"I was wrong."

Of all the words in all the paragraphs in all the stories ever written by journalists anywhere, the simple inability to utter those three syllables is what distinguishes, say, a Howell Raines from, say, a Michael Kelly.

The real issue has always been whether Pryor would allow his personal beliefs to affect his judicial decision-making. He has said that he would not, and points to his record as Alabama attorney general to show that he has in the past separated his personal beliefs from his professional obligations. In fact, Pryor would never have been able to be so candid with the committee about his personal beliefs had he not also been able to cite his record as solid evidence that he would follow the law. It was, perhaps, Pryor's most powerful argument for himself, one that Democrats were never able to counter.

Hope's own wit was as sharp, if not sharper, than that of his writers. When a writer with a stuttering affliction explained he missed a meeting because he was at the hospital while his wife had twins, Hope said, "Twins, huh. Apparently you don't just stutter when you talk."

An opinion column by Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, published in the May 15 Mobile Register, should have quoted President Bush as saying, "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaida operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore." Dowd's column changed the president's meaning by omitting the quote's second sentence and the opening words of the third sentence: "That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated ... They're not a problem anymore."

And I got two responses from Ms. Collins Tuesday morning.

Hi Mr. Marshall,

Maureen feels very strongly that she clarified the Bush quote. I appreciate your taking the trouble to write, and I'll ask Maureen if there's anything else she wants to say about the matter.

Best wishes, Gail Collins

Here's Response No. 2, sent a couple of hours later, I suppose after she consulted with Maureen Dowd:

Dear Mr. Marshall,

Thanks for writing to ask. After Maureen received complaints about the editing of the quote she decided to reprint it in full in a later column, which ran on May 28. We're confident it was never her intention to distort the meaning.

Best wishes, Gail Collins

Busy chasing off Saddam, the president and vice president had told us that Al Qaeda was spent. ‘Al Qaeda is on the run,’ President Bush said last week. ‘That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated…They're not a problem anymore.’”

Good evening. Reports that the former Italian leader Benito Mussolini is "dead" and "hanging" "upside down" at a petrol station were received with scepticism in Rome today. Our "reporter" - whoops, scrub the inverted commas round "reporter", the scare-quotes key on the typewriter's jammed again. Anyway our reporter Andrew "Gilligan" is "on" the scene "in" Milan. Andrew...

Andrew Gilligan: I'm leaning on a lamp post at the corner of the street in case a certain little duce swings by, and I don't see any dead dictators, John. But then the Allies have a history of making these premature announcements...

He's just above your head, Andrew. I know you don't like to do wide shots, but, if the camera pulls back, I think you'll find that's definitely a finger tickling the back of your ear...

AG: Well, there you are. He's not hanging from a petrol station, is he? He's hanging from a rope attached to a girder on the forecourt of a petrol station. We've become all too familiar with the Allies playing fast and loose with the facts.

A UC San Diego investigation into the distribution and publication of a magazine ridiculing Islam has concluded that the students involved will not be disciplined because the content is protected speech.

While images and articles in the magazine portraying Muslim women as sexual objects were highly offensive, university officials said, they were satirical and therefore not defamatory.

"The campus understands that there are going to be publications that contain very offensive and objectionable content," said Nick Aguilar, UCSD's director of student policies and judicial affairs. "But the First Amendment is of higher order of importance for us in making sure we do not discourage or interfere with the rights of our students."

I believe that not only is the case unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, but it has led to a morally wrong result. It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children. That's my personal belief.

The dispute over what Kelly told Gilligan is the least interesting part of this treacherous story.

The first hint that Dr Kelly was about to get caught up in the row over whether the Government had deliberately “sexed up” the intelligence dossier was when he returned to his office in Whitehall from a week’s trip to Iraq.

He was shown a transcript of the evidence Mr Gilligan had given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and recognised certain technical references to be ones he had divulged during his lunch with the reporter.

