Iraq and the War on Terrorism (09/23/02)
Speech by Al Gore at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in USA Today
“I’m speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”

For Remarks on Iraq, Gore Gets Praise and Scorn (09/25/02)
By Adam Nagourney in The New York Times
“Mr. Gore's advisers described his speech as a genuine expression of sentiment about an issue with which he has long been closely identified, rather than an attempt to position himself for the 2004 presidential election. He wrote it after consulting a fairly far-flung group of advisers that included Rob Reiner, the actor and filmmaker. For all that, some Democrats expressed skepticism that Mr. Gore had enhanced his standing.”

Speechless (09/26/02)
By Editors of The New Republic
“The former vice president’s speech almost perfectly encapsulated the evasions that have characterized the Democratic Party’s response to President Bush’s proposed war in Iraq. In typical Democratic style, Gore didn’t say he opposed the war. In fact, he endorsed the goal of regime change — before presenting a series of qualifications that would likely make that goal impossible.”

The new San Francisco democrat (09/27/02)
By Jonah Goldberg at TownHall
“Gore doubles back, crisscrosses and zigzags — between favoring force, opposing force, opposing multilateralism, opposing unilateralism — the only conclusion one can reach is that this speech wasn’t written to reveal his convictions. It was crafted as an attack on Bush and an attempt to win the Democratic nomination. The overriding theme wasn’t to depoliticize the war but to blame George Bush, at all costs.”

Look Who’s Playing Politics (09/25/02)
By Michael Kelly in The Washington Post
“Gore’s speech was one no decent politician could have delivered. It was dishonest, cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts — bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.”

Conservative Churches Grew Fastest in 1990’s, Report Says (09/18/02)
In The New York Times by Laurie Goodstein
“Socially conservative churches that demand high commitment from their members grew faster than other religious denominations in the last decade, according to a study released yesterday by statisticians who count American religious affiliations every 10 years.... ‘I was astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative,’ said Ken Sanchagrin, director of the Glenmary Research Center and a professor and chairman of the department of sociology at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, N.C. ‘And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people’s definition, the more they were losing.’”

Christianity’s New Center (09/12/02)
Interview of Philip Jenkins by Katie Bacon at Atlantic Unbound
“In the global South you have almost a pre-Vatican II, old-world kind of Catholicism. Catholics there are more concerned with the traditional, more willing to accept authority and leadership, more prepared to insist on orthodoxy. Whereas in America and Europe we tend to have cafeteria Catholicism, as in, I'll take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, throw in a bit of Wicca, and see what we come up with.”

Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend (09/10/02)
At Insight on the News by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro
“‘What are you looking at?’ asked the schoolteacher as she approached one of her freshman students. The boy, a young Palestinian, seemed captivated as he stared out the window across Brooklyn toward the lower downtown area of Manhattan. ‘Do you see those two buildings?’ he asked while pointing toward the World Trade Center. ‘They won’t be standing there next week.’ It was noon, Sept. 6, 2001.”

Hippocratic Oafs: Muslims demand sensitivity. They ought to show some too. (09/20/02)
By Peggy Noonan at OpinionJournal
“So the Southerners are eyeballing the young Muslim males. Maybe these guys are bad guys. They allow themselves to think this in part because one of the things Americans regret most since Sept. 11 2001 is their lack of suspicion. We’re all very live-and-let-live. Before Sept. 11, young Muslim males could tell someone in passing that soon those towers in New York will go boom. And fearing to offend, fearing to hurt the feelings of another person, we’d let it pass. We’d mind our business, give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Iraqi Interrogatories: The usual questions about Iraq. (09/20/02)
By Victor Davis Hanson at The National Review Online
“Since September 11 there has no longer been a margin of safety — or error — allowing us a measure of absolute certainty before action. Long gone is the notion that American soil is inviolable or that enemies will not butcher thousands of civilians unexpectedly and in time of peace. All we need to know is that [Saddam Hussein] broke the armistice agreements of the first war, violated the weapons-inspections accords, likes to attack other countries, dallies with terrorists, has nightmarish weapons, and has already fought us once. That he is a dictator, killed thousands of his own people, sought to assassinate a president of the United States, tried to destroy the ecology of Kuwait, and sent missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia are not misdemeanors.”

Behind the Hate: The enemy’s problem. (09/11/02)
By David Pryce-Jones at The National Review Online
“For centuries now, the West and its social order has challenged other civilizations. In the face of that challenge, China, Japan, India, adopted the science and the arts, even the music, which were both the cause and the effect of Western creativity. Leaders and thinkers in Muslim countries also tried to match the West. With the possible exception of Turkey, they proved unable to do so. The reasons for this are unclear. Nobody and nothing effectively stands in the way of education, reform, experiment in building a modern social order with its own special characteristics like other peoples.”

Is This the Way to Decide on Iraq? (09/20/02)
By Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post
“When the case for war is made purely in terms of American national interest — in terms of the safety, security and very lives of American citizens — chins are pulled as the Democrats think it over. But when the case is the abstraction of being the good international citizen and strengthening the House of Kofi, the Democrats are ready to parachute into Baghdad.”

U.S. Was Aware of bin Laden Threat Before Sept. 11 Attacks (09/19/02)
In The New York Times by James Risen
“The Congressional panels’ staff director said on Wednesday that the American intelligence community was told in 1998 that Arab terrorists were planning to fly a bomb-laden aircraft into the World Trade Center, but the F.B.I. and the Federal Aviation Administration did not take the threat seriously. The August 1998 intelligence report from the Central Intelligence Agency was just one of several warnings the United States received, but did not seriously analyze, in the years leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks that were detailed at the Congressional hearings.”

Congress was Warned Two Months Before 9/11 Attacks (09/19/02)
At Cybercast News Service by Jeff Johnson
“Based on information gathered by the committee, there were a total of 28 pieces of intelligence information gathered after June 1998 that hinted bin Laden wanted to strike the U.S., including 11 indicating an imminent attack after March 2001. Additionally, 12 so-called ‘intelligence indicators’ lead analysts to believe that al Qaeda would use airplanes to strike targets in Washington, D.C., and New York.”

A Visit to Shanksville (09/11/02)
By Joan Marie Nagy at NewsMax
“I hope the permanent memorial maintains the evidence of that violent impact and preserves that hallowed ground forever. Americans need to remember the price paid in that Pennsylvania field. When I remember September 11, I will feel grief, then anger, then pride. The overwhelming thought or feeling I will forever associate with September 11 will be that, when given a chance, most every ordinary American will still fight to the death to preserve the lives of other Americans.”

A Bell Tolls In Shanksville (09/11/02)
At CBSNews by Jim Krasula (?)
“Flight 93 took off from Newark, N.J., bound for San Francisco. It crashed in a grass field next to a line of trees about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh — far from the devastation in New York and at the Pentagon. The reason, say investigators, is that people on board confronted their four hijackers and brought down the flight far from some intended target in Washington, D.C. — The Capitol, according to al Qaeda members interviewed by Arab television recently.”

“Citizen-soldiers” of Flight 93 honored (09/12/02)
In The Modesto Bee by Lawrence M. O’Rourke
“Charles Carpenter, a farmer just over the ridge from the crash site, said the terrorists failed to splinter America. ‘The terrible thing that happened here has brought us closer together as a people,’ he said. ‘If those terrorists had in mind splitting us up, it sure did backfire.’ Sandy Dahl, widow of pilot Jason Dahl, said that the memory of Sept. 11 constantly reminds her that ‘lives are short and there is no time for hate.’ ‘Here we remember ordinary people who did heroic things,’ said Albert Youngblood, an accountant whose half sister, Wanda Green, a flight attendant, died in the crash. Alice Hoglan, the mother of passenger Mark Bingham of San Francisco, said the terrorist attack showed the need for the United States to take an active role in solving the world’s problems. ‘Today was beautiful,’ she said. ‘It was a fitting tribute in honor of the actions the people aboard Flight 93 took.’”

The Heroes Of Flight 93: The last full measure of devotion (09/12/02)
In Newsday by Hugo Kugiya
“A sharp change in the weather marked the service for the 33 passengers (not including the four hijackers) and the crew of seven aboard the Boeing 757 that crashed onto a reclaimed strip mine about an hour after it departed Newark Airport. Low, dark clouds, propelled by a furious wind, arrived with the dawn, turning frigid what had been a string of balmy, humid days. Schools in Somerset County were canceled for the day, as all the district’s school buses were deployed to shuttle people to the memorial site. Attendees were searched and prohibited from freely entering and leaving the service. State police patrolled the grounds on horseback. A covered stage was set up about 500 yards from the crash site, where the Johnstown Symphony Orchestra and a Marine Corps band played to open the service at 9:30 a.m. Relatives sat in white folding chairs on a gravel clearing in front of the stage. Separated by a plastic fence behind the relatives were the 4,000 others who attended.”

Flight 93 Victims Praised as Patriots (09/11/02)
At KDKA by The Associated Press
“Family members clutched flowers and flags - some wore pins with photographs of their lost loved ones - under overcast skies as wind whipped across the pastoral setting. Military aircraft, first large cargo ships and then four fighter jets, flew over the ceremony in formation.... Some of the family members of the victims also spoke. Murial Borza, an 11-year-old who lost her half-sister, Deora Bodley, asked for a minute of silence for world peace. Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl said, ‘If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.’”

Courage of Flight 93 heroes celebrated in Pa. (09/12/02)
In The (Penn State) Collegian by Adam Fabian
“‘We are all grateful,’ Director of Homeland Security and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge told the listeners. ‘Your loved ones did not expect to serve the cause of freedom that Tuesday morning, but serve freedom they did.’ Ridge also took a moment during his statement to thank the citizens of Shanksville for their help and support. ‘This sleepy little town puts its arms around you and embraces you,’ he said. After those remarks, the family members of Flight 93 stood and applauded the crowd that included many residents of Shanksville and surrounding communities.”

Site of Crash Is “Hallowed Ground”: In a Pa. Field, Thousands Pay Homage to Where America First Fought Back (09/11/02)
In The Washington Post by Sue Anne Pressley
“There is nothing much to see at the rural crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 — just a line of charred trees and a distant disturbance in the oats field where the giant crater was. Yet people keep coming here, with the hushed reverence of church-goers, more than a thousand of them a week. Most say it helps them somehow. They stand quietly near the wall of tokens brought here by other visitors — the police patches and firefighters’ caps from around the country, the flags with broken hearts designed by someone in Ohio, even plain rocks with ‘Thank you, Heroes of Flight 93’ scrawled over them in big black letters.”

Flight 93 Passengers Honored with Gratitude (09/11/02)
At ABCNews by David Morgan of Reuters
“The tolling of a single bell and release of white doves on a wind-swept field on Wednesday honored the memory of the 40 passengers and crew on United Airlines Flight 93, a year after their plane crashed during an onboard struggle with four hijackers. Near the edge of a reclaimed strip mine in the Appalachian highlands 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, thousands — including more than 500 relatives of the victims — gathered for an anniversary service under leaden skies, many tearfully clutching American flags.”

Site Of Tragedy Now A Shrine To American Heroes (09/02/02)
At Cox Newspapers by Bob Dart
“Todd Beamer’s final call to action is repeated on hundreds of signs, rocks and scrawled messages at the temporary memorial that overlooks the crash site. Congress will soon approve legislation authorizing the National Park Service to build and maintain a permanent memorial. It will be designed with input of the families of the 40 victims of Flight 93. Meanwhile, thousands of tributes have been attached to a billboard-sized rectangle of chain-link fence. Smaller memorials are added daily by the visitors who drive down Skyline Drive to reach the site. Visitors write on every available spot — poster boards attached to the fence, the guard rails around the parking lot, stones on the ground, even the porta-potties. ”

Life in small town forever changed by Sept. 11 plane crash (03/09/02)
In The (South Carolina) State by Amy Worden of Knight Ridder Newspapers
“Twenty miles from the Pennsylvania Turnpike, along narrow roads, Shanksville is not easy to find. A driver could easily miss the small sign directing traffic to a temporary memorial along a newly paved mountaintop road. Visitors stop at a parking area built a quarter-mile from the crash site, overlooking the area now ringed with chain-link fence and still under 24-hour guard. A memorial wall - a colorful shrine to the heroes of Flight 93 - has sprouted on the barren land scarred by years of mining. Visitors leave familiar tokens behind - flags, flowers, toys and signs - and they bring intimate mementos such as MIA bracelets, watches, police badges, and a United Airlines flight attendant’s uniform.”

Year One: We Didn’t Change After All (09/09/02)
By Charles Krauthammer in The Spectator
“This September 11 marks not just a day of infamy, but the close of Year One of that war. And to win it we will need to demonstrate — as we did in the other great wars of necessity — patience, endurance, determination, and a willingness to bear any burden. That is a solemn calling, but it need not elicit grim solemnity. Success will require that both sides of the American character — the visible fluff and the (once) buried steel — remain in play. Last September 11, we thought that the one must banish the other. The great lesson, the great triumph, of Year One is that fury and grit did not drive out lightness and laughter. And a good thing too. To prevail in this long twilight struggle, we will need them all.”

The triumph of American values (09/07/02)
By Mark Steyn in The Spectator
“The change that occurred on 11 September was a simple one. When Osama bin Laden blew up the World Trade Center, he also blew up the polite fictions of the pre-war world. At Ground Zero, they’ve been working frantically to clear away the rubble. Likewise, at the UN, EU and all the rest, they’ve also been working frantically not so much to clear away the mess but to stick it back together and reconstruct the great fantasy world as it existed on 10 September, that bizarro make-believe land where Nato is a ‘mutual defence alliance’ and Egypt and Saudi Arabia are ‘our staunch friends’. Even in America, some people are still living in that world. You can switch on the TV and hear apparently sane ‘experts’ using phrases like ‘Bush risks losing the support of the Arab League’.”

America, Be Angry: This is no time to “get over” Sept. 11. (08/13/02)
By Rod Dreher at The National Review Online
“The most patriotic thing the networks can do in the days running up to the September 11 anniversary is run those pictures of the planes crashing into the towers, over and over. They were taken off the air days after the attack, for fear of traumatizing the shocked nation. Well, we need to be shocked again. We need to be traumatized again. Our national survival depends on it. And this time, don't withhold the images of human beings jumping to their deaths from the upper floors of the towers. We can handle the truth.”

It’s a good time for war (09/08/02)
By Christopher Hitchens in The Boston Globe
“I am not particularly a war lover, and on the occasions when I have seen warfare as a traveling writer, I have tended to shudder. But here was a direct, unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated. On one side, the ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. (Those are the ones I love, by the way.) On the other, the arid monochrome of dull and vicious theocratic fascism. I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials.”

Say no to the nay-sayers (08/31/02)
By Bruce Anderson in The Spectator
“Before the summer recess, all of Mr Blair’s senior advisers were convinced that America would go to war with the UK in support, and nothing seems to have changed during the PM’s holiday. There is a constant interplay of co-operation between London and Washington; the SIS and the CIA are virtually functioning as one body. Recently, one British visitor was chatting to CIA Director George Tenet about the Europeans’ role. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what the President said the other day on that very subject,’ said Mr Tenet. ‘He said, “I don’t give a sh*t what the Europeans think.”’”

Are We Owed an Apology? Muslim leaders remain mute on 9/11. (08/16/02)
By William F. Buckley Jr. at The National Review Online
“If a band of Americans, proclaiming their devotion to the faith, assaulted a Muslim center, we would not need to wait very long for disavowals — by Christian leaders. When John Brown carried his faith to unreasonable lengths, we hanged him. What we are waiting for, says Dr. Graham, is an apology from Muslim leaders. Why shouldn’t we have that? An explicit disavowal, as contrary to acceptable teachings of the Koran — of the acts of the terrorists.”

