Global

Not the least dismaying aspect of the most recent crisis in Northern Ireland has been the stampeding of public opinion here in the United States into denunciation of the IRA, and into sympathy to the political maneuvers of the British government and of the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble. Naturally enough, this sudden tilt is being viewed with profound satisfaction by the British, not to mention the Ulster Unionists, who have chafed for years at the admirable refusal of the Clinton administration to take dictation from the British Embassy in Washington.

Tens of thousands of high-flown words have now been devoted to the IRA's supposed flouting of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, the IRA's lack of good faith, and Sinn Fein's duplicity.

A specter is haunting cyberspace -- the specter of e-vandalism.

Media alarms have been loud recently: Electronic commerce is under siege. A virtual crime wave threatens to wreak havoc on the World Wide Web. Any site is vulnerable, no matter how big.

Let's not bother to shed tears for the likes of E*Trade, Amazon.com and Buy.com. Sympathy seems misplaced for massive outfits that are blights on the Web as they strip-mall every pixel in reach. And I can't summon much empathy for the targeted website run by the Time Warner subsidiary CNN, a cable giant with millions of viewers every day.

But at the same time, even when electronic attacks occur against corporate sites with little or no socially redeeming value, I won't cheer for cyber-saboteurs. Efforts to censor or block communication are odious -- whether based in government offices, corporate suites or secret hacker locations. What we need is not less but more speech: and especially more diverse speech.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks Sunday morning. There was Karl Rove (a.k.a. "Bush's Brain") on television, chatting with the Sabbath gasbags about how the real champion of campaign finance reform is ... George W. Bush.

This was funny enough, but Rove went on to say solemnly that John McCain has taken money from lobbyists and special-interest groups! Of course, by then I was on the floor.

And then Rove said: "He (McCain) is the only candidate to accept a $2 million contribution. He took $2 million raised for a Senate campaign and transferred it over to his presidential campaign. He benefits from the current sort of insider way that we handle campaign finance laws in America, and he sees nothing wrong with that." By then I was in hysterics. Let's take a look at the record.

George W. Bush has raised the unheard-of sum of $70 million for his presidential campaign. He has collected so much money that he can afford to ignore the caps on campaign spending that accompany federal matching funds.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Listening to our presidential candidates is a splendid example of the dog-that-did-not-bark-in-the-night. (The dog-that-did-not-bark was the crucial clue to the solution of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Elementary, my dear Watson.)

While they snipe at one another over golden oldies -- abortion, soccer moms and who-invented-Willie-Horton -- there is something happening out here. And they don't know what it is, do they, Mr. Jones?

Alan Greenspan, the great pooh-bah of the economy, just raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point -- the fourth increase since June -- and clearly signaled another increase to come on March 21. This was in an effort to tamp down the roaring stock market.

The response from the stock market? According to The Associated Press, "Investors poured money into the shares of technology companies to the exclusion of all other sectors." It was the speculation in high-tech stocks that Greenspan was trying to stop, so that was a brilliant success, wasn't it?

Bill Clinton used to quote a definition of insanity: It's doing the same thing that doesn't work over and over again.

Time magazine recently offered some notable journalism. A 14-page investigative report -- "Big Money and Politics: Who Gets Hurt?" -- provided extensive coverage of how government decisions really get made in the nation's capital. The cover story, by Donald Barlett and James Steele, was terrific.

But the mass media's response to the new expose was dismal.

Barlett and Steele don't bother with the fluff and psychoblather that dominate political reporting. They bypass the styles and personal traits of politicians. Instead, in the Feb. 7 issue of Time, the two journalists illuminate a process that normally remains in shadows. Money doesn't talk. It screams. And it gets heard.

AUSTIN, Texas -- There may yet be some instructive points to be mined from the New Hampshire primary. Perhaps the most important of these is that George W. Bush is not the front-runner because he is the most able or effective candidate. He is the front-runner because he raised so much money early.

