September 2002 Archives

San Jose Mercury News editorial writer Miguel Helft makes an excellent observation:

The best way to empower shareholders and ensure the pressure stays on is to tighten disclosure rules. Expensing executive stock options -- a requirement most experts believe is coming -- would be a huge a step forward. But why not detail every other CEO benefit, from salary to golden parachute to caviar allowance, in one easy-to-understand document?

Nat Hentoff takes on the John Ashcroft Justice Department's post-September 11 excesses and wonders if "tyranny" is too strong a word to use to describe what is happening to our civil liberties.

Today's edition of ABC News' The Note newsletter succinctly outlines the huge problem created by Rep. Jim McDermott and Rep. David Bonior's performance yesterday from Baghdad.

Their argument is absurd. The Note explains:

The images and sound from Democrats over the weekend arguably won't help them in this regard. First came Congressmen McDermott and Bonior saying from Iraq that they don't trust the president to be honest with the American people about the war, but they DO trust Saddam Hussein to tell the truth.

Robert Wright has an excellent essay outlining the myopia and hypocrisy exhibited by the Bush Administration within its new national security policy. Among the points Wright makes is this nugget:

There are those who think that a superpower facing eventual decline but for now possessing unprecedented influence would be wise to sustain this trend, encouraging respect for international law and the evolution of international policing structures.

President Bush isn't one of these people. In dramatically lowering the threshold for pre-emptive attack, he undermines the civilized world's consensus against unprovoked transborder aggression, a principle central to international law (and to his father's rationale for the Persian Gulf war).

The Sacramento Bee urges Californians to reject Proposition 51 this November because:

Proposition 51, sponsored by the Planning and Conservation League and paid for by some of the biggest landowners in the state, ought to be known as the Developer Tax Grab Act of 2002. It would take money from the disabled, sick, poor and young and use it to benefit the developers who paid to put the measure on the ballot and are now trying to sucker citizens into voting for it.

Michael Rubin writes about the evidence that Iraqi soldiers will not put up much of a fight.

Remember when then candidate George W. Bush (rightly) condemned the Clinton Administration for renting out the Lincoln bedroom?

That set a standard to which we should measure the Bush Administration. Helen Thomas notes that the White House is not interested in such questions. She writes:

White House spokeswoman Anne Womack, who prepared a White House release on the subject, told me she didn't ask which of the guests had slept in the Lincoln bedroom. When I asked if she would pursue the subject since Bush had so heartily condemned Clinton's practice, she made it very clear that she had no intention of doing so. "There are a variety of guest rooms in the White House," she said defensively.

George Will makes the case for tort reform.

David Broder today celebrates a new book by Professor (and Bowdoin College alumnus) G. Calvin Mackenzie.

Mackenzie's book Scandal Proof: Do Ethics Laws Make Government Ethical? takes a critical look at the ethics industry in Washington and finds that it is too complicated. It also has, as Broder explains, another unintentional effect:

Because the whole premise of this process is the suspicion of individual dishonesty, when an ethics violation does occur, the response is to pillory, prosecute or purge the individual miscreant. Those in charge -- ultimately, the president -- disavow the culprit but typically are not held responsible for the misjudgment that led to his or her appointment. Thus, Mackenzie says, this legalistic approach to ethics actually has weakened the political accountability, enforced by elections, on which the Founders believed the good behavior of government officials depended.

Michael Kinsley asks a reasonable question: shouldn't the people in a democratic republic have some say in whether we are to wage a preemptive war? Shouldn't we be upset that the White House does not trust us enough to lay out its evidence?

As Kinsley argues:

But let's pretend we actually do have some role in deciding whether our nation goes to war. We aren't capable of answering the actual questions at hand: Is Saddam Hussein an imminent threat to our national and personal security, and is a war to remove him from power the only way to end that threat? So we must do with a surrogate question: Based on information we do have and issues we are capable of judging, should we trust the leaders who are urging war upon us?

The Bush administration campaign for war against Iraq has been an extravaganza of disingenuousness. The arguments come and go. Allegations are taken up, held until discredited, and then replaced. All the entrances and exits are chronicled by leaks to The Post. Two overarching concepts -- "terrorism" and "weapons of mass destruction" -- are drained of whatever intellectual validity they may have had and put to work bridging huge gaps in evidence and logic.

Joel Mobray updates the ongoing political junkie story about how a win by Jim Talent (R) in the Missouri Senate race could switch that chamber to GOP control in a potential lame duck session.

Former Vice President Al Gore leveled his second attack on President Bush's policies yesterday.

As is his bent, Gore overreached on at least one point. The Associated Press' Randall Chase writes:

Gore also criticized the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft, saying FBI warnings about possible terrorist activity before the Sept. 11 attacks had been ignored.

But, the failures are not limited to the Bush Administration.

Gore, of course, was the Vice President in an Administration that may have had things to say about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But he was also the Vice President of an Administration that did woefully little to fight the threat. Lobbing a few cruise missiles every now and then hardly constitutes a policy.

Gore, like virtually everyone else in Washington, ignored the Hart-Rudman Commission (officially known as the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century) report released on April 19, 2000. That report outlined the terrorist threat. It also served as a mostly unread doorstop until September 11, 2001.

Gore had an entire national campaign as the Democratic nominee for president to mention his concerns if he could not get the Clinton Administration to focus on them. Of course, that did not happen.

Gore should not quickly judge the present Administration on the government's failure to act because he will not like the final verdict.

Steve Chapman is unimpressed with our government's plans to deal with a possible smallpox attack.

With war imminent and the anthrax scare still fresh in our minds, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released a plan to counter the smallpox threat. It consists of two parts: Doing nothing, and then praying.

OK, I'm exaggerating a bit. But what is striking about the government plan is that it prescribes a mass inoculation of Americans only after the first infections emerge. At that point, with panic sweeping the country, the plan calls for millions of people to get the vaccination in a very short period of time--the equivalent of trying to build a dike in the middle of a flood.

The New York Daily News wonders why the Transportation Security Agency wants to reduce security at our nations airports by eliminating the random searches of passengers right before boarding a plane.

The editorial explains:

The TSA apparently wants you to believe the new federal screeners are infallible, worthy of absolute trust. Never mind that security experts continue to advocate layers of airport checkpoints. That's because if one screening doesn't pick up on a weapon or suspicious behavior, another might. Reduce the screenings, increase the risks.

Newsday editorializes about the Alternative Mimimum Tax problems that will grow to include a good portion of the middle class by the end of the decade.

As John Balzar wrote on Sunday:

The overall result will be a significant shift in tax burden from the wealthy to those in the middle classes. Consider two groups of taxpayers: Those earning $100,000 to $200,000 now account for 22% of total federal income taxes owed to the government. That's the same percentage shouldered by those earning more than $1 million. By 2010, however, the share paid by million-dollar-earners will drop to 18%, while the lower-earning group's share will rise to 27%.

The San Jose Mercury News makes the case against those who say Iraq is the nation's top priority:

THE Dow's at a four-year low. Median incomes are falling and the poverty rate's up. Airports have yet to put meaningful new security systems in place. Al-Qaida operatives are setting up shop again in Afghanistan. The Mideast conflict is again at full boil.

Feeling a little uneasy? No doubt. All the more so because none of those critical issues is the country's top priority. Instead, the president, with a compliant Congress behind him, continues to beat the drums for war, not against the flagging economy or the Al-Qaida terrorists or the forces of violence in Israel and the occupied territories, but against Saddam Hussein.

The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon thinks the Iraqi threat is being overblown by an Administration and its supporters who are too quick to charge those with reservations about a new Iraq war with appeasement.

Richard Cohen writes that one does not have to agree with everything former Vice President Al Gore said to realize that he performed a valuable public service by coming forward with his critique of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy.

Jeremy Rifkin outlines some of the steps Europeans are taking to begin switching away from fossil fuels.

The movement away from fossil fuels has obvious environmental ramifications. It also will have stark economic consequences.

The United States must not find itself behind this transformation. We, in fact, should lead it.

Of course, you will not find much thinking like that in Vice President Cheney's energy plan.

Slate's Timothy Noah agrees that it is actually worse that President Bush was talking about domestic security rather than Iraq when he questioned the Senate Democrats' commitment to "the security of the American people."

(Here's a link to what I wrote yesterday about it.)

Some school administrators never cease to amaze in their ability to show absolutely zero common sense.

A student sets up a blog and posts to it. In other words, he is using a computer to write. This, one might assume, is something worth encouraging.

As Leo Laporte writes, this student faces punishment because the administrators believe blogging violates the "acceptable use policies."

Slate's Jack Shafer writes about the new Google News. He peers into the future:

The technology behind Google News threatens disintermediation once again, encouraging readers to click on the Jerusalem Post and then on BBC rather than starting at CNN. But just as the media's top dogs defeated disintermediation the first time around, they're likely to find a strategy around it this time, too. I predict that by New Year's Day, at least one of the Web's top 10 news and information sites will have partnered with Google News and at least another one will have ripped off the Google News strategy by remodeling their portal to crawl thousands of outside sites.

Now, here is an odd defense to the big political story of the day.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) took exception to President Bush's claim that the Democrats are "...not interested in the security of the American people."

The White House and their GOP supporters say that Bush was talking about Homeland Security and not about Iraq. So, hey, chill out.

The logical leap there is quite large.

After all, our government's failure to protect the misnamed "homeland" led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans a year ago. That makes Homeland Security important. (Or, at least, it should.)

This writer (based on information that has been made public) often argues that Homeland Security and the war on terror are far more important than Iraq.

