In a culture where self-importance and private ambition often lead to disaster, here is a simple reminder why we need to believe in God. Rev. Billy Graham's gentle eloquence at the 911 memorial 14 Sept. 2001. He reminds us that human enterprise is lethal without remembering that we are accountable to God, not just literally, but morally. Consider the savage insanity of Muhammad Atta and the quiet dignity of Billy Graham. You need not be a Christian or even religious to get Grahams central point. Recognition that what we are and that which we may do, is finally a matter of judgment by God and generations to come. There must acceptance of a moral force in the universe, even if it is a human construct founded in fantasy.

Simple decency from a gentle spirit.
President and Mrs. Bush, I want to say a personal word on behalf of many people. Thank you, Mr. President, for calling this day of prayer and remembrance. We needed it at this time.
We come together today to affirm our conviction that God cares for us, whatever our ethnic, religious, or political background may be. The Bible says that He's the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles. No matter how hard we try, words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on Tuesday morning. September eleven will go down in our history as a day to remember.
Today we say to those who masterminded this cruel plot, and to those who carried it out, that the spirit of this nation will not be defeated by their twisted and diabolical schemes. Someday, those responsible will be brought to justice, as President Bush and our Congress have so forcefully stated. But today we especially come together in this service to confess our need of God.
We've always needed God from the very beginning of this nation, but today we need Him especially. We're facing a new kind of enemy. We're involved in a new kind of warfare. And we need the help of the Spirit of God. The Bible words are our hope: God is our refuge and strength; an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.
But how do we understand something like this? Why does God allow evil like this to take place? Perhaps that is what you are asking now. You may even be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands these feelings that you may have. We've seen so much on our television, on our -- heard on our radio, stories that bring tears to our eyes and make us all feel a sense of anger. But God can be trusted, even when life seems at its darkest.
But what are some of the lessons we can learn? First, we are reminded of the mystery and reality of evil. I've been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept by faith that God is sovereign, and He's a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says that God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a mystery. In 1st Thessalonian 2:7 it talks about the mystery of iniquity. The old testament prophet Jeremiah said "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure." Who can understand it?" He asked that question, 'Who can understand it?' And that's one reason we each need God in our lives.
The lesson of this event is not only about the mystery of iniquity and evil, but secondly it's a lesson about our need for each other. What an example New York and Washington have been to the world these past few days. None of us will ever forget the pictures of our courageous firefighters and police, many of whom have lost friends and colleagues; or the hundreds of people attending or standing patiently in line to donate blood. A tragedy like this could have torn our country apart. But instead it has united us, and we've become a family. So those perpetrators who took this on to tear us apart, it has worked the other way -- it's back lashed. It's backfired. We are more united than ever before. I think this was exemplified in a very moving way when the members of our Congress stood shoulder to shoulder the other day and sang "God Bless America."
Finally, difficult as it may be for us to see right now, this event can give a message of hope -- hope for the present, and hope for the future. Yes, there is hope. There's hope for the present, because I believe the stage has already been set for a new spirit in our nation. One of the things we desperately need is a spiritual renewal in this country. We need a spiritual revival in America. And God has told us in His word, time after time, that we are to repent of our sins and return to Him, and He will bless us in a new way. But there's also hope for the future because of God's promises. As a Christian, I hope not for just this life, but for heaven and the life to come. And many of those people who died this past week are in heaven right now. And they wouldn't want to come back. It's so glorious and so wonderful. And that's the hope for all of us who put our faith in God. I pray that you will have this hope in your heart.
This event reminds us of the brevity and the uncertainty of life. We never know when we too will be called into eternity. I doubt if even one those people who got on those planes, or walked into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon last Tuesday morning thought it would be the last day of their lives. It didn't occur to them. And that's why each of us needs to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God and His will now.
Here in this majestic National Cathedral we see all around us symbols of the cross. For the Christian -- I'm speaking for the Christian now -- the cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering. For He took upon himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, our sins and our suffering. And from the cross, God declares "I love you. I know the heart aches, and the sorrows, and the pains that you feel, but I love you." The story does not end with the cross, for Easter points us beyond the tragedy of the cross to the empty tomb. It tells us that there is hope for eternal life, for Christ has conquered evil, and death, and hell. Yes, there's hope.