He is not the front-runner because he has a splendid record as the governor of a large state. (He has been a so-so governor of Texas, a record that qualifies him to be lieutenant governor of Texas -- which, as all Texans know, is the more powerful office.) He is the front-runner because he has $70 million in his campaign kitty.

And thereby hangs a tale. He has already spent $37 million, which is almost as much as the Democratic nominee will have to spend on his entire campaign up to Election Day, since the D will abide by spending limits in order to qualify for federal matching funds. Bush has raised so much money that he's well beyond needing federal funds and their accompanying limits.

The reeling Bush campaign is pulling out all the stops to show that George W. is not only a true leader of men, but a warm soul. "He's had to sit in the chair," cries Gov. Carroll Campbell of South Carolina, whose state faces a Feb. 19 primary now touted as crucial for Bush. "He's had to make life-and-death decisions." "He has a human touch, a personal touch that most candidates don't have," an aide whispers to the New York Times. But it's hard to reinvent George W. at this late hour, when most Americans access his warmth through bulletins of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, announcing executions in the months ahead.

It'll be a busy time in the Huntsville Death House. Feb. 23 sees Cornelius Goss strapped down for his last shot, followed the very next day by 64-year old Betty Beets. March will bid adieu to Odell Barnes, Timothy Gribble and Dennis Bagwell, and Super April will be crueler yet, with lethal injections for Orien Joiner, Victor Saldona, Robert Carter, Robert Neville and Ricky McGinn. Carruthers Alexander goes to his maker on May 3. Such, at least, is the present execution calendar.

The cruelest example of human rights violations in the United States today is the death penalty. Everyone knows that the death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a deterrent to violent crime. Social scientists for decades have long established that the death penalty is inherently racist. African-American defendants found guilty of the identical crime as a white defendant are statistically at least four times more likely to be given the death penalty. Black people currently comprise more than 40 percent of death row inmates. Regional differences make it 160 times more likely that a person convicted of a capital offense in the South will be executed than one in the Northeast. And of course, the capital justice system can never guarantee that innocent people won't be executed by the state. For these and other reasons, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1972 case of Furman v. Georgia, outlawed capital punishment.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, there has been mounting legal evidence that capital punishment cannot be implemented in a fair and impartial manner. The state of Illinois, for example, currently has 161 people on death row.

How far has America actually progressed toward more constructive race relations? Judging by some recent events, not much.

During this year's legal holiday marking the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I was invited to speak at a small, predominantly white Southern college. For decades, this school had been racially segregated, like other all-white public educational institutions. The college's first black faculty member had been hired only in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, the initial reception I received was friendly and positive, from administrators, faculty and representatives of the student government association, who had sponsored my visit. Nothing up to that point had prepared me for what I would soon encounter that evening. My lecture that night was before an audience of perhaps 500 people, consisting mostly of students and a significant number of African Americans from the surrounding community. I spoke about the enduring legacy of Martin, the necessity to achieve social justice, and the urgent need for constructive dialogue across America's racial chasm. As I concluded, most of the audience responded favorably to the message, but many sat in silence.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Best lead paragraph of the New Hampshire primary: "I expect to live long enough to hear a woman running for president asked what she would do if she found herself pregnant" -- Ellen Goodman. This is the year that the abortion issue was supposed to disappear from the political radar screen.

"Divisive issue," "find common ground," "an issue on which reasonable people can disagree." George W. Bush, leading contender for the Republican nomination, has made a specialty out of not saying much on the issue -- or, more specifically, not reminding the general audience that he wants a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion.

But since the rhetorical firepower on the Republican side is strongly pro-life -- Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer double-teaming the wishy-washy pro-lifers, and Steve Forbes swooping down in Iowa to take advantage of the zealous pro-life voters there -- it's b-a-a-ack.

Still, there has been rather more significant political news lately than what television pundits invariably describe as "New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary."