Clumsy Leadership The furor over Dubai's planned takeover of some U.S. ports is a sign of how out of control the ‘war on terror’ has become.
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
Updated: 12:53 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2006
Feb. 22, 2006 - Revolutionaries need several ingredients to succeed: charisma, for one; organization, for another. But what they need most of all is an incompetent regime, one that makes their ideas look good by comparison. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," William Wordsworth famously wrote after the French Revolution, romanticizing the "enfants de la patrie" who marched on the Bastille. But no one ever quotes the next line in his poem about the "meager, stale, forbidding " old regime that collapsed so easily there. The early Bolsheviks were nobodies in Russia before the 1917 Revolution, but thanks to the combined ineptitude of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexander Kerensky—the first one representing bumbling monarchy, the latter the most indecisive sort of democracy—Lenin and Co. established their "dictatorship of the proletariat" with a swiftness that surprised even them.
Listening this week to the latest excerpts from Osama bin Laden's and Ayman al Zawahiri's taped messages, it is hard not to marvel at how lucky these would-be revolutionaries have been in their enemy. Who would have thought that, four and a half years on, facing down the mightiest power in history, this sociopathic pair would still be out there talking trash, their continued existence a daily desecration of the memory of the 9/11 dead? Or that bin Laden and Zawahiri would have been able to whip what had been a bare ember of “global jihad”—one barely smoldering on 9/10/01—into a global conflagration? Was that a smirk I detected on Zawahiri's face as he advised George W. Bush that it was not too late for him to convert to Islam? You could not miss the contempt in bin Laden’s voice when, in a tape said to be several months old, he mocked Bush's aircraft carrier-staged declaration in April 2003 that major conflict in Iraq had ended.
What a contrast to four years ago, when the rapid collapse of the Taliban caught bin Laden by surprise as he sought to escape the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora. It was probably the last time, we must now conclude, that the terror impresario was surprised at all. As Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the operation, records in his new book "Jawbreaker," (Crown, 2005) bin Laden told his followers, "Forgive me," and apologized for getting them pinned down by the Americans (Berntsen's men were listening on radio). Bin Laden then asked them to pray. And, lo, a miracle occurred. As Berntsen stewed in frustration over the Pentagon’s refusal to rush in more troops to encircle the trapped “sheikh,’ bin Laden was allowed to flee. And not only did Bush stop talking about the man he wanted “dead or alive,” the president began to shift U.S. Special Forces (in particular the Arabic-speaking 5th Group, which had built close relations with its Afghan allies) and Predator drones to the Iraq theater.
It is time to have an accounting of just how badly run, and conceived, this "war on terror" has been. You won't hear it from the Democrats, who have been running a severe testosterone shortage since Vietnam. And there's certainly no need to take my word for it.
Instead, just listen to what the president's own party is saying. Let's start with Donald Rumsfeld, the man we thought was in charge of the GWOT, the global war on terror. Speaking last week at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld lamented how much better bin Laden and Zawahiri were at understanding the nature of the war. He quoted Zawahiri as saying (way back in July 2005), "We are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds of Muslims," and then proceeded to complain that "the U.S. government”—some entity the Defense Secretary is not on familiar terms with, presumably—“still functions as a five and dime store in an eBay world." Al Qaeda, Rumsfeld said, as if he were still head of some blue-ribbon commission questioning the competence of the Clinton administration, has made better use of the technologies we invented than we have. "Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we, our country, our government has not adapted," he said.
Uhhh, that failure to adapt, wouldn’t that be your failure, Mr. Rumsfeld? Or the president's? But Rummy was his usual unflappable self, just as full of brio and self-confidence as he appears in Eugene Jarecki's new movie, "Why We Fight," when he raps the podium in prewar 2003 and says, "We know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.”
Again, lest I'm accused of being partisan (I'm really just a reporter, and a very disappointed hawk), I would just refer you to the rebellion within Bush's own party. The way the war was supposed to have been fought—a way that would really have distressed bin Laden and Zawahiri—was that Al Qaeda was supposed to be so isolated by now that we had most of the Arab world on our side. Deals like Dubai Ports World 's takeover of the London company that administers some U.S. ports were supposed to be pretty much routine. After all, as one commentator said to me during an appearance on al Jazeera the other day, isn't this the way globalization is intended to work: you co-opt everyone, even your rivals, into the international system? Instead, so mistrusted is the Bush administration—and so out of control has the war on terror become—that even leading Republican politicians this week sought to cancel the Dubai contract (Bush, to his credit, did manage a presidential response, vowing to veto).
We did not have a clash of civilizations four years ago, but we're getting closer to one now. As violent anti-Western protests sweep the Islamic world, and what remains of the moderate Muslim community is cowed into silence, how unbearably sad it is to cast one 's mind back to the eve of 9/11. As Wall Street Journal reporter Alan Cullison wrote in a too-little-noted article in The Atlantic in September 2004, Al Qaeda was then a small fractious group that could not even agree among itself about what its goal was. Members had been hounded from the Arab world, from Sudan, into the hands of a lunatic fringe regime in Afghanistan. Qaeda had one A-team, and one big roll of the dice to make, with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his ace psychopath, Mohammed Atta. Cullison, quoting a remarkable series of letters he found on Zawahiri’s old computer in Afghanistan, wrote that jihadis who were members of Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad—the biggest component of Al Qaeda—still wanted to make Egypt the main enemy. One of them even compared the grandiose war against America to tilting at "windmills." Cullison is worth quoting at length on this:
"Perhaps one of the most important insights to emerge from the computer is that 9/11 sprang not so much from Al Qaeda’s strengths as from its weaknesses. The computer did not reveal any links to Iraq or any other deep-pocketed government; amid the group's penury the members fell to bitter infighting. The blow against the United States was meant to put an end to the internal rivalries, which are manifest in vitriolic memos between Kabul and cells abroad. Al-Qaeda’s leaders worried about a military response from the United States, but in such a response they spied opportunity: they had fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and they fondly remembered that war as a galvanizing experience, an event that roused the indifferent of the Arab world to fight and win against a technologically superior Western infidel. The jihadis expected the United States, like the Soviet Union, to be a clumsy opponent."
Not in their fondest dreams did they realize how clumsy.