So, the argument that people should not care about Bush's remark because it was merely about Homeland Security is patheticly lame.

Bush's remarks were clearly designed to politicize national security. Daschle was correct to say so.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), moreover, should retract his moronic demand that Daschle apologize for pointing it out.

David Broder explains how President Bush's policies represent a new radical conservatism seeking to redefine how the government should handle military, social, and economic policy.

Bruce Bartlett rightly argues that Congress needs to fix quirks in our tax code that prohibits the use of "indexed stock options."

Indexed stock options would, as Bartlett explains:

A preferable approach, economists say, would be to raise the price at which options may be exercised according to a scale based on the Standard & Poor's 500 index of stocks or some other index. Only those executives whose stock prices rose by more than the index would benefit from stock options, rather than gaining largely from a rising tide, as is now the case.

Tony Blankley takes a look at Patrick J. Buchanan's new American Conservative magazine and the intramural debate it plans to create with neoconservatives.

Buchanan and co-founding editor Taki Theodoracopulos want something different for the conservative movement. Their mission statement argues:

Our aim is to rekindle within the conservative movement and the Republican Party the necessary debates on the key questions of patriotism versus globalism, prudent realism versus reckless interventionism. We take to heart the idea that the United States should be “A Republic, Not an Empire;” we believe the United States should slow down its rate of immigration; we are skeptical about many of the benefits promised by the new gods of the global economy.

The Senate yesterday approved an investigation into the failures that contributed to the September 11 terrorist attacks by a 90-8 margin.

It is about time.

ASIDE: Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) once again proved that he is a dolt. He complains about the new commission for several reasons, including its "cost."

So, Senator, the country can afford numerous ships the Navy does not want in order to keep shipyards in your state running, but we cannot afford to learn about the mistakes that contributed to our government's failure to prevent the worst-ever terrorist attacks against our nation?

When will Senate Republicans realize how ill-served they have been by this man?

Former CBS News writer and editor Daniel Meltzer is not happy "that newscasting in America is less each year about the news and more about casting."

Are we at peace or at war? As E.J. Dionne notes, for the Bush Administration that apparently depends on the subject of the debate.

The working poor are being hurt by the economic downturn and the resulting budget crises facing the states. But the war priority trumps efforts to help.

Sens. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, both Democrats, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, pushed the Senate to approve $9 billion to assist the states with Medicaid and social service costs over the next 18 months. Imagine $3 billion or $4 billion dedicated to child care over a comparable period. This would be a relief not only to the poor but also to the state governments, toward which the president's party is supposed to show solicitude.

Ah, but the poor have to wait because we are at war. But are we? A few weeks back, Mitch Daniels, the president's savvy budget director, defended Bush's tax cut by arguing that "Americans are being taxed at the highest peacetime rates in history." Huh? "Peacetime"?

What you have to understand is that where tax cuts for the wealthy are concerned, war is peace. When it comes to spending on health care and child care, peace is war. This is Orwellian budgeting, and its victims are the poor, especially poor kids.

Richard Cohen makes two worthwhile observations in his column today.

National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice likely misspoke or was simply being diplomatically generous when she wondered how a German minister could compare President Bush to Adoph Hitler after all we did to "liberate" Germany during World War II.

To clarify: Germany was not liberated. Germany was defeated. This remains an important historical lesson.

Second, Cohen writes about an observation made by his colleague Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who has recently returned from Iraq: Saddam Hussein may not be as unpopular with his people as we assume.

When a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld finds himself in full agreement with Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), people should take notice.

Ken Adelman is fully behind Wellstone's efforts to prohibit the Pentagon from awarding contracts to any company that incorporates outside the United States in order to avoid our taxes.

The Senate has passed the bill, it now awaits House action.

I am not presently interested in any attempts by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's to mend fences with the United States now that he was been reelected.

Especially since his current attempts have been painfully lame. He allowed his former Justice minister's remarks comparing President Bush with Adoph Hilter to linger far too long.

Peter Finn also reports on how Schroeder's anti-U.S. electoral strategy has split Europe. I guess those plans for a common European Union foreign policy have been set back a bit.

Buried within Dan Balz' story about former Vice President Gore's speech on Iraq is the following requisite quote from, um, a GOP political hack:

Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke brushed aside Gore's critique as politically motivated. "The whole speech was a contradiction within a contradiction and really highlights the fact that this is a guy who can't recognize leadership," Dyke said. "To me, he sounded more like a political hack than a presidential candidate."

Well, kids, Gore is a Democrat. Bush is a Republican.

So, duh. Should we discuss how White House advisors like Karl Rove have suggested the use of the war on terrorism as an electoral asset during this campaign season?

All that said, I feel Gore's speech is a perfect example of why he should not run in 2004. I agreed with much of the substance within it, but found the speech hard to watch. Reading it, however, left a better impression.

Robert Novak says that the Republican leadership has decided just to retain Congressional control on a seat-by-seat basis and not bother to try and create a mandate for GOP domestic policies. He is not optimistic about where this will lead.

Here is an excellent observation from the Los Angeles Times editorial page:

Lawyers must remember that shareholders, not the corporate executives who sign their paychecks, own the company. It's a distinction that some lawyers have forgotten and one that the Securities and Exchange Commission must heed as it creates standards of professional conduct for securities lawyers.

Read this Bob Herbert account of a recent airline marshal incident and then try to explain to me why the marshals involved -- and their superiors -- should not be immediately dismissed.

Remember how George W. Bush was going to be a different kind of president? Remember how the Republicans (rightly) took former President Bill Clinton to task for his repeated fundraising excesses?

Well, as Marc Sandalow notes, Bush plays the same cynical fundraising game. The White House schedules a fundraiser, but makes sure there can be some sort of public policy event nearby so the taxpayers can pick up the tab for the President's transportation (Air Force One alone costs $57,000 an hour).

Again, presidents have played this game seemingly forever. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of the charge. But, as Sandalow notes:

Bush won a lot of votes from Americans angry at the previous administration's single-minded devotion to raising money and political advantage. It may dawn on some voters that Bush's claim that he represents a break from the old ways of Washington is little more than campaign doublespeak.

The Continuity of Government Commission will hold its first meeting today.

While this may sound like a wonky idea, the problem this commission will confront is one of the most important facing the nation.

Norman Ornstein, one of the Commission's senior counselors, writes about the issue in today's USA Today. He notes that there is no effective succession plan should terrorism strike the U.S. Capitol or Supreme Court. Unless you like Martial Law, you should care that our government could be paralyzed for months if terrorists hit the proper targets at the worst time.

As Ornstein writes:

Someday, another serious attack on our governing institutions might require a declaration of war, suspension of habeas corpus and sweeping police power, not to mention emergency disaster relief, the authorization of military force or public health mobilization.

Do we really want to risk having those momentous decisions made by a single figure - the president, our commander-in-chief - using self-declared emergency powers? Of course, it is possible that a disastrous attack would still leave enough members standing to muster a constitutional quorum. But do we want decisions such as those above made by a wholly unrepresentative group of 20 or 30 out of the 435? Some of these problems can be ameliorated by changes in law and rules, but we may also need a narrowly targeted constitutional amendment.

Memo to the Justice Department: shaving is not terrorism.

Congress is going to need to pass a temporary funding bill for the federal govenment this week. Our political leaders are not close to passing the annual government spending bills despite the start of the new fiscal year on October 1.

But, while Congress will delay tough budget questions until the future (and likely until after the November elections), the Washington Post rightly argues that Congress can and should immediately pass an extension of the budget rules that helped the government eliminate the budget deficit in the late 1990s.

Sen. John McCain is unhappy with the House Republicans and plans to spend most of the fall plugging his new book instead of fundraising and campaigning.

Vernon Loeb reports on what the United States may need to do in Afghanistan and Iraq:

A new study by the Army's Center of Military History has found that the U.S. military would have to commit 300,000 peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan and 100,000 in Iraq if it were to occupy and reconstruct those nations on the scale that occurred in Japan and Germany after World War II.

But, thay may decide to opt out as long as our government belittles the peacekeeping idea as beneath us. As the Brookings Institutions' Ivo H. Daalder says, "why would the French or the Brits or the Germans contribute? They don't want to be second-class citizens."

Cragg Hines reviews the record from this past week's Congressional hearings into the September 11 terror attack intelligence failures, and notes that there is much more we need to investigate.

Now that President Bush has dropped his opposition to an independent investigation, perhaps we will now learn in detail what failed and what our policymakers need to fix.

The latest evidence that we need to rethink the Bush Administration's tax policy? The fact that the White House refuses to deal with the ticking Alternative Minimum Tax bomb that is set to hit middle class families in the coming decade. John Balzar reports from a recent Tax Policy Center report:

The overall result will be a significant shift in tax burden from the wealthy to those in the middle classes. Consider two groups of taxpayers: Those earning $100,000 to $200,000 now account for 22% of total federal income taxes owed to the government. That's the same percentage shouldered by those earning more than $1 million. By 2010, however, the share paid by million-dollar-earners will drop to 18%, while the lower-earning group's share will rise to 27%.

Jake Tapper looks at the newest generation of Kennedys, Bushes, and Gores, and writes:

God bless America. Good thing we left England and that monarchy thing long behind us.

Gail Buckley explains that lay Catholics want to be heard and have more power in church affairs. She also, in a rarity, finds herself in agreement with Pat Buchanan on one point.

