AUSTIN, Texas -- Budgets are the guts of government. That's where you find the answer to the first of the three important questions about who runs a society: Who's getting screwed? Who's doing the screwing? And what the hell will they do to us next?

There was a time when reporters actually read budgets to find out what was going on, but the things are so humongous these days, we've given up on that. Consequently, there's usually a bit of a pause after a budget comes out, while we wait to hear from the various special interest groups that study their own section of a budget in minute detail. Then, the screaming from injured parties commences, and the press presumably sits up and takes note of who's screaming loudest.

With President Bush's proposed budget, may it die in committee, no pause is necessary. Read any overview of the proposal, and you can see exactly who's getting screwed: children.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes the ironic timing of events in our public life is so striking as to cause one to wonder if the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky isn't trying to make a point. Thus, the word that the U.S. Senate voted for tort deform last week came just a few days after the news that seven executives of W.R. Grace and Co. were indicted on criminal charges for knowingly putting their workers and the public in danger by exposing them to asbestos ore.

Hundreds of miners, their family members and townsfolk in Libby, Mont., have died, and at least 1,200 more are sick from breathing the air polluted by the mine. Since the ore was shipped all over the country and was used as insulation in millions of homes, the total health effects are incalculable. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer deserves credit for bringing Grace to public attention with a series back in 1999.

The executives and the company were indicted on 10 counts of conspiracy, knowing endangerment, obstruction of justice and wire fraud.

W.R. Grace & Co. "categorically denies any criminal wrongdoing," said a spokesman.

The National Association of Secretaries of State recently held its annual convention. In the wake of two disputatious presidential elections in a row, there was considerable sentiment at the meeting for a resolution barring state secretaries from simultaneously serving as partisan political officials. In the two states where the greatest controversies arose in 2000 and 2004, Florida and Ohio, this had been a glaring problem.

The convention did the opposite. It passed a resolution stipulating that it was O.K. for secretaries of state to proselytize for their parties’ candidates, indeed even to serve as party chairpersons during the campaign. By inference, the N.A.S.S. would allow such officials to suborn acts of voter disenfranchisement, make rulings contrary to state law, interfere with legally sanctioned recounts, even to later campaign for higher office on the basis of having “carried our state for (the incumbent).”

Deborah L. Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State, attended the convention. She said later that she recognized the need for reform, but added, “It’s hard to change the system. I’m a Democrat. I don’t want to appear partisan.”

When conservatives talk of George W. Bush’s “transformational” role in American politics, they are referring to a fundamental change they seek in the U.S. system of government in which the Republican Party will dominate for years to come and power will not really be up for grabs in general elections…

Four years ago, some hopeful political analysts predicted that the rightward swing of the media pendulum, which so bedeviled Bill Clinton in the 1990s, would lurch back leftward once Bush took office in 2001…

But no self-correction ever occurred. Instead, as Bush enters the fifth year of his presidency, major news outlets are continuing to swing more to the right…

[W]hile commentators expect Democrats to praise Bush, the major news media acts as if Republican disdain for Democrats is the natural order of things. There was barely a peep of media objection on Jan. 20 when triumphant Republicans jeered John Kerry when he joined other senators at the Inaugural platform on Capitol Hill.

But it’s not only Democratic politicians who can expect rough treatment these days.