He wrote a memo to his line manager explaining his fears that he might have been the informant for Mr Gilligan’s story on the BBC Today programme. Later, however, when Dr Kelly appeared before the committee, he said he could not have been the main source because of allegations that bore no resemblance to the conversation he had with the journalist on May 22.

For almost seven years, U.S. immigration officers struggled to keep Adrian Camacho out of the country.

Four times they ordered him deported to Mexico because of his lengthy rap sheet. He always managed to come back.

The last time U.S. authorities caught him – on Jan. 28, 2002 – they decided to charge him with re-entering the United States after deportation, a felony.

But instead of appearing in court, Camacho somehow disappeared.

He avoided U.S. law enforcement until June 13. On that day, he was arrested and accused of pistol-whipping and then killing Tony Zeppetella, a 27-year-old Oceanside police officer who had pulled him over on a traffic stop.

Border Patrol officials, who had custody of Camacho before his disappearance, refused to discuss the case in detail, citing a continuing investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General. But federal law enforcement officials familiar with the case believe Border Patrol detention officers mistakenly released him into Mexico, giving him yet another opportunity to return to the United States.

In theory, pursuing with intent to kill violates a long-standing policy banning political assassination. It was the misfortune of Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, that the Bush administration has not bothered to enforce the prohibition.

The brothers were killed during a six-hour raid Tuesday at a palatial villa in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by U.S. forces acting on a tip from an informant. They ranked just below their father in the deposed regime. Odai, in particular, had a reputation for brutality.

Officials said people inside the villa opened fire first but left little doubt what the U.S. troops hoped to accomplish.

"We remain focused on finding, fixing, killing or capturing all members of the high-value target list," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition troops in Iraq, announcing the deaths of Odai and Qusai. [emphasis added]

Earlier this week, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, stated in unusually candid terms the administration's disregard for the assassination ban. Appearing on NBC TV's "Meet the Press," Bremer said U.S. officials presumed that Saddam was still alive and that American forces were trying to kill him.

"The sooner we can either kill him or capture him, the better," Bremer said. Often in the past, officials resorted to winks and nods or other circumlocutions when asked about U.S. actions that gave the appearance of homicidal intent. [emphasis added]

The ban on assassinations, spelled out in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 and reinforced by Presidents Carter and Reagan, made no distinction between wartime and peacetime. There are no loop holes [sic]; no matter how awful the leader, he could not be a U.S. target either directly or by a hired hand.

To my knowledge, Saddam Hussein's sons had not been found guilty of any offense by an international court of law. Their killing by United States troops (front page, July 23) is therefore extrajudicial.

This is technically correct: We acted extrajudicially because we are not involved in a judicial procedure, we are involved in a war. The storming of the beaches of Normandy, for example, was also extrajudicial because we didn't have a search warrrant. So what?

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said Thursday he plans to ask the California Supreme Court to ease the state's budget gridlock and free up money for schools by ruling that a simple majority of lawmakers can pass a spending plan.

The petition, expected to be filed early next week on behalf of the state's 6 million school children, was applauded by education groups who are urging a quick resolution over how to close the state's $38.2 billion shortfall. Critics of the suit decried the bid as a grandstanding maneuver to prod legislative leaders -- who will be defendants in the case -- to strike a budget deal soon.

``I cannot in good conscience stand by and watch political conflict disrupt the education of the children of California,'' said O'Connell, noting that the State Education Department is unable to dispense $628 million in school aid this month to fund everything from special education to transportation services. "It's important that we act quickly and decisively.''

O'Connell said he was emboldened to act by a recent Nevada high court decision that found Nevada's constitutional requirement that lawmakers pass a budget with a two-thirds vote should be set aside in favor of another mandate to adequately fund public education. California's constitution has similar requirements.

"I'll own up to my mistakes – I haven't done everything perfect," Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But I do believe we have to stay in the direction voters want."