It is just as sad to remember the support that once existed for the United States, then at the pinnacle of its power and prestige. On 9/10/01 America had adversaries, but mainly on the fringes. The invasion of Afghanistan brought barely a peep from the Arab street. No one had much use for Al Qaeda, even in the Islamic world. Global polls like those taken by Pew and the German Marshall Fund showed a remarkable degree of global consensus in favor of a one-superpower (in other words, American-dominated) world. The silver lining of 9/11 was a chance to reaffirm the legitimacy of America's role as trusted overseer of the international system. That is why Bush had so much support when he ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan, who were clearly harboring bin Laden, and so little backing when he shifted attention to Saddam, whose connection to bin Laden was plainly manufactured. The post-9/11 period was a fantastic opportunity for alliance- and institution-building. All that was required was American leadership.
How then did we arrive at this day, with anti-American Islamist governments rising in the Mideast, bin Laden sneering at us, Qaeda lieutenants escaping from prison, Iran brazenly enriching uranium, and America as hated and mistrusted as it ever has been? The answer, in a word, is incompetence. We now have testimony from enough Republicans and Bush loyalists—from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to former CIA senior director Paul Pillar — that the administration knew all along how flimsy its WMD case against Iraq was. We also now know, from Berntsen and others, that the administration knew then how solid the intel on bin Laden's and Zawahiri's whereabouts was. So catastrophic was Bush's decision to shift his attention and resources to Iraq, when bin Laden was panting at Tora Bora, that one is tempted to rank it with Adolf Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941, at a time when Great Britain was prostrate and America was still out of the war (a decision that almost certainly cost Hitler the war then and there). Yes, Iraq may some day become a legitimate democracy. But for now it is mainly a jihadi factory, cranking out new generations of hardened bomb-ready Islamists, as we have seen with the cross-pollination that has brought Iraqi-style suicide bombs back to Afghanistan.Bush of course has been lucky in his adversaries as well—not bin Laden, but the Democrats (not to mention many a media pundit). To this day they seem afraid to make the case that the great war presidency has been a disastrous war presidency, in large part because of the fraudulent Iraq invasion. Has any presidential candidate ever had a better talking point than this, as John Kerry did in 2004? But Kerry, a true combat hero, turned out to be a political coward, declining to attack while the Bush-Rove machine slowly emasculated him. Today the only Democratic candidate with the necessary money and renown to run for president, Hillary Clinton, is also one who must prove her presidential timber by out-hawking the hawk-in-chief. So forget about her calling it as she sees it. No wonder Karl Rove is telling the GOP that the war on terror is still the president’s ace issue in 2006, as it was in 2002.So, yes, bin Laden and Zawahiri have been fortunate in their enemies. Had the Bush administration been more competent, these two would have long since been bloody pulp, perhaps largely forgotten. Luckily for the rest of us, the Al Qaeda revolutionary program is so abhorrent that most of the world still has no choice but to stick with us, through thick and thin—and dumb and dumber. How long we can test the world’s patience is another matter. Alan Cullison’s 2004 article based on Zawahiri’s private thoughts is again instructive here. "Al Qaeda understood that its attacks would not lead to a quick collapse of the great powers,” he wrote. “Rather, its aim was to tempt the powers to strike back in a way that would create sympathy for the terrorists. ... One wonders if the United States is indeed playing the role written for it on the computer." What I wonder is, how many more years will we have to wait for Rumsfeld to figure that one out?
pd_top('Story','handheld','11500950','Clumsy Leadership','The furor over Dubai\'s planned takeover of some U.S. ports is a sign of how out of control the ‘war on terror’ has become.',
© 2006 MSNBC.com

Posted on Sat, Mar. 04, 2006
THE HOUSING BOOM MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
City's high-rise boom stirs discussion about flight safety
By ANDRES VIGLUCCI
aviglucci@MiamiHerald.com
Miami city leaders have been discreetly lobbying Miami International Airport and federal aviation authorities to lift height restrictions on new buildings in and around downtown -- limits meant to ensure clear flight paths for planes.
The city's yearlong lobbying effort is vigorously opposed by American Airlines, other MIA carriers and pilots unions. They contend that skyscrapers now under construction or approved are already too numerous and too tall, and that they will create a ''Great Wall of Miami'' along Biscayne Bay that will compromise flight safety, add to their costs and squeeze airport operations.
''Miami is just growing by leaps and bounds; the numbers of tall buildings are increasing,'' said American Capt. Mike Leone, chairman of the Allied Pilots Association's safety committee. ``So why lower the safety bar? They should be thinking of raising the safety bar.''
The tussle, waged largely out of public sight, pits two of Miami's most powerful and vital economic players -- airlines and developers -- in a heated contest over the city's increasingly crowded urban airspace, with millions of dollars and the future viability of MIA potentially at stake.
It also underscores just how intense the city's high-rise boom has become, as developers propose towers far taller than anything Miami has seen -- including several exceeding 100 stories.
Buildings that tall would break through long-standing federal and local limits that cap towers at 950 feet in the downtown core and taper to 650 feet along the bay to the north and south. The limits are designed to let planes clear buildings by at least 1,000 feet under routine conditions.
In the past 18 months, the airspace rules have thwarted several developers' plans to erect 1,000-foot skyscrapers and have forced others to downscale.
The conflict arises from MIA's proximity to downtown. The airport's east-west configuration, designed to take advantage of prevailing winds, puts airplane takeoffs and approaches directly over the center of the city's high-rise boom -- Brickell, downtown, the Omni-Edgewater area and the Miami River.
In letters to MIA and the Federal Aviation Administration, city officials have complained that ''outdated'' regulations are keeping the white-hot condo boom from reaching as far into the sky as a gaggle of big developers and architects would like.
City administrators say they want to accommodate developers' dreams for taller buildings to maximize the bang from the boom -- but only so long as the towers don't affect flight safety or MIA's viability. They say they believe there is room to increase height limits without hurting flight operations.
''No one wants to create a hazard out there,'' said Otto Boudet-Murias, the city's chief of planning and urban development. ``But certain areas of the city are zoned for high-intensity projects. These are very valuable to the city.''
`A FINITE RESOURCE'
In response, MIA officials are exploring a compromise that would allow buildings up to 1,000 feet in a small area downtown, and up to 750 feet along the bay in Brickell and Edgewater. That would require an OK from the FAA as well as the Miami-Dade County Commission, said airport planner Sunil Harman.
