Where have we heard this all before? When Ronald Reagan was president and then won a landslide reelection, the voters felt a similar ambivalence: liked the man, disliked his ideology and agenda. A reader explained this recurring, baffling phenomenon: "Americans usually vote for the friendly guy - Ike vs. the intellectual Stevenson, Truman over Dewey, gush Bush not bore Gore, Reagan over naggin', JFK over Nixon, Carter over Ford.... It is a bit like those high school class [presidential] elections - the vote goes to the nice, social type, not the socialist ..."

My standard response to the "No Jews died at the World Trade Center" slander is "I went to David M. Weiss' memorial service. He was Jewish. So are his kids. I've met them. If you don't believe me, ask the surviving members of Rescue 1, FDNY. But stand far enough back when you ask."

Some, like [Phyllis] Schlafly, may argue that there is another option - a fundamentalist regime that actually gets its citizens to practice sexual abstinence. This could work in theory, but it's a much less robust strategy. Once AIDS occurs in these societies, it's impossible to stop, since the state can't admit its existence without admitting its founding principles are being violated. Any discussion would have to admit the possibility of illicit sex and drug use. In fact, the spread of AIDS in totalitarian societies is likely to be much faster because of the state's reluctance to ever publicly broach the topic.

Though hardly scientific, this tended to confirm my suspicion that people like buying books more than they like reading them. And of course, in the famous formulation (credited to Gloria Steinem, among others), writers don't like writing—they like having written. They like having written under the impression that this means they will be read. The whole book thing is thus based on mutual misunderstanding.

under the guise of fiction based on real events, a lethal provocation to hatred, violence and jihad against Israelis and Jews. A book, that in the French social-political context, can only encourage anti-Semitic acts.

While reading your Daily Dish just now, I noted the oft-repeated statement that no Israelis (it used to be no Jews) died in the Sept. 11 attacks. As a matter of fact, the first person killed, on the first plane, before it hit the North Tower, was an Israeli civilian, male. He stood up to the hijackers and was stabbed, as was reported by the flight attendant during her call. Investigators later matched his name to his seat number.

What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.
(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals... The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.

Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.

You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?... You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it... And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention.

The Slough Journal article yesterday, about Princess Anne's guilty plea to charges of having lost control of her dog, which bit two children, misstated the timing of what historians say was the most recent previous criminal conviction of a senior member of the royal family. In that case, Charles I was beheaded in 1649 — after the English Civil War, not on the eve of it.

The Times has obtained a copy of the agreement that victims had to sign before they were compensated and a leading lawyer said last night: "This is a gagging clause and it would have been taken as such." Some of the agreements relate to the time when Cardinal Murphy O’Connor was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Father Hill [a pedophile] was employed as a priest at Gatwick.

An article yesterday about a man accused of having tried to hijack an El Al plane en route to Istanbul from Tel Aviv on Sunday referred incorrectly to Tel Aviv. It is not the capital of Israel; Jerusalem is.

"Gore: Bush Loses Terror Focus
2000 Rival Says Focus on Iraq Aided GOP but Not Nation"

"U.S. Identifies Captured Al Qaeda Official
Suspected Head of USS Cole Bombing Caught Earlier This Month"

Hamas, whose immediate aim is to secure an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has claimed responsibility for the majority of attacks against Israeli targets since the Palestinian uprising against occupation began two years ago.

There are many ironies and contradictions in its position. For most Catholics none will strike with such exquisite and even risible pain as the spectacle of an institution, the Vatican, that has done so much damage over so many years by telling people, on pain of mortal sin, how they should lead their sexual lives, itself now demanding that the sexual perversion of priests should be forgiven and forgotten.

That’s what Eminem’s whole career has been: an absolute commitment to parade his demons and his flaws publicly, an absolute determination to say what no one else will say, to tell his own truth.
This entails that what he says is, at times, horrible. And we see his bigotries as well as his creativity, his stupidities and blindness as well as his intense intelligence and courage. Eminem is wrong about homosexuality and wrong about women (though so right about race). But that very wrongness is part of what makes him true, because he says it.
I predict that we have seen almost the last of Britney Spears and Al Gore, and are in for some real moments.

