Exemptions for religious observers: This story about a public school dress code raises the perennial constitutional question: May the government exempt religious observers from a generally applicable rule (here, a dress code, though it could equally be military conscription, a high school biology vivisection requirement, or a variety of other rules) but not extend the same exemption to conscientious nonreligious observers? If you're interested in this general question, you might check out this summary in an article of mine -- I don't take a stand on the subject, but I outline the issues. (As a policy matter, I think that secular conscientious objectors should generally be treated the same as religious objectors, but it's not clear to me whether, and to what extent, the Establishment Clause requires this.)

Note, though, that the dress code case also includes a different twist: Not all religious objectors are entitled to an exemption, but only those who can get a note from their religious leader. This, I'm pretty sure, is unconstitutional, because it privileges those religions that have organized clergy over those that don't, and those people whose religious beliefs match their leader's and those whose beliefs are more idiosyncratic. The Supreme Court held, in Thomas v. Employment Division (1981), that constitutionally mandated religious accommodations (when the Free Exercise Clause was interpreted as mandating such accommodations) turn on a person's own sincere beliefs; and I think the same principle would apply to religious accommodations that the government voluntarily creates.

Fox News dropped its lawsuit against Al Franken on Monday, three days after a federal judge refused to block the liberal humorist from using the Fox slogan "Fair and Balanced" on the cover of his book.

The lawsuit had sought unspecified damages from Franken and Penguin Group, publisher of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

"It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity that he's normally accustomed to," Fox News spokeswoman Irena Steffen said.

Alexandria, VA--The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism (CAC) today filed formal comments with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia opposing the U.S. Justice Department's settlement with the National Council on Problem Gambling, Inc. (NCPG), a nonprofit trade association representing organizations that assist individuals addicted to gambling.

NCPG consists of 34 state affiliates that provide "problem gambling services" within particular states.  The DOJ charged NCPG with illegally restraining trade among its affiliates by maintaining internal policies designed to prevent one affiliate from offering services in another state's territory.

"NCPG's members entered into a voluntary agreement governing their operations, and that agreement was arbitrarily and capriciously negated by the Justice Department's antitrust police," CAC Chairman Nicholas Provenzo said. "No consumer was deprived of their legal rights by NCPG's actions, but rather the DOJ has deprived of NCPG of its right to associate with one another on mutually agreeable terms."

The proposed settlement, which must be approved by the district court, prevents NCPG from maintaining any policy governing competition that contradicts the beliefs of the Justice Department. "The proposed settlement goes so far as to prevent NCPG from lobbying Congress and the public to overrule the Justice Department's erroneous and unconstitutional attack on the organization's First Amendment rights," CAC senior fellow Skip Oliva said.

The NCPG settlement could become final after the Justice Department reviews and replies to CAC's comments and the court makes a determination of whether the agreement is in the "public interest", a process that could take three to six weeks.

The comment letter can be accessed online at:
http://www.capitalismcenter.org/Campaigns/Antitrust/NCPG_Comments.pdf

In nearly every American city or town, you can find people like Peter Jaquith. He is 67 and has $150 in his checking account. He lives on $1,100 a month in Social Security and a little help from family members. To make ends meet, he has worked as a deliveryman and a toilet cleaner.

It hasn't always been like this for Mr. Jaquith. In the 1980's, he was a partner at Lazard Frères, the elite investment bank, and the right-hand man of Felix Rohatyn, its legendary deal maker. At his peak, Mr. Jaquith was worth at least $20 million.

Back then, he led the glamorous life of a major Wall Street player. For Thanksgiving, he thought nothing of spending $40,000 to fly 30 friends to his weekend home in Palm Springs, Calif. He paid their air fares, hotel and restaurant bills and golf fees.

But one night 10 years ago, an increasingly frustrated and heavy-drinking Mr. Jaquith discovered crack cocaine. Suddenly, Mr. Jaquith, who had earned millions advising corporate tycoons on deals, found himself begging dealers with names like "Cuffie" for drugs. At one point, he wound up homeless. "Part of me wondered if he was dead," his daughter Pamela recalled.

[W]ith obesity a growing health problem, lawmakers, lawyers and activists are lining up the way they do for most issues: on two sides.

The left's view is that the food industry and advertisers are big bullies that practically force-feed people with gimmicks and high-calorie treats. They say Ronald McDonald is the cousin of Joe Camel.

The right's argument has been dubbed: You're fat, your fault. They say people can make their own choices about food and exercise.

