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Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones spoke before the House Administration Committee during their hearing on the Implementation of the Help America Vote Act following the 2004 election.

"I am thoroughly disappointed that the Secretary of State from my home state of Ohio, Ken Blackwell, chose not to testify today before the House Administration Committee," stated Rep. Tubbs Jones. "Just as he created tremendous confusion among voters in Cuyahoga County and across the state of Ohio during this past election by issuing bizarre directives and playing partisan politics, his failure to testify before this committee today shows that he is not committed to improving our election system.

The northern North Americans in Canada are taking another cautious step for drug policy reform. NAOMI, the North American Opiate Maintenance Project, will shortly begin providing maintenance doses of heroin to addicts in Vancouver, moving later in the year to Toronto and Montreal as well. Drug warriors in the US and Canada alike are likely to characterize the project as reckless or wrongheaded. In reality it is a cautious first step only, but an urgently needed one.

In Vancouver's Downtown East Side, where many of the city's hard drug users congregate, the addicted each day face unnecessary levels of risk from overdose, spread of infectious diseases such as Hepatitis or HIV, marginalization from society and the health system, a wearing and time consuming search for money to pay for expensive street drugs, general destabilization of their lives, and all the obstacles to survival, recovery or prosperity these conditions present.

Hard-core heroin users began lining up this week in Vancouver to participate in a pioneering study where researchers will provide them with free heroin. The study, known as the North American Opiate Maintenance Project (NAOMI), won final approval Monday from Health Canada. Moving quickly, researchers this week began the process of selecting 158 participants, 88 who will receive free heroin and 70 -- the control group -- who will get methadone.

The NAOMI project is slated to expand to Toronto and Montreal later this year. In all, some 450 heroin users will participate in the one-year pilot project. At the end of the study period, the doses of heroin will tail off. The study is designed to see whether heroin is more effective than methadone in getting users who have proven resistant to other therapies to quit using. It will also examine whether providing free heroin will lead to decreases in criminality and homelessness among participants.

President Bush submitted a $2.57 trillion budget to Congress which eliminates or drastically cuts 150 governmental programs. The budget is an attempt to meet his goal of slashing the deficit in half by 2009, without giving up tax cuts for the wealthy which were implemented during his first term. When asked about the cuts, Bush said “Spending discipline requires difficult choices.” But much in Bush’s budget runs contrary to his administration’s rhetoric.

On Monday, George W. Bush launched an unprecedented attack on poor and working people in the U.S. His proposed a $2.57-trillion budget will cut domestic programs to seniors, veterans, children, and the poor by $20 billion dollars next year.

This budget proposal is an outright declaration of war on working people. It is part of a neoconservative effort to attack the welfare of working people and force working people in this country to accept third world working conditions – no health care, no pensions, no rights. These cuts are not necessary. They the intended result of tax cuts for the rich and massive military spending for a needless war. They are part of a neocon plan to “starve the beast”, to create artificial crises in order to justify slashing spending for the welfare of the people, while at the same time increasing spending for the welfare of the rich.

I attended the J20 inauguration protests in Washington DC. It was cold as hell that day. The sidewalks were filled with that black stuff that really isn’t snow but isn’t water either. Washington DC was a police state and made no attempts to conceal this.

Congressional Democrats are faced with a challenge, the challenge of an out-of-control fascist regime. How did the Democrats respond today?, they gave the regime what it wants, another impediment to citizens' rights in the courts. Way ta go Dems, you're doing great IF what you are trying to do is run interference for the fascists. Where are the bills of impeachment? Where are the fillibusters? where are the ten-million-person marches? Dems, are you listening? Maybe we better leave the Dems behind, and start with step one, a ten-million-person march on Washington demanding the end of the corporate-fascist regime, and the return of the government to the people.

A. Attlee

Dear Editor:

I shudder to think what Gov. Taft's state of the state address is going to be like. From hearing Pres. Bush's state of the union address, he and the Republicans (The real "Evil Empire") didn't mention one word about jobs, healthcare, or education, which I've come to a conclusion that the Republicans don't have too high on their priority list. As a citizen of Galion (population 11,200) and volunteer at the Galion Public Library, I for one, disapprove of the job that Gov. Taft is doing during his final term in office. I knew from the very outset that Taft was going to cut back on state funding on both education and library expenses, and not to mention create a very dismal unemployment rate, which I believe we are still suffering to this day.

Since the 1950s, many young Americans have first encountered critiques of mass media in the pages of Mad. With its intricate cartoons and satirical sendups, the monthly magazine gained a reputation for skewering politicians, advertisers, TV shows and a variety of print outlets.

One of Mad’s recurrent shticks has involved making fun of gaps between words and meaning -- an especially welcome form of humor because mainstream news so often amplifies the words of public figures with scarcely a hint of irony, much less deprecation. Notwithstanding the zany image of Alfred E. Newman, the magazine’s grinning icon of absurdity has overseen plenty of sobering antidotes to the phony self-importance of major media.

One-third of the way through February, looking at a few of the day’s top news stories, I tried to imagine the properly Mad way to annotate them. Here’s what I came up with:

* Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said to an audience at a university in Paris: “It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past. It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship and a new chapter in our alliance.”