He warned, however, that developers and the city are unlikely to get all they want. The city's chief building official, Jose Ferras, has asked for all height restrictions to be lifted downtown, something Harman said just won't fly.
''Airspace is a finite resource,'' Harman said. ``Not in all areas of Miami can you build the way people want to build. We want to strike a balance.''
Pilots and airlines say the drive for taller buildings is misdirected, both for safety and economic reasons.
The proliferation of very tall buildings, they say, will force routine flights to climb more steeply or bank more sharply, while curtailing room to maneuver during emergencies or bad weather.
American and other airlines are particularly worried about FAA rules requiring that aircraft be able to clear buildings by set margins should they lose an engine on takeoff -- 300 feet to either side of the flight path, and 35 feet over the tallest obstacles.
Ensuring that jets on one engine can clear a line of super-tall buildings would require substantial reductions in passenger, fuel and cargo loads, hurting their already precarious economic situation, the airlines say. That would prove especially burdensome to airlines flying big jets with heavy fuel loads to South America.
''The FAA leaves us in a position where all we can do is take evasive action. That's the last thing we want to do, to be turning to avoid a building in an emergency,'' said Frank Erickson, a former American Airlines executive now advising the airline on the issue.
``A piece of it is economic, too. If I fly a 777 from Miami to Tokyo or to deep South America, I don't want to be told I can't fill my plane up.''
By extension, they say, payload reductions could hurt MIA's capacity and economic viability.
It's not clear, MIA and American say, what can be done about the airlines' concerns, in particular the one-engine-out issue.
Both the FAA and Miami-Dade County review building proposals to safeguard air traffic. But the rules are designed to apply only to routine, nonemergency flying. That means regulators don't consider whether buildings will impede airlines' ability to meet the one-engine-out rule.
'The airlines' job is to make sure they don't hit anything,'' said Kevin Haggerty, an airspace analysis program manager with the FAA. ``Airlines prefer it straight out and the lowest climb possible. But we don't have the legal right to take action on that.''
The result, the airlines complain: They take a financial hit while developers get the go-ahead to build.
''Everybody has raised that issue,'' AA's Erickson said. ``That's where lies what we see as the inconsistency. We would like to see consistency from the FAA.''
Airlines and pilots also contend that the FAA has allowed developers too much wiggle room even when it does have authority to crack down. The agency has been clearing an increasing number of buildings in Miami that encroach into protected airspace after determining the interference they create is minor.
Just in the past three months, over the objections of airlines, the FAA has approved buildings as tall as 700 feet on Biscayne Boulevard downtown and up to 650 feet in the Omni-Edgewater area that encroach on flight paths.
Some developers dismiss the airlines' concerns as exaggerated.
''The airlines would like to have it completely flat,'' said veteran Miami developer Tibor Hollo, who last fall visited FAA headquarters in Washington with a delegation from the Latin Builders Association to argue that current building limits are too restrictive. ``They just want to be saving fuel. All that is just crying by the airlines.''
PLANS SCALED BACK
The developers have their own complaints. The height restrictions mean that sometimes it's developers doing the weeping when MIA or FAA rules block or force them to downscale projects, even after approvals from the city.
A proposal for Empire World Towers, a 106-story building on Biscayne Boulevard, cannot go ahead without an easing of restrictions, for instance.
Terra Group's 900 Biscayne condo tower, now under construction, had to come down by more than 50 feet, or about five stories, to 650 feet. So did Platinum on the Bay, planned in Edgewater -- from 800 feet to 583.
Most recently, Miami Rivertown, a complex of three towers on the site of the Mahi Shrine, was stalled when the FAA determined that the buildings would be too tall at 390 feet -- the height approved by the city.
The Chicago developer, Dan McAffrey, reluctantly agreed to the FAA's 270-foot limit. The delay has complicated efforts to close on the property and will likely cost millions, he said.
''We're toddling along here patting ourselves in the back, and boom! There are millions of dollars riding on this,'' McAffrey said. ``This could bring a grown man to tears.''
In late 2004, after three towers had to come down in height, city building chief Ferras began questioning the need for the strict regulations in letters to MIA and the FAA.
''Some of the world-renowned developers would like to build very tall mega structures in our city. However, your height restriction regulations are preventing this from occurring,'' Ferras wrote.
That set off a yearlong series of meetings, e-mail and memo exchanges between MIA, FAA, city officials and sometimes developers' lawyers and consultants as the city lobbied for greater heights.
The airlines, led by American, have responded aggressively, though so far to little effect.
American engineers have begun routinely filing objections with the FAA to developers' building proposals -- in particular in the Omni area, which lies below MIA's main cargo routes -- by citing the engine-out rule.
In a memo, MIA officials said continued development, especially in the Omni-Edgewater area, would force ''more aggressive'' and ''difficult'' procedures on planes to avoid the area. Those maneuvers could also increase jet noise, violating noise standards meant to protect neighborhoods, the memo said.
In each case, however, the FAA has rejected the airlines' objections, citing the agency's legal inability to enforce the engine-out rule as regards building heights.
NEW RULES SOUGHT
Now the airlines are pushing the FAA to enact rules that include the effect of buildings on one-engine-out procedures -- which could lead to substantially reduced building limits in Miami.
MIA officials say that seems unlikely to happen. The FAA is reviewing the issue -- which has also been raised by airlines in Boston and Phoenix, where development close to runways may impinge on emergency flight procedures.
Harman said differences of opinion within FAA have stalled a decision. But FAA officials say local officials should be responsible for finding a solution.
''It seems like it's a local government issue, deciding what trade-off they feel comfortable with -- greater height or airport capacity,'' said the FAA's chief of flight standards, John Allen.
At some point, FAA officials warn, Miami may not be able to have both.
''The city of Miami wants this investment and the world's tallest buildings,'' said Haggerty, the height analyst. ``But an aircraft can only climb so far so fast.''

U.S. Cites Exception in Torture BanMcCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison
By Josh White and Carol D. LeonnigWashington Post Staff WritersFriday, March 3, 2006; A04
Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.
In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."
Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.