SACRAMENTO – Unaware that a live microphone was broadcasting their words around the Capitol, Assembly Democrats meeting behind closed doors debated prolonging California's budget crisis for political gain.

Members of the coalition of liberal Democrats talked about slowing progress on the budget as a means of increasing pressure on Republicans.

A microphone had been left on during the closed meeting, and the conversation was transmitted to about 500 "squawk boxes" that enable staff members, lobbyists and reporters to listen in on legislative meetings.

Some members of the group, including Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, said if the budget crisis were extended, it could improve chances for a ballot initiative that would make it easier for the Democrats to raise taxes by lowering the threshold for passage from two-thirds to 55 percent.

Issues of principle aside, the invasion of a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose an imminent threat has seriously weakened our military position. Of the Army's 33 combat brigades, 16 are in Iraq; this leaves us ill prepared to cope with genuine threats. [emphasis added]

I'm not the brightest crayon in the box
Everyone says I'm dumber than a bag of rocks
I barely even know how to put on my own pants
But I'm a genius in France (yeah), genius in France, genius in France


...

People in France have lots of attitude
They're snotty and rude, they like disgusting food
But when they see me, they just come unglued
They think that I am one happening dude

...

I'm the biggest dork there is alive
My mom picked out my clothes for me 'till I was 35
And I forgot to mention
I'm not even welcome at the Star Trek convention

But the Frenchies think
That my poop don't stink
I'm a genius in France

Rather than enacting a sudden and dangerous departure from American moderation, instead we are in effect correcting the prior dangerous veer away from commonsense reciprocity and mutual respect. And this reappraisal has naturally induced hysteria among those who have enjoyed or profited from the recent abnormal character of the foreign policy of the United States. Strong, but lifesaving medicine is not always welcomed by ill patients.

It is not a normal situation, after all, for a United Europe — with a vast population and economy larger than our own — to have tens of thousands of American troops on European soil to protect them from Soviet divisions that no longer exist. Or is it that we are still there to help keep internal peace (the old NATO line of "keeping Germany down") within a continent that nevertheless professes to have evolved to a higher plane — a continent where utopians grandly announce that they have, by fiat, disavowed war?

It really makes no sense to dot the Mediterranean with bases, keep old-fashioned heavy brigades in northern Europe, and run it all out of an ankle-biting Brussels — not when those who are being protected caricature Americans as Neanderthal troublemakers useful only for helot work, such as intervening in Serbia to stop a genocide on Europe's doorstop, or eradicating fascists in Afghanistan. Calling attention to these glaring anomalies was, I think, a moderate and much-needed act of restoring sanity — hardly the work of a firebrand.

There never has been a time when the power of America was so necessary or so misunderstood, or when, except in the most general sense, a study of history provides so little instruction for our present day.

...

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack.

And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify around an idea. And that idea is liberty.

We must find the strength to fight for this idea and the compassion to make it universal. Abraham Lincoln said, "Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

...

Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership.

That is something history will not forgive.

...

Europe has one potential for weakness. For reasons that are obvious--we spent roughly a thousand years killing each other in large numbers--the political culture of Europe is, inevitably, rightly based on compromise. Compromise is a fine thing, except when based on an illusion, and I don't believe you can compromise with this new form of terrorism.

...

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being one. So America must listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for your values. Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when "The Star-Spangled Banner" starts, Americans get to their feet--Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers, and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with--but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress. Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud.

...

We're not fighting for domination. We're not fighting for an American world, though we want a world in which America is at ease. We're not fighting for Christianity, but against religious fanaticism of all kinds. And this is not a war of civilizations, because each civilization has a unique capacity to enrich the stock of human heritage. We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind--black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent--to be free--free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.

That's what we're fighting for, and it's a battle worth fighting. And I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go--I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do

VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern's email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet's job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.
Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing UrgentCall, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell.

None of this proves that VIPS is evil, or even wrong. It does say that Kristof is trying to pass off a fairly left-wing group as a group of non-partisan "professionals". Remember Katie Couric's description of MoveOn.com, a very left anti-war group as simply an outfit “started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process”? This is the same kind of scam.

Why should The New York Times be required to include a whole host of conservatives on its op-ed page? The op-ed page is where a paper nominally expresses its political opinions, and as you folks are always reminding us, the Times is indubitably a liberal paper. But if you think newspapers should, on principal, give equal time on their op-ed pages, you'd best include the Journal and The Washington Times in your litany of complaint.

"The Army now has 128,000 troops in Iraq, along with 15,000 British troops and a U.S. Marine contingent that is drawing down to about 7,000. An additional 45,000 Army troops are in Kuwait providing support. The Army contribution adds up to the equivalent of just over five divisions out of a total active-duty strength of 10 divisions."

And, no offense, given the shoddy quality of your research and your thoroughly hysterical tone, I really don't think you're qualified for the Times just yet.

The decision to go to war was not based on 16 words in the State of the Union. In fact, that address was delivered more than three months after both houses of Congress had already authorized Bush to take military action against Iraq. Lest we forget, that resolution was endorsed by Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards and Rep. Dick Gephardt, all of whom are now carping that they were deceived by the president. They must have been pretty clairvoyant to have been deceived by a claim that Bush had not yet made.

[M]ore than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq, which didn't have significant weapons of mass destruction and wasn't supporting Al Qaeda. We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support; Tony Blair is still with us, but has lost the trust of his public. All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?

What about the risk that an invasion of Iraq would weaken America's security? Warnings from military experts that an extended postwar occupation might severely strain U.S. forces have proved precisely on the mark. But the hawks prevented any consideration of this possibility. Before the war, one official told Newsweek that the occupation might last no more than 30 to 60 days.

[A]fter I wrote a month ago about the Niger uranium hoax in the State of the Union address, a senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know.

Actually, I have to agree with Ms. Rice that the focus on that single sentence in the State of the Union address is a bit obsessive. It was only 16 words, attributed in a weaselly way that made it almost accurate, and as any journalist knows well, mistakes do get into print.

So the problem is not those 16 words, by themselves, but the larger pattern of abuse of intelligence. The silver lining is that the spooks are so upset that they're speaking out.

But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter ...

One insider complains:...

Patrick Lang, a former senior D.I.A. official, says that many in the government believe...

The latest issue of the Naval War College Review describes...

British officials admitted that the country was Niger but insisted that the intelligence behind it was genuine and had nothing to do with the fake documents. It was convincing and they were sticking with it, the officials said.

They dismissed a report from a former US diplomat who was sent to Niger to investigate the claims and rejected them. "He seems to have asked a few people if it was true and when they said 'no' he accepted it all," one official said. "We see no reason at all to change our assessment."

The fake documents were not behind that assessment and were not seen by MI6 until after they were denounced by the IAEA. If MI6 had seen them earlier, it would have immediately advised the Americans that they were fakes.

• He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
  
  
• He's an "adjunct scholar" at the Middle East Institute — which advocates for Saudi interests. The March 1, 2002 issue of the Saudi government-weekly Ain-Al Yaqeen lists the MEI as an "Islamic research institutes supported by the Kingdom."
  
  
• He's a vehement opponent of the Bush administration which, he wrote in the March 3, 2003 edition of the left-wing Nation magazine, has "imperial ambitions." Under President Bush, he added, the world worries that "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."
  
  
• He also wrote that "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party." He said that "the new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."
  
  
• He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions — and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
  
  
• And consider this: Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat." He added that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."
  

President Jacques Chirac negotiated a secret deal to protect Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of Europe's worst atrocities since the Second World War, according to evidence submitted to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

M Chirac allegedly agreed to sabotage the extradition of Gen Mladic to face genocide charges for his role in the planned extermination of Bosnian Muslims, including the massacre of 7,000 men and boys in the UN safe haven of Srebrenica in July 1995.

In exchange, Gen Mladic handed over two French pilots held hostage for 14 weeks by his forces after their Mirage fighter jet was shot down outside Sarajevo.

Although she calls herself a Christian now, Ms. Barr acknowledges that she might not be so considered by other Christians, since she sees Jesus (like Buddha and others) as a prophet to be emulated rather than as the one true son of God. But she says her fellow Episcopalians in Mississippi are comfortable with her position. "They're very open-minded about people thinking about and questioning things. I talked to my priest, and he said, 'If you come to church and you pray, you're a Christian. Period.' " [emphasis added]

Finally, if the court is willing to nullify "general procedural rules" so that it can order the legislature to fund education, why stop at the 2/3 supermajority? What if it turns out that the Legislature can't even get a simple majority for a tax increase? Under the court's reasoning, it should nullify the 50%+1 requirement, too -- after all, the simple majority requirement is also a mere "procedural requirement that is general in nature." Or, better yet, why not order the governor impose the taxes himself? The requirement that taxes be imposed by elected legislators is also just a "procedural requirement that is general in nature." But wait -- that would be inefficient. Why doesn't the court just impose the taxes itself, and order government officials to just seize the property from Nevadans' bank accounts? The only thing that stops it is also a "procedural requirement that is general in nature," and apparently those aren't really binding any more.

This really is shameful, and I do not use the term lightly. Yes, I know that there are lots of claims of judicial overreaching -- but there are at least various defenses based on tradition, precedent, ambiguous constitutional text, or whatever else. Here, I see no such defense: Just the court's willingness to completely ignore the very constitution that gives it power.

On Thursday, six justices of the Nevada Supreme Court -- with a lone justice dissenting -- drooled all over the state Constitution, wadded it up and tossed it in the trash.

...

Justice Bill Maupin dissented. More power to him. But that only one member of the high court didn't treat the state's guiding document as a roll of Charmin should outrage every resident of this state. Even those who support huge tax hikes. Even the now-chortling Democratic lawmakers who brought us to this point by refusing to compromise.

He has canceled elections in Iraq. He will probably cancel them in Afghanistan. Will George W. Bush put the kibosh on elections in the United States next year?

Frightened by Bush's rapidly accruing personal power and the Democrats' inability and/or unwillingness to stand up to him, panicked lefties worry that he might use the "war on terrorism" as an excuse to declare a state of emergency, suspend civil liberties and jail political opponents.

People who have spoken out against Bush are talking exit strategy--not Alec Baldwin style, just to make a statement, but fleeing the U.S. in order to save their skins. "Do you or your spouse have a European-born parent?" is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain dual nationality and a European Union passport that would allow you to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown.

To these people, whether or not the 2004 elections actually take place as scheduled is the ultimate test for American democracy. At Guant?namo Bay the United States is converting a concentration camp into a death camp where inmates will be executed without due process or legal representation. Never before in history has a U.S. president contemplated the denaturalization of native-born citizens-thus far even people executed for treason have died as Americans--but Bush has drafted legislation that would allow him to strip anyone he calls an "enemy combatant" of their citizenship and have them deported. By any objective standard he has already gone way too far, but for many it would take the cancellation or delay of the elections to confirm that we are trading in our wounded democracy for a fascist state.

Lincoln considered suspending the 1864 election because of the Civil War, but ultimately tabled the idea. To date nothing has ever prevented an American presidential election from being held on time.

It's easy to come up with a scenario in which canceling the 2004 election could be made to appear reasonable. Imagine that, a few weeks before Election Day, "dirty bombs" detonate simultaneously in New York and Washington. Government, media and political institutions and personnel lie ruined in smoking rubble and ash; hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered. The economy, already teetering on the precipice, is shoved into depression. How could we conduct elections under such conditions?