[W]e must acknowledge God in the public sector because the state constitution explicitly requires us to do so. The Alabama Constitution specifically invokes "the favor and guidance of Almighty God" as the basis for our laws and justice system. As the chief justice of the state's supreme court I am entrusted with the sacred duty to uphold the state's constitution. I have taken an oath before God and man to do such, and I will not waver from that commitment.

By telling the state of Alabama that it may not acknowledge God, Judge Thompson effectively dismantled the justice system of the state. Judge Thompson never declared the Alabama Constitution unconstitutional, but the essence of his ruling was to prohibit judicial officers from obeying the very constitution they are sworn to uphold. In so doing, Judge Thompson and all who supported his order, violated the rule of law.

[***]

The First Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It does not take a constitutional scholar to recognize that I am not Congress, and no law has been passed. Nevertheless, Judge Thompson's order states that the acknowledgment of God crosses the line between the permissible and the impermissible and that to acknowledge God is to violate the Constitution.

Not only does Judge Thompson put himself above the law, but above God, as well. I say enough is enough. We must "dare defend our rights" as Alabama's state motto declares. No judge or man can dictate what we believe or in whom we believe. The Ninth and 10th Amendments are not a part of the Constitution simply to make the Bill of Rights a round number. The Ninth Amendment secured our right as a people. The 10th guaranteed our right as a sovereign state. Those are the rules of law.

Thousands of people enter the Judicial Building each year. In addition to attorneys, parties, judges, and employees, every fourth grader in the state is brought on a tour of the building as part of a field trip to the state capital. No one who enters the building through the main entrance can miss the monument.

An American soldier stands at the side of an Iraqi highway, puts his AK-47 on fully automatic and pulls the trigger.

Within seconds the assault rifle has blasted out 30 rounds. Puffs of dust dance in the air as the bullets smack into the scrubland dirt. Test fire complete.

U.S. troops in Iraq may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but they're certainly getting their hands on the country's stock of Kalashnikovs--and, they say, they need them.

The soldiers based around Baqouba are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles.

A four-man tank crew is issued two M4 assault rifles and four 9mm pistols, relying mostly on the tank's firepower for protection.

But now they are engaged in guerrilla warfare, patrolling narrow roads and goat trails where tanks are less effective. Troops often find themselves dismounting to patrol in smaller vehicles, making rifles essential.

"We just do not have enough rifles to equip all of our soldiers. So in certain circumstances we allow soldiers to have an AK-47. They have to demonstrate some proficiency with the weapon ... demonstrate an ability to use it," said Lt. Col. Mark Young, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.

Under-investment in transmission lines and a weak oversight board controlled by utilities have created an unstable, unreliable and overloaded patchwork system for transmitting power from one place to the other.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday said a former leader of a group that distributed pirated music ahead of its commercial release pleaded guilty to criminal infringement of copyright laws.

Mark Shumaker, 21, of Orlando, Florida, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a statement. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Nov. 7.

Prosecutors charged that Shumaker headed Apocalypse Crew, a group that would recruit music industry workers, such as radio disc jockeys and employees of music magazines, to obtain pre-release copies of compact disks.

Released to the Internet, the advance copies would filter down to public distribution channels such as the file sharing networks of KaZaa and Morpheus, law enforcement officials charged.

Promising a "compassionate" administration, President Bush pledged to "recover the momentum of our economy," "reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans" and confront economic problems now, "instead of passing them on to future generations." Instead, he's offered tax cuts that don't address our needs, and saddled our children with debt for generations to come. On this president's watch, the federal debt has grown by over $1 trillion. That's the rough equivalent of putting $3,500 on the charge card of every American.

How did our nation come to this place? The answer is simple--the economic policies of this administration are aimed at ideological goals, not help for the average American.

We can do better. As president, my economic policies will be focused and clear. I will begin by repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and using the revenues that result from the repeal to address the needs of the average American, invest in the nation's infrastructure and, through tax reform, put money in the hands of those most likely to spend it.

The task of meeting the needs of American families begins with health care. My plan will not only insure millions of Americans who are without adequate care today, it will reduce costs for small business, states and communities--freeing up funds that can be used to grow businesses and meet other national and local priorities.