Bawazir's attorneys contend that "extremely painful" new tactics used by the government to force-feed him and end his hunger strike amount to torture.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike "extremely disturbing" and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain's language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.
In Bawazir's case, the government claims that it had to forcefully intervene in a hunger strike that was causing his weight to drop dangerously. In January, officials strapped Bawazir into a special chair, put a larger tube than they had previously used through his nose and kept him restrained for nearly two hours at a time to make sure he did not purge the food he was being given, the government and Bawazir's attorneys said.
Richard Murphy Jr., Bawazir's attorney, said his client gave in to the new techniques and began eating solid food days after the first use of the restraint chair. Murphy said the military deliberately made the process painful and embarrassing, noting that Bawazir soiled himself because of the approach.
Kessler said getting to the root of the allegations is an "urgent matter."
"These allegations . . . describe disgusting treatment, that if proven, is treatment that is cruel, profoundly disturbing and violative of" U.S. and foreign treaties banning torture, Kessler told the government's lawyers. She said she needs more information, but made clear she is considering banning the use of larger nasal-gastric tubes and the restraint chair.
In court filings, the Justice Department lawyers argued that language in the law written by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) gives Guantanamo Bay detainees access to the courts only to appeal their enemy combatant status determinations and convictions by military commissions.
"Unfortunately, I think the government's right; it's a correct reading of the law," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "The law says you can't torture detainees at Guantanamo, but it also says you can't enforce that law in the courts."
Thomas Wilner, a lawyer representing several detainees at Guantanamo, agreed that the law cannot be enforced. "This is what Guantanamo was about to begin with, a place to keep detainees out of the U.S. precisely so they can say they can't go to court," Wilner said.
A spokeswoman for McCain's office did not respond to questions yesterday.
Murphy told the judge the military's claims that it switched tactics to protect Bawazir should not be believed. He noted that on Jan. 11 -- days after the new law passed -- the Defense Department made the identical health determination for about 20 other detainees, all of whom had been engaged in the hunger strike.
Guantanamo Bay officials deny that the tactics constitute torture. They wrote in sworn statements that they are necessary efforts to ensure detainee health. Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the facility's commander, wrote that Bawazir's claims of abuse are "patently false."
"In short, he is a trained al Qaida terrorist, who has been taught to claim torture, abuse, and medical mistreatment if captured," Hood wrote. He added that Bawazir allegedly went to Afghanistan to train for jihad and ultimately fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops.
Navy Capt. Stephen G. Hooker, who runs the prison's detention hospital, noted that the hunger strike began on Aug. 8, reached a peak of 131 participants on Sept. 11, and dropped to 84 on Christmas Day. After use of the restraint chair began, only five captives continued not eating.
Hooker wrote that he suspected Bawazir was purging his food after feedings. Bawazir weighed 130 pounds in late 2002, according to Hooker, but 97 pounds on the day he was first strapped to the chair. As of Sunday, his weight was back to 137 pounds, the government said.
Kessler noted with irritation that Hood and Hooker made largely general claims about the group of detainees on the hunger strike in defending the switch to the new force-feeding procedures used on Bawazir.
"I know it's a sad day when a federal judge has to ask a DOJ attorney this, but I'm asking you -- why should I believe them?" Kessler asked Justice Department attorney Terry Henry.
Henry said he would attempt to gather more information from the officials but said there was no legal basis for the court to intervene. Bawazir's weight is back to normal, his health is "robust" and he is no longer on a hunger strike, Henry said.
© 2006 The Washington Post

From Andrew Sullivan

The Theocon Agenda
28 Feb 2006 06:58 pm
A reader writes a long email, but it's so smart and insightful I'm running all of it. If you're tired of this debate, by all means skip it. But if you care about the future of individual freedom in America, read on:
"I've long debated whether to write you about this and other matters, but as a frequent reader I feel I can no longer remain silent. Thank you for your follow up on Ramesh Ponnuru's comments in The Corner. His attacks on your earlier blogging regarding prof. George were wholly unwarranted.
Bear with me as I digress ... You see, I was president of Princeton Pro-Life from 1993 until 1995 and president of Princeton College Republicans from 1992 until 1996. I also studied in the politics department with Robert George (junior paper advisor 94-95; thesis advisor 95-96) and was a close associate of Father C. John McCloskey. Ramesh Ponnuru was a class ahead of me and an avowedly moderate member of the conservative movement on campus at the time.
In the interest of full disclosure, my position is and always has been that the murder of abortion providers deserves the full application of state criminal sanctions regardless of spurious claims of moral justification. Except in extreme cases, I do not support the criminalization of abortion -- there are far more effective and less conflictual means to reduce the number of abortions and ease our collective culture away from the attitude that life is disposable. Further, I am gay and support full and equal legal rights, including marriage, for LGBT individuals and their families. I also wholeheartedly endorse masturbation as a natural, normal and enjoyable part of physical existence.
So, onto the matter at hand: how could Ponnuru take offense at your characterization of Prof. George's position? The good professor deliberately humorized the issue of whether killing abortionists is morally justified in an attempt to sidestep the logical conclusion to which his other views on abortion must necessarily lead. Your emailer is exactly right - George has a predilection for cloaking his positions with the appearance of good-natured (though sometimes snide) humor, especially on issues where taking a genuine stand would cast him in an unfavorable light. The piece you cite, along with your comments, illustrate this modus operandi perfectly, and Ramesh doesn't like that the cliched cat is out of the bag. Ponnuru's attempts at rolling out "prudential" arguments notwithstanding, it's clear to me that much of their slipperiness is caused by the political environment, not their moral views.
Moreover, George's recommendation that Christians should pray for the redemption of abortion providers is beside the point - and Ponnuru knows better, but this is really just another dodge. It is quite possible to craft an internally consistent position that advocates praying for a transgressor's soul in this life and the next while also favoring a certain specific punishment (legal or otherwise) for his transgression. And the idea that compassion requires taking a lighter view of killing fetuses seems a hollow one. Would George and Ponnuru take a similar view about a certain mother who murdered her born children out of the "compassionate" view that doing so would relieve them from a great deal of suffering? Would they take the same view with respect to a psychopath who has a mistaken but honestly held view of the worth of adult human life? It's absurd if you ask me.
