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AUSTIN, Texas -- Great, now everyone who thinks Ariel Sharon is a screaming disaster for Israel has been read out of the pro-Israeli camp. This excommunication comes not from Israel -- where quite a few people think exactly that -- but from William Safire and his fellow grandees of the journalistic right, who apparently have no doubt about their own authority to decide who is for Israel and who is not. Some of us who think Sharon is a walking catastrophe have been under the apparently misguided impression that we, too, were devoted to Israel's best interests.

But ever since Attorney General John Ashcroft informed me that worrying about cancellation of the Constitution was the same thing as aiding terrorists, it has been clear to me that I mustn't think what I think. I need to be instructed what to think by people who think the way he does. This is the same attorney general who spent $8,000 to cover up the tits on a statue and who believes calico cats are a sign of the Devil, but I am not allowed to conclude that the attorney general is something of a nincompoop because that would aid terrorists.

Two years ago, less than 8 percent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favor of what is politely called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month, that figure reached 44 percent.

Professor Martin van Creveld is Israel's best-known military historian. On April 28, Britain's conservative newspaper The Telegraph, published an article outlining what Van Creveld believes Sharon's near-term goal: "transfer," otherwise known as expulsion of the Palestinians.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes I forget how truly simpleminded the Bushies can be. The front-page of The New York Times reports, "The Bush administration seems to accept and even relish (Attorney General) Ashcroft's role as lightning rod on difficult criminal justice issues."

Since the attorney general has so amply demonstrated his clueless incompetence, it may seem difficult to plumb why it should be so. But it is precisely, you see, because liberals consider John Ashcroft a dangerous nincompoop that the administration thinks he's doing a good job. They really are that simple.

In the Texas Legislature, the press occasionally gives the If-He-Votes-Yes, I-Vote-No Award for some egregious example of this particular strain of non-thinking. Any halfway smart politician loves to have another pol in this position. That's when you introduce a resolution in favor of Motherhood just to watch the other guy vote against it.

Weeks before the 20th century ended, the pundit Michael Kinsley was uncommonly direct in a Time essay that defended the virtues of the World Trade Organization with these closing words: "But really, the WTO is OK. Do the math. Or take it on faith." Delivered by the flagship magazine of the Time Warner conglomerate (soon to merge with AOL), the message was more overt than usual: We should devoutly accept certain pronouncements as conclusive.

Such rigid faith is dangerous. It undermines critical thinking. And it's wide open for manipulation -- by mainstream news outlets as well as by some who present themselves as anti-establishment.

Many decades before the invention of television, the American historian Henry Adams was essentially correct when he wrote about the dominant media of the day: "The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved." In substance, there is much truth to that observation in 2002.

MARATHON -- In the annals of West Texas law enforcement, few episodes rival the recent (well, relatively recent) unfortunate occurrence involving the mayor of Lajitas. As visitors to that border metropolis in the Big Bend are aware, the mayor of Lajitas is an alcoholic goat named Clay Henry.

The incumbent Mayor Henry is the third of his line, making this, we believe, the only democratically elected dynasty in the country. If you give the mayor a longneck bottle of beer, he'll swig it -- just like most of his constituents. The Sober Party ran a canine against him in the last election, but it didn't have a dog's chance.

So first thing one morning just a few months ago, Steve Houston, the county attorney, gets a call from Richard Hill, constable in Lajitas, announcing they're dealing with a serious situation: Someone castrated the mayor. A vet is en route at high speed from Alpine, but it's unclear whether the goat will live or not. Local feelings were running high against the perps. Some felt there was danger of a possible lynch mob. Constable Hill got right on it.

LINCOLN -- This nicely rehabbed little place about 160 miles south by southeast from Santa Fe, N.M., is the wellspring of the Billy the Kid saga. He hung out here, was jailed here, escaped from jail here, and so forth. In this same saga, two of the eternal verities, military procurement and insurance, were the primal forces at work, along with the third verity, tardy authors.

In 1850, with the exception of coastal California and east Texas, there was barely a cow or steer west of the Mississippi. There were more cattle, nearly a million, in New York State than anywhere else. By 1870, the total was up to 15 million, and by 1900, that had doubled again to 35 million. Texas alone had 6.5 million. Industrial meat-eating had come of age.

Editor:

By the time this newpaper is distributed, the state of Ohio will have executed another man, John W. Byrd, Jr. By most accounts Mr. Byrd was not, and is not a saint, and was at least a petty criminal when he was arrested for the murder of a convenience store clerk almost two decades ago. But does having low moral character and/or a criminal record mean that the state has the right to take your life away? Many Christians are now saying no.

The time has come for the state of Ohio to join the rest of the industrialized, civilized world and ban capital punishment. Germany, France, England, Japan, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Canada, Mexico, and even some former Soviet states are just a few of the countries that have made capital punishment illegal; what is so unsettling about following these countries into the 21st century?

AUSTIN, Texas -- When in the course of the usual reasoned, civil debate on public affairs -- conducted always with courtesy and good cheer -- one finds one's self snarling, "Oh, shut up!" one has, I fear, been reading too much George Will.

Being instructed what to think by the peerlessly pompous Mr. Will, perched upon his superiority and apparently in a permanent state of dudgeon over everybody else's stupidity, is reminiscent of being bullied by a snotty teacher. One is tempted to respond with the classic, frozen-faced Texas inquiry, "No bull?"

Will is often worth reading if only so you can figure out why you disagree with him. Lately, he has been leading an entire phalanx of right-wing commentators in full cry over President Bush's loss of "moral clarity" in the Middle East. The sheer implausibility of finding moral clarity in the Middle East does not deter them. Better minds than Bush's are defeated by that challenge, but the moral-certainty crowd admits no shades of gray.

Late in the evening in back-road America, you tend to pick the motels with a few cars parked in front of the rooms. There's nothing less appealing than an empty courtyard, with maybe Jeffrey Dahmer or Norman Bates waiting to greet you in the reception office. The all-night clerk at the Lincoln motel (three cars out front) in Austin, Nev., who checked me in at around 11.30 p.m. a few nights ago, told me she was 81 and putting in two part-time jobs, the other at the library, to help her pay her heating bills, since she couldn't make it on her Social Security.

She imparted this info without self-pity as she took my $29.50, saying that business in Austin, Nev., last fall had been brisk and the 57 motel beds available in the old mining town had been filled with crews laying fiber-optic cable along the side of the road, which, in the case of Austin, meant putting 20 feet under the graveyard that skirts the road just west of town.

of all the words i've read about our current military adventure, none have spoken as strongly as the pictures i have seen.
the pictures that the western media monopolies refuse to even allow out of Iraq.
you find them other places.
like al-jazeera.

oh, no,
am i an enemy sympathizer?
if the children who have been decapitated by u.s. cluster bombs are the enemy,
then yes, the enemy has my sympathy.
because, pathetically, that's the most i can muster.

last night i learned,
through a photograph,
that 3 iraqi children
can fit in one wooden coffin,
especially when one is missing half of her head.

it seems that only those who don't need to hear of this, (my fellow sympathizers),
will.

wouldn't want to darken a birthday party
being held for a lovely american child
attended by her pro-war relatives
and 3 young cousins
whom we wouldn't dream of placing in one coffin.
that would be barbaric.