The Parable of the Weed: Attacking terrorism at its roots. (07/19/02)
By Victor Davis Hanson at The National Review Online
“The latter systematic choice in the short-term — the ending of Saddam Hussein; ultimatums to Syria and Iran to cease their succor to Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, or else; a reckoning with the terrorist enclaves in Lebanon; a gradual dissolution of alliances with the autocracies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan; subsidies to democratic reformers throughout the Middle East — is both unorthodox, frightening, and easily caricatured. But, in the long term, it offers the only hope of destroying weeds like al Qaeda for good. Anything less and we are simply pruning back a perennial pest.”

US begins push for humanitarian aid in Iraq (08/14/02)
In The Financial Times by Carola Hoyos in Washington
“The US has launched a public bidding process for humanitarian relief organisations to work in Iraq and surrounding areas in the run-up to a possible military campaign against the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. In addition, Central Command, the military operations centre co-ordinating the war against terrorism, this week asked for a list of American international relief organisations - non-governmental organisations - working in or around Iraq, senior members of NGOs said.”

Preemptive strike on Iraq to improve peace prospects (08/11/02)
By Henry Kissinger in The Manila Times
“Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed. For, in the end, the task is to translate intervention in Iraq into terms of general applicability for an international system. The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, the demons­trated hostility of Saddam combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action. But it is not in the American national interest to establish preemption as a universal principle available to every nation.”

Act Now: The danger is immediate. Saddam Hussein must be removed. (09/06/02)
By George P. Schulz in The Washington Post
“This is a defining moment in international affairs. Authorization for action is clear. We have made endless efforts to bring Saddam Hussein into line with the duly considered judgments of a unanimous U.N. Security Council. Let us go to the Security Council and assert this case with the care of a country determined to take decisive action. And this powerful case for acting now must be made promptly to Congress. Its members will have to stand up and be counted. Then let’s get on with the job.”

Target Iraq’s Terrorist Regime, Not Just Osama bin Laden, to Win War on Terrorism (10/02/01)
By James A. Phillips of The Heritage Foundation
“President George W. Bush has declared war against international terrorism in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed more than 6,000 innocent people. That war will require eradicating Osama bin Laden’s global terrorist network and uprooting its Taliban protectors from Afghanistan. But that alone will not be enough to stop terrorism. Troubling questions have been raised about possible Iraqi support for bin Laden’s network; this is not surprising, given Iraq’s past support for terrorist attacks against America and its allies.”

Bushophobia on West 43rd Street: The New York Times’s daily rant. (08/12/02)
By Erin Sheley in The Weekly Standard
“On two consecutive days last week, the New York Times advanced its crusade against military action in Iraq with page-one ‘news’ stories — the first detailing a leaked war plan, the second predicting dire effects for the U.S. economy. While these prominently featured pieces occasioned much comment, lesser instances of the Times’s political use of its news columns are commonplace and also deserve attention.”

The Left has lost its way and lost its voice (08/17/02)
By Camille Paglia in The London Times
“Only a lunatic fringe on the far Left is still calling for revolution, a smashing of the social order, but it must be acknowledged how widespread that idea was in the 1960s. Most leftists do believe that, without them, the naive proletariat would wallow for ever in ignorance and slavery. Unless they are volunteering hands-on service in blighted neighbourhoods, however, most leftists are far removed from working-class life. Many are wordsmiths — journalists or academics who run in packs. Leftism has become wordplay — a refuge for bourgeois intellectuals guilty about their comfort and privilege.”

Teaching Enronomics (07/02/02)
By Stephen Balch in The New York Post
“In the wake of the recent scandals, the National Association of Scholars, an association of academics dedicated to raising standards on campus, asked Zogby International to poll American college seniors about what they’re being taught. College students imbibe from their academic mentors a low opinion of prevailing business ethics. When asked to name a profession in which, according to their teachers, an ‘anything goes’ attitude is most likely to yield success, business leads the pack - chosen by 28 percent - among eight choices provided. (Twenty percent named journalism; 16 percent, law. Teaching, science/medicine, the civil service, religion and the military each drew 5 percent or less.)”

NAS/Zogby Poll Reveals American Colleges Are Teaching Dubious Ethical Lessons (07/02/02)
A Press Release from National Association of Scholars
“‘These results have disturbing implications both for America’s economy and its institutions of higher education,’ said National Association of Scholars President Stephen H. Balch. ‘They suggest that our colleges and universities, however unwittingly, are contributing to, and perpetuating, the ethical laxness behind the recent scandals at Enron, Worldcom, and other major American firms.’ ‘To be sure, the foundations of ethical education are laid in the home and school. At best, universities can only confirm the lessons taught there. But they can also undermine these lessons by providing sophisticated excuses for succumbing to the temptations of greed and power. The relativization and politicization of ethical standards, plus cynicism about business in general, opens the way for such excuse making.’”

College Seniors Taught Right and Wrong Is Relative (07/08/02)
At Cybercast News Service by Lawrence Morahan
“A large majority of students also report that they’ve been taught that corporate policies furthering ‘progressive’ social and political goals are more important than those ensuring that stockholders and creditors receive accurate accounts of a firm’s finances, the study said. When respondents were given a list of business practices and asked, based on what they’ve been taught at college, which of the practices rank as the most important, 38 percent chose ‘recruiting a diverse workforce in which women and minorities are advanced and promoted.’ Eighteen percent chose ‘minimizing environmental pollution,’ and another 18 percent chose ‘avoiding layoffs by not exporting jobs or moving plants from one area to another.’ Only 23 percent said ‘providing clear and accurate business statements to stockholders and creditors’ is the most important business practice.”

Professors who see no evil (07/22/02)
By John Leo in U.S. News & World Report
“A Zogby International poll of college seniors came up with a fascinating finding. Almost all of the 401 randomly selected students around the country–97 percent–said their college studies had prepared them to behave ethically in their future work lives. So far, so good. But 73 percent of the students said that when their professors taught about ethical issues, the usual message was that uniform standards of right and wrong don’t exist (‘what is right and wrong depends on differences in individual values and cultural diversity’). It’s not news that today’s campuses are drenched in moral relativism. But we are allowed to be surprised that college students report they are being well prepared ethically by teachers who tell them, in effect, that there are no real ethical standards, so anything goes.”

Point. Click. Think? As Students Rely on the Internet for Research, Teachers Try to Warn of the Web’s Snares (07/16/02)
In The Washington Post by Laura Sessions Stepp
“Welcome to the world of Net thinking, a form of reasoning that characterizes many students who are growing up with the Internet as their primary, and in some cases, sole source of research. Ask teachers and they’ll tell you: Among all the influences that shape young thinking skills, computer technology is the biggest one. ‘Students’ first recourse for any kind of information is the Web. It’s absolutely automatic,’ says Kenneth Kotovsky, a psychology professor at Carnegie-Mellon University who has examined the study habits of young people.”

Assignment America: Tales from the newsroom (07/08/02)
By John Bloom at United Press International
“This new book Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism... will break your heart. I’ve worked in journalism all my life, and I had no idea any of this was going on. All through the 1990s, every time Rush Limbaugh would accuse the media of a liberal bias, I would just chuckle it away as the usual sort of right-wing paranoia we’ve been dealing with since the Nixon administration. But William McGowan has written a carefully researched analysis of news coverage in the ’90s, showing that ... it’s true. It’s even worse than liberal bias.”

Break cycle of eternal poverty (07/16/02)
By Jim Wooten in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“America’s first public housing projects for the poor were in Atlanta. The idea born here should die here. The nation should never build another stick of public housing. Assembling the poor in concentrations where their life models are broken families and welfare dependency is an idea whose time is gone. It’s a mistake to teach self-destructive behavior — and that is the legacy of public housing.”

Cohabiting can make marriage an iffy proposition; Even married, men may still feel less committed (07/08/02)
In USA Today by Karen S. Peterson
“An expert addressing a ‘Smart Marriages’ conference this week will drop research on his colleagues that may indeed make some Americans smart. Researcher Scott Stanley’s case is this: Women living unmarried with guys and expecting a lasting, committed marriage down the line had better review their options. His research finds that men who cohabit with the women they eventually marry are less committed to the union than men who never lived with their spouses ahead of time.”