"Catholic bishops who failed in their managerial and moral duty to protect innocent children should be sent to monasteries to do penance the rest of their lives," Patrick Buchanan said. For once, I agree with him.

Remember, our current Vice President feels that conservation is nothing more than an issue of "personal virtue." But, as the San Jose Mercury News' Phil Yost explains, there is much that government and business could do to save energy and money:

The Energy Foundation is about to release a study done by the Oakland consulting firm Xenergy which says: Doubling the amount spent on energy conservation, to $5 billion over 10 years, would cut the state's need for new power supplies by a third, and net a total savings of $8.6 billion in statewide energy costs.

Think we can trust a president with a blank check resolution that provides no limits? Gar Alperovitz, a Senate aide during the Gulf of Tonkin resolution debate, explains how the Johnson Administration abused the power it received despite assurances to Congress that the White House would limit its response.

The lesson of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution is clear: There is every reason for tough and explicit limiting language that does not allow for the usual rhetorical gambits that thereafter can be used by an aggressive administration to claim support for whatever it wants to do, no matter what.

George Will writes an important column urging people to help save the sites of various Northern Virginia Civil War battles from development. As he writes:

But Northern Virginia has ample acreage for development without erasing the landscapes where the Army of Northern Virginia spent its valor. As for the Federals' side, it is a scandal that the federal government's cheese-paring parsimony has prevented the purchase of historically significant land -- 20,000 acres, maximum -- at Civil War battlefields from Maryland to Mississippi.

While I do not agree with all of his reasons, the overall point of Kenneth Chilton's commentary makes sense: Congress should stop working on what has developed into a horrible energy bill and focus on other priorities.

Iraq says that it will not abide by any new United Nations Security Council resolutions. What a surprise. News will be made when Iraq does follow a resolution.

Other countries use what the United States says and does to justify their own actions. This is the potentially dangerous unintended consequence of the new preemption national security policy.

Peter Slevin reports in the Washington Post:

Made official on Friday, the dramatic change in the decades-old strategy of deterrence and containment puts an option into play that could be effective against rogue states, according to experts. But they warned that the shift to preemption also risks establishing a precedent for countries whose motives or timing the U.S. government may not support.

Just as Russia, India and Israel cited last year's U.S.-led assault on Afghanistan to justify aggressive measures against opponents they labeled terrorists, a preemptive attack by the United States on another country could prompt other governments to bypass the United Nations and launch a unilateral strike against a foe.

The lack of local government response after the White House raised the Homeland Security Threat Level to orange (high) prior to September 11, 2002, proves that the five-color Homeland Security Advisory System is basically worthless.

As USA Today's Mimi Hall reports, a survey by the National League of Cities found that:

• Fewer than a third of cities increased security at utilities, public buildings, schools or airports.
• 27% said they "conducted business as usual."
• Fewer than a fifth issued local warnings or coordinated with police and emergency responders.

"The code is like the boy who cried wolf," says John Weichsel, town manager of Southington, Conn. "We did nothing, as there was nothing to be done."

A Washington Post editorial today describes Michael McConnell, a nominee for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, as "the sort of person who would bring intellectual range, depth and independent-mindedness to the bench."

This nomination should not fall prey to the ongoing judicial nomination war between Democrats and Republicans.

Let's recap.

We are about to attack Iraq. We are in the midst of a world wide war with terrorism focused in large part on the middle east. Our reliance on Saudi oil is an embarassment that funds a despotic regime, Islamic extremists, and terrorists around the world.

Our Congressional response to this situation? A plan that would result in Americans increasing their oil consumption.

Future generations will not forgive our energy myopia.

While I find myself opposing many of President Bush's policies (and his election was the last straw leading to my break from a Republican Party from which I drifted away in the late 1990s), you have to admire how he has repeatedly achieved the politically impossible.

Dana Milbank explains how Bush does it.

The Bush White House's maneuver on Iraq was nothing new. It followed a pattern of hard-nosed politics similar to Bush's victories in winning support for a massive tax cut, trade promotion authority, withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and even, to some extent, success in the Florida election recount.

The pattern goes something like this: Bush finds himself in a jam, with heavy opposition to the position he advocates. After a sometimes painful period of stumbling, he casts aside all other issues so that he can focus his administration's attention -- and the public's -- on just one topic. Then, he hammers away at the issue, using the bully pulpit with numbing repetition and marshaling all arguments to make his case. When one rationale doesn't sell, he drops it and adopts a new one.

"It happens again and again: People on Bush's own side worry and get antsy, while critics become euphoric and think these guys aren't that bright," said GOP strategist Jeffrey Bell. "Once the tactical situation is clear to Bush, they start pounding and won't let up."

I am not surprised to see that the Bush Administration's opening suggestion on a Congressional resolution to authorize military action against Iraq is simply too broad.

It is, after all, not just a presidential request but an opening bid in negotiations. Now Congress needs to do its job and reign it back.

California Gov. Gray Davis (D) loves to mention how the state has grown to have the world's fifth largest economy under his watch.

One problem: California has slipped to sixth. The French have passed the Golden State.

Sens. John McCain (D-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) continue their necessary efforts to create a commission to investigate the intelligence failures that failed to prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks.

They have now proposed the idea as an amendment to the Homeland Security Bill. As McCain says in his media release:

The anniversary of September 11th is past us, and with it the celebration of heroism and sacrifice that will forever mark that day. Now it is time to take a harder look at the other side of that tragic event – the utter failure of the United States government to predict and prevent the slaughter of Americans in America's greatest city.

The September 11th attacks were incredibly depraved but not, as it turns out, unimaginable.

Steve Chapman argues that the United Nations may be annoying, but that nuisance has a virtue.

The rest of the world attaches far greater importance to the UN than Americans do. For many countries, it's the only place they can hope to influence world events. For us, it's just the opposite--an impediment, not a help.

But given our peerless might, that's exactly what the UN ought to be. Americans have no trouble grasping the value of checks and balances within our own government--devices meant to limit and regulate the use of power by those entrusted with it. Multilateral bodies and agreements are an attempt to achieve that same thing in the global arena.

The escalating cost of campaigning is rapidly subverting our Republic. The Boston Globe explains:

While Tuesday ended the most expensive primary campaign in Massachusetts history, the expenditures here were modest compared with the buckets of money being thrown at the voters in several other states. Shannon O'Brien spent something close to $30 per vote to win the Democratic nomination for governor, but even more is being spent in the races for governor in Texas, California, and Pennsylvania. In New Hampshire, businessman Craig Benson spent $160 per vote in winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination last week.

It is appalling. The message for future candidates, as Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin put it this week, is, ''Unless you're rich or have access to riches, don't bother to run.''

While the rich should have every opportunity to run for public office, they should not be the only ones capable of running a credible election. This is a Democratic Republic, not a plutocracy.

The genesis of California Gov. Gray Davis' (D) fund raising abuses, and his obsession with raising money, come from experience. He is not a wealthy and wanted to protect himself from a potential challenge from a rich opponent.

If we want a functioning electoral system, we taxpayers need to be willing to pay for its upkeep. The time has come for public campaign financing. Public campaign financing will open the political system to more possible candidates and save us money (since politicians will not find themselves writing special tax and spending plans to pay off their contributors).

The National Science Foundation's Rita Colwell explains why more research into the relationship between climate and the spread of diseases is necessary.

The Baltimore Sun takes a look at our government's disgraceful response to the September 11 terror attacks:

SOMETHING IS dangerously out of whack with the priorities of our national leaders. More than a year after terrorists masterfully executed a cold-blooded sneak attack on American soil, little has been done to ensure that the nation won't be similarly caught off guard in the future.

A congressional inquiry into the intelligence failures that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks is only now beginning to release its preliminary findings. Much work remains to be done just on identifying what went wrong. Far more work awaits on designing preventive solutions. But Congress is about to adjourn soon to campaign for the November election. Then comes Thanksgiving, then Christmas. January brings a new Congress.

Our government (Republicans, Democrats, and bureaucrats) failed the American people. It is time to find out how. Only then can policymakers intelligently design better ways to protect us.

Now this could get interesing. The Washington Post reports:

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) yesterday asked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for an explanation of Justice Department policies that resulted in the public identification and firing of a Maryland man targeted by the FBI for investigation in last fall's fatal anthrax mailings.

Dana Priest and Dan Eggen report on yesterday's joint intelligence committee report on our nation's intelligence failures prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Although the panel's staff unearthed no single intelligence report foreshadowing the particulars of the Sept. 11 strikes, the investigators assert that U.S. agencies failed to commit adequate resources and analysis to understanding and apprehending al Qaeda terrorists. They also say that policymakers failed to alert the public to the gravity and immediacy of the threats they were receiving.

Our government must undertake a full (and as public as possible) investigation of all of our intelligence and policy failures.

The United Nations reportedly may try to give Saddam Hussein one year to abide by the weapons inspection requirements.

That's dumb. First, it does not take a year to abide by decade-old resolutions. Either Hussein will comply or he will not. Second, such a resolution could spell the end of the United Nations Security Council as an effective international body. The Bush Administration will simply ignore such a lenient and ineffective idea.

This Independent article also spells out the danger facing British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Such a disavowal of the United Nations by the United States would spell both war and diplomatic disaster for the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who helped to persuade Washington to bring the crisis back under the UN's umbrella. Britain's global influence depends largely on its permanent seat at an effective and respected UN Security Council. The organisation will be shunted into irrelevance, diplomats fear, if President Bush unilaterally goes to war.