David Austin, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, says, "You would have to show some ID ... What is unfortunate is there is misinformation out there - not only for viewers who see the movie in Canada but the rest of the world - that it is relatively easy to buy ammunition in Canada, and that is not the case."

Kudos to top Army's brass for intercepting this axis of fabulousness before it could do any real damage. Yes, we're in a war on terror. Yes, intelligence is the key to winning this war. Yes, Arabic translating is the key to intelligence. But they're gay. ... They make kissy with their own kind. Is that really the kind of person you want with you in wartime translating situation? Would you really be comfortable side by side with a gay person hunkered down in a fox hole or cubicle, office park, really would you?

Monday's episode showed Mr Castro dressed casually before a banquet, inspecting the elaborate dinnerware on the dinner table, his grandchildren playing with relatives and Antonio zooming along the patio on an electric scooter. It pictures the spacious compound and carefully landscaped garden and reveals that many of the family are wearing designer clothes. The house is decorated with wooden chests and Cuban handicrafts. A large-screen television monitors foreign news channels.

What I think modern conservatives sometimes miss in their legitimate calls for morality and the need for human beings as personalities and as people to live up to certain moral norms is also the joy of character, or personality, of the things that make us love another person. We don't always love another person because he or she is virtuous. We sometimes love another person because of their faults. We love them because of their idiosyncracies. And yet it takes, often, until the memorial service before we actually acknowledge this particular reality. And Oakeshott saw that love of humanity in all its difference as one of the critical projects of a liberal political order. He looked around at people and saw them as things to be cherished, in contrast to those who would look at human beings and see them as something to be corrected or corralled or instructed or uplifted or informed.
This is the real conservative definition of diversity ... the joyous variety of humankind, the beautiful difference that exists in our culture and the ability to cherish difference without being panicked by the possibility of inequality.

Moses drove an Acura which he kept in excellent condition, since when he died, "his sight was unimpaired and his Vigor had not abated." It is clear that Pharaoh did not keep his Dodge in the garage during bad weather, for after his famous dreams, "in the morning his Spirit was troubled." Dodges were very popular among the entire populace in ancient Egypt, since when Moses asked the Israelites to pack into their car and leave Egypt, "they would not listen to Moses because of their broken Spirit." The Dodge continued to be the car of the upper class right through turn of the century Jerusalem, when the priests and scribes "conspired to arrest Jesus by Stealth." The apostles could not afford Dodges, however, and had to make due with Hyundais, as evidenced by the fact that Peter was identified as a follower of Jesus when the bystanders said to him, "Certainly you are also one of them, for your Accent betrays you." God himself likes to give Mazdas as gifts, proof of which is that in Numbers 31, "Moses gave the Tribute, the offerring for the Lord, to Eleazar the priest, as the Lord had commanded." For his own wheels, God drives a Plymouth when he wages war, as the prophet Zechariah proclaimed, "Then the Lord will appear over them, and his Arrow will go forth like lightning." But there can be no doubt that when God is in the mood for a nice leisurely drive, nothing but a Rolls Royce Silver Dawn will suffice, which makes him the envy of world leaders as Isaiah makes quite clear when he says of the Lord, "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your Dawn."

One theory is that Jesus would tool around in an old Plymouth because "the Bible says God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden in a Fury." But in Psalm 83, the Almighty clearly owns a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the Lord to "pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm." Perhaps God favors Dodge pickup trucks, because Moses' followers are warned not to go up a mountain "until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast." Some scholars insist that Jesus drove a Honda but didn't like to talk about it. As proof, they cite a verse in St. John's gospel where Christ tells the crowd. "For I did not speak of my own Accord..." Meanwhile, Moses rode an old British motorcycle, as evidenced by a Bible passage declaring that "the roar of Moses' Triumph is heard in the hills." Joshua drove a Triumph sports car with a hole in its muffler: "Joshua's Triumph was heard throughout the land." And, following the Master's lead, the Apostles car pooled in a Honda... "The Apostles were in one Accord."