Perfidious Belgium (07/13/02)
By Paul Belien in The Spectator
“According to a recent inquiry ordered by a Belgian parliamentary commission, Brussels has become a major recruiting base for al-Qa’eda and a launch-pad for terrorist attacks on neighbouring countries. The commission investigated the failure of the Sûreté de l’Etat, the Belgian secret service, to screen Islamic terrorists. On 5 June, Mrs Godelieve Timmermans, the head of the Sûreté, resigned after the report concluded that the Sûreté had remained passive because it had found no indications that the terrorists would attack Belgian targets, and also because the Sûreté did not want to discredit certain corrupt Belgian authorities or politicians for fear that these might attribute to the secret service ‘a racist or xenophobic attitude towards immigrants or Muslims’.”

Gays race supporters of marriage amendment (07/15/02)
In The Washington Times by Larry Witham
“To neutralize state court rulings on same-sex ‘marriage’ rights, Mr. Daniels and other family-values groups are backing the Federal Marriage Amendment, which last month was introduced in the House with bipartisan backing. It would amend the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as between a man and woman and allow state legislatures to decide on marriage benefits.”

The Gay Inquisition (07/19/02)
By Camille Paglia at FrontPage Magazine
“There was a time when gay men were known for their scathingly independent minds and their encyclopedic knowledge of culture. The welcome relaxation of legal and social sanctions against homosexuality over the past 30 years has paradoxically weakened the unsentimental powers of observation for which gays, as outsiders, were once renowned. Gay men used to be ferocious exemplars of free thought and free speech. But within 15 years of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, an insidious totalitarianism infected gay activism, parallel to what was occurring in feminism in the Catharine MacKinnon/Andrea Dworkin era. Intolerance and witch hunts became the norm.”

Moral Relativity Is a Hot Topic? True. Absolutely. (07/13/02)
By Edward Rothstein in The New York Times
“The war now taking shape may even be related to the principles that gave birth to postmodernism. Avatars of absolutism — terrorist Islamic fundamentalists — are challenging the liberal democratic societies of the West, objecting to their power, their values, their differing creeds, their modern (and postmodern) perspectives. This is something Mr. Fish recognizes. But postmodernism tends to retain its old critical habits. So when postmodernist arguments are applied to the war, they often seem directed at the West, relativizing its claims and qualifying condemnations of the opposition.”

America should celebrate its independence (07/04/02)
By Mark Steyn in The National Post
“The anything most of the Western world’s non-believers believe in is government: the age of church-and-state has been superseded by the era of state-as-church. In Europe, they’re happy to have cast off the supposed stultifying oppressiveness of religion for a world in which the EU regulates every aspect of life from ‘xenophobia’ to the curvature of bananas. The fact that the most religious nation in the West is also the most powerful militarily, economically and culturally may be sheerest coincidence, so let’s just say that separating church from state wound up strengthening the vitality of religion in America.”

Why we should all love America (07/04/02)
By Michael Gove in The London Times
“Britain may be more stable, earthed and charming. Australia may have much of America’s openness with a healthier population, freer of conceit. Europe’s smaller nations such as The Netherlands and Denmark may have succeeded in building greater social solidarity while still preserving personal freedom. But no nation has the sheer innovative energy, the democratic vitality, the openness to personal growth and the willingness to shoulder burdens bigger than itself that America has.”

The business of America is America — and we’d better get used to it (07/06/02)
By Matthew Paris in The Spectator
“Why should the Americans join the ICC if they do not want to? Are they not a sovereign nation with some reason to distrust progressive internationalists? America is not preventing other countries setting up whatever international courts we choose; she is simply declining to take part. Any claims we make to jurisdiction over non-participants are preposterous, and if we cannot assure Washington that US peacekeeping troops are safe from being dragged before this court, then — obviously again — her troops will come home.”

Fatah calls for attacks on US, Zionist targets (07/02/02)
By Margot Dudkevitch and Lamia Lahoud in The Jerusalem Post
“Groups affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement yesterday called upon all Palestinian organizations, including the Islamic movements, to attack Zionist and American targets everywhere in response to US efforts ‘to remove the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people.’”

Time for Muslim Show-and-Tell (07/02/02)
By Tammy Bruce at FrontPage Magazine
“Somehow the pathetic proving would rest with the victims as we swim in false guilt and political correctness inflicted on us by the Left Elite for decades. The same mentality that compelled the American establishment to beg Muslims to like us in the aftermath of slaughter brought to us by their ‘brothers’ is also responsible for our inability to stop it as the conspiracy grew. Can you imagine an effort by law enforcement before September 11 to question Arabs or Muslims in this country? It was impossible. And it remains impossible even after the attack. Our hands were tied then as they are now, by a Left Elite rhetoric that has reduced our critical minds to mush, and twisted our legal right to defend ourselves into the bizarre effort at group therapy to make sure those who hate us know that we don’t hate them.”

The Enemy Among Us (07/02/02)
By Editors of The New York Post
“Ten months after 9/11, too many officials remain reluctant to address head-on the question of how much support for terrorism exists within the U.S. Muslim community. Efforts at the worthy goal of reassuring Muslim-Americans that their community isn’t being stigmatized have left many government officials suddenly sharing a platform with known supporters of Islamic terrorism.”

Test of revered wisdom (07/07/02)
By Linda Chavez in The Washington Times
“The Founders understood that religious belief was not incidental to the American experiment in liberty but was the foundation on which it was built. The whole idea that individuals were entitled to liberty rests on the Judeo-Christian conception of man. When the colonists rebelled against their king — an action that risked their very lives — they did so with the belief that they were answering to a higher law than the king’s. They were emboldened by ‘the laws of nature and nature’s God,’ in Thomas Jefferson’s memorable phrase, to declare their independence.”

Death of a Thousand Cuts: Killing the death penalty softly. (07/02/02)
By William Saletan at Slate
“The Times isn’t really angry that the death penalty is administered too secretly in Japan or too openly in the United States. It’s angry that the death penalty is administered at all. But most Americans don’t share that view, so the Times and other critics seize on any related issue — the killer’s youth or mental capacity, the execution’s secrecy or publicity — that might buy extra sympathy for the condemned. Over time, these related issues add up. If you can’t kill murderers when they’re too young or too old, too dumb or too smart, killed secretly or killed openly, then you can’t kill them at all. That’s the objective all these arguments are meant to disguise.”

The Political Intolerance of Academic Feminism (06/21/02)
By Mary Zeiss Stange in The Chronicle Review
“Feminist scholars have struggled to be inclusive when it comes to every conceivable form of "otherness" (race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, age, appearance, education, ability). Every form of otherness, that is, except one: politics. How ironic, given that our movement began with the assertion that the personal is political.”

Letting Parents Decide (06/28/02)
By Editors of The Washington Post
“In affirming yesterday the constitutionality of Ohio’s use of vouchers in Cleveland — one of the country’s most dramatically failed school systems — the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rightly created wiggle room for states, localities and potentially even Congress to try carefully designed voucher programs. The case split the court along ideological lines, with the court’s more liberal justices all but declaring this voucher program to signify the end of church-state separation. We don’t belittle the dangers. But the dangers of vouchers are hypothetical ones at this stage. The crisis in education is real. And the court should not be insisting that the only lawful policies are the ones that have already failed.”

A Win for America’s Children (06/28/02)
By Rod Paige in The Washington Post
“The No Child Left Behind Act, when fully implemented, will make it easier to determine what works and what doesn’t in America’s schools, and it will carry consequences for failure. Among the consequences are public school choice and access to supplemental educational services, both underwritten by federal dollars. Now the Supreme Court has opened the door to even broader school choices, not only ushering in a new era in American education policy but also potentially starting a reformation in American public education. What must emerge through this education reformation should be a focus on students and achievement, rather than on the ‘system.’”