Thomas Friedman believes that Saddam Hussein is not the biggest Middle Eastern threat we face. He writes:

I think the chances of Saddam being willing, or able, to use a weapon of mass destruction against us are being exaggerated. What terrifies me is the prospect of another 9/11 — in my mall, in my airport or in my downtown — triggered by angry young Muslims, motivated by some pseudo-religious radicalism cooked up in a mosque in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Pakistan. And I believe that the only way to begin defusing that threat is by changing the context in which these young men grow up — namely all the Arab-Muslim states that are failing at modernity and have become an engine for producing undeterrables.

There are few things that would prove more dangerous to the United States than the failure after any Iraqi war to create a stable and democratic regime there. We should do all we can to avoid producing another generation of "undeterrables."

Claudia Rosett wonders why no one seems to care that North Korea and China flagrantly break United Nations agreements and international law.

Brad DeLong has an interesting post about the Federal Reserve Board's plans to fight deflation should the need arise.

Stanley Collender explains why the Senate's recent passage of a $6 billion drought relief bill opposed by President Bush signals the end of budget discipline.

There is no longer any effective break on spending. You can expect federal budget deficits to grow much larger than presently projected.

The Miami Herald explains what it wants fixed by November 5 in hopes that Florida can avoid another embarrassing election fiasco.

Yes, the judicial confirmation process is broken.

But it is simply idiotic for a writer to spend an entire column blaming the present Democratic majority without noting (and justly condemning) the games the Republicans played with former President Bill Clinton's nominees.

The needed cease fire will not come until everyone admits that both sides have been guilty of Constitutional shenanigans.

Qualified nominees deserve confirmation. Everyone deserves a vote.

I do agree with Douglas W. Kmiec's article in one respect. The Judiciary Committee and Senate should confirm Michael McConnell's nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Howard Bashman's How Appealing blog has links that explain why -- including to letters from his liberal supporters.

Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin is unimpressed with the Bush Administration's handling of the war on terrorism.

The president has failed the test of Sept. 11. Other than benefiting from the normal intervals between terrorist strikes, and disrupting terrorist networks built to weather disruption, he has done little to change the dynamic that brought us that day. His gratuitous deference to hostile enemy and inconstant ally, his indecision, irresolution, and delay have exposed the nation he dearly loves to unprecedented danger.

E.J. Dionne explains that Florida elections officials can learn a lot from their D.C. counterparts who just administered a successful election despite the most complicated of possible circumstances. (The major candidates were not on the ballot, over 90 percent of the votes cast were write-ins.)

Many people blame the voter in fiascos like the last two Florida elections (and take indirect swipes at the class or race of those voters). Dionne explains why such blame is misplaced. He writes:

But the evidence is overwhelming that voters of all classes and education levels know exactly what to do when voting systems are intelligently designed, and when poll workers are helpful. When election officials create stupid-looking ballots, when no one at the polls will help confused voters, and when some voters find their names knocked off the rolls illegally, the proper response is not to blame the voter first.

Richard Cohen says that we could use more class envy in this country. He writes:

I do not mean European-style class envy, which can be senseless and destructive. I mean something totally American that can act as a brake on the whole Greed Is Good movement. The excesses of capitalism -- a mere economic system, after all, and not something handed down at Sinai -- need to be reined in by public opprobrium.

This is not a good economic sign (link requires Wall Street Journal subscription). Andrew Caffrey writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

The Federal Reserve Monday reported that household net worth in the second quarter this year plunged $1.425 trillion, or 3.4%, to just under $40.077 trillion from first-quarter figures that were revised upward. The drop reverses a moderate 1% gain reported in the prior quarter.

Economists worry that a sustained decline in household net worth could cause consumers to cut back on spending. Household net worth -- a measure of total assets such as homes and retirement funds, minus liabilities such as mortgages and credit-card debt -- had fallen in 2001 and 2000 after hitting a $42.382 trillion peak in 1999 due to the bull market.

Richard Oppel Jr. reports in today's New York Times:

Governors' races across the country are setting records for campaign spending, driven by wealthy, self-financed candidates, tight contests, donors seeking access in statehouses and aggressive fund-raising by incumbents.

Neal Peirce says that it is time to experiment with different election systems in order to find ways to engage more voters in the electoral process.

Al Jazeera reporter Yosri Fouda fears retribution from those who link his interview earlier this year with suspected September 11 attack coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh with Binalshibh's capture in Pakistan last week.

Saudi Arabia hints that it will allow the United States to use bases within the country for an attack on Iraq if the United Nations approves the action.

It looks like countries, after all of their complaining, are looking to get on the side of the winning team.

Of course, an Iraqi campaign also works to the Saudi's short-term advantage.

Why? Our government's potential gratitude makes it more likely that we will forgive or overlook their culpability in the September 11 attacks, continued holding of U.S. citizens against their will, funding of terrorists, and export of radical Wahhabism.

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch says he is giving up many of his retirement perks.

Welch explains why in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required for story). Meanwhile, he will have to deal with an informal SEC probe into the perks and their disclosure.

(I remain willing to assume, however, that there was nothing illegal in the compensation. It instead represents an overly generous board of directors forgetting about their responsibility to their employees and shareholders.)

Welch deserves partial credit for realizing that he had to give up the perks. He gets a miss, however, for trying to justify the agreement instead of using this opportunity to take a stand against excessive executive compensation.

Update: GE has posted Welch's Wall Street Journal column on its website. Click here to see it.

Pennsylvania's state legislature this fall will meet in special session to consider statewide tax reform.

While political wonks often complain about the meaningless rhetoric that gets thrown around in campaign season, I should also note that we citizens hold a great deal of responsibility for how the politicians campaign.

After all, voters are quite inconsistent in their views. As the Philadelphia Inquirer argues:

A majority of the folks polled believes Pennsylvania should spend more on K-12 education. OK, but they also want the tax relied upon to pay for public education, the property tax, slashed or eliminated. And don't even think about increasing income or sales taxes!

We need fewer of what the late Sen. Paul Tsongas called "pander bears" in government. Voters, at the same time, need to become more realistic about how the public services they demand are funded.

Matthew Miller is unimpressed with the campaign talking points from both major political parties.

Less than two months from the midterm elections, and what are our leaders peddling to win? Republicans want a war. Democrats root for recession. Where's a third party when you need it?

Psychiatrists say autumn is often a time when depression strikes, but my own blues seem to hit at this season only in two-year cycles. Call it Pre- Election Depression Syndrome (PEDS), when the bipartisan rhetoric becomes so intellectually dishonest that your ordinary impulse to side with the team whose values are closest to yours gets drowned in rising nausea at what passes for "debate."

The New York Daily News says that the United States says it is time to confront our poor response to many aspects of the war on terrorism.

We have also met - but appear hesitant to acknowledge - the enemy that is us. Our bureaucratic incompetence. Government shortsightedness. Ideological rigidity. Disorganization. Mismanagement. Fear. Complacency. Where is the declaration of war against those insidious threats?

Why are there tax loopholes for which only the very rich (people with at least $5 million in investible assets) may qualify? The Houston Chronicle rightly argues that Congress should eliminate the loophole or open it to everyone.

Robert Novak reports that the GOP plans to play political hardball to retake control of the Senate for a lame-duck session should Jim Talent defeat Sen. Jean Carnahan in their Missouri Senate race.

Michael O' Hanlon and P.W. Singer explain the dangers caused by the United States' neglect toward rebuilding and stabilizing Afghanistan.

While the Karzai government is a vast improvement over its Taliban predecessors and communist stooges running the country two decades ago, it has only a tenuous grip on power. It lacks control over the Afghan countryside and has only a minimal hold over its own capital. Indeed, Russian observers have noted that the United States is at roughly the same stage where they were in 1981, supporting a weak central government, faced with a bubbling opposition.

A coalition is now building, made up of Taliban remnants, Al Qaeda fighters, and extremist Pashtuns attached to the former warlord and radical Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In a pointed reference to the war against the Soviets, they have entitled themselves ''the Sons of the Mujahideen,'' and are adapting many of the same tactics that eventually wore down the Red Army.

There is a major potential problem growing in Afghanistan. The United States needs to confront it immediately.

Jim Hoagland explains why President Bush's United Nations speech about Iraq could prove to be his "Nixon goes to China" moment:

[Bush] put the case into the right context for his audience as well: Iraq is not just an American problem, but a U.N. crisis that now threatens that organization's legitimacy and future. He outlined the only path that will lead to greater U.S. involvement in and support for the United Nations.

The president in effect was asking: If not now, when? If not in Iraq, where? If the Security Council will not meet the obligations it has willingly assumed in this unique modern case of aggressive and murderous behavior by a member state, it clearly will never act to enforce its writ and to secure human justice. It will become the odious caricature that isolationist Republicans have always painted.

Voter turnout so far this year has largely been abysmal. David Broder rightly argues that, especially now, such voter indifference is unacceptable. The inactive citizens, moreover, are missing a good political show.

The flight from politics, the mass refusal to participate in the most basic responsibility of a citizen of the republic, would be grounds for criticism at any time. It is particularly unworthy for citizens of a nation that claims before the world the right to judge the acceptability of leaders of other lands -- a nation that promotes "regime change" in Iraq and tells the Palestinians to replace Yasser Arafat.

But there is another, less elevated reason to reproach ourselves for what amounts to our national boycott of candidates and campaigns. And that is, simply, that there are some damn good people running and some very competitive races in the offing.

Memo to the White House: the global climate change problem does not go away simply because the Bush Administration insists on deleting the chapter about it from the nation's annual report on air pollution trends.

