Welcome to the spring Green issue of the Columbus Free Press, an actually remaining free press. Most of the American mainstream press have determined that Bushism is 21st century Americanism. In the words of ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Raymond Vasvari, we should attempt to resist “an Orwellian slide into a surveillance society.”

If you’re not afraid of the National Security Agency’s Echelon project eavesdropping on your electronic communications, or the FBI’s Carnivore software snooping on your email communications, or the national security bureaucracies Face Recognition Technology, then you should enjoy this issue of the Free Press.

By now it should be clear to Freep readers and supporters that the so-called “shadow government,” the undemocratic forces of the military industrial complex and their spooky friends, see the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. as a golden opportunity to promote happy-face, nanny-state fascism. Investigative reporter Marty Yant points out how a Bush administration official was in Afghanistan the month before the terrorist attack threatening U.S. military action against the Taliban.

If movies could be convicted of a crime, this one would be on Death Row.

OK, “Monster’s Ball” is beautifully shot. And the music is haunting in this tale of race, sex, violence and twisted lives in a small town in post-Sixties Georgia.

And yes, there is some great acting by Halle Berry, Billy Bob Thorton, P. Diddy and newcomer Coronji Calhoun. And yes, Halle Berry shows her breasts in the infamous sex scene — more on that later.

But even with all of that, the writers of the script should be charged with a crime for the way they created the lead Black female character Leticia, played by Berry. She is written to be as weak as a wet paper bag, so weak that you wonder if there isn’t some twisted white male fantasy about Black women going on here.

For one thing, Berry’s character Leticia is horribly insulted to her face by her white boyfriend’s father, an insult involving sex and race, but Leticia does nothing about it but storm out of a house.

For another thing, she found out that her white boyfriend (Hank) had been

If you want power – be it political or electrical — you need connec tions. No one knew that better than the super-slick executives of Enron, who in the past year desperately tried to stave off the largest bankruptcy in history.

And when it came to connections, Enron had the best money could buy in George W. Bush, whose most generous campaign supporter to date has been longtime Enron head Kenneth Lay.

According to a recent report in The Nation, Bush’s connections with Enron go back to 1986, when the future president went from a struggling oilman to a millionaire through a series of deals and partnerships, one of which was with Enron and its new chairman, Lay.

The Nation had previously reported that, in late 1988, the then-president-elect’s son allegedly called Argentine cabinet minister Rodolfo Terragno to urge him to award a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Enron. Bush angrily denied the accusation when it was published in 1994, but Terragno recently stood by his claim in a commentary published in an Argentine daily newspaper.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Well, things do seem to be going to hell, don't they? The beauty of having fled to Mexico for a week to escape the endless blat of television news is that it leaves you with enough energy to tackle the subject of the Middle East -- if not with cheer, at least with hope.

And that does appear to be the missing ingredient here -- the expectation that anything at all can be done about the situation. Of course it can. The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal hell where they have to kill each other forever. There is no military solution, but there is a political solution -- and they will get there. The United States is obliged to broker the deal because there's no one else to do it.

The situation could certainly use a couple of good funerals, but failing that luck, we have to deal with what's there. It is possible to deal with people who are beyond persuasion by either fact or logic, which to an outsider is certainly how both the Israelis and the Palestinians now seem to be behaving. Political solutions to apparently intractable situations can be

In times of crisis, many policymakers and journalists pay special attention to the editorializing from America's most influential papers. The spin of news coverage and the mix of individual opinion pieces usually indicate the outlooks of the media establishment, but the editorials by powerhouse newspapers convey more direct messages.

The spin of news coverage and the mix of individual opinion pieces usually indicate the outlooks of the media establishment, but the editorials by powerhouse newspapers convey more direct messages.

With carnage a daily reality in Israel and the West Bank, some editorials have been entirely predictable. The Wall Street Journal, true to ideological form, applauds Israel's iron fist and urges the White House to stand firm behind Israeli leaders. In contrast, more refined Washington Post and New York Times editorials tell us a lot about common U.S. media reactions.

For editorial writers at the Post and the Times, an incontrovertible fact is that Yasser Arafat must be held responsible for the suicide bombings of recent weeks. "It cannot be forgotten that Mr.