Federal Appeals Court Rules Pledge of Allegiance Unconstitutional (06/26/02)
In The Washington Post by David Kravets of Associated Press
“Harvard scholar Laurence Tribe predicted the U.S. Supreme Court will certainly reverse the decision unless the 9th Circuit reverses itself. ‘I would bet an awful lot on that,’ Tribe said. The 9th Circuit is the nation’s most overturned appellate court – partly because it is the largest, but also because it tends to make liberal, activist opinions, and because the cases it hears – on a range of issues from environmental laws to property rights to civil rights – tend to challenge the status quo.”

“One Nation Under God” (06/27/02)
By Editors of The New York Times
“This is a well-meaning ruling, but it lacks common sense. A generic two-word reference to God tucked inside a rote civic exercise is not a prayer. Mr. Newdow’s daughter is not required to say either the words ‘under God’ or even the pledge itself, as the Supreme Court made clear in a 1943 case involving Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the pantheon of real First Amendment concerns, this one is off the radar screen. The practical impact of the ruling is inviting a political backlash for a matter that does not rise to a constitutional violation.”

One Nation Under Blank (06/27/02)
By Editors of The Washington Post
“If the court were writing a parody, rather than deciding an actual case, it could hardly have produced a more provocative holding than striking down the Pledge of Allegiance while this country is at war. We believe in strict separation between church and state, but the pledge is hardly a particular danger spot crying out for judicial policing. And having a court strike it down can only serve to generate unnecessary political battles and create a fundraising bonanza for the many groups who will rush to its defense. Oh, yes, it can also invite a reversal, and that could mean establishing a precedent that sanctions a broader range of official religious expression than the pledge itself.”

The risks in the Rome Statute (07/02/02)
By Editors of Ha’aretz
“The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court goes into force today, establishing for the first time a permanent institution for investigating and judging people accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The court, which will begin operating from The Hague next year, will have the authority to judge individuals, based on complaints made to it by governments or the UN Security Council.”

Lone stand for justice (07/01/02)
By Editors of The London Telegraph
“Hitherto, legal systems have been rooted in democratic assemblies. Laws are passed by national legislatures, which are responsible to their peoples, and treaties signed by accountable governments. But, from today, the ICC will cast off the guy-ropes that attach it to its constituent states. From now on, it will function as an international body answerable to no one. The idea that laws ought to be made by the people’s representatives will be replaced by the pre-modern concept that law-makers are answerable to no one but themselves.”

President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership (06/24/02)
George W. Bush in The Rose Garden at The White House
“I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts. If the Palestinian people meet these goals, they will be able to reach agreement with Israel and Egypt and Jordan on security and other arrangements for independence.”

Democracy for Palestinians: Bush’s bold plan for Mideast peace. (06/25/02)
By Editors of The Wall Street Journal
“It’s important to understand how radical this idea of democracy is for Palestine. For years the U.S. and Israel both winked at the brutality of Arab leaders, in the Faustian hope that they would provide ‘stability’ and ‘peace.’ This was the flaw at the heart of the Oslo peace process, in which the U.S. sub-contracted with Yasser Arafat to stop attacks against Israel. But this was impossible as long as Mr. Arafat and other Palestinian leaders derived all of their political legitimacy from the struggle against Israel. Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over.”

What it Means: Politically, Arafat is a dead man walking (06/25/02)
By David Landau in The Ha’aretz
“Yasser Arafat, the seemingly immortal leader of the Palestinian national movement, was politically assassinated Monday by President George W. Bush. His role as Israel’s prospective partner in any future diplomatic process was effectively snuffed out by a stern-sounding American president, delivering his verdict on two years of violent intifada and his recipe for a turnabout towards peace in this war-torn region. Bush’s verdict: Arafat is the guilty party.”

An End to Pretending (06/26/02)
By Michael Kelly in The Washington Post
“There is some limited truth in seeing what Bush is trying to do in the Middle East in traditional terms — hard-liners vs. State Department softies, etc. — but this is missing the elephant on the settee. For better or worse — a great deal better, I think — Bush has set the Palestinian issue within the context of a larger approach that is fundamentally, historically radical: a rejection of decades of policy, indeed a rejection of the entire philosophy of Middle East diplomacy. This philosophy has rested on a willingness to accept a U.S. role as a player in a running fraud.”

Admit terrorism’s Islamic link (06/24/02)
By Michael Medved in USA Today
“Ideas — including religious ones — have consequences, and examining those consequences is the best way to judge them. Americans are mature enough to handle the inescapable truth that our daily dangers come not, as Hollywood would have it, from freelance misfits and nostalgic Nazis, but from a serious and frightening Islamic mass movement implacably devoted to our destruction.”

Judgement Day in Dallas (06/22/02)
In The Tablet by Richard Major
“Greater than any constitutional shift is a change in the way the American Catholic Church and society see each other. They are not mutually comprehending; they do not now trust each other. In Dallas justice required the Church to humble itself before society and accept the demands of public opinion. But the shattering effect of its humiliation will make the Church think more freshly of its role. Cardinal George, cool and sad, declared that this scandal would be ‘providential’ if it made the Church look beyond the particular and attend to the wider context of American society. He said: ‘The Church was weakened even before this crisis began; for a generation we have experienced profound loss. How are we to be the Catholic Church within this kind of culture?’ Then the cardinal spelled out his view of American civilisation, and the journalists began squirming, stirring in their seats, laughing nervously and snorting — which is the effect truth sometimes has on journalists. ‘Our culture is secularised protestantism, self-righteous and decadent at the same time’, Cardinal George said baldly. In such a culture, how can the Church understand itself? How can it, ‘smaller perhaps but faithful’ as it is likely to be, he said, understand anew celibacy, or homosexuality, which society does not pretend to understand either? ‘To whom do we really listen?’ he asked.”

Trying to Restore a Faith (06/15/02)
By Frank Keating in The New York Times
“Yesterday I accepted a request by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to become chairman of a special lay commission that will address the crisis of confidence — and in too many cases, a crisis of faith — in my church. I undertook this task after much thought and prayer, and only after specific criteria were established defining the powers and goals of the commission. Those goals can be easily summarized: to protect the innocent from abuse and exploitation, and to restore faith in the church and its leadership.”

God Save Us From Democracy (06/20/02)
By J. P. Zmirak at FrontPage Magazine
“The Vatican, for all its reputation as an international power broker, is little more than a (very tall) bully pulpit; the pope has a staff of a few hundred overworked men and women, a budget smaller than most Fortune 500 corporations, and no legal leverage. Under these constraints, it labors around the world, nudging bishops, persuading statesmen, sending missionaries, mediating wars, caring for the poor, trying to keep the Moslems from slaughtering nuns and the West from eating its young. It’s an inhuman task; that the Church succeeds at all, and has not already collapsed, ought to impress any skeptic that there’s something mysterious about this organization.... Would that happen, if ordinary Catholics — not just trouble-making, orthodox intellectuals like me — got involved in choosing bishops? In changing Church policy? You bet it would. Andrew Greeley, erotic novelist and weathervane, is probably right when he says that the average American Catholic wants both condoms and altar rails, easy divorce and ‘Ave Maria,’ sung at his daughter’s third church wedding. Subject Church teachings to plebiscite — remembering that a majority of American Catholics voted for Clinton and Gore — and what will you get? God only knows. And that’s why he’s protecting the Church from democracy.”

Throw Away the Key: Well, not really — but hold Padilla for as long as necessary. (06/20/02)
By Rich Lowry at National Review Online
“Embedded in all this heated rhetoric is the idea that there is no check on the executive’s authority in the Padilla case. But habeas corpus has not been repealed (if it had been, that would indeed be news, and actually endanger our rights). Which means that if the heavy-breathers are correct and Padilla’s rights are so obviously being trampled, his lawyer can challenge the constitutionality of his detention in court. Which is exactly what she — with plenty of help from the ACLU — is going to do.”

Powell’s Trial Balloon (06/17/02)
By William Safire in The New York Times
“1. Statehood, even if qualified as provisional or interim, confers a degree of sovereignty. That means control of borders, the ability to make treaties, and to import arms from Iraq and by sea from Iran. 2. Partial statehood would give Arafat control of an airport. A plane loaded with fuel or explosives could hit a major Tel Aviv building within three minutes, too quickly for Israeli jets to scramble. Ritual condemnation would follow. 3. Any form of statehood would limit Israel’s ability to search out bomb factories and arrest terrorist leaders. What is now a tolerable sweep into disputed territory would be denounced in the U.N. as invasion pure and simple. That would trigger European economic boycotts and draw Arab allies into a wider war.”