Are Pakistani officials providing support to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as he attempts to reorganize his movement?

The arrest of Ramzi Binalshibh, the alledged logistics and financial planner of the September 11 terror attacks, is excellent news. I hope he will give U.S. investigators a wealth of new information.

William Saletan explains why President Bush needed the United Nations to bolster his case against Iraq.

With the Al Qaeda connection discredited, the nuclear weapons case unproven, and our general toleration of despots who harm their people (hello, China), Bush needed a new line of argument.

Which, thanks the the United Nations, Bush was able to stumble upon. Saletan writes:

But when introduced into a larger context—the conflict between Saddam and the U.N.—Bush's belligerence becomes logical and salutary. Saddam's history with the U.N. is a joke. As Bush amply detailed today, Saddam has betrayed pledge after pledge, circumvented sanction after sanction, and defied warning after warning from the U.N. Security Council. No one on the council other than the United States and Britain has lifted a military finger to punish him. Always there is a new round of talks with Saddam's latest designated liar, exploring under what conditions Saddam might agree to honor the conditions he agreed to in the last round of talks. By now nearly everyone has forgotten that the alternative Saddam avoided by making his initial promises in 1991 was military destruction. By any logical standard, that's the alternative to which U.N. must now turn.

You don't have to be a hawk to reach this conclusion. You just have to recognize that if the U.N. won't enforce war-ending agreements about nuclear proliferation, it will never be able to stop any war or enforce any agreement. Sheer power will rule everywhere.

President Bush today presented a very good case for why the United Nations needs to deal with Saddam Hussein.

No one should deny that Hussein is a problem. I remain concerned, however, with how an Iraq campaign right now could negatively affect our ongoing efforts in the War on Terrorism. Unless Iraq is on the verge of something horrible, I continue to believe we need to focus on those who killed 3,000 people in the United States 366 days ago.

So, now comes down to the evidence. Is attacking Iraq more important than focusing on Al Qaeda? I do not have that answer. I hope Congress thinks to ask.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon finally gets some welcome good news. The Associated Press reports:

A judge Thursday threw out a politically damaging $78 million civil fraud verdict against GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon's family investment firm.

Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, in a written ruling, dismissed the huge compensatory and punitive damages verdict against William E. Simon & Sons and a nearly $20 million verdict also levied by a jury against another investor group.

Simon had a horrible summer. Of course, as DailyPundit Bill Quick often noted, few people pay attention to campaigns during the summer.

William Safire describes the split within the Saudi royal family, and what the world has at stake in its resolution. He writes:

The House of Saud is beset with dissension. Its nation is nobody's ally. The royal family can fight a civil war or undergo a revolution — or join the modern world.

Richard Cohen writes about another sad morning yesterday in Manhattan.

The Miami Herald is quite unhappy with the officials responsible for Tuesday's election administration fiascos in South Florida.

Nevertheless, the harm done to voters in the primary election is unforgivable. Few activities that citizens participate in are as critical to a democracy as is voting. Yet thousands of voters have been disfranchised by officials' lack of planning and poor organization. This debacle is an unconscionable betrayal of all of South Florida's voters.

Cragg Hines gives the domestic and international wars on terrorism a (generous) grade of "an incomplete, and in some ways a troubling incomplete."

Thomas Friedman writes that we can learn much from the Biblical story of Noah and the great flood.

And that is where the analogy with today begins. After the deluge of 9/11 we have two choices: We can numb ourselves to the world, and plug our ears, or we can try to repair that jagged hole in the wall of civilization by insisting, more firmly and loudly than ever, on rules and norms — both for ourselves and for others.

Maureen Dowd makes several excellent observations about the past year in her column today:

We liberated Afghanistan, which was good for Afghanistan. But what else had been accomplished?

Osama et cetera remain unaccounted for. Al Qaeda has regrouped and is said to be plotting smaller attacks against American targets.

It is still startling that not a single head has rolled at the C.I.A. or the F.B.I. George Tenet has escaped the fate of his counterparts at Enron and Arthur Andersen.

The Homeland Security Department is bogged down in Congress. Airport security remains risible.

After a few months the president shifted his attention from a hard war to an easy war, from an unconventional war with no end or bad guys in sight to a conventional war with a clearly discernible end and bad guy.

David Broder puts into words some of the emotions have I been feeling today. He writes:

A year after Pearl Harbor, the previous worst day for foreign-inflicted American casualties on U.S. soil, we were at war -- and the fighting did not stop for a 24-hour extravaganza of remembrance.

Unlike that attack, Sept. 11 has not stirred the nation to the realization that the United States is under attack -- and that life cannot be the same. Our leaders have declared war on terrorism but have not asked the rest of us to give up anything of importance for the cause. There is no draft; no tax cuts have been canceled, let alone any taxes raised to finance the war on terrorism; we have done nothing to cut our dependence on imported oil, and nothing very effective to rally allies for this struggle.

One would have thought, from the genuine emotions a year ago and the stimulated emotions of the past few days, that at least Sept. 11 would have sobered this society and reminded us what is important to our democracy.

But I see no signs of our shaking off the trivialization of our attention.

WTOP-AM Radio in Washington, D.C., has posted the unedited audio files from its broadcast the morning of the terrorist attacks last September 11. The files include the broadcast from 8:50 a.m.-11:00 a.m.

You can listen to the world change as the reporters realize it was not just a commuter plane accident.

The best description of this day so far comes in from Jeff Jarvis, who survived the World Trade Center attacks. He went to this morning's memorial there, and has posted this:

Here and only here, we could hear the ceremony. Across the wide street, on the platform, I could see the people reading the names and a young woman playing her violin.

The names continued.

My God, they are only up to F.

I stood and listened.

I heard the bell ring when the first tower fell. A year ago right now, I lived.

I heard the name of my neighbor, who died.

Former Baltimore Sun Foreign Editor Richard O'Meara writes about the "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. He notes that this relationship is actually quite young in geopolitical terms, having been created between President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the dark days of World War II.

While discussing this history, O'Meara notes that current British Prime Minister Tony Blair has placed himself in a great measure of political jeopardy with his support of President Bush's call to attack Saddam Hussein.

Important members of his own Labor Party, Cabinet ministers and members of Parliament, oppose the Bush policy. So do most of Labor's midlevel leadership cadres throughout the United Kingdom.

This is unsurprising. Why? Because most people in Britain are against the idea of one country attacking another without provocation or solid evidence of planned aggression. It is thought a bad precedent to set in international relations. It recalls to the European mind the predatory dictatorships of the 1930s.

For Mr. Bush's sake, the evidence will have to be good. For if Mr. Blair departs, the president will be left lonelier than he ever expected to be since he fell in thrall of "regime change."

Thomas Oliphant makes a notable point about tomorrow's anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States within a column examining the lessons we should learn from the Battle of Antietam memorials. (That battle marks the bloodiest day on U.S. soil.)

After only a year, the raw emotions of remembrance are still overpowering. The war of response the attacks have spawned is still foggy, if deadly serious and just. But if meaning is still elusive, it helps to remember that history is a process, not an end, and that the vast majority of our insights and factual knowledge are still ahead of us.

The Washington Post's Dana Priest reports that the United States is no longer claiming, at least for now, that Saddam Hussein has ties to Al Qaeda.

The White House has just changed the nationwide terrorist threat level to "orange" or "high" for the first time. Which means:

High Condition (Orange). A High Condition is declared when there is a high risk of terrorist attacks. In addition to the Protective Measures taken in the previous Threat Conditions, Federal departments and agencies should consider the following general measures in addition to the agency-specific Protective Measures that they will develop and implement:

Coordinating necessary security efforts with Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies or any National Guard or other appropriate armed forces organizations;

Taking additional precautions at public events and possibly considering alternative venues or even cancellation;

Preparing to execute contingency procedures, such as moving to an alternate site or dispersing their workforce; and

Restricting threatened facility access to essential personnel only.

Attorney General Ashcroft emphasized that people should not change travel or work plans in response. Of course, now the American people cannot claim that they were not warned if something does happen.

Nicholas Kristof provides another example for those who argue that U.S. citizens must insist that the Bush Administration modify its position about providing some due process to enemy combatants (discussed below):

A new report by Human Rights Watch records the abuse of detainees such as Uzi Bohadana, a 24-year-old Israeli Jew (apparently the authorities find all Middle Easterners equally likely to be members of Al Qaeda). Mr. Bohadana was left with a group of inmates who had been told that he was a terrorist. Guards stayed away during the subsequent beating, which left Mr. Bohadana with a broken jaw and cuts on his right eye and lip that required stitches.

That's what happens when people are arrested secretly, when human rights groups cannot interview detainees, when proceedings are secret. We become China.

The National Journal's Stuart Taylor Jr. continues his efforts to strike a reasonable balance between fairness and security when it comes to our national need to detain enemy combatants.

In his latest column, Taylor argues that the United States government must provide some process to allow alledged enemy combatants to challenge the government's claims.

The biggest civil-liberties issue that the nation has confronted since Sept. 11 -- indeed, the biggest in many years -- is getting only a fraction of the attention it deserves. One reason is confusion over exactly what is at stake. The real issue is not whether the government can detain "enemy combatants" in military brigs without criminal charges. It can. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit so stated in a July 12 preliminary ruling. (pdf file) Based on World War II precedents, it seems almost certain that the Supreme Court will agree.

The real issue is whether the government can refuse to give people it says are enemy combatants any opportunity, ever, to tell their side of the story to any court, any lawyer, or the public, and can instead keep them in solitary confinement for months, years, perhaps decades -- even if they are U.S. citizens, and even if they were arrested in this country in civilian clothes.