All that having been said, you've missed the point with George's statement that you cited on policing private sexual conduct. This particular claim turns on whether government retains the power to regulate such behavior in the absence of an individual right to the contrary (George believes there is no broad federal right to privacy). On the surface, his position seems closer to the following: "There is no right to masturbation (or fill in the blank with sinful sexual acts of your choosing). Thus, the states retain the power to criminalize it, but if I were a member of a legislature I might vote against such a law because it is unenforceable." If this is his position, then it's really more about judicial review than outright advocacy of a particular substantive law, and it has appeal across a broad swath of the political spectrum. It also appeals to me.
Of course, George and his allies ARE advocates for including the norms of their sexual morality in the law, but they prudently recognize that such controversial moral debates are likely to go against them on the national scale. So, they stick to the more general, structural arguments and omit the real focus of their attention: "Then again, I might vote for such laws because criminal prohibition of masturbation (or other sinful acts) would be 'instructive' regardless of whether it could be enforced, and my morality demands that the government strongly condemn non-generative sexual acts."
Is it a purely cynical move? For some yes, for others no -- the structural arguments do have independent merit. However, there's no denying that the theocon right has used this issue masterfully as a political tactic: attack the uses of judicial power that accomplish ends you disagree with as an incremental step toward your substantive goals. This tactic has become both a shield and a hammer with which to build intellectual and political coalitions that chip away at "bad" precedents while ruffling as few feathers as possible by defending nominees and politicians from hard questions.
Would George and his allies really criminalize masturbation if they could? I don't know, but I sure wouldn't want to find out the hard way. I do know for a fact they would roll back Griswold, Roe, Hardwick, and the right to privacy, as most Americans understand it, in the hopes that they could secure regional political coalitions to recriminalize abortion, sodomy, and contraception - not to mention dispatching Roemer and repealing the few anti-discrimination laws protecting gays. The ongoing experiement in South Dakota is proof that such coalitions are not only possible but probable, and I doubt it will end there substantively or geographically. Many modern First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment protections likely face an equally uncertain future.
And you've hit the nail on the head -- these people are bright enough to know that their radical agenda would scare the pants off most Americans, even many Republicans (it scares me and I fall into both categories). Thus, their best option is to engage in disingenuous rhetorical games designed to leave their opponents tied in intellectual and political knots, and with Roberts and Alito on the SCOTUS, they can smell victory around the corner. They most certainly don't want a bunch of hayseeds ruining it with their corn-belt idealism. Of course they get upset when you call them on it!
As for your tongue-in-cheek comments regarding Ponnuru's "hysteria", I can only say that I have always known him to hide himself behind various facades depending on the circumstances. Liberal, moderate, conservative? Whatever works at the moment."
For me, an instructive moment was when Rick Santorum insisted that he was only opposed to judicial activism in banning sodomy laws. Then he let it slip that he'd support an anti-sodomy law in his own state if the courts let legislatures decide. The theocons often use the legitimate judicial activism argument to conceal their real agenda. Gay people have borne the brunt of this so far, but we are not their ultimate targets. We're a tiny minority, easily beaten up on in the public discourse. But the broader aim is the policing of all private morality, straight or gay. You're next. But they're not exactly going to tell you that, are they?

Gay cowboys embraced by redneck country

Andrew Sullivan
Last December, when the movie Brokeback Mountain nudged nervously onto the cultural radar screen in the US, the consensus was broad and wide. This movie was one step too far. It was yet another example of Hollywood’s liberal bias. It wouldn’t sell in the heartland.
“They’re not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana. I’m sorry. They’re not going to do it,” opined cable television’s chief windbag Bill O’Reilly on December 20.
The liberal blogger Mickey Kaus wrote around the same time: “I’m highly sceptical that a movie about gay cowhands, however good, will find a large mainstream audience. I’ll go see it, but I don’t want to go see it . . . When the film’s national box office fails to live up to its hype and to the record attendance at a few early screenings, prepare to be subjected to a tedious round of guilt-tripping and chin- scratching.”
The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer made a new year’s prediction about Oscar night: “Brokeback Mountain will have been seen in the theatres by 18 people — but the right 18 — and will win the Academy Award.”
Something odd happened between the elite’s assessment of the heartland and the heartland’s assessment of Brokeback Mountain. No, it’s no The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. But of all the Oscar nominees it has racked up by far the biggest domestic grosses so far: more than $70m at the last count (compared with, say, $22m for the superb Capote). And that’s before the potential Oscar boost. More interestingly, it’s done remarkably well in the middle of the red states.
O’Reilly’s Montana? In the 85-year-old cinema in Missoula, Montana, the owner told the media: “It’s been super every night since we started showing it.” The movie did even better in Billings, a more conservative city in the state.
According to Variety magazine, some of the strongest audiences have been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, Des Moines, Iowa and Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock is the place George W Bush calls his spiritual home and may well be the site for his presidential library. Greenwich Village it ain’t.
What happened? There are various theories. Brilliant marketing pitched the movie as a love story and a western, two genres well ingrained in middle American tastes. Women dragged nervous husbands and boyfriends to see a film where the women could enjoy long, languorous views of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, and the men could admire the scenery.
Blue state liberals felt it some kind of social duty to see the film. Gays and lesbians flocked. The media hyped the “gay cowboy” movie and it generated more and more publicity, and thereby curiosity and thereby tickets.
The iconic phrase uttered by Gyllenhaal — “I wish I knew how to quit you” — has become part of the popular culture. The cover of last week’s New Yorker had a parody of the now-famous poster, with Bush and Dick Cheney as the cowboys and Cheney blowing some steam off the top of his rifle.
Everyone seems to have an opinion about the film, especially those who haven’t seen it. My own view is that Brokeback has done well primarily because it’s an excellent film. It has a compelling story, two astonishing performances from Ledger and Michelle Williams, and an elegant screenplay from the great western writer Larry McMurtry.
I still don’t think the movie is in the same class as the brilliantly compressed short story by Annie Proulx on which it’s based. But it’s still way better than most films now offered by Hollywood, and it’s a little depressing that we have to ask why a decent number of people would not want to see a rare example of Hollywood excellence.
As for the gay sex, it’s barely in the movie, and the least convincing part of it. Compared with the sex and violence usually served up by Hollywood films, Brokeback is Jackanory. But there is something, perhaps, that explains the interest beyond mere artistic skill.