Republicans have already floated the don't-change-horses-in-midstream argument. After Democratic presidential Sen. John Kerry criticized Bush recently, GOP National Committee Chairman Mark Racicot took him to task not for his specific remarks, but rather for "daring to suggest the replacement of America's commander-in-chief at a time when America is at war." The White House website's "frequently asked questions" section indicates that the "war" is expected to continue well beyond 2004: "There is no silver bullet, no single event or action that is going to suddenly make the threat of terrorism disappear. This broad-based and sustained effort will continue until terrorism is rooted out. The situation is similar to the Cold War, when continuous pressure from many nations caused communism to collapse from within. We will press the fight as long as it takes."

The Cold War lasted 46 years; does Bush intend to remain in office that long?

Our boy president has plenty of reason to worry about his election chances. A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll says that only 50 percent of Americans would vote for Bush over a generic unnamed Democrat--the lowest number since 9/11.

Two-thirds say that Bush lied about or exaggerated the threat from Iraq's WMDs, and a steady flow of body bags from Afghanistan and Iraq has made 53 percent aware that the occupations are going poorly. Pollsters report that most people trust Democrats to rescue the sinking economy--and few believe that Bush's tax cuts will help them.

Even today, after two wars, three years of a bear market, an economy that continues to sputter, Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction still AWOL, and U.S. troops being picked off one by one daily by Iraqi guerrillas, Bush still commands polling heights even his father had lost much sooner after Gulf War I.

The average approval rating in the third year of every President's first term since Dwight Eisenhower has been 55 percent -- Bush's remain in the mid-60s. Almost two out of three voters are still sold on the notion that he's trying to do a good job.

Small wonder Bush's advisers are so smug about 2004 and Democrats so glum: According to a July 2 Gallup poll, three out of four American have concluded that the President is a "strong and decisive leader," and 65 percent think he's "honest and trustworthy." Those are bankable numbers in political terms, encompassing many voters who don't agree with his policies.

Bush may be the kind of guy who sees 99 percent odds as 2 percent short of a sure thing, but I bet he'll look at his $200 million campaign war chest and decide to let the people decide. He'll surely want to win legitimately in 2004--albeit for the first time. Though they're capable of anything, Bush's people probably know that Americans wouldn't stand for two putsches in four years. Still, you have to hand it to him: The fact that Democrats are terrified of ending up imprisoned by an American Reich is the ultimate tribute to Bush's artful bullying--and sad confirmation of the impotence of his would-be, should-be opponents.

On April 15, 2003, Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, wrote to Cal Poly President Warren J. Baker, urging him to defend Steve Hinkle’s fundamental constitutional rights. Lukianoff demonstrated the absurdity of a “disruption” charge against someone who was silently posting, on a public bulletin board, a flier for an approved campus event. Moreover, Lukianoff wrote, the “disrupted” students were “not a recognized student group and the ‘meeting’ was therefore not a ‘campus function.’ Ironically, Mr. Hinkle was actually posting fliers for an event that was sponsored by a recognized student group and by the student government, and it is he who has the far better claim to ‘campus function’ status.”

Lukianoff continued: “All accounts agree that Mr. Hinkle, who only wanted to post a flier, was then approached by the students—not the other way around.” Hinkle’s accusers, he noted, “themselves initiated what they later claimed was his ‘disruption’….If they had allowed Mr. Hinkle to go about his constitutionally protected activity, there would have been no ‘disruption’ at all. All of this leads FIRE to draw the obvious conclusion: Mr. Hinkle and the CPCR are being punished for the content of their expression.”

On May 9, 2003, Cal Poly’s legal counsel, Carlos Cordova, responded to FIRE’s letter. Cordova denied any wrongdoing and did not substantively address any of FIRE’s specific concerns. Today, Steve Hinkle remains punished for trying to post a factual, simple, and constitutionally protected flier.