The Bush Administration is creating new legal structures and precedents that could last for decades. Officials urge us to "trust" that they will not abuse these wartime powers. That is an inappropriate standard. As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our Constitutional history should know, the Constitution's framers were concerned not about trust but rather the mistrust of government power. (see also: "checks and balances" and "separation of powers") We are a nation of laws, not good intentions.

As Taylor notes, there is a recent and clear example to show why we should worry about the executive branch's assumption of unilateral power. He writes:

Perhaps the most vivid example is an Egyptian student named Abdallah Higazy. He was arrested and held as a material witness after an aviation radio was found in a hotel room in which he had stayed on Sept. 10 and 11; the room faced the World Trade Center. The FBI told a federal judge that Higazy had confessed to owning the radio, after initially denying it. This much was true: Higazy had said what his FBI interrogator told him to say after hours of interrogation so intense that, as Higazy later put it, "I felt I was going to faint," and -- he claims -- after the interrogator had threatened his family. Higazy was charged with lying to investigators and paraded before the media as a terrorist. But then an American pilot who had previously stayed in the same hotel room turned up and claimed the radio as his own. The government had to admit that Higazy was entirely innocent and his confession was false. The judge is investigating whether the FBI intentionally misled him.

What would have happened to Higazy if he had been thrown into the "enemy combatant" box, with no chance to tell his story to any judge, lawyer, or journalist? Will the courts really let the administration do that to people?

Regardless, it is well past time for the American people to demand that the Bush Administration join in the creation of judicial processes that include some due process and fairness. It is also time for Congress to insist upon it.

The Congressional elections less than two months from now should provide a perfect avenue for this needed national discussion.

Richard Cohen says one Vietnam syndrome remains alive within the present debate about Iraq: "the willingness of Washington to exaggerate the threat."

There are primary elections in Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Caroline, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia today.

Please take the time to go vote if you are eligible and live in one of those areas. For more information on poll closing times and links to results on the web follow this link.

For a quick look at some of today's key races, check out ABC News' The Note.

San Jose Mercury News Editorial Writer Miguel Helft explains why Chinese internet censorship efforts are doomed to fail.

In today's USA Today, Cathy Trost provides a short excerpt from Running Toward Danger, a book she co-authored with Alicia C. Shepard about the journalists who rushed toward the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks.

These pictures they took play a vital role towards keeping the memory of that day's attacks alive. In a related note, on September 11 The History Channel will reair its excellent documentary featuring the stories told about that day by the professional and amateur photographers who shot these memorable photographs and videos.

Did Bill O'Reilly naively collude with the Saudis with his recent segment about some of the American women who have been kidnapped by their Saudi fathers? Did his decisions harm those who are seeking to give these women a real chance at freedom? Did he undermine a Congressional effort that was making progress?

Wall Street Journal Chief Editorial Writer William McGurn lays out the compelling case against O'Reilly. He writes:

Mr. O'Reilly originally proposed to Rep. Dan Burton (R., Ind.) that the delegation meet the Roush sisters inside Saudi Arabia before a Fox camera; the Burton people responded that such a meeting was unwise. Burton staffers say they were stunned to learn, upon their arrival in Riyadh, that the Saudis had spirited Ms. Roush's daughters out of the country on the precise day the delegation was there to press demands the women be brought to America.

Mr. O'Reilly admits that he set the whole thing up with Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudis' point man. As he said, "We convinced the Saudis to fly the women, now ages 19 and 24, to London, where our producer interviewed them." In other words, the deal was: The Saudis supplied the women, he supplied the interview.

In a statement issued on his return, Rep. Burton scored the Saudis for their "bad faith" in removing the Roush sisters out of the country, saying, "It is clear that they [the Saudis] purposefully were involved in an effort to undermine" his visit. If we are to believe Mr. O'Reilly's own words, it all happened at his instigation. My contention is not that Mr. O'Reilly deliberately set out to do Mr. al-Jubeir's dirty work. The point--as I stated on the show--is that Mr. al-Jubeir and Co. were looking for a sucker and they found him.

McGurn outlines other recent examples showing why the arrangements to which O'Reilly agreed cannot be trusted. He also explains the scope of the damage O'Reilly did to this cause.

Instead of becoming unhinged and yelling "Liar" at McGurn and those who point out his errors, O'Reilly should try helping to free Americans whether or not they have been "brainwashed" or held against their will.

Fred Hiatt notes that no matter how stirring the rhetoric against Saddam Hussein, the United States will fail if explosions continue in Afghanistan.

But the bomb that shook Kabul last week and the near-assassination of President Hamid Karzai punctuated a more difficult question: Is Afghanistan better off now than three or six months ago? Warlords have consolidated their control, often in cooperation with American advisers. Karzai is isolated and in danger. Promised aid has not arrived. Allegations of unspeakable war crimes by America's allies -- the deliberate suffocation of hundreds of prisoners-of-war in metal boxcars -- are shrugged off by the administration as beyond its power to investigate.

After achieving a crushing military victory last fall, Americans said that they would not walk away again from Afghanistan. Bush invoked the Marshall Plan. Yet, incredibly, with not even a year gone, Washington's attention is drifting away. Administration officials say that they would not oppose broadening the inadequate peacekeeping force. But they wait for others to do the job.

On September 6, I posted the following CBS News story:

It turns out an overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world, according to a Gallup poll, do not believe the attacks of Sept. 11 were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, or by Arabs, or by Muslims.

Many believe, instead, that the whole thing was a conspiracy orchestrated by Jews.

Two key al Qaeda network members have affirmed that Osama bin Laden was personally involved in planning the September 11 attacks on the United States, a journalist who interviewed the two men said on Sunday.

Steve Chapman makes an extremely important point in his Chicago Tribune column today:

If Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep last Sept. 10 and just awakened last week, he would have no trouble placing the blame for the horror that shocked the world a year ago. We were attacked and, he would conclude, we are now preparing to mete out justice to the evil man responsible: Saddam Hussein. Mention Afghanistan, and Rip might wonder why you're changing the subject.

He could be forgiven for his confusion. Sometime in the last 12 months, the Bush administration let its attention be diverted from the country that spawned the worst terrorist act in our history to a nation that had nothing to do with it.

Before it has really begun to rebuild Afghanistan, the United States government is moving toward a war that, if successful, would give us the additional responsibility of administering Iraq. Afghanistan has gradually become yesterday's problem, a tedious chore that just doesn't excite George W. Bush like marching to Baghdad.

Our skies are not safer, Afghanistan is not stable, Al Qaeda remains active. Our nation and its leaders need to regain their focus.

Phil Yost explains the role played by partisan-protection redistricting in California's budget problems:

Redistricting has become a scurrilous collusion between Republicans and Democrats in which each concentrates on creating safe districts for its candidates.

Safe districts theoretically could provide a net that allows legislators to venture out on the high wire of statesmanship. The districts tend, instead, to fill the Legislature with the most ideologically committed candidates, who have no fear voters will punish them for holding out until they get what they want.

This San Jose Mercury News editorial correctly condemns the Drug Enforcement Administration for its unconscionable raid last week on a Santa Cruz County, California, medicinal marijuana farm.

THE one-acre marijuana farm that Valerie and Michael Corral ran in Santa Cruz County was exactly what California voters had in mind in 1996, when they approved Proposition 215 and made it legal to use marijuana to treat serious medical problems.

The Corrals worked closely with county law enforcement to make sure their operation followed state law and existed only to serve patients who needed cannabis to ease the symptoms of AIDS, cancer and other ailments.

The farm was no secret -- in fact, the Corrals have been in the forefront of the medical marijuana movement for many years. So it came as a nasty surprise when about a dozen U.S. Drug Enforcement Agents raided the farm near Davenport Thursday. They hauled off 100 marijuana plants, along with the Corrals. But the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to file charges against them. The Corrals are back home -- but not the plants.

It is clear that the White House has failed to make the case for attacking Iraq when even Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) has 10 questions he'd like President Bush to answer about any Iraqi operation.

David Broder examines why President Bush's call for bipartisanship is likely to fall upon deaf Congressional ears. He writes:

In a paper presented at the recent Boston convention of the American Political Science Association, Peter Trubowitz and Nicole Mellow of the University of Texas at Austin said that bipartisanship occurs only rarely and briefly under special circumstances, and those circumstances just don't exist today.

At the same meeting, Sarah A. Binder of the Brookings Institution and George Washington University said the evidence shows that while gridlock may be damaging to the reputation of Congress, individual lawmakers are not punished by their voters for the failings of the institution and thus have little incentive to worry about such matters.

The Washington Post is right to wonder why leading House Republicans continue to block legislation to secure nuclear material from sites outside the former Soviet Union.

This Nicholas Kristof column cautions that obstacles may be wished away in war games but not in real wars. He writes:

I asked General Van Riper if the war games should make us nervous. "There's an unfortunate culture developing in the American military that maybe should make you nervous," he said. "I don't see the rich intellectual discussions that we had after Vietnam. I see mostly slogans, clichés and unreadable materials."

General Van Riper said the mood reminded him of the mindset in Vietnam: excessive faith in technology, inadequate appreciation of the fog of war, lack of understanding of the enemy, and simple hubris.

Aviation author Walter Boyne says the United States has yet to take airline security seriously. He makes several suggestions for improving this dangerous situation.