The past two decades have seen a huge shift in how homosexual people are viewed in the West. Where once they were identified entirely by sex, now more and more recognise that the central homosexual experience is the central heterosexual experience: love — maddening, humiliating, sustaining love.
That’s what the marriage debate has meant and why the marriage movement, even where it has failed to achieve its immediate goals, has already achieved its long-term ambition: to humanise gay people, to tell the full, human truth about them.
And that truth includes the red states. The one thing you can say about the homosexual minority is that, unlike any other, it is not geographically limited and never has been. Red states produce as many gay kids as blue ones; and yet the heartland gay experience has rarely been portrayed and explored.
In America this is particularly odd, since the greatest gay writer in its history, Walt Whitman, was a man of the heartland. And you only have to read about the early years of Abraham Lincoln’s life to see that same-sex love and friendship was integral to the making of America, especially in its wildernesses and frontiers. You see that today even in the American gay vote, a third of which routinely backs Republicans.
Brokeback, in other words, is not just a good movie, but a genuinely new one that tells a genuinely old story. It shows how gay men in America have families and have always had families. It shows them among themselves and among women. It shows them, above all, as men.
For the first time it reveals that homosexuality and masculinity are not necessarily in conflict, and that masculinity, even the suppressed, inarticulate masculinity of the American frontier, is not incompatible with love.
It provides a story to help people better understand the turbulent social change around them and the history they never previously recorded. That is what great art always does: it reveals the truth we are too scared to see and the future we already, beneath all our denial, understand.

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.

CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS OF "PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION" BAN
Laurence H. Tribe Ralph S. Tyler Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law Harvard University Law School
March 6, 1997
This memorandum addresses the constitutionality of S. 6, a proposed federal statute that would criminalize a certain abortion procedure whether or not the fetus is viable, and without making any exception for the health of the mother.
1. The proposed statute (called the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1997"), in exempting from prohibition only those abortions necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, is undeniably inconsistent with a core holding of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) -- a holding explicitly reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Roe held that, even after a fetus was viable, the State could not place the interests and welfare of that fetus above those of the method in preserving her own life and health. Accordingly, the State, after fetal viability may "regulate, even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment for the preservation of the life or health of the mother." Roe, 410 U.S. at 165 (emphasis added). Moreover, in Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), the companion case to Roe, the Court emphasized that the health of the mother represents a medical judgment that "may be exercised in light of all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient. Id. at 192. Even the dissenters in Roe and Doe suggested that abortion procedures required to avoid "substantial hazards to either life or health" could not constitutionally be forbidden. Doe, 410 U.S. at 223 (White, J., dissenting) emphasis added); see also Roe, 410 U.S. at 173 (Rehnquist, now C.J. dissenting). Perhaps most importantly, the controlling opinion in Casey explicitly reaffirmed Roe's requirement of an exception for the life or health of the pregnant woman, adopting verbatim the language quoted above from the Roe majority opinion. Casey, 505 U.S. at 879. The real debate in Roe and its progeny through Casey centered on whether so-called "elective" abortion was part of a woman's privacy and liberty; it appeared to be common ground that, however tragic it might be, an abortion require to protect a woman's life or health fell beyond the State's power to proscribe. Ironically, because many of the abortions that the proposed statute would ban involve fetuses that will never be "viable" because of their deformities would make it impossible for them to survive for any sustained period outside the womb -- there is dispute over just how many of the proscribed abortions would involve such fetuses, but no dispute that a considerable number would -- it follows that not even the broadest imaginable health exception could save the proposed statute's constitutionality as applied to many of the abortions it would purport to outlaw. The next paragraph develops this point in somewhat greater detail.
2. The proposed federal statute would forbid a described medical procedure regardless of whether the fetus being aborted was viable. Indeed, S. 6 is manifestly intended to prohibit at least some abortions of fetuses with severe abnormalities (such as anencephalic condition, in which the brain develops outside the head) that would likely render them unable to live independently outside the womb for more than a very short time. The vilified "partial-birth abortions" described in the statute clearly include pregnancy terminations (even if the pregnancy is in its final stages) in woman whose fetuses would in no event be able to survive for more than minutes or hours outside the womb. See, e.g., Testimony of Coreen Costello before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, March 21, 1996; Testimony of Mary-Dorothy Line before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, March 21, 1996. Yet the controlling opinion in Casey prohibits regulations that place an undue burden on women seeking abortions, and holds categorically that this test renders unconstitutional any regulation or requirement that has the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle -- let alone a flat prohibition -- in the path of a woman seeking to abort a non-viable fetus. It is true that Casey allowed for informed consent requirements as well as regulations designed to further the health or safety of a woman seeking an abortion, but the proposed law is plainly not designed to further those interests. It does not inform a woman but directly bans a particular procedure, one that is performed specifically because it is less likely to harm the pregnant woman. The proposed statute is thus analogous to the prohibition on saline amniocentesis that the Supreme Court invalidated in Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976). Many physicians considered saline amniocentesis to be safer for the pregnancy woman than other methods of abortion, just as many physicians consider so-called partial-birth abortions to be safer for certain pregnant women that the alternatives. The Court in Danforth emphasized this perceived safety advantage in ruling that the State could not prohibit abortions using saline amniocentesis. Id. at 78-79.
3. Even if supporters of the proposed statute attempted to argue the prohibition was designed to benefit the fetus, and even if they could demonstrate that the alternative methods of abortion would in fact be less awful from the perspective of the fetus itself -- a dubious proposition at best -- Supreme Court precedent forecloses the option of placing the well-being of the fetus above the health and safety of the pregnant woman -- even where the fetus is viable, and certainly where the fetus could not survive lone outside the woman in any event and thus is not "viable" as the Court has defined that term. In Thornburgh v. America College of Obstetricians, 476 U.S. 747 (1986), the Court specifically rejected as unconstitutional a proposal that the State be permitted to "trade" some of the woman's well-being for an increase in that of the fetus -- and in Thornburgh, in contrast to the proposed bill, the asserted interest on the fetus's side of the trade-off was in enhancing the prospects for fetal survival. Id. at 768-69.