I've become an old man now. And I've preached all over the world. And the older I get, the more I cling to that hope that I started with many years ago, and proclaimed it in many languages to many parts of the world. Several years ago at the National Prayer Breakfast here in Washington, Ambassador Andrew Young, who had just gone through the tragic death of his wife, closed his talk with a quote from the old hymn, "How Firm A Foundation." We all watched in horror as planes crashed into the steel and glass of the World Trade Center. Those majestic towers, built on solid foundations, were examples of the prosperity and creativity of America. When damaged, those buildings eventually plummeted to the ground, imploding in upon themselves. Yet underneath the debris is a foundation that was not destroyed. Therein lies the truth of that old hymn that Andrew Young quoted: "How firm a foundation."
Yes, our nation has been attacked. Buildings destroyed. Lives lost. But now we have a choice: Whether to implode and disintegrate emotionally and spiritually as a people, and a nation, or, whether we choose to become stronger through all of the struggle to rebuild on a solid foundation. And I believe that we're in the process of starting to rebuild on that foundation. That foundation is our trust in God. That's what this service is all about. And in that faith we have the strength to endure something as difficult and horrendous as what we've experienced this week.
This has been a terrible week with many tears. But also it's been a week of great faith. Churches all across the country have called prayer meetings. And today is a day that they're celebrating not only in this country, but in many parts of the world. And the words of that familiar hymn that Andrew Young quoted, it says "'Fear not, I am with thee. Oh be not dismayed for I am thy God and will give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand upon my righteous, omnipotent hand."
My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him. We also know that God is going to give wisdom, and courage, and strength to the President, and those around him. And this is going to be a day that we will remember as a day of victory. May God bless you all.

And now, something different!
From The Ayn Rand Institute:

Keep Our "Addiction" to Oil, End Our Allergy to Self-Assertion
By Alex Epstein
Politicians and commentators from both parties are decrying our "addiction to oil." They exhort us to embrace costly programs to reduce our consumption of oil as quickly as possible. The primary rationale for this is national security. Our oil consumption is dangerous because, in the words of a New York Times editorial, "Oil profits that flow to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries finance . . . terrorist acts." With the same justification, President Bush has called for cutting "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025 . . . and mak[ing] our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."
But Americans are not "addicted" to oil. "Addiction" implies an intense desire for something harmful. But we do not desire oil irrationally; we consume it because it is a wonderful, life-sustaining product. Oil is unmatched as an efficient, safe source of portable energy. It enables us to affordably ride, drive, or fly anywhere we wish, and fuels a transportation industry that enables us to trade anything with anyone from anywhere around the world. We are not addicted to oil any more than we are addicted to the myriad values it makes possible, like fresh food, imported electronics, going to work, or visiting loved ones.
The problem we face today is not our love of oil, but oil-rich dictatorships like Iran and Saudi Arabia--who use ill-gotten profits to spread totalitarian Islamic ideology around the world and terrorize us with their minions. The solution is not to punish ourselves by renouncing oil--but to punish our enemies until they renounce their aggression.
As the most powerful nation on earth, the United States has many options at its disposal.
One means of ending the Iranian and Saudi threat would be to issue an ultimatum to these regimes: cease all anti-American aggression immediately, or be destroyed. Many, witnessing the Iraqi quagmire, might scoff at this option. But such a course is eminently practical if America's unsurpassed military forces are committed to the task, not of "rebuilding" or "liberating" these states, but of making their inhabitants fear threatening America ever again.
Another means of addressing the threat would be to remove Middle Eastern oil fields from Iranian and Saudi control, put them in the hands of private companies, and then employ surveillance and troops to secure that oil supply. Contrary to popular assumption, Middle Eastern dictatorships have no right to their nationalized oil fields, which should be private property--the property of individuals who work to find and extract the oil.