An important part of my program for a full-employment recovery will be extending a helping hand to states and communities. My policies as governor kept Vermont strong fiscally; but all over America, the financial resources of other states and cities are strained to the limit. Teachers are being laid off, highways lack repairs, firehouses are closed. Instead of tax cuts that have not created jobs, we need to make investments in America. I will increase federal aid for special education, and provide more temporary help to the states--for homeland security and school construction and infrastructure modernization. And I will increase the availability of capital for small businesses, so that they can invest in new technology and create more jobs.

MessageLabs Inc., which scans e-mail for viruses, said that within 24 hours it had scanned more than 1 million copies of the "F" variant of the "Sobig" virus, which was blamed for computer disruptions at businesses, colleges and other institutions worldwide.

The previous record was "Klez," with about 250,000 copies spotted during its first 24 hours earlier this year, MessageLabs chief technology officer Mark Sunner said Thursday.

* * *

Sobig does not physically damage computers, files or critical data, but it tied up computer and networking resources, forcing networks like the University of Wisconsin-Madison to shut down outside access to its e-mail system Wednesday.

"We were removing 30,000 bad e-mails an hour," said Jeff Savoy, an information security officer at the school.

In India's high-tech city of Bangalore, dozens of cybercafes shut down and home computers blacked out. Some cafes were hit because their service provider was affected, but others got the virus in their machines using Windows operating systems.

"Our cybercafe has been down since Tuesday night," said Afar, a cafe manager in north Bangalore who goes by a single name. "Customers are returning home disappointed."

The owner of one of the Internet's most popular e-mail lists, technologist David Farber, was livid about Sobig.

"I got 1300 junk e-mails `delivered' this AM," he said in a message to subscribers Thursday. "Find the person and put him/her in jail."

Can we have a moment of appreciation please for the characteristic gutsiness of President Bush’s expected recess appointment of Daniel Pipes to the board of the US Institute for Peace. Radical Muslim groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations had organized to defeat Pipes. Despite the modest importance of the Institute itself, these groups understood that the struggle over Pipes was a potentially decisive political event. For underneath the wild allegations against him (about which more in a moment), the argument over Pipes boiled down to this: is it an act of bigotry to notice that the terrorists we are fighting commit their acts of terror in the name of Islam

Pipes’ critics claimed that it was. All of their other slanders against him quickly collapse on examination into a pile of distorted quotations. Pipes has never impugned Muslims in general – on the contrary, he has been an eloquent voice in favor of the need for and possibility of democracy and liberty in the Islamic world. But he has eloquently and presciently sounded the alert for a decade and a half over the gathering menace of extremist Islamic ideology – and he has fearlessly and tirelessly struggled against that menace as it has tried to sink roots into American soil.

It is for these services to the American people that this scholar who has devoted his life to the study of Islamic civilization, and who has mastered modern and medieval Arabic for his studies, has been damned by CAIR and others as a bigot.

Some people might have feared that CAIR might succeed. President Bush has boldly and consistently championed the rights and good name of the American Muslim community, and he has taken his sympathy for American Muslim to the point of being willing to meet with some of that community’s least responsible members. This openness triggered a familiar pattern of conservative response to President Bush:

Bush speaks gently.

Conservatives panic.

Bush acts firmly.

Conservatives are surprised.

Now issn’t [sic] it past time to stop being surprised when this president acts in a principled manner?

Bush surely understood better than anyone what it was that the radical Muslim groups were claiming when they called for Pipes’ defeat. They were implicitly contending that anyone willing to name the enemy in this war thereby disqualified himself for a role in the prosecution of the war. They were demanding a veto over the conduct of the war for those people in American life who have shown the most sympathy for the enemy: It would be rather as if the leaders of the Communist Party USA asserted veto power over national-security nominations during the Cold War.

The recent blackout is a concrete consequence of the elevation a secondhander’s values to governance.

In the electric utility industry, the producer is not free from coercive restraint to produce and trade value for value with his customers. Instead through government intervention, the productive capacity is checked by the requirement to consider the feelings and opinions of anyone and everyone regardless of the protection of individual rights. Thus the rational is subordinated to any arbitrary claim seeking to impose its voice upon the product of another.

Based upon demand for electricity, an electrical utility could plan to expand generating capacity, expand its distribution network, acquire the market of weaker utilities, or implement revolutionary new technology. But first, we must have public hearings, environmental impact studies, the consideration of arbitrary health concerns that lack scientific evidence, and baseless lawsuits appealing to the authority of non-objective law. Instead of profitable investment, capital is squandered on satisfying the whims of the non-productive.