Qaeda’s New Links Increase Threats From Global Sites (06/16/02)
In The New York Times by David Johnston, Don Van Natta Jr. and Judith Miller
“A group of midlevel operatives has assumed a more prominent role in Al Qaeda and is working in tandem with Middle Eastern extremists across the Islamic world, senior government officials say. They say the alliance, which extends from North Africa to Southeast Asia, now poses the most serious terrorist threat to the United States. This new alliance of terrorists, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out potent attacks on American targets as the more centralized network once led by Osama bin Laden, the officials said.”

Arrests Reveal Al Qaeda Plans: Three Saudis Seized by Morocco Outline Post-Afghanistan Strategy (06/16/02)
In The Washington Post by Peter Finn
“Besieged by U.S. and allied forces in December in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden commanded his fighters to disperse across the globe to attack ‘American and Jewish interests,’ according to accounts officials here say they have obtained from three al Qaeda operatives who were captured in Morocco. The three men, citizens of Saudi Arabia, have told interrogators that they escaped Afghanistan and came to Morocco on a mission to use bomb-laden speedboats for suicide attacks on U.S. and British warships in the Strait of Gibraltar, senior Moroccan officials said. The men were captured in May in a joint Moroccan-CIA operation.”

Scholar warns West of Muslim goals (06/18/02)
At United Press International by Uwe Siemon-Netto
“A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement warned the West Tuesday against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam. ‘The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other,’ said Bassam Tibi.”

Iraq’s tortured children (06/22/02)
By John Sweeney of BBC News
“Ali talked about the paranoid frenzy that rules Baghdad — the tortures, the killings, the corruption, the crazy gangster violence of Saddam and his two sons. And the faking of the mass baby funerals. You may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning Western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq. Usefully, the ages of the dead babies — ‘three days old’, ‘four days old’ — are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did that.”

2 FBI Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible Espionage (06/19/02)
In The Washington Post by James V. Grimaldi
“In separate cases, two new FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement and lax security — and in one case possible espionage — among those who translate and oversee some of the FBI’s most sensitive, top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and counterterrorist investigations. The allegations of one of the whistle-blowers have prompted two key senators — Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) — to pose critical questions about the FBI division working on the front line of gathering and analyzing wiretaps.”

Stop — in the Name of Hate! (06/19/02)
By Chris Weinkopf at FrontPage Magazine
“To the champions of hate-crime legislation, not all victims — and not all criminals — are the same. Race, sex, religion, or sexual preferences are crucial. They distinguish truly ghastly crimes from the mundane. Which groups are entitled to special protection (or extra prosecution) depends entirely on which biases the self-proclaimed enemies of bias enshrine that day.”

Web Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash (06/21/02)
In The Washington Post by Anick Jesdanun of Associated Press
“The Internet’s potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium’s long-standing culture of openness, some leading Internet thinkers warned. At the annual Internet Society conference this week in Arlington, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try to exert control and businesses look to maximize profits.”

Prepare for the big chill (06/22/02)
By Andrew Kenny in The Spectator
“When the global warmers tell us that the stakes are very high, they are quite right. Global warming has become an immense international gravy train worth billions of dollars. It is now one of the largest recipients of government research money in the world. It finances jobs, grants, conferences, international travel and journals. It not only keeps a huge army of people in comfortable employment but also fills them with self-righteousness and moral superiority, and satisfies those deep instincts in the Green movement for meddling, hectoring, controlling and censuring.”

Silent Spring at 40: Rachel Carson’s classic is not aging well. (06/12/02)
By Ronald Bailey at Reason Online
“So 40 years after the publication of Silent Spring, the legacy of Rachel Carson is more troubling than her admirers will acknowledge. The book did point to problems that had not been adequately addressed, such as the effects of DDT on some wildlife. And given the state of the science at the time she wrote, one might even make the case that Carson’s concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on human health were not completely unwarranted. Along with other researchers, she was simply ignorant of the facts. But after four decades in which tens of billions of dollars have been wasted chasing imaginary risks without measurably improving American health, her intellectual descendants don’t have the same excuse.”

Federal Judge Throws Out Charge in Shoe Bomb Case (06/11/02)
By The Associated Press at FOXNews
“A judge threw out one of nine charges Tuesday against a man accused of trying to blow up a jetliner with explosives in his shoes, ruling that an airplane is not a vehicle under a new anti-terrorism law. The charge — attempting to wreck a mass transportation vehicle — was filed under the USA Patriot Act, which was passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge William Young said that although an airplane was engaged in mass transportation it is not a vehicle as defined by the new law.”

Dispatcher Says She Was Told Not to Report Shoe-Bomb Incident (06/13/02)
In The New York Times by Matthew L. Wald
“The American Airlines dispatcher who was monitoring a trans-Atlantic flight when the captain reported that a passenger had a shoe bomb said today that her supervisor tried to prevent her from notifying the authorities. The supervisor worried that law enforcement officials would delay the plane on the ground, the dispatcher said. In a complaint filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, the dispatcher said her supervisor ‘instructed me to hold off informing the authorities because the flight would be remotely parked, and “it would be forever before we could get the plane out of there.”’”

Shoe-bomb flight conduct criticized (06/13/02)
In The Dallas Morning News by Jim Morris
“The American Airlines dispatcher who helped guide the flight carrying a suspected shoe-bomber to a safe landing in December alleged in a whistle-blower complaint Wednesday that airline supervisors interfered with her during the incident and threatened her afterward. In a complaint filed with the director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Whistleblower Protection Program, Julie Robichaux, a 12-year American employee, said she was subjected to ‘intimidation, threats and disciplinary action’ after criticizing the airline’s handling of Flight 63 on Dec. 22.”

Post-Sept. 11 “Backlash” Proves Difficult to Quantify (06/12/02)
In The New Jersey Law Journal by Jim Edwards
“With five lawsuits filed in three states last week by the American Civil Liberties Union, all alleging racial profiling of Arabs and Asians on airplanes, Americans could be forgiven for thinking that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had turned the country into a nation of vigilantes and bigots. But 10 months after the events, the official numbers tell a less alarming story. While there certainly was a hike in such bias claims since September, it’s hard to say that the increase was serious or even statistically significant.”

Much of Sept. 11 Charity Remains to Be Disbursed (06/11/02)
In The Washington Post by Lena H. Sun, Sarah Cohen and Jacqueline L. Salmon
“Of the $2.3 billion raised by the largest charities in the nine months since the terrorist attacks, 29 cents of each dollar has gone to the survivors of those killed. A survey by The Washington Post of the major charities, which raised virtually all of the funds that flowed in after Sept. 11, found that roughly 20 cents of each dollar has gone to displaced workers and others affected by the attacks and an additional 40 cents has yet to be distributed. Several charities reported that money continues to come in — in one case an average of $21,500 a day — even though the organizations have long since ended their appeals for donations.”

The State of the Special Relationship (June 2002)
By Robin Harris in Policy Review
“If America’s European allies only France and Britain possessed a significant capacity to assist in the war on terrorism, and only Britain had the will. A British task force was accordingly deployed in the Gulf; British submarines fired Tomahawks against Taliban targets on two occasions. Within Afghanistan, members of Britain’s SAS regiment — without doubt the most skilled special service forces in the world — performed taxing and dangerous tasks with great success, notably in attacking the al Qaeda training camp outside Kandahar and in hand-to-hand fighting in the Tora Bora region. British forces are still involved in mopping-up operations against the enemy. The pity is that from first to last these exploits have mattered little in the overall outcome. This has been America’s war, and the U.S. has fought it according to its own battle plan and almost entirely with its own resources.”