From the Associated Press:

[Afghanistan] President Hamid Karzai narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar this evening, just three hours after a powerful car bomb exploded in a crowded street in downtown Kabul, the capital, killing at least a dozen people and injuring scores more.

As the New Republic's Spencer Ackerman noted this week, the United States has so far failed to make Karzai more than the mayor of Kabul. The rest of the country remains in control of warloads and beyond the reach of the weak central government.

Ackerman, today, updates his New Republic story. He rightly argues that:

"The attack on Hamid Karzai is an attack on the United States."

Otherwise the war on terror will be lost.

You would think that a multimillion dollar salary would allow a person to live quite comfortably, even in Manhattan.

But, according to papers filed by his wife yesterday in their pending divorce case, GE continues to pay living expenses for ex-CEO Jack Welch. The payments, according to the New York Times' Geraldine Fabrikant, include:

The document did not list any personal use by Mr. Welch of corporate aircraft last year, though it did quantify aircraft use by other executives. There is no mention of sports tickets or restaurant meals or the G.E.-owned apartment on Central Park West, which the court documents value at about $80,000 a month.

According to the court papers, the subsidized benefits include a car and driver for the Welches, and the communications and computer equipment at the Manhattan apartment and at their homes in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida. G.E. pays for security personnel when the Welches travel abroad.

Mrs. Welch states that G.E. was paying for V.I.P seating at Wimbledon, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, a box at Red Sox games, a box at Yankee games, four country club fees, security services in all four homes and limousine services while traveling. Because of his relationship with G.E., Mr. Welch and his wife also got discounts on diamonds and jewelry settings.

TalkLeft calls our attention to today's call-in effort directed at U.S. Senators to urge them to oppose S. 2633, the all-too-cutely named RAVE (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act of 2002. TalkLeft's web site includes links to all the information you need to see just how dangerous a legislative overreach this bill represents.

Pat Nolan explains how we are affected by our failure to take seriously the prison rape problem.

Official indifference to prison rape -- for example, see California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's comment about former Enron head Kenneth Lay ("I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey."') or Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Anthony Carnevales ("Well, that's prison . . . I don't know what to tell you.") -- is simply unacceptable.

TalkLeft wrote about efforts to fight this problem late last month.

CBS News reports:

It turns out an overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world, according to a Gallup poll, do not believe the attacks of Sept. 11 were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, or by Arabs, or by Muslims.

Many believe, instead, that the whole thing was a conspiracy orchestrated by Jews.

Bob Herbert writes about a conversation he had with Andrew Cuomo after Cuomo withdrew from the New York gubernatorial campaign.

Cuomo clearly fails to understand why he lost. He is blaming everyone else instead of looking at himself. As Herbert writes:

If Mr. Cuomo does not acknowledge that his arrogant, abrasive, controlling and — in the view of some — even mean-spirited qualities played a big role in his defeat by Mr. McCall, then he will not bother to work on improving those aspects of his personality and character. And that will mean his political career is doomed. A winning politician needs better interpersonal skills than Mr. Cuomo has thus far exhibited.

Jane Eisner explains why the people who argued against the University of North Carolina's decision to assign a book about the Koran to its incoming freshmen were wrong.

The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub explains why the recently passed California state budget plan all but guarantees future fiscal crises. It was full of accounting gimmicks, questionable assumptions, and one-time savings.

Weintraub writes:

I don't mean to pick on the Assembly. Its budget was only marginally worse than one passed earlier by the Senate, which was just slightly inferior to the spending plan proposed by Gov. Gray Davis in May. But this means, incredibly, that our risk-averse governor is setting the state's standard for political courage. That's a recipe for deep, deep trouble.

This is one of the best campaign parody web sites that I have seen so far this year. E-Gray highlights the troubling connection between California Gov. Gray Davis' (D) policy decisions and campaign contributions.

You should check out the site quickly. I imagine eBay's lawyers are already working to try and shut it down.

Davis may win the election, and campaign finance troubles are a bipartisan issue. I hope, however, that the California public will be ready for voluntary public campaign financing efforts after this election.

Thanks to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for the link.

Bill O'Reilly has spun himself into a wrongheaded position. On Tuesday, the self-proclaimed "working-class" man decided to side with the Saudi government instead of the American mother, Pat Roush, whose children, Alia and Aisha Gheshayan, were kidnapped by their Saudi father years ago.

James Taranto's excellent "Best of the Web Today" has the goods (see the fifth item). Taranto writes about the exchange between O'Reilly and Roush:

"Now, Miss Roush, look, it is entirely conceivable that your daughters are brainwashed or threatened or whatever," he told her. "But there comes a point in everybody's life, if they want freedom, they have to fight for it. And it looks to me like your two daughters do not want freedom." Later, when Roush tried to dispute something O'Reilly said about her, he said: "Cut off Miss Roush's mike, she's too emotional."

"I have totally lost all respect for you," Roush told O'Reilly when he let her speak again. Who can blame her?

Accountability is important. As Richard Cohen argues in his excellent column today, we must remember to hold our government accountable for its failures that allowed the September 11 terrorist attacks to happen.

Maybe in another column at another time I will dwell on grief, mourn the dead and salute the heroes. But this one is a reminder that planes crashed into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and a Pennsylvania field not because the terrorists were so awfully competent but because the government was so awfully incompetent. From the Oval Office on down the line, what should have been done was not. The terrorists succeeded because the government failed.

This story has thus far been woefully underreported. The intelligence community failed. Our law enforcement community missed leads. Our elected officials ignored warnings from analysts, experts, even a Secretary of Defense!

It is well past time for the American people to hold their elected officials accountable for their failures. The next time a Representative or Senator asks you to reelect them, you should ask what they did before September 11 to prepare the nation to fight terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular.

Did they ignore the Hart-Rudman Commission's warnings? Their Commission noted the terrorist threat in the final report they released on April 19, 2000. What, exactly, did your members of Congress do with it?

The answer, for most, is nothing.

The FBI's continues its underhanded attack against Dr. Steven Hatfill. This Washington Post editorial gets at the problem:

Whatever impact government pressure may have had, what excuse can there be for the Justice Department to blacklist an unindicted non-suspect? A department official explains that, under the center's contract, the department's Office of Domestic Preparedness retains overall management and that it determined Mr. Hatfill should not be involved under the circumstances. But if the FBI has evidence that Mr. Hatfill committed a crime, he should be charged. Even short of that, if the government means to impede his ability to earn a living, it should do so openly and give him a chance to respond.

The anthrax attacks warrant the most vigorous of investigations. Regrettably, vigorous investigations sometimes have negative consequences for innocent people who come under suspicion. Investigators often must pry into the affairs of many people to find one guilty person. But investigators don't need to do more than pry. They don't need to smear.

Regardless, it is time for Congress to demand accountability for these obvious investigatory excesses. People at the FBI should be fired for their actions. When the FBI is finished with its Congressional intelligence leak investigation, it should investigate and then fire any agent who leaked information to the media about Hatfill.

How could this have happened? The Associated Press reports:

The American flag that was raised by three firefighters over the wreckage of the World Trade Center, one of the most enduring images of Sept. 11, has disappeared.

Timothy Noah explains that the inclination to fire employees for having inconvenient political opinions is not just a conservative one. Liberals play the horrible, albeit legal, game as well.

Noah writes about Bryan Keefer, a co-founder of SpinSanity. Keefer quit working for the Service Employees International Union after he was threatened with dismissal because of a critique of liberal spin he wrote for his web site.

According to Noah, Keefer had the following conversation with his supervisor, SEIU Director of Research Arne Anderson:

Keefer answered that he was now familiar with SEIU's policy toward outside activities, and that in the future he would avoid writing about anything material to SEIU or even to the Campaign for America's Future. Anderson answered with a hypothetical: Say SEIU was giving money to Sen. Paul Wellstone's campaign. (In fact, it's given $11,250 during this election cycle.) Would Keefer feel free to criticize Wellstone's political rhetoric? Yes, Keefer answered. Well, that's a problem, Anderson replied, because that would be a fireable offense. "By that logic," Keefer complained, "I can't criticize most or all of the political left." According to Keefer, Anderson answered, "Yes, that's true."

Thomas Friedman offers a three-point lesson plan, with recommended readings, about the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The San Jose Mercury News notes that "the nearly $10 million spent by the financial services industry in campaign contributions and direct lobbying" led to the death of a popular bill to protect the financial privacy of California's consumers.

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle provides a helpful guide to who voted "yea" and "nay" on the real financial privacy bill.

The Chronicle also notes how campaign contributions seem to have affected Gov. Gray Davis' (D) support for the issue:

Bottom line: The governor said repeatedly that he wanted California to adopt the nation's strongest financial privacy law, but he worked behind the scenes to make sure one never reached his desk. Davis is awash in campaign contributions from the financial-services industry, including more than $200, 000 from Citigroup, which has an enormous stake in information sharing and lobbied fiercely against state restrictions.

Maki Becker and Greg Gittrich write in today's New York Daily News:

Carry-on bags concealing potentially deadly weapons. Six major airlines. Eleven airports. Fourteen flights. And not once did anyone catch on.

To test the supposedly more stringent security imposed at the nation's airports after the Sept. 11 attacks, Daily News reporters boarded flights over the Labor Day weekend carrying contraband - including box cutters, razor knives and pepper spray.

Not a single airport security checkpoint spotted or confiscated any of the dangerous items, all of which have been banned from airports and planes by federal authorities. (emphasis added)

At least the authorities insist that security is better. Soothing words covering an unacceptable situation.

The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives will not schedule a vote on a popular (and White House supported) national service bill.