Consequently, productive ability is thwarted while mediocrity reigns. And when the lights go out, the secondhander’s do not accept responsibility, while inflicting upon the productive the double burden of the blame and the shame of begging their inferiors for permission to produce.

"I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean."

So says a popular song. The implication, clear from the rest of the song, is that man should feel in awe of nature, because nature is far superior to anything human beings can generate.

I don't know about you, but I actually feel tall when I stand beside the ocean.

I feel tall because I belong to the human race, and I know that the human race can sail great ships, even aircraft carriers, on the ocean; I know that gigantic jetliners cross the ocean in the sky; I know the human race can develop sophisticated underwater cameras to photograph century-old shipwrecks with the clarity of a family portrait; I also know that the human race can build wonderful hotels and condominiums, not to mention candy popcorn and salt water taffy stands, to allow human beings to relax and enjoy the wonderful ocean air and sounds.

I feel tall beside the ocean because I am human, and humans can navigate, master and enjoy the ocean better than any fish, whale or bird ever could.

Many look at the ocean and exclaim how tiny they are. I look at the ocean and marvel at how great it is to be human.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed a court settlement Tuesday intended to clear the skies and improve the views in national parks and wilderness areas.

The settlement with Environmental Defense, a national environmental group, places the EPA on a court-ordered schedule to curb by April 2005 haze-forming pollutants that threaten such national parks as Yosemite, Sequoia, Glacier, Big Bend, Great Smoky Mountains, Shenandoah, Big Bend and Acadia. The deal applies to 156 parks and wilderness areas in all.

Hundreds of industrial plants nationwide could be affected by the settlement, including cement plants, copper smelters and coal-fired power plants in the West that supply energy to California.

The settlement must go through a public comment process and requires approval by a Washington, D.C., court before it takes effect.

"This settlement is a big step toward cleaning up the air in our national parks and wilderness areas," said David Baron, attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit legal organization that represents Environmental Defense.

"The law sets a national goal of clearing the skies in these special places, for the enjoyment and inspiration of present and future generations," Baron said.

Under 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act, industrial plants are prohibited from creating "regional haze" that spoils scenic vistas in parks and wilderness areas. The National Park Service has blamed fine particles created by emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that blow hundreds of miles and impair visibility in many of its wild parks.

Supporters of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore held a candlelight vigil early Wednesday, hoping to convince state and federal leaders that his Ten Commandments monument should not be removed from the state judicial building.

Nine pastors led some 30 worshippers from across the country in prayer just after midnight.

"Even if they should remove this monument--and God forbid they do--they'll never be able to remove it from our hearts," said the Rev. Greg Dixon of Indianapolis Baptist Temple.

Moore later reiterated his refusal to move the 5,300-pound monument by the deadline, set by a federal judge, of midnight Wednesday.

"This case is not about a monument, it's not about politics or religion, it's about the acknowledgment of God," he said during an interview on CBS' "The Early Show."

"We must acknowledge God because our constitution says our justice system is established upon God. For (the judge) to say 'I can't say who God is' is to disestablish the justice system of this state."

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to allow America Online to transmit video entertainment over its popular Instant Messenger system, ending a restriction imposed when it approved the merger of the online company with media giant Time Warner Communications in early 2001.

A source familiar with this week's decision said that the commission's three-member Republican majority decided in favor of lifting the ban while the two Democrats dissented. The result of the vote, which is not required to be conducted in a public session, is expected to be announced in the next 48 hours.

The decision is a victory for struggling AOL Time Warner Inc., which lobbied hard for the change and hopes to use instant messaging to promote its video content. AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose declined to comment on the decision before an official announcement from the FCC but said the company has been hoping for a favorable decision.

"We think that we made a compelling case," Primrose said.

FCC spokesmen declined to comment.

AOL and Time Warner were primarily in different businesses when they announced their merger in early 2000. But regulators were concerned about the marriage of the largest online service provider with one of the nation's most powerful media conglomerates.

They reasoned that a combined company that included a large cable television system, magazines, CNN, and Warner movies and music could dominate news and entertainment over the Internet and lock out competitors.

When it approved the [Time-Warner/AOL] merger, the FCC said it would need to see convincing evidence that AOL's instant-messaging dominance had significantly lessened.

According to people familiar with the vote to lift the ban, AOL prevailed by demonstrating that since the merger, its share of the instant-messaging market had dropped from a percentage in the mid-sixties to the mid-fifties.