Climate Changing, U.S. Says in Report (06/03/02)
In The New York Times by Andrew C. Revkin
“In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”

White House defends U-turn on global warming (06/04/02)
In The Washington Times by George Archibald
“The White House yesterday defended the about-face on global warming contained in its report to the United Nations on climate change. The report marked the first Bush administration agreement with environmental activists that recent global warming is caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human use of fossil fuels.... White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday defended the report, issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency, by pointing to its language reiterating the administration’s stance that, Mr. McClellan said, there remains ‘considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how climate varies naturally.’ The administration says such uncertainty backs its opposition to the Kyoto treaty’s goal of cutting U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 7 percent from their 1990 levels between 2008 to 2012.”

Bush burned by climate report (06/08/02)
By Henry Lamb at WorldNetDaily
“Despite a flurry of media reports to the contrary, the Bush administration’s policy on climate change has not flip-flopped. The media frenzy followed the release of a U.S. Climate Assessment Report prepared for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.... Most of the individuals who prepared the report are holdovers from the Clinton-Gore era, who are known proponents of the global-warming theory. It is also widely known that some of Bush’s high-level appointments are also proponents of the theory, even though Bush, himself, has expressed strong reservations. Release of the report was not intended to be an announcement of a change in policy — it was simply compliance with treaty requirements.”

Don’t tell Dubya (06/09/02)
By Robert Novak in The Chicago Sun-Times
“The Environmental Protection Agency report warning of global warming dangers was issued without President Bush’s being informed in advance, even though it seemed to contradict his long-held position. That’s why Bush dismissed what the EPA did as a ‘report put out by the bureaucracy.’ The president did not mention EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey who has frequently clashed with the White House.”

C.I.A. Was Tracking Hijacker Months Earlier Than It Had Said (06/03/02)
In The New York Times by David Johnston and Elizabeth Becker
“The officials said the C.I.A. learned in early 2001 that Khalid al-Midhar, who died in the attack on the Pentagon, was linked to a suspect in the bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000. The agency had said previously that it did not learn of Mr. Midhar’s connections to Al Qaeda or his multiple visits to the United States until the month before the hijackings, when an increase in ‘chatter’ about terrorist threats prompted a review of the C.I.A.’s terrorism files.”

Face to Face With a Terrorist: Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking Funds Before Sept. 11 (06/06/02)
By Brian Ross at ABC News
“Four of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept. 11 tried to get government loans to finance their plots, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, who sought $650,000 to modify a crop-duster, a government loan officer [Johnelle Bryant] told ABCNEWS.... Atta also expressed an interest in visiting New York, specifically the World Trade Center, and asked Bryant about security there. He inquired about other American cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago. Prompted by a souvenir she had on her desk, he also expressed interest in the Dallas Cowboys’ football stadium, mentioning that the team was ‘America’s team’ and the stadium had a ‘hole in the roof.’”

The Other Shoe: Obsessing over Sept. 11 distracts us from preventing the next attack. (06/07/02)
By Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal
“At the same time the institutions that keep us up and humming, or at least help keep us mutually invested in and respectful of each other and our way of life, continue to wobble and groan from the weight of their misconduct. The American Catholic Church is a victim of self-inflicted wounds, its corruptions as towering as its cathedrals. Big business — Enronned. Wall Street — stock tipped, finagled and fooled by a bubble. Big accounting, by which we judge how our business investments are doing, is a joke. The FBI and the CIA are more joke fodder. Our serious journalists are focused on today’s testimony, tonight’s game and the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. The others do shark attacks and entertainment awards. Our intellectuals are off on various toots, most of them either irrelevant — the latest edition of the New York Review of Books leads with stories on David Brock, Clarence Thomas, Sexy Puritans, Peggy Guggenheim and Noel Coward — or all too relevant and wrong.”

Wartime Distractions (06/04/02)
By John Podhoretz in The New York Post
“The war did not end with the regime change in Afghanistan. Nor did it end with the removal of the last girder from Ground Zero. It’s still ongoing. The CIA-FBI-Congress-media frenzy is the way the Washington game was played before the war on terrorism. For a while, it seemed that game had at last been retired in the wake of Sept. 11. It should have been. But you could sense a kind of perverse relief on the part of the media and governmental Establishment that the old game could still be played.”

A Few Very Good Men: Priest Recruiter Bill Parent Is Looking for Those Who Have Seen the Light (06/09/02)
In The Washington Post by Phil McCombs
“What’s most surprising, in talking with the seminarians and young priests and new deacons-at the reception and later by phone-is that, far from being discouraged by the scandals that have rocked the church, they seem filled with new fervor, as McCarrick indicated. These are hard-charging guys-tough, determined, full of life and good humor, a palpable sense of joy. Most come from solid Catholic homes, had careers before they went to seminary, and wanted success, cars, romance-all the stuff of modern life. But something kept nagging, and although they ran and hid and wrestled with demons and angels they knew deep down what it was.”

Celibate and Loving It: For Many Priests, True Happiness Lies in The Joining of Self and Church (06/06/02)
In The Washington Post by a Staff Writer
“Part of the point of celibacy, for Catholics, is to confront people with something bigger than biology, society, music, dancing, writing, painting, advertising. And sex. Celibates also turn around the supposition this life is a heroic renunciation. They say celibacy is not No. It is Yes. Maybe. Anyway, it's not just a Catholic thing.”

The Body of Christ and the spring meeting of the U.S. Catholic bishops (06/09/02)
By Francis Cardinal George, OMI, in The Catholic New World
“A crisis of authority in the Church cannot be resolved if bishops don’t act like bishops. A bishop has responsibility before Christ for keeping people united to Christ. A bishop therefore sets boundaries, in the matter of sexual misconduct or any other matter; but, more fundamentally, he encourages people to live virtuously in Christ. When people are “in Christ” and not full of themselves and their own lives, they are the Church. Since the bishop is the visible point of reference for union with Christ, people divorced from their bishop are not part of the apostolic Church. Hence the terrible trial for the Church when priests and people and bishops are not together in purpose and in life.”

The Bishops and the Vatican (06/10/02)
By Avery Cardinal Dulles in The New York Times
“The bishops are understandably concerned to show that they are taking bold and decisive measures. But they should take care not to lock the church into positions that will later prove to be unwise. If they yield too much to the present atmosphere of panic, the Holy See can be relied upon to safeguard the theological and canonical tradition. The many levels of authority in the church are a precious resource.”

Tearful FBI Agent Apologizes To Sept. 11 Families and Victims (05/30/02)
At Cybercast News Service by Jeff Johnson
“In a memorandum written 91 days before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an FBI agent warned that Americans would die as a result of the bureau’s failure to adequately pursue investigations of terrorists living in the country. FBI Special Agent Robert Wright, Jr., who wrote the memo, led a four-year investigation into terrorist money laundering in the United States. Wright began crying as he concluded his remarks at a Washington press conference Thursday.”

FBI admits bureau missed clues of Sept. 11 attacks (05/30/02)
In The Oklahoman by Ted Bridis of Associated Press
“FBI Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday there may have been more missed clues before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He also suggested for the first time that investigators might have uncovered the plot if they had been more diligent about pursuing leads. ‘The jury is still out on all of it,’ Mueller said, during a wideranging, two-hour presentation at FBI headquarters. ‘Looking at it right now, I can’t say for sure it would not have, that there wasn’t a possibility that we could have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers.’”

Stop frisking crippled nuns (06/01/02)
By Mark Steyn in The Spectator
“So you’re at Newark standing in line behind a young Saudi male and an 87-year-old arthritic nun from Des Moines. Who’ll be asked to remove his or her shoes? Six out of ten times, it’ll be the nun. Three out of ten times, you. One out of ten, Abdumb al-Dumber. Even if this is just for show, what it’s showing is profound official faintheartedness.”

Liberal Reality Check (05/31/02)
By Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times
“One reason aggressive agents were restrained as they tried to go after Zacarias Moussaoui is that liberals like myself — and the news media caldron in which I toil and trouble — have regularly excoriated law enforcement authorities for taking shortcuts and engaging in racial profiling. As long as we’re pointing fingers, we should peer into the mirror. The timidity of bureau headquarters is indefensible. But it reflected not just myopic careerism but also an environment (that we who care about civil liberties helped create) in which officials were afraid of being assailed as insensitive storm troopers.”