Still another option might be a comprehensive, all-out embargo by the United States and its allies to starve the leader of the enemy, Iran, until the regime crumbles and the Islamic totalitarians lose their will to fight.
Which policy is best is for military strategists to determine--but our politicians and intellectuals refuse to consider any of these options. Instead, they decry our "addiction to oil," condemn us for not all wanting to drive Priuses, and urge, as penance, that we cut ourselves from the world oil market. Can anyone honestly believe that such asceticism will protect us from attack--given that Saudi Arabia and Iran both actively sponsored terrorism when oil was $10 a barrel?
Why do our leaders eagerly embrace impractical policies that punish Americans, while eschewing practical options that would punish our enemies? Because the practical policies would involve "going to war for oil," "America imposing its will on the rest of the world," upsetting the "international community," and all of today's other foreign policy taboos--i.e., they are branded immoral because they involve American self-assertion.
Our leaders do not believe that America has a moral right to assert itself in self-defense. This is why we engage in self-effacing, appeasing "diplomacy" with easily defeated enemies like Iran and Saudi Arabia. And this is why, when we actually do go to war (after such diplomacy fails), we pull our punches and declare our purpose to be lavishing the good life on hostile foreign peoples. Now, after over 2,500 American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars put in service of mob rule in Iraq, we are told to give up the lifeblood of our civilization rather than wage real war against our enemies. Could anything be more encouraging to our enemies than the knowledge that America will make Americans, not them, pay for their aggression?
This senseless sacrifice must stop. It is past time to adopt a foreign policy of self-assertion and self-interest--i.e., a truly moral policy.
Alex Epstein is a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine,

The Sunday Times
July 09, 2006
Stop dithering, this dictator's really got WMDsAndrew Sullivan
Case No 1: a genocidal, certifiably loopy dictator with a history of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry has the potential to hand such WMDs to terrorists and wreak havoc on the West.
Case No 2: a genocidal, certifiably loopy dictator with a history of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry has the potential to hand such WMDs to terrorists and wreak havoc on the West.
There’s a difference, though. The first hasn’t aimed such weaponry at the West, and is hemmed in by Anglo-American warplanes. The second has launched missiles aimed at the American homeland, has the potential to murder millions in a country allied with the West, has constructed concentration camps for dissidents, has starved thousands to death and is far further along in the nuclear bomb-making process. Who’s the bigger worry?
According to President George W Bush, it’s the first guy. Saddam Hussein was exponentially more dangerous in 2002 than Kim Jong-il is today. In 2002 we were told of the necessity of acting before a threat became imminent.
Speeches were given; ultimatums were delivered; the public was warned that acquiescence to Saddam’s attempt to get WMDs was not an option. “We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” the president warned.
And yet a day after a nuclear-armed dictator fired failed missiles at Hawaii Bush had to be cornered at a doughnut shop in the middle of a motorcade trip to provide a response. The Washington Post noted that his national security meeting last week was devoted to . . . Cuba.
His spokesman told the press: “It’s been our policy all along that we do not act unilaterally . . . There are attempts to try to describe this almost in breathless world war three terms. This is not such a situation.”
Does that sound like the Bush you remember? There are, of course, differences between North Korea today and Iraq four years ago.
It was partly because Saddam did not yet have a nuclear capacity that he could be tackled militarily.
Kim is one step ahead of Saddam on that one. Saddam didn’t have the blackmail of a potentially obliterated Seoul either — and he sat precariously at the geographical nexus of radical Islamism in the Middle East. Kim is geographically and culturally about as far away from radical Islam as one can imagine.
But there are also similarities: Russia and China are content to block meaningful action against North Korea, just as they were with Saddam’s Iraq. Kim could easily team up with terrorists to attack the West. There is an “axis of evil” after all. Who coined that term again? Remind me.
You can, of course, make an argument that removing Saddam came first precisely because it was doable and he was less of a threat. You can also argue that a multilateral approach works best with North Korea, because its neighbours are far more vulnerable than the US and have a greater interest in containment.
In fact, I’d be largely persuaded by such arguments. But what you cannot do is argue as Dick Cheney and Bush have consistently argued about the WMD threat, then look at their current position on North Korea and consequently make any coherent sense at all.