4. The proposed statute attempts to elide the issue of viability with a peculiar bit of alchemy that raises its own constitutional problems: it defines a "partial-birth abortion" as an abortion in which "the person performing the abortion partially vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the infant," and it specifies -- as it saying it could make it so -- that "the terms ‘fetus' and ‘infant' are interchangeable." Both this novel definition of "infant," and whatever protections that designation may be designed to evoke or entail, apply to any fetus, however, hopeless its condition, that may be brought into the vagina during an abortion, even if this occurs long before the fetus is sufficiently developed to feel pain or to approach viability, and even if this is done with respect to a fetus so badly deformed or disabled that it would never be "viable" even if it were to come to term and to be delivered in the ordinary manner, only to die shortly thereafter. The proposed statute therefore seeks to make the legality of the physician's conduct in facilitating the woman's exercise of her reproductive freedom turn no on the viability of the fetus or on its capacity to perceive or on the health of the woman but, strangely, on the physical location of the fetus between the uterus and the vagina at the moment its development within the woman is deliberately halted -- as though the fetus that is being aborted were suddenly to acquire the capacity to experience sensations of pain, or were to acquire other traits of personhood, simply by virtue of having been moved from one point to another within the woman's body prior to completion of the abortion procedure, rather than by virtue of its own state of neurological or other development. Evidently unable to identify in any other manner the procedure they wish to outlaw, the statute's authors have thus fastened upon anatomical details that bear no relationship whatsoever even to the concern with fetal dignity or sensation that supposedly animates both the statute's title and its structure. The authors' chosen definition of which abortions to condemn as "partial birth abortions," even if readily understandable in terms of the ability to persuade the general public that something gratuitously cruel and terrible is being prohibited, and hence in terms of the public relations objectives of the draftsmen, defies plausible justification in terms of anything real and might well fail even a test of minimum rationality, much less the far more stringent test of "undue burden" that the Court applies to regulations of abortion procedures. In any event, and quite apart from the irrationality introduced into the law by the proposed definition, the fact is that fetal viability is the constitutionally significant event, ad the bill's barely-concealed attempt to apply an altogether different standard is flatly inconsistent with the Liberty Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments as construed by the Supreme Court in Casey.
5. Given the seemingly fatal constitutional infirmities in the proposed Partial Birth Abortion ban, one is led to wonder whether the insistence on enacting some new federal law in this area -- despite the absence of any reason to doubt the ability of the States to enact laws of their own dealing with precisely the same subject matter -- reflects more than a desperate desire to prove that Congress is capable of doing something about an obviously tragic procedure that everyone wishes were never necessary. There is, no doubt, a time and a place for such demonstrations of congressional determination, even in eras supposedly dedicated to the devolution of power to the States. But I doubt that experimenting with the lives and health of women, and with their ability to control their own reproductive destiny, represents a fit occasion for such a show of federal force.

Don Knotts, star of 'The Andy Griffith Show,' dead at 81
Knotts died Friday night of pulmonary and respiratory complications at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills.
By Scott Collins, Times Staff Writer2:30 PM PST,February 25 2006
Don Knotts, the saucer-eyed, scarecrow-thin comic actor best known for his roles as the high-strung small-town deputy Barney Fife on the 1960s CBS series "The Andy Griffith Show" and the leisure-suit-clad landlord Ralph Furley on ABC's '70s sitcom "Three's Company," has died. He was 81.Knotts, who lived in West Los Angeles, died Friday night of lung cancer at UCLA Medical Center, according to Sherwin Bash, his longtime manager.

Family members said that his longtime friend Griffth was one of his last visitors at Cedars on Friday night.Despite health problems, Knotts had kept working in recent months. He lent his distinctive, high-pitched voice as Turkey Mayor in Walt Disney's animated family film "Chicken Little," which was released in November 2005. He also did guest spots in 2005 on NBC's "Las Vegas" and Fox's "That '70s Show." He occasionally co-headlined in live comedy shows with Tim Conway, his sometime co-star in Disney films such as "The Apple Dumpling Gang." Knotts also appeared as the TV repairman in director Gary Ross's whimsical 1998 comedy "Pleasantville," and voiced the part of T.W. Turtle in the 1997 animated feature "Cats Don't Dance."As he grew older, Knotts became a lodestar for younger comic actors. The new generation came to appreciate his highly physical brand of acting that, at its best, was in the tradition of silent-film greats such as Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel and Harold Lloyd.Knotts first rose to prominence in the late 1950s, joining Louis Nye and other comedy players on "The Steve Allen Show." In 1961, United Artists Records released a comedy album entitled "Don Knotts: An Evening with Me," which featured various takeoffs on the "nervous man" routine the comic had made famous on Allen's show. One of the bits, "The Weatherman," concerned a TV forecaster forced to wing it after the meteorology report fails to make it to the studio by air time.During the mid to late 1960s, in a largely unsuccessful bid for major film stardom, Knotts made a series of family films that many connoisseurs now say were critically underappreciated at the time. These include "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" (1964), "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966) and "The Reluctant Astronaut" (1967). The latter two were made as part of a five-picture deal with Universal Pictures."Limpet," the tale of a meek man who is transformed into a fish, has particularly won recent acclaim. Its early mix of live action and animation was a forerunner of such later films as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Space Jam."At one point, Jim Carrey was said to be considering starring in a "Limpet" remake, although the project has yet to materialize. Once, when Knotts visited the set of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," Carrey paid tribute. "I went to him, and I was just like, 'Thank you so much for "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken,"' Carrey later told an interviewer. " 'I watched it a hundred times when I was a kid.' "Martin Short has likewise hailed Knotts as a major influence, and at least one of Short's recurring characters, shifty-eyed lawyer Nathan Thurm, owes a debt to Knotts' "nervous man" character, created for "The Steve Allen Show" in the 1950s.Many TV viewers remember Knotts as Ralph Furley, the ascot-wearing middle-aged landlord who mistakenly viewed himself as a swinger on ABC's hit sex farce "Three's Company." The series starred the late John Ritter as Jack Tripper, a chef who pretended