At the Woman to Woman centre, 20 women of all ages were sitting on the floor, all them with burkas left hanging on pegs by the door. Despite the absence of outward change, were things getting better for them now that the Taliban had gone? There was a spontanteous chorus of cries, hands raised in the air, laughter, sighing, exclamations - my translator could not keep up with their energetic assertions that life had changed beyond recognition. This relative liberation - freedom to walk outside for many who had never left their one room in years - was hard to imagine. "I never saw the light of day in five years!" one widow said.

There is a charism or gift of political discernment unique to the vocation of public service. That charism is not shared by bishops, moderators, rabbis, imams or inter-religious agencies. Moral clarity in a time of war demands moral seriousness from public officials. It also demands a measure of political modesty from religious leaders and public intellectuals, in the give-and-take of democratic deliberation.

I'm afraid I must disagree with the separated gay officer. When he said that "the rank-and-file" had no problem with gay personnel, he was exercising in some wishful thinking. Perhaps, as an officer, he had blinders on. It is a definite truth that our officers are in many ways unaware of aspects of the enlisted culture.
I am the Navy "rank-and-file", an E-5 with nine years of service. And, just so you don't think I'm some kind of troublemaker, I also outrank my peers on ALL of my performance evaluations since I entered service.
I'm not saying it's right, but most of my peers have a definite and obvious dislike of male homosexuals. Openly gay personnel would have a negative effect on good order and discipline and some of them would get HURT.
Most personnel I have met and worked with seem generally satisfied with current Navy policy (though some would surely like to see a return to openly violent attitudes against gays). Many people say that gays are "alright", AS LONG AS THEY KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES. Then the discussions degenerate into descriptions of the retaliation they would visit on any gay member who dared to make overtures or even look at them crossways.
I have a gay friend who was outed by a drunken boyfriend two years ago. We decided to just keep it amongst our "clique." But you would not believe the sense of crisis it created when it first came out. There were arguments, recriminations ... total chaos in our circle of friends. Sadly, two of my other friends simply refused to continue any relationship with our gay friend. If he came to my home or one of our hangouts, they made a big show of leaving. The only reason things did not become far worse is because this is a guy we FOUGHT beside. When I was behind on rent, he was there with his checkbook. When I got jumped in a foreign port, he was wading into the fray. Had he been a little less close or a little less brave and generous, he would probably be out of friends.
I am not gay. I do not want to serve with the openly gay, since it would cause a great disruption of accusations, harassment, and possible violence. And let me make this clear ... I am not projecting my own opinions onto my fellows. We have been discussing this since I walked onboard my first ship. We may put a PC face on things, but when all the masks finally come off, the consensus is...DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL.

Whatever the the legend to the contrary, the English character is more strongly marked than ours, less reserved, less ironic, more open in its expression of willfulness and eccentricity and cantakerousness. Its manners are cruder and bolder. It is a demonstrative character - it shows itself, even shows off. Santayana, when he visisted England, quite gave up the common notion that Dickens' characters are caricatures. One can still meet an English snob so thunderingly shameless in his worship of the aristocracy, so explicit and demonstrative in his adoration, that a careful, modest ironic American snob would be quite bewildered by him.

All you need to know about the reason people hate San Francisco values is hanging from the roof at The City Lights Book Store on Broadway and Columbus. A series of huge banners each with a picture and a word. The old banner "Dissent is not un-American" apparently lost its appeal. The new one "Resist War and War Makers" has the burning World Trade Centers photo on the banner with the word War and Bush's photo on the one with the word "Makers". Moral equivalency at its most sickening.

I was born (in 1956) and raised in San Francisco and my family still lives there. I still commute to work there daily. The term "San Francisco Democrat" refers to the Burton Machine and what it has done to the City. Once Burton, Brown, Feinstein, Boxer, Pelosi are through, perhaps Shelley, Newsom and other native sons and daughters, from the Castro and the other districts, will make the City great again.