The Cheney argument, as outlined in Ron Suskind’s book-length brief for the CIA, The One Percent Doctrine, is clear. It is that if there is a 1% chance that terrorists can get access to WMDs, the US, after 9/11, must treat that chance as a 100% certainty.
Under that Cheney risk-rubric, Kim is easily the gravest threat to American lives since Bush took office. He has the materials; he has the motive; all he lacks is a delivery system.
And the failure of his missile delivery system is not a cause for relief. It merely means that if he is to deliver the nuclear goods to his enemies, he has to find another way.
A suitcase? An Al-Qaeda suicide bomber? A Pakistani intelligence agent?
You think these options aren’t available to him? If you live anywhere near a western city you should be concerned. Or at least a little more concerned than a president who spent the afternoon at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Again, you see the strange, almost surreal disconnection between the president’s words and his actions. He has indeed described the current conflict between civilisation and terror masters armed with WMDs as the equivalent of the third world war.
And yet he still refuses to send two more divisions to pacify Baghdad, a critical element in stabilising Iraq. He hasn’t enlarged the size of the military, and has had to rely on part-time reservists to hold the line in hell-holes in Iraq.
He won’t raise taxes on petrol, an act that would by itself rob the terror states of the Middle East of long-term financial leverage over the United States (as well as help stimulate technology that could help stave off global warming).
He won’t confront Saudi Arabia over its continued financing of Wahhabist terror. He hasn’t captured Osama Bin Laden, and he’s content to pursue multilateral blather against a real nuclear threat from one of the vilest dictatorships on the planet.
As someone who backed the resolution and analysis of this president in the run-up to war against Saddam, and who still hopes for the best in Iraq, I can only say I feel somewhat conned.
Perhaps if the president had publicly announced that he had miscalculated the Iraq risk, had now abandoned the Cheney doctrine, and, by the sheer weight of experience, was now a Kissingerian realist, able to tolerate the risk of the unthinkable, I could adjust. But he hasn’t.
He has just behaved according to one assumption for four years and is now behaving according to another one.
It’s up to us to adjust to his incoherence. Forgive me if the adjustment is a little unnerving and bordering on, shall we say, absurd.
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

July 9, 2006
Editorial NY TIMES
Signs of Life in Congress
Congress, which is supposed to push back against executive attempts to amass overweening power, has hardly played its proper role when it comes to George W. Bush. In the past, when evidence arose that the president had overstepped his authority, the Congressional response was generally to look for ways to make whatever Mr. Bush did retroactively legal. But the Supreme Court's decision on the Guantánamo Bay detention camp seems to have jolted even some of the most loyal Republicans back to reality. They are vowing that this time, they will not merely rubber-stamp presidential overreaching. Soon, Americans will get a sense of how seriously to take this newfound spine.
The court ruled, in a decision so strong that it sent shock waves through Washington, that Mr. Bush violated the Geneva Conventions and American law when he created commissions to try detainees outside established judicial procedure. The court rejected Mr. Bush's claim of a power to handle prisoners any way he wants and said it was up to Congress to set rules.
This week, three Congressional committees will hold hearings on the issue. The White House predictably asked Congress simply to legalize Mr. Bush's policies. But a wide range of senators rejected that and called for a serious look at the basic question: whether and how existing rules should be changed to deal with terrorists who are not in any army.
The court said the military commissions, which Vice President Dick Cheney and his team cooked up without bothering to consult military lawyers, violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which has rules of evidence and process similar to civilian law. Congress could simply apply the military court to the Guantánamo prisoners. But the code was created to try members of the United States armed forces and some experts make convincing arguments its use would not be appropriate for terrorist suspects.
Still, Congress could create a new kind of military commission, operating as closely as possible to United States military law. That is the proposal of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of the Senate's experts on military law, and Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman. It sounds reasonable, as long as lawmakers resist pressure from the administration to deny the prisoners any real rights, barring them from seeing classified evidence, admitting coerced confessions, excluding prisoners from hearings and sharply limiting their lawyers' ability to defend them.