A North Haven bride spent part of her wedding night in a jail cell, after police said she hurled things at reception hall workers who closed the bar.

Adrienne T. Samen, 18, was arrested on criminal mischief and breach of peace charges Saturday after police responded to The Mill on the River restaurant.

When workers there closed the bar, Samen allegedly began throwing things, including wedding cake and vases. Samen left the restaurant, and police found her walking down the road in her gown.

While being taken into custody, police said she kicked the door and window of the police cruiser and tried to bite an officer.

There's more to America than New York, Washington and Los Angeles. The same is true for Iraq; there's a vast country outside Baghdad and the "Sunni triangle" that's now the center of a guerrilla campaign. It's understandable that Western press reports are fixated on attacks that kill American soldiers. But that focus is obscuring what's actually happening in the rest of the country--and it misleads the public into thinking that Iraqis are growing angry and impatient with their liberators.

In fact, there is another Iraq that the media virtually ignore. It is guarded by the First Marine Division, and, unlike Baghdad, it has been a model of success. The streets are safe, petty and violent crime are low, water and electrical services are almost universally available (albeit rationed), and ordinary Iraqis are beginning to clean up and rebuild their neighborhoods and communities. Equally important, a deep level of mutual trust and respect has developed between the Marines and the populace here in central and southern Iraq.

I know because I'm one of those Marines. My reserve unit was activated before the war, and in April my team arrived in this small city roughly 60 miles south of Baghdad. The negative media portrait of the situation in Iraq doesn't correspond with what I've seen. Indeed, we were treated as liberating heroes when we arrived four months ago, and we continue to enjoy amicable relations with the local populace.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has certified three separate classes of purchasers to pursue antitrust claims against two of the world's top manufacturers of microcrystalline cellulose, or MCC, a binding agent used in pills and vitamins and as a food additive.

In a significant victory for the plaintiffs in the case, In re Microcrystalline Cellulose Antitrust Litigation, the judge applied the "Bogosian short-cut" -- named for a 1977 decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- in which the court presumes that all buyers of that product have suffered an antitrust injury where the anti-competitive behavior artificially raised the price of a product.

In the suit, purchasers allege that Chicago-based FMC Corp. set out to neutralize competition in the MCC market and to secure monopoly power for itself in North America by conspiring with a Japanese firm, Asahi Kasei Co., to divide the world MCC market into two territories.

The alleged conspiracy came to light in December 2000 when the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint that said FMC had agreed not to sell any MCC product to customers in Japan or East Asia without Asahi's consent, while Asahi promised not to sell in North America or Europe without the consent of FMC.

The FTC suit also accused FMC of trying to secure agreements with three smaller Asian manufacturers of MCC in order to maintain its monopoly position.

FMC and Asahi settled the suit with a consent decree in which both companies offered no admission of wrongdoing but nonetheless pledged to end the practice.

Under the terms of the settlement, FMC and Asahi were prohibited from agreeing with competitors to divide or allocate markets; agreeing with competitors to refrain from producing, selling or marketing MCC; and inviting or soliciting other companies to enter into agreements not to compete.

The settlement sparked a flurry of lawsuits brought by purchasers of MCC -- pharmaceutical companies, vitamin producers and food manufacturers -- that said the illegal practice had inflated MCC prices since 1984. Now Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas N. O'Neill Jr. has certified the suit as a class action on behalf of three classes of FMC's customers -- vitamin producers, pharmaceutical companies, and companies that purchased MCC to be used as a food additive.

More than half of Americans favor a law barring gay marriage and specifying wedlock be between a man and a woman, an Associated Press poll found.

The survey also found presidential candidates could face a backlash if they support gay marriage or civil unions, which provide gay couples the legal rights and benefits of marriage.

The poll, conducted for the AP by ICR-International Communications Research of Media, Pa., found 52 percent favor a law banning gay marriages, while 41 percent oppose it.

About four in 10 — 41 percent — support allowing civil unions, roughly the same level found in an AP poll three years ago. But 53 percent now say they oppose civil unions, up from 46 percent in the earlier survey.

The increase came largely from people who previously were undecided, the polls suggested.

Close to half those surveyed said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who backs civil unions (44 percent) or gay marriage (49 percent), while only around 10 percent said they would be more likely.

"I don't think it's a great idea, the whole idea of marriage is bringing up children," said Jim Martin, a 64-year-old engineer from Alexandria, Va. "If somebody was promoting it, I would vote against them."