I served in the Navy as a surface warfare officer and nuclear engineer for almost 8 years. As a gay man, I left the Navy once my obligation was complete since I was not personally comfortable with the military policy nor would I - as a Naval officer - feel that I could enforce that policy towards my subordinates without sacrificing my personal integrity. The rank and file and young officer leadership did not have issue with gay servicemembers, even in the close confines of shipboard and submarine life. It seems that the anti-gay policies and enforcement thereof reside within the senior military and civilian leadership, even among so-called "liberal" officers. Within some smaller communities of the military, being openly gay is perfectly acceptable at first glance, then with an unfortunate chain of events a crackdown occurs - just like what happened at the Defense Language Institute.
The bottom line is that the military is losing some of its best and brightest. In my case, most of my superiors requested that I remain in the service, having been consistently ranked above my peers, and that I had the command of a ship and perhaps flag rank in my future.
But I left, and of course I could not tell them the real reason why.
Don't ask, don't tell....

Paul C. Light, an expert on the federal bureaucracy at New York University and the Brookings Institution, the liberal-leaning research group, called the administration's policy "an aggressive and a dramatic extension" of the effort by both parties at all levels of government to save money and improve the quality of public services.

[T]he best estimate I could get from the NHS was a six week wait. I have medical insurance through my employer and I am lucky enough to now have started privately arranged treatment on Wednesday, less than two weeks after my diagnosis. There are thousands of cases like mine every year in this country and most will not have that option.

An anecdote from a service academy. A majority of the upperclassmen that I've talked to here at the Naval Academy have no problem with openly gay service members. (Many of the freshmen, or plebes, who've just been through a full summer of intense physical training and indoctrination, are not yet so open to the idea.) This being my first semester here, the sample of my students is statistically meaningless, of course, but it still surprised the hell out of me. These kids seem to understand a few things that their superiors don't.

I think you've missed another key indication in the letter of Saddam's true intentions. Many times when the letter mentions allowing the inspectors into Iraq it includes language referring to international law. For example: "We are eager to see them perform their duties in accordance with the international law," and "let the inspectors come to Baghdad to carry out their duties in accordance with the law." The key to understanding these references, I think, is in the last substantive paragraph of the letter, in which the writer promises "to forward another letter to you on a later date, in which I shall state our observations the measures and procedures, contained in SCR 1441 that are contrary to international law . . . ." It seems clear to me that the letter is designed to build into the "acceptance" of the inspectors an escape hatch, whereby if the inspectors actually demand the access that the U.N. Resolution requires, Iraq can refuse on the ground that the demands are inconsistent with "international law." All in all, the letter looks like another in a long line of Iraq's pattern of loudly proclaiming "yes" while quietly adding conditions that make it really a "no."

But we will not forget, nor should others do, that safeguarding our people's dignity, security, independence, and protecting our country, its sovereignty and sublime values, is as a sacred duty in our leadership's and government's agenda.

But if the whims of the American administration, the Zionist desires, their followers, intelligence services, threats, and foul temptation, were given the chance to play and tamper with the inspection teams or some of their members, the colors would be then confused and the resulting commotion will distort the facts and push the situation into dangerous directions which is something fair-minded people do not wish for, as well as the people who, including my government, want to bring forward the facts as they are.

Therefore, we hope, that you will, Mr. Secretary General, advise the ignorants not to push things to the precipice, in the implementation, because the people of Iraq will not choose to live at the price of their dignity, country, freedom or sanctities, and they would rather make their lives the price if that was the only way before them to safeguard what they must safeguard.

Thank you! This describes my political ideology perfectly, especially the fear of the Republican's alignment with the Christian right and what that means for the future of gays and lesbians (especially with the new shift in the political paradigm). Democrats have dropped the ball, and Republicans are still very scary. I'm a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, Christian right fearing independent (former Democrat), and I don't think I'm alone.

I'm 34 and have voted in every election since I was 18. I've never voted Republican for a major political office, but found myself voting for Bill Simon out of utter contempt for Davis and the Democratic party.