The challenge for Congress is simply to create a vehicle for giving the prisoners their day in court that contains the protections that Americans believe any human being deserves before he can be locked away in an isolated prison forever. Coerced testimony should be banned. Classified material could be safeguarded by using the current civilian court practice, in which judges review such material and decide whether to share it with defense lawyers, who are cleared in advance.
The division here is not between people who want to win the war on terror and those who for some unfathomable reason do not. It is between an executive branch that seems bent on proving that the president has unlimited power and those who believe that the Constitution and the rule of law did not crumble along with the World Trade Center.
We would not be in this mess if Mr. Bush had followed the rules. If he had allowed the screening of captives on the battlefield, which the military wanted and the Geneva Conventions require, hundreds of innocent men would never have been sent to Gitmo. If he had asked Congress to create tribunals, instead of fashioning extralegal ones, some of those prisoners who really are terrorists might have been convicted by now in full view of the world.
Senator Graham put it just right the other day. "We don't need to change who we are to win the war," he said. "We need to create a system to meet the needs of a fair trial, the rights of the accused and the defense of the nation, that the world will see as fair and the nation can be proud of."
We hope Congress follows that spirit.

Putin fails to explain kissing boy on stomach

From Jeremy Page in Moscow

(Times of London)
AFTER a week of frenzied speculation across Russia, President Putin finally explained yesterday that he had kissed a young boy on the stomach in the Kremlin because he wanted to “stroke him like a kitten”.
But his explanation during a live webcast held by the BBC and a popular Russian browser left many viewers even more bemused.
The normally dour former KGB officer insisted that it was a spontaneous decision to approach the five-year-old, who was in a group of tourists, to lift his shirt and kiss his stomach.
“People came up and I began talking to them, among them this little boy. He seemed to me very independent, sure of himself and at the same time defenceless so to speak, an innocent boy and a very nice little boy,” Mr Putin said. “I tell you honestly, I just wanted to stroke him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. There is nothing behind it.”
Russians occasionally kiss babies on the stomach, but almost never five-year-old boys.
The country was so stunned that the issue shot almost to the top of a list of more than 162,000 questions sent into www.yandex.ru, which cohosted the webcast yesterday.
None was more surprised than the little boy himself — identified in the Russian press as Nikita Konkin. The Izvestia daily reported that Nikita had refused to wash ever since.
“I just liked him and he liked me very much. I want to be president myself,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. Some political analysts suggested that the kiss was a clumsy attempt to soften Mr Putin’s image in the run-up to the G8 summit in St Petersburg from July 15 to 17.
The Kremlin has launched a huge publicity drive, with the help of Ketchum, an American PR firm, to counter critics of its campaign to curb democracy.
The PR team denies having anything to do with “that kiss”. It is, however, helping to organise media events like the webcast to give Mr Putin a chance to explain his policies to a Western audience.
Mr Putin used the opportuninty to defend his democratic credentials, his policies in Chechnya and his decision to cut off gas supplies to neighbouring Ukraine. He also tried to allay fears of a new Cold War by declaring his friendship for President Bush, whom he described as a “decent” person.
Mr Bush “is a very good partner for me with whom I can not only talk, but agree”, he said. “I want to note with pleasure that he’s a man who, not just because he’s President of the United States, but because of his personal, human qualities, I count among my circle of friends.”
He escaped some of the more trivial and fanciful questions, including one about a giant mythical octopus sleeping under the Pacific Ocean.
But after the webcast, journalists in the Kremlin studio did ask whether he recalled losing his virginity.
“I can’t remember exactly when I did it for the first time,” he said, laughing. “But I certainly remember when I did it the last time, to the exact minute.”

The Sunday Times
July 02, 2006
The founding fathers save America's soul

Andrew Sullivan
The full importance of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld took a little time to sink in. Military tribunals to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay were found to be illegal. The administration had breached both American law and the Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners. The lesson is that even in times of war America is run, not by a president, but by a constitution.