Why would the House GOP leadership keep this popular bill off the floor? Why wouldn't the House GOP leadership want to pass this legislation in time to enact it near the September 11 anniversary?

Because of their hatred of everything Bill Clinton. As Broder explains:

[House Majority Leader Richard] Armey was not available when I called his office, but his aides were frank in confirming and explaining his opposition to the measure. "He has never been a fan of AmeriCorps," the program that sends volunteers to work with local agencies such as Habitat for Humanity, a senior associate said. "It is regarded as Bill Clinton's pet project. It would be a difficult vote for many of our members and it would alienate our base, less than 100 days before the election."

President Clinton is a deeply flawed man. But some of his policies, like AmeriCorps, were excellent ideas.

Congress should pass a national service bill. If it fails to do so, Americans should hold the House Republican leadership accountable this November.

The Transportation Security Agency assures us that airport security is improving.

CBS News decided to test that theory.

The airport security screeners failed the test. CBS reports:

To determine if screening really has improved, CBS News went back to the same airports using the same kind of X-ray blocking film bags, and we got the same results. Once again, 70 percent of the time, those film bags went undetected or unopened.

William O'Rourke wonders why we should expect the Saudi government to care about its image and actions when our government goes out of the way to be so friendly. He writes:

Saudi Arabia is doing a half-hearted PR push to burnish its image after it came to light that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis and that there were other connections to terrorism. But they appear more angered by the bad press they have received than interested in changing it. They are not going to change. Why should they, is their attitude. And why, indeed, when the president of the United States and his family are such close friends?

Is the Washington Post's Dana Milbank merely writing a tribute to CBS Radio reporter Mark Knoller with this story about Knoller's collection of presidential statistics?

Maybe.

I cannot help but wonder, however, if this story is not also a wonderful way to make a subtle dig at the Bush Administration and the White House communications operation.

Payback is tough, and Milbank has been called the Bush Administration's least-favorite reporter.

Milbank writes:

The statistics Knoller assembles produce many revealing portraits of the Bush presidency:

Bush has spent a whopping total of 250 days of his presidency at Camp David (123 days), Kennebunkport (12) and his Texas ranch (115). That means Bush has spent 42 percent of his term so far at one of his three leisure destinations.

To date, the president has devoted far more time to golf (15 rounds) than to solo news conferences (six). The numbers also show that Bush, after holding three news conferences in his first four months, has had only three more in the last 15 months -- not counting the 37 Q&A sessions he has had with foreign leaders during his term.

Bush has raised $114.8 million this year at 48 GOP events, surpassing Clinton's record of $105 million in 2000 from 203 events. The Bush White House has challenged his tally only once, and Knoller countered with voluminous evidence.

Victor Gold writes that a little thinking can help people figure out the difference between Congressional grandstanding and actual reform efforts.

Take, for example, the Martha Stewart ImClone stock scandal. Gold wonders:

If the House Committee on Government Reform is truly interested in long-range reform rather than the headlines gained from Martha Stewart-bashing, why isn't it looking into the FDA practice of providing favored lawyer-lobbyists with confidential information before releasing it to the public?

Paul Krugman is not impressed with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's excuses for failing to prevent the 1990s stock market bubble.

Wall Street Journal chief editorial writer William McGurn provides an excellent overview of the Saudi government's continued contempt for the United States.

Our "allies" continue to hold American citizens hostage. But, as McGurn writes:

What we've learned from the last week is that the House of Saud is willing to embarrass an American president even after he's complained that the Saudis are not handling these cases the way they should.

Any person who thinks the Saudis are willing to make a good faith effort about this (or any other) issue should note how the Saudi government treated a Congressional delegation seeking to find a solution to this problem. McGurn writes:

When [Rep. Dan] Burton was talking with Miss Radwan [the mother of a kidnapped child] at a Riyadh Starbucks, they had their meeting interrupted by a member of the Saudi religious police. Uglier still, late that night, after that meeting, U.S. Ambassador Robert Jordan summoned the congressmen to tell them he'd heard from the Saudi foreign ministry that Miss Radwan and her husband had said Mr. Burton had offered her $1 million to get on their plane out of Saudi Arabia. Though Mr. Burton is careful to say that Prince Saud did not himself accuse Mr. Burton, the foreign minister did repeat the alleged bribe three or four times during his meeting with the delegation. The Saudis have their own hardball.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) will offer an alternate Domestic Security plan today. He writes about his idea in today's Washington Post, urging the White House not to derail his effort over the "secondary issue" of civil service reform.

E.J. Dionne writes about the newest political craze: attempting to pick your general election opponent by intervening in the other party's primary.

The trend started in California this spring and in the past week spread to Florida. The latest victim is a candidate in this month's primary for governor of Massachusetts, Democratic State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien.

One wonders why party activists would fall for such an obvious tactic. But they did in California, and they may in Massachusetts. (Dionne writes that it could backfire in Florida.)

I have until now avoided the baseball labor agreement because I do not feel that this agreement is all that special. Something similar to it could have been reached last summer or over the winter without the months of Bud Selig and his owners' chorus talking down the sport.

But before we get all teary-eyed, read the following report from ESPN's Peter Gammons:

When ESPN approached MLB about televising games from 1 p.m. until 1 a.m. on September 11 to celebrate baseball's dedication to the healing process, the network was told that it would have to be put out for bid and that it was all about money. Not conscience ... money.

David Broder writes about today's release of "The State of Working America," a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.

Here, for example, is a startling statement you are not likely to hear from anyone seeking office: "For the typical household, rising debt, not a rising stock market, was the big story of the 1990s. Household debt grew much more rapidly than household income in the last decade."

You can read more about this report by reading this EPI news release.

Chris Matthews closes his final column for the San Francisco Chronicle with a sharp argument, just to make sure we know where he stands.

So I'll say it: I hate this war that's coming in Iraq. I don't think we'll be proud of it. Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it. You talk about Bush trying to avenge his father. What about the tens of millions of Arab sons who will want to finish a fight we start next spring in Baghdad?

Thomas Friedman says that we need to be prepared for a long, complicated, and dangerous nation building exercise if we choose to invade Iraq.

Kevin Phillips writes that liberals hope that "crime in the suites" can catapult them into power.

He argues, however, that corporate scandals will not be enough, in themselves, to lead to an electoral shift.

Crime rarely becomes a dominant national political issue by itself. It usually takes on a high profile when connected to a broader governmental incapacity. In the 1960s and early '70s, amid central-city and campus riots and the morass of Vietnam, crime in the streets became Richard M. Nixon's catchword for a failure of liberal politics, jurisprudence and sociology, as well as excessive belief in the power of government to do good. That deeper worry was the motor that made crime statistics a cutting-edge indicator: the public's fear of deadly streets, revolutionary campuses, police crippled by liberal judges, ruined neighborhoods, endangered homes.

This year, politics is still looking for its conceptual motor. For crime in the corporate suites to become one, it too must come to symbolize a broader failure, most likely of conservative economic policy.

Steve Chapman debunks the idea that President Bush need not receive Congressional approval before attacking Iraq. He writes:

If the founding fathers were to hear all this, they would wonder how their cherished republic fell back under the rule of the King of England. They took care not to give the executive a free hand to initiate armed hostilities.

Robert Novak reports that many Democratic leaders, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), do not believe that former Vice President Al Gore will run for president in 2004.

Novak also notes that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has hired a legislative director who previously specialized in national health care advocacy for a Democratic Congressman. Is McCain now looking to get out in front of this vital issue?

Thomas Oliphant writes that "the Bush administration is using too much rhetoric and not enough evidence in its presentations" seeking to justify its desire to attack Iraq.

Oliphant contrasts the Bush Administration's approach with how the Kennedy Administration handled the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today's White House should consider trusting the American people with its evidence. Is the threat from Saddam Hussein so dire that it requires a detour from the war on terrorism and Al Qaeda?

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby does not approve of the Saudi Arabian ambassador's recent trip to President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch. He writes:

If sucking up to the House of Saud were an Olympic event, George W. Bush would be a contender for the gold.

"In the war on terrorism we all have a part to play," says the narrator in one of the Saudi ads. What he doesn't say, but what many Americans have figured out, is that the part being played by Saudi Arabia is not that of a loyal ally or dependable friend but something closer to a callous and unscrupulous adversary. (emphasis added)

Charles Krauthammer makes an excellent point in his latest Weekly Standard essay. He argues:

WE DIDN'T CHANGE after all. Things changed, yes. Flags waved. A president emerged. The economy slid. The enemy scattered. Politics cooled. The allies rallied. The allies chafed. Politics returned.

But we didn't change. We thought we would. After the shock of the bolt from the blue, it was said that we would never be the same. That it was the end of irony. That the pose of knowing detachment with which we went to bed September 10 was gone for good.

Not so. Before the first year was out, it was back, all of it. Irony. Triviality. Vulgarity. Frivolousness. Whimsy. Farce. All the things no healthy society can live without.

Why are we arguing over attacking Iraq when we have failed to eradicate an enemy that killed 3,000 people on our "homeland" nearly one year ago? Why have we failed in so many ways to make our skies safer? Why is the FBI mishandling its investigation into the anthrax letter attacks? Why is the Bush Administration focusing on "fundamentally alter[ing] the relationship between executive branch agencies and Congress" and its unhealthy emphasis on secrecy? Why are people again insisting on fighting a culture war that condemns a college for asking its students to read and discuss the Koran?

Must, in Krauthammer's words, "the other shoe drop" for us to regain our way?