Pelosi's father was a Congressman for a decade, then mayor of Baltimore for a dozen years while she was growing up. Her brother later was elected mayor of Baltimore. She graduated from Trinity College in Washington, DC, which was established as a finishing school for Catholic girls. Ford's father, Harold Ford, Sr., was elected to Congress from Memphis in 1974 and the youngster spent most of his time in Washington. He attended the tony St. Albans prep school on the grounds of the Episcopal National Cathedral, then went on to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan Law School. He took over his father's seat when the elder decided not to seek reelection.

Theodore R. Mitchell, president of Occidental College in Los Angeles, said, "It is our job as educators to construct conscious communities in which students and others spend time, work and play with people unlike themselves — ethnically, ideologically, politically."

When they saw us they started cursing. Without first saying hello, or anything, a young Latino man told us to "f—- off." He began yelling at one of our older Russian Jewish supporters, Isaac, "You are Zionist Nazi pigs. You are Nazis!" It was surreal... One woman who videotaped me yelled that she could do what she wanted to because she had First Amendment rights. I told her that she lacked grace. She turned around and said, "Well you lacked grace when you slaughtered my people." She was referring to Native Americans. Again, I thought this was about President Bush and Iraq.

"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, whose loss in the race for governor of Maryland on Tuesday was the family's first general election defeat since John F. (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, her great-grandfather, was beaten in a race for governor of Massachusetts in 1922." Wrong. Townsend herself suffered a general election defeat in 1986, when she ran for Congress. (I was her issues director.) She lost in the general to the Republican incumbent, Helen Delich Bentley.

I have been a very avid reader of your column in the Sunday Times for a number of years now, and for the past few months I have also read your Website daily. I am a huge fan, and applaud your hard work and diligent presentation. However, since last Wednesday, I have lost a bit of interest. The reason for this is nothing to do with your efforts, which have not diminished at all. Rather, the situation has changed dramatically, and I think you need to take account of this. WE HAVE WON. We won the mid-term elections ... and we even won in the UN (quite how, I cannot imagine). We are now the majority, in control, and no longer victims of a left/liberal conspiracy to suppress the will of the American people through the imposition of an establishment elite's left of centre viewpoint. Yes, the media is genarally biased, but in a nation where the Right is generally in control this is less of a worry than before - indeed it may even be a good thing. I am reminded of the last time I actually enjoyed reading the Village Voice. This was the early 1980's, when Reagan was in power (because I along with so many others voted for him) and the conservative agenda dominated. Now the liberals are useful as gadflys - and you need to think about redefining your role.

He's even more ignorant than you make out. He claims that none of FDR's sons attained even state office. In fact, two of them served in Congress--FDR Jr. for three terms from New York, James for five terms from California. And FDR was a fourth cousin once removed of TR, not a fifth cousin. And since WH Harrison died a month after taking office, the mot juste for his term is probably not "undistinguished" but "brief."

Mondale was merely a spectator Tuesday night, they reason. How can people blame him? Before they adjourn the press conference rehearsal, Ted asks what his father should say if he's asked about Tuesday night. The sentiment in the room is that with Blodgett making a public apology and taking responsibility earlier in the day, that should take most of the heat off Mondale. As they meet, DFL pollster Paul Harstad is completing an overnight survey. Harstad finds that 73 percent of those interviewed agree that the memorial service went overboard -- and 52 percent agree strongly. Furthermore, they are taking it out on Mondale. Mondale, who led Coleman by 52-39 percent in Harstad's Sunday night poll, is tied 43-43 on Wednesday night. The percentage who feel positively toward Mondale has dropped 10 points, to 51 percent. And the percentage who say they feel positively toward Coleman has risen six points, to 50.

Among other things, he opined that the US-born Jewish settlers should be shot dead. "They are Nazis, racists," he said, adding - unnecessarily, you might argue - "I feel nothing but hatred for them." He also pronounced that the state of Israel had no right to exist, that Tony Blair's government was "Zionist", and that the suicide bombers were an expression of "deep injustice and tragedy".

Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.

includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what's coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don't even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote 'a Biblical worldview' in American politics? So it is a heady time in Washington — a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.

After the men argued for 15 minutes, I fretted that I was in one of those movies where an American makes one mistake in a repressive country and ends up rotting in a dungeon. I missed John Ashcroft desperately.

Kennedy in 1962 and Mr. Bush in 2002 marginally increased their parties' share of the vote--very much against precedent--and greatly strengthened their parties' leverage in a closely divided Congress. Within two years, Kennedy's Democrats won by huge majorities, often wrongly attributed to Lyndon Johnson's appeal to voters who would never have voted for Kennedy Democrats. But if you look at the regional breakdowns in the September and October 1963 Gallup polls, taken just before Kennedy was assassinated, it is clear that he was heading to a victory very much like Johnson's in 1964. He was winning the East and Midwest and much of the West by margins far larger than Franklin Roosevelt's; his job rating fell in 1963 only among white Southerners after he supported what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

I counted up the margin of victory for all Senate elections from 1992 to 1996, and then looked at how far off the polls were in projecting those margins. Then I looked at this year. (I used the polls listed in Hotline in both instances and only looked at polls conducted the final three weeks of the campaign.) Here's what I found: from 1992-1996, 21 percent of polls missed the margin of victory by 10 points or more. In 2002, 16 percent of polls missed the margin of victory by 10 points or more. From 1992-1996, 55 percent of polls missed the margin of victory by five points or more. In 2002, 43 percent of polls missed the margin of victory by five points or more.

Two years after the most bizarre presidential election in American history was decided by the Supreme Court, 14 months after the unspeakable horror of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the nation voted yesterday in a mood of disenchantment and curious disconnection from the political system. The American public may be faced with a series of potentially life-altering issues, including the prospect of war with Iraq, the possibility of further assaults on national security at home, the reality of a prolonged slump in the stock market and the uncertainty of the economic outlook. But the campaign that led up to the balloting was notably lifeless and cheerless, with pep rallies devoid of pep and stump speeches that stirred few voters.

But there is no Democratic leadership willing to do more than look for weaknesses on the other side. If Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt have an alternative economic program, they have kept it well hidden throughout this campaign. What they have, at the moment, is a program of opposition. They are the opposition, so that's fine. Such a program may sustain them through this election. But it won't get them far over the next two years, when a new leader will emerge in the struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination. The old saying that you can't beat somebody with nobody applies to policy as well. You can't beat something with nothing - although you may be able to hold your own.

Ensuring that the church ordains only psychologically healthy priests is one answer to the sexual abuse crisis. Scapegoating healthy and celibate gay priests is not. Historically, the ministry of gay priests has represented a significant contribution to the Catholic Church. Preventing the ordination of gay men would deprive the church of many productive, hard-working and dedicated ministers and would, moreover, ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who has called these men to holy orders.

Even after John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were identified, the New York Times said authorities were exploring their possible connection to "skinhead militias." (This was deleted after the early editions of October 24, perhaps when some alert Times editor figured out that black men are not likely to join skinhead groups.)

[T]hat question, known as a generic ballot question, is a measure of national sentiment, and does not necessarily reflect how Americans will vote in the governor's races around the country and in the handful of close Senate and House races that will ultimately determine the control of Congress.

Poll results show the backlash from the service, which was broadcast live on radio and TV, may make its mark on the election's outcome. Nearly a quarter of the 929 likely voters said the service made them more likely to vote for Coleman, while 16 percent said it made them more likely to vote for Mondale. An additional 53 percent said the service will make no difference in how they vote.

Take the 7.6% [productivity] growth rate of the last quarter of 2001, the 8.3% growth rate of the first quarter of 2002, the 1.7% growth rate of the second quarter, and now the third quarter's 4.0%, and realize that over the past four quarters America's measured economic productivity has grown by 5.4%. This is an amazing performance for a time over which total hours worked have been falling.