In the mind of a would-be suicide bomber (05/30/02)
In The Jerusalem Post by David Rudge
“Underlying it all, however, were the teachings which preach the need for jihad to ‘create a just and equal, non-corrupt and non-criminal society by the spread and unification of Islam.’ .... ‘I also began to imagine the people I would be killing, whether they would be women and children, families sitting down at a cafe. I became a bit disillusioned, because I had been told to blow myself up in any event,’ she said. ‘This meant to me that what was important for them was to succeed in perpetrating an attack, whether there were casualties or not, and then they would be able to pat themselves on the back. I felt like they were playing a game with the blood of the martyrs.’”

Shin Bet, IDF nab reluctant female suicide bombers (05/30/02)
In Ha’aretz by Staff
“25-year-old Tanzim activist from Jaba in the northern West Bank was planning to carry out a suicide strike in Jerusalem. Hamamra told reporters she had decided to go ahead with the attack for ‘personal reasons’ but wouldn’t give further details.... She said after she had completed the training, she had a change of heart and decided not to go through with the plan. She said: ‘I began to think about killing people — babies, women, sick people, and to imagine my family sitting in a restaurant and someone coming in and blowing them up.’ Hamamra said she feared ‘God would not see it as a good reason for committing suicide and therefore would not accept me as a shaheed.’”

My fellow Muslims, we must fight anti-Semitism (05/26/02)
In Ha’aretz by Joseph Algazy
“Ramadan, 39, is not only an outstanding Muslim intellectual but also the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hassan Al-Bana, who was murdered in his own country in 1949. He firmly condemns the anti-Semitic incidents that took place during the past year in France, Belgium and other European countries, such as attacks on synagogues and Jewish institutions. ‘Too few Muslims have spoken out against these anti-Semitic and Judeophobic phenomena,’ he says. In his opinion, any attempt to afford legitimization to anti-Semitism on the basis of texts taken from the Islamic tradition, and as an expression of protest against the suffering of the Palestinians, must be firmly rejected.”

The Elderly Man and the Sea? Test Sanitizes Literary Texts (05/02/02)
In The New York Times by N. R. Kleinfield
“In a feat of literary sleuth work, Ms. Heifetz, the mother of a high school senior and a weaver from Brooklyn, inspected 10 high school English exams from the past three years and discovered that the vast majority of the passages — drawn from the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among others — had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions based on these doctored versions — versions that were clearly marked as the work of the widely known authors.”

Political Diversity Lacking in Many UNC-CH Departments (May 2002)
In Carolina Journal by Jon Sanders
“A survey of faculty members in nine departments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that more than four-fifths are registered Democrats. The results of the survey, conducted by the conservative student magazine Carolina Review for its March issue, called into question UNC-CH’s devotion to diversity. The results were not unique; in 1996, The Daily Tar Heel examined eight departments and found a similar disparity: 91 percent of professors who were registered with a major political party were Democrats, while 9 percent were registered Republicans.”

The unhyphenating of America: Census finds fewer citing European roots (05/31/02)
In The Boston Globe by Cindy Rodriquez and Bill Dedman
“Four centuries after the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock, European-Americans are cutting their ancestral roots. In the last decade, the number of Americans who said they were English, Irish, or from another European derivation dropped by at least 32 million, according to new Census 2000 data. Six million more people than 10 years ago, about 20 million, listed their ancestry as “American” or “USA.” And millions more left it blank.”

UN Misses the Forest for the Trees (05/22/02)
By Alex A. Avery of Hudson Institute
“We suggest that the United Nations work to accelerate market reforms, property rights protections, and the rule of law so that people in developing nations can increase their standards of living. Moreover, the UN should work much harder than it has in the past to increase the productivity of farmers in developing countries.... It is just too bad that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, and the other groups that are supposedly concerned about biodiversity continue to be distracted by fights over fertilizers, pesticides, and biotechnology as the forest burns around them.”

Weakland apologizes for his “sinfulness” (05/31/02)
In The Journal-Sentinel by Staff
“Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland apologized to his parishioners tonight for the ‘scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness,’ saying he felt ‘remorse, shame, contrition and emptiness’ over a relationship he had 20 years ago with a man and the archdiocese’s subsequent $450,000 payment to silence him. Weakland also revealed that, contrary to earlier statements, his income from honoria and writing projects over his 25 years as archbishop did not cover the amount of the settlement. ‘In my remaining years, I will continue to contribute to the archdiocese whatever I can,’ he said, ‘and, of course, the archdiocese will receive whatever effects I own on my death.’”

Text: Weakland’s apology (05/31/02)
In The Journal-Sentinel
“I come before you today to apologize and beg forgiveness. I know — and I am sure you do too — that the Church to be authentic must be a community that heals. But I also know — and you do too — that there is no healing unless it is based on truth. In my remarks I will do my best. I apologize to all the faithful of this Archdiocese which I love so much, to all its people and clergy, for the scandal that has occurred because of my sinfulness. Long ago, I placed that sinfulness in God’s loving and forgiving heart, but now and into the future I worry about those whose faith may be shaken by my acts.”

Finger Pointing (05/25/02)
By Linda Chavez in The Washington Post
“So what should the president have done in August 2001 after he was warned that intelligence sources thought an attack against American interests was likely in the not-too-distant future? If the president had gone public with the information, he probably would have been rebuked by the very same people who are raising a fuss now because he didn’t speak out sooner.”

What Clinton Knew (05/21/02)
By Dick Morris in The New York Post
“If Bush did not know much about al Qaeda intentions before 9/11, why didn’t he? The blame rests not on his incumbency, then only months old, but on that of his predecessor.... So, even had Bush received notification of the nature of al Qaeda’s plans, there was little he could have done, in the weeks before 9/11, to stymie them. Clinton and Gore had simply not left behind them the tools to permit an increase in airport security.”

FBI Memo Author Did Not Envision Sept. 11 (05/23/02)
In The Washington Post by Bill Miller and Dan Eggen
“The Phoenix FBI agent who wrote a memo last summer warning about possible terrorists at U.S. flight schools told lawmakers yesterday that he never expected officials at FBI headquarters to respond immediately to his suggestion for an investigation and that he never envisioned the kinds of attacks that took place Sept. 11. Although his memo cautioned that al Qaeda members might be training at U.S. aviation schools, FBI agent Kenneth Williams told congressional panels in secret hearings yesterday and Tuesday that none of the information in the document could have led investigators to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, according to officials familiar with his testimony.”

Low Profile: The real scandal of the Phoenix memo isn’t that it was ignored — it’s why it was ignored. (05/24/02)
By Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard
“The real scandal of the FBI memo is that it wasn’t passed up the line. And we can make a pretty good guess why it wasn’t. In May 8 hearings held by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein asked FBI director Robert Mueller what had happened. Mueller replied, ‘There are more than 2,000 aviation academies in the United States. The latest figure I think I heard is something like 20,000 students attending them. And it was perceived that this would be a monumental undertaking without any specificity as to particular persons; the individuals who were being investigated by that agent in Phoenix were not the individuals that were involved in the September 11 attack.’ What a load of nonsense. Any small-town newspaper reporter could have narrowed down that 20,000 to under a hundred in an afternoon, just by focusing on names like... oh, I don’t know... try Mohamed, Walid, Marwan, and Hamza. Couldn’t the entire FBI have done the same?”

Letter contends FBI unit had dots to connect (05/25/02)
In The Chicago Tribune by Stephen J. Hedges and Cam Simpson
“A letter to Congress from an FBI lawyer suggests that at least a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, FBI officials in Washington had a broader knowledge of flight training activities by men with terrorist connections than has been previously disclosed.... Rowley’s letter, which expresses her frustration that it took three weeks from Moussaoui’s arrest before her office was told of the Phoenix investigation, is the strongest suggestion yet that someone within FBI headquarters had a working knowledge of both cases, and had acted on them together.”

Social Security memo gives GOP smoking gun (05/24/02)
In The Washington Times by Stephen Dinan