Not long ago, the GOP offered an alternative to Big Government: individual rights, which were once implicit as the Republican Party's premise. The Republican philosophy was represented by the late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who opposed Medicare, favored a woman's right to an abortion, and promoted a strong defense. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, religion replaced individual rights as the guiding Republican philosophy.

To the extent Americans have resisted theocratic notions of government, the GOP's religious right domination is mixed with pragmatism, resulting in a Republican Party whose goal is a smaller welfare state under God. The arch proponent of this blend is the GOP's standard-bearer, faith-based President Bush, who is pushing the largest expansion of Medicare since it was enacted in 1965.

Contrary to Jefferson's contention that the best government is that which governs the least, today's Republicans increase public school subsidies. While Goldwater opposed Medicare, today's Republicans expand it. Individual rights -- the right to own property, to make money and to be left alone -- have no meaningful place in the Republican Party.

Goldwater's defiant cry that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, has been abandoned. Before the party that cheered Goldwater at the 1964 San Francisco convention recalls California's governor, the GOP must restore individual rights as their essential philosophical principle. Then, Republicans will win elections -- or, in losing, they will at least have been right.

The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. Thus his aim in proposing to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is to reform the entire health-care system for seniors. True, the drug benefit would be the biggest new entitlement in 40 years. But if paired with reforms that lure seniors away from Medicare and into private health insurance, Mr. Bush sees the benefit as an affordable (and very popular) price to pay. Mr. Bush earlier wanted to go further, requiring seniors to switch to private health insurance to be eligible for the drug benefit. He dropped the requirement when queasy congressional Republicans balked. Now it's uncertain whether Congress will pass a Medicare bill with sufficient market incentives to justify Mr. Bush's approval. Should he sign a measure without significant reforms, he won't be acting as a big government conservative.

On education, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kennedy joined to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. Its only real reform was a mandate for states to test student achievement on the basis of federal standards. Many conservatives, including some on the president's staff, felt this wasn't sufficient reform to warrant boosting the federal share of education spending. Still, Mr. Kennedy and other liberals aren't happy either. They'd expected even more spending.

When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals.

A second trait is a programmatic bent. Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn't do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative. His most ambitious program is his faith-based initiative. It would use government funds to expand social programs run by religious organizations. Many of them have been effective in fighting drug/alcohol addiction and helping lift people out of poverty. So far, the initiative has had only a small impact, its scope limited by Congress.

Another trait is a far more benign view of government than traditional conservatives have. Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) This means they support transfer payments that have a neutral or beneficial effect (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and oppose those that subsidize bad behavior (welfare). Mr. Bush wants to reform Social Security and Medicare but not shrink either.

Mr. Bush has never put a name on his political philosophy, though he once joked that it was based on the premise that you could fool some of the people all of the time and he intended to concentrate on those people. An aide characterized Bushism as "an activist, reforming conservatism that recognizes it's sometimes necessary to use the power of the government to change the status quo." I doubt that Mr. Bush would put it that way, but at least it distinguishes him from the ordinary run of conservatives. He's a different breed.

It's complicated and carries a hefty pricetag, but the federally approved iBOT wheelchair promises to give some of the nation's 2 million wheelchair users new freedom of movement, even allowing them to climb stairs.

The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) on Wednesday authorized the sale of the iBOT, which uses sensors and gyroscopes to climb up and down stairs. It also shifts into four-wheel drive to navigate grassy hills and can lift its occupant to standing height.

Doctors have called the technology potentially revolutionary and the FDA termed it a breakthrough, but one so complex that, unlike other wheelchairs, it will require a doctor's prescription and special training before patients can buy an iBOT.

Prices capture the relative value people put on intangibles. The price system lets individuals make trade-offs among goods, without having to articulate a "good reason" for their preferences. It rewards value you cannot easily count.

Some critics find that wasteful. "Addiction to a strict and unremitting valuation of all things in terms of price and profit" leaves executives "unfit to appreciate those technological facts that can be formulated only in terms of tangible mechanical performance," Thorstein Veblen wrote in 1921 in "The Engineers and the Price System."

Veblen's critiques still influence both intellectual opinion and practical policy. His intellectual heirs, like the economists Robert Frank and Juliet Schor, treat the intangible pleasures of style as either deceptive "salesmanship" (Veblen's term) or wasteful status competition.

Public policy often regards aesthetic value as illegitimate or nonexistent. This oversight comes less from ideological conviction than from technocratic practice. Unlike prices