The president is not an old-style monarch, empowered in wartime to make up rules as he goes along to defend his subjects. He is not the law. He must obey the law, as all citizens must. And in a series of actions and decisions after 9/11, President George W Bush in effect broke the law, violated his oath of office and pushed the limits of his power beyond the permissible.
Not for the first time, in other words, a King George has been dethroned in America. This time, though, it wasn’t the British monarch but a president who had almost come to regard himself as a king in a war with no end. The rebels were not a crew of colonial tax-avoiders, but the Supreme Court set up more than two centuries ago by the first independent Americans. On Tuesday Americans will celebrate that moment on July 4. This year, thanks to the court, Independence Day came early.
America is not in essence a geographical entity. When it was founded, it occupied a fraction of the land it now does. Nor is it defined by an ethnic group or a royal line. Its core is essentially a piece of paper, a written constitution, a formal set of procedures designed, before everything else, to protect individual liberty. At the heart of that liberty is the right to a fair trial and the insistence that nobody — especially not the president — can take that away.
That constitution has been tested before. It was tested when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the civil war. It was tested when Franklin D Roosevelt interned thousands of Japanese-American citizens in camps during the second world war. It was tested when Richard Nixon turned the presidency into a criminal conspiracy in Watergate. There was never any doubt that the war launched against the United States on September 11, 2001, would test it too. Wars do that, as Lincoln and Roosevelt demonstrate. No war by foreign enemies has implicated the American homeland as profoundly as this one.
In retrospect a large part of Bush’s immediate response to 9/11 was understandable, even admirable. Facing a sudden attack, the constitution allows the president to take emergency measures to protect American citizens. He can act swiftly and legally to defend the country as commander-in-chief — and he did. If he hadn’t and further attacks had occurred, he would have been pilloried. It is to his credit that no further attacks have taken place.
But the constitution also insists that any emergency powers be temporary, that Congress alone can declare war and regulate the laws of warfare, and that the president’s first task is to protect the constitution, not violate it. He does not have, as this president argued, one “accountability moment” every four years. He is continually accountable to a constitution applicable to everyone.
After 9/11, this president and his closest advisers decided otherwise. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld believed presidential power was overly shackled after Nixon. They saw in 9/11 a golden opportunity to get it back. Yes, they seized emergency powers. But they seized them while claiming they had no need for congressional permission. The president, they claimed, was empowered to be judge, jury and executioner in wartime. Neither Congress nor courts could stop him from his duty to defend Americans. If that meant tearing up the Geneva conventions, violating the constitution, breaking domestic law, setting up ad hoc courts and enforcing torture, so be it. After 9/11, few dissented.
What happened last week was the return of constitutional order. The court insisted that the president needed legislative backing for prosecuting terrorists and that he was bound by the laws of warfare passed by Congress. The farcical military tribunals at Gitmo were more suited to a banana republic than the US — and they had to be scrapped. Torture is illegal in America — and the president has no authority to say otherwise. What we saw last week, in other words, was the end of a potential rival regime to constitutional government in America.
It doesn’t mean Guantanamo will close. It doesn’t mean that the president cannot detain some individuals indefinitely in wartime. It doesn’t mean the president has no right to take military actions to defend the country as he sees fit. But he must work through constitutional channels, get congressional backing and win court support. If he wants to torture prisoners, he must ask Congress to repeal the law against it.
Nor does the Hamdan decision end the debate over presidential power in America. The decision was written by the most senior member of the court — and the one most likely to retire next. Bush’s own appointees, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, favour the notion of an untrammelled executive power in wartime. The vote was essentially 5-4 and Bush is one nominee away from reversing it.
The conservative intelligentsia in America have also shifted dramatically from a conservatism that protects the individual from government towards a conservatism that wants to impose democracy abroad and enforce morality at home. These new conservatives are contemptuous of constitutional propriety and limited government. They believe in results, rather than following careful procedures. They will not relent after one court decision.
What will ultimately decide this battle for the soul of America will be the people who elect their own representatives to check the president. The court is as evenly balanced as it has ever been. American constitutional democracy is only marginally more secure this Sunday than last.
