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I am sorry. I can't help but comment on this one.  I sat by idly and watched the Bolton controversy unfold and have been uncharacteristically silent while I watched the GOP shove this Presidential prerogative down everyone's choking throats.  But I just got back from a tour of UN Related agencies in Geneva and Paris with the UNA and now find I cannot be silent with regard to Bush's choice for UN Ambassador.

First, has George Allen ever been to any international destination other than perhaps Cancun or the British Virgin Islands? Because the tea sipping pinky comment was replayed on BBC World News and he looked like his only exposure to anything international was watching reruns of Faulty Towers- like diplomats in Geneva ever sit in parlors and sip tea. They might be skiing an hour away in Val D'isere or on Mount Blanc and sipping sherry in the apres ski lodge, or maybe sipping Chardonay on the Lake, but Bolton wouldn't be invited.

If the Republicans really believe our top federal judges deserve an up-and-down vote, and that the filibuster is an unfair relic, there's an easy solution: Propose a rules change that will end it-in 2015.

I'd still support keeping the filibuster as way to protect minority rights. But its history has been pretty mixed. If the shift were voted in now but deferred for ten years, it would be hard for anyone to argue that it was being changed for narrow political advantage. The Republican push might even look like principle, instead of yet another raw power play along the lines of Tom DeLay's mid-census midnight Congressional redistricting. If they can sunset the phasing in of tax cuts to make them easier to pass, why not sunrise this fundamental shift in how the Senate has done business for 200 years?

Would the Republicans accept this deal if offered full Democratic support? Would they offer an alternative to grabbing everything they can the moment they hold the reins of power? I doubt it. But it would be a great way to highlight their real priorities.

To the Editor: David Brooks' otherwise balanced column about the Newsweek article controversy omitted one crucial fact.

Bush administration officials vetted the Isikoff piece before it went to print, and offered no objections. Only after an entirely predictable uproar in the Muslim world did Scott McClellan, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld accuse Newsweek of contributing to the deaths of innocents and a loss of American prestige. These remarks represent crocodile tears after the fact, shed for Muslims who have been mistreated by our military at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo with the full knowledge of the administration.

Robert Lockwood Mills, author/historian

Sign here to become a member of the 14 Per Cent Club. Twenty bucks plus shipping and handling gets you the T-shirt. Credentials for membership derive from a recent study by the Pew Research Center disclosing, in the words of Katharine Seelye of the New York Times on May 9, that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers.

"When specific newspapers were mentioned, The Times fared about average, with 21 percent of readers believing all or most of what they read in The Times and 14 percent believing almost nothing," Seelye reports. Chalk up another victory for the left. We've been at it for 30 years at least, saying that most things in the Times are distortions of reality or outright lies, and here is a robust slice of the American people agreeing with us. Of course, the faint hearts who believe that the left can never win anything will say that the credit should go to moles at the New York Times, boring from within, hollowing out the mighty edifice with year upon year of willful falsehoods until, at last, the whole ponderous structure is crumbling into dust, crushing all within.

I know it may sound crazy, but the Bush administration has actually made a proposal to allow wastewater treatment plants to dump barely treated sewage into American waters whenever it rains. I don't know about you, but I don't want more sewage in my water no matter the weather.

Fortunately, neither do a lot of Members of Congress, and they've banded together to make sure this proposal does not get enacted. This week, Congress is going to vote to stop the Bush administration's proposal from becoming law.

Please take a moment to ask your Member of Congress to keep more sewage out of America's water. Then, if you have friends who don't want more sewage in their water either, forward this email to them and ask them to contact their Member of Congress too.

To take action, click on this link or it into your web browser:
http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=2&id4=OHFreep

Background

AUSTIN, Texas -- As Riley used to say on an ancient television sitcom, "This is a revoltin' development." There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time. The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen released from Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner said he had been physically beaten but did not consider that as bad as the psychological torture, which he described extensively. Jamal al-Harith, a computer programmer from Manchester, said 70 percent of the inmates had gone on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. The strike was ended by force-feeding.

AUSTIN, Texas -- As Riley used to say on an ancient television sitcom, "This is a revoltin' development." There seems to be a bit of a campaign on the right to blame Newsweek for the anti-American riots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries.

Uh, people, I hate to tell you this, but the story about Americans abusing the Koran in order to enrage prisoners has been out there for quite some time. The first mention I found of it is March 17, 2004, when the Independent of London interviewed the first British citizen released from Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner said he had been physically beaten but did not consider that as bad as the psychological torture, which he described extensively. Jamal al-Harith, a computer programmer from Manchester, said 70 percent of the inmates had gone on a hunger strike after a guard kicked a copy of the Koran. The strike was ended by force-feeding.

CHICAGO (April 18, 2005) – Addressing some of the most controversial but relevant issues in America – from the renewal of the Voting Rights Act to the failure of college sports programs to graduate their players – the RainbowPUSH Coalition and the Citizenship Education Fund also echo the nation's Founding Fathers and look to more recent historical giants in the 34th Annual Conference, “A More Perfect Union: Building on the Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson.” The conference, an event where the RainbowPUSH seeks to take action on many of the key issues it addresses during the year, will be held June 11 through 16, 2005, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, 301 E. Water St. in downtown Chicago.

A stellar array of guests scheduled to appear during the conference includes, from the political arena, Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Barack Obama (D-IL) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters D-Calif.); and from the religious, entertainment and business arenas, Nation of Islam Leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte; and prominent business executives Cathy Hughes and Earl Graves.

History is slowly being rewritten. Hard to believe yet harder to deny is the increasing frequency and fervor with which those on the religious right are asserting that the United States was founded on Christian principles. Every day, on editorial pages and radio talk shows across the country, more and more unapologetic Christian crusaders are stating as fact fantastic claims of our founding fathers’ providential mission to create a nation based on the Ten Commandments and a Biblical worldview.

You may be tempted to chuckle, but you must not. You must take this seriously, very seriously, for unknown to many of you America has become engaged in nothing less than an epic battle, one whose outcome will shape world history for the next century and beyond. It is not a battle against radical Islamic terrorism, though that is a separate fight we must also win, but a battle that pits reason against faith, the Enlightenment against the Dark Ages, the light against the cave.

To Harvey Wasserman.

I read your article "Four bloody lies of war, from Havana 1898 to Baghdad 2003".

Thank you for writing a great historical review.

I discovered at the national achieves, seven taped telephone conversations between Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson on august 4th 1964 the day of the Golf of Tonkin Incident.

One minute and thirty-eight seconds into clip # 3 McNamara says "and our ships are allegedly o be attack tonight". Confirming in there own words that the whole Gulf of Tonkin incident was to be a fake excuse to start a war and murder three million people.

If you listen to all seven clips you will get a real fly on the wall understanding of two mass murderers preparing for the kill.

I especially like the part were Johnson checks with the New York bankers before going ahead.

Jim Davis

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/tapes.htm