to be gay in order to share an apartment with two attractive young women. The plot of many episodes hinged on Tripper struggling to keep his secret from an ever-suspicious (and homophobic) Furley. Knotts introduced the character in 1979, during the show's fourth season, when the original landlords (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley) had departed for their own spin-off, "The Ropers."For Knotts, who typically worked in Disney comedies and other family-friendly fare, appearing in a sex comedy — then decried by critics as "jiggle TV" -- constituted a major departure. But he stayed with "Three's Company" until it went off the air in 1984 after eight seasons.However, it was his portrayal of Barney Fife — a role for which he won five Emmy Awards -- that immortalized Knotts to TV viewers. Deputy Fife, an inveterate bumbler, was not in the series pilot, and was at first intended simply to be part of a large ensemble that would surround Griffith, who played Sheriff Andy Taylor in Mayberry, a fictional North Carolina town near Raleigh.But not long after the series debuted in October 1960, Knotts stole the show. Griffith, who was meant to be the series' comic focus, shifted to playing straight man. The writers began beefing up Fife's role and creating episodes that depended on the sheriff rescuing Fife from his latest predicament. "Andy Griffith" was the most popular comedy on television during its first season, and never dropped from the Top 10 for the rest of its eight-year run.In Knotts' hands, Fife was a fully realized stooge, a hick-town Don Quixote who imagined himself braver, more sophisticated and more competent than he actually was. His utter lack of self-control led him into desperate jams that usually culminated with Fife at the end of his rope, bug-eyed and panting with anxiety. Sheriff Taylor allowed his deputy to carry just one bullet, which he was obliged to keep separate from his service revolver due to past trigger mishaps.Asked how he developed his most famous character, Knotts replied in a 2000 interview: "Mainly, I thought of Barney as a kid. You can always look into the faces of kids and see what they're thinking, if they're happy or sad. That's what I tried to do with Barney. It's very identifiable."Jesse Donald Knotts was born in Morgantown, W.Va., on July 21, 1924, the youngest of four brothers. His family life was troubled; Knotts' father twice threatened his mother with a knife and later spent time in mental hospitals, while older brother Earl — nicknamed "Shadow" because of his thinness -- died of asthma when Knotts was still a teenager.Years later, the actor did not recall his childhood fondly."I felt like a loser," he recalled in a 1976 interview with the Los Angeles Times. "I was unhappy, I think, most of the time. We were terribly poor and I hated my size."Knotts turned to performing in his early teens, doing an Edgar Bergen-inspired ventriloquism act with a dummy he named Danny.He enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served in the Pacific, receiving the World War II Victory Medal among other decorations. After the war, in 1948, he graduated from West Virginia University with an education degree.He soon borrowed $100 and moved to New York to pursue an acting career. He auditioned for several radio gigs but was turned down. One of his earliest TV roles was on the CBS soap opera "Search for Tomorrow," where he played Wilbur Peterson — a neurotic young man so troubled he communicated only with his sister -- from 1953-55. It was the only non-comedic role he ever played.But Knotts did not receive widespread attention until he appeared on Broadway in Ira Levin's 1955 comedy "No Time for Sergeants." Based on Mac Hyman's novel, the play concerned a hillbilly — played by a then-unknown Andy Griffith -- who was drafted into the Air Force. Knotts won plaudits as an overly tense military evaluator.From 1956-60, Knotts further cemented his reputation on NBC's "The Steve Allen Show," where he would play a character named Mr. Morrison, aka "the nervous man." Interviewed on the street, Morrison was asked whether something was making him nervous and would inevitably offer a terse, anxiety-wracked "No!"In the meantime, "No Time for Sergeants" was made into a feature film in 1958, with Griffith and Knotts reprising their roles. The two actors kept in touch, and when Griffith signed to do the TV series as a rural sheriff, Knotts half-jokingly suggested that the lawman would need a deputy.Knotts left "Andy Griffith" in 1965, later explaining that he believed the producers had always intended for the series to last just five seasons. In a 1967 Times interview, he said, "The grind gets to you in television, and that's primarily the reason I'm concentrating on pictures."Griffith stayed with the program for three years after Knotts' departure, however, and Knotts agreed to revive his role as Fife in a number of guest spots. Even without Knotts, "Andy Griffith" remained popular, and the show was ranked No. 1 in its final season, 1967-68. Episodes remain syndication favorites and still appear in frequent rotation on cable network TV Land.But many fans now believe "Andy Griffith" fizzled creatively without Knotts' manic energy — a point that even Griffith himself has conceded. On the TV fan site www.jumptheshark.com, one viewer wrote, "When Barney Fife left town, 'The Andy Griffith Show' changed from a television classic to just another 60's TV show."After "Griffith," Knotts stayed busy, although he never quite matched the success he had seen as Barney Fife. An NBC variety hour, "The Don Knotts Show," premiered in 1970 and lasted just one season. The actor subsequently appeared in several live-action Disney features: as a bumbling bandit in "The Apple Dumpling Gang" (1975), a would-be safecracker in "No Deposit, No Return" (1976) and an auto-racing veteran in "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" (1977). He also reprised his role as Fife in "Return to Mayberry," a nostalgic TV movie that delivered enormous ratings for CBS in 1986, and had a recurring role in "Matlock," CBS' courtroom drama starring Griffith.A self-described hypochondriac, Knotts suffered numerous health reversals in recent years. He developed vision problems that made driving and some other tasks difficult. In the fall of 2003, he injured his Achilles tendon while starring in "On Golden Pond" at the New Theatre in Overland Park, Kansas, and had to wear a brace onstage.Two of Knotts' three marriages ended in divorce. The first, to Kathryn Kay Metz, lasted from 1947 to 1964 and produced two children, Karen, an actress who co-starred with her father in a 1996 stage revival of "You Can't Take It With You," and Thomas, both of whom survive him. From 1974 to 1983, Knotts was married to Loralee Czuchna. He was married to actress Francey Yarborough at the time of his death."He saw poignancy in people's pride and pain and he turned it into something endearing and hilarious," Yarborough, who is also an actress, said in a statement Saturday.Knotts received a star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame in January 2000.In the foreword to Knotts' 2000 memoir, "Barney Fife and Other Characters I Have Known," Griffith wrote that Knotts personally had little in common with his most famous creation. "Don was not Barney Fife," Griffith wrote. "I know Don to be a bright man and very much in control of himself. As everyone knows, Barney Fife had very little control of himself. In the comedy scenes we did, I was often closer to Don than the camera and I could look at him before we started those scenes, and through his eyes, I could see him become Barney Fife."