Can democracies fight long — let alone open-ended — wars without ceasing to be democracies? Can we fight barbarians without becoming like them? This has always been an open question, but rarely as open as today. The enemy knows no moral boundaries and no checks on its power. The West is defined by both. What we saw last week was the moment when the most powerful democracy asked itself if it could fight terror and retain its soul. The answer was yes. But the question will come again. Maybe sooner than we think.

Beatles' legacy revived with Love show in Vegas 01/07/2006 - 14:17:51

It was Beatlemania all over again. Flashes popped and hundreds of fans screamed as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr walked the red carpet for the opening performance of Love, a surrealistic portrayal of the Fab Four’s career performed by Cirque du Soleil.The event early today Irish time, at the retooled Siegfried & Roy Theatre at The Mirage hotel, chronicles a deconstructed musical trip through the Beatles’ past.John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, wearing a large white hat and matching pantsuit, drew loud cheers from fans.“All this time when I was working on this show in the rehearsals, I thought: ‘Oh, John should be here’. That’s the only thing that I regret, the fact that he’s not here because he would have enjoyed it so much,” Ono said.Olivia Harrison, the widow of George Harrison, spoke over her shoulder as she was whisked past a crowd. “I hope he (George) would like it.”Love is a dance and acrobatic spectacle filled with characters from their songs – the walrus, Lady Madonna, Sgt Pepper – and set to a soundscape made of parts of songs, outtakes and fragments of sound that are sure to please fans and at the same time leave them full of questions.“John? Who knows about John,” said George Martin, the Beatles’ long-time producer about John Lennon, who was shot dead on December 8 1980.“If he saw the show, he’d probably say: ‘Yeah, but it could be better’,” said Martin, who worked with his son Giles Martin, to create the 90-minute show’s soundscape.In Love, the Beatles’ dream world does appear on stage.The performance explodes early at the hotel-casino’s €104m, 2,013-seat theatre with Get Back, the band’s 1969 hit, as dancers and acrobats jump and twirl in the air.Set to blended, reversed and enhanced parts of 130 songs and unpublished out-takes, the acrobatic and dance spectacle takes the audience through the Second World War, the 1960s era of “Beatlemania”, the band’s reclusive studio years and a psychedelic time that produced songs such as Strawberry Fields Forever and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.Some moments allude to real-life events, according to creator Dominic Champagne. Hooded figures throwing knives at a cross hint at threats made by the Ku Klux Klan against the Beatles after Lennon famously proclaimed in 1966 that the band was “more popular than Jesus”.Also dramatised to A Day In The Life is Julia, Lennon’s mother, whose death in a traffic accident early in his life is thought to have created a bond between Lennon and McCartney, whose own mother died when he was young.“I tried to get inspired by the lyrics, but also the moments and the motion of their careers,” Champagne said. “We tried to be spiritual and physical without trying to be too didactic. I didn’t want to do the live version of The Anthology. We’re not here to teach the Beatles story to people.”What emerged is a multitude of symbols and metaphors that will have dedicated fans dusting off their LPs and looking through lyric books.A South African tap dance in yellow gumboots to Lady Madonna evokes the “children at your feet” line from the song. A lonely looking Eleanor Rigby drags her belongings like a bag lady behind her on stage, while Doctor Robert, who allegedly gave the band LSD in their tea, merrily carries a teapot in hand.It was Harrison’s desire to do more with the Beatles’ legacy and his personal friendship with Cirque founder Guy Laliberte that sparked development of the project. The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, then signed off on Love.The production is the first major theatrical partnership for Apple Corps, which has earned a feisty reputation for having sued companies from Apple Computer Inc to record label EMI to protect the band’s legacy. It also marks the company’s most significant endeavour since 2000 when it released “1”, a CD collection of 27 No 1 singles that has sold more than 24 million copies.Giles Martin likened the long hiatus to the quiet time from 1966 to 1967 that his father spent in the studio with the Beatles to create their seminal album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.“Sgt Pepper was done because the Beatles stopped touring,” he said. “And this was done because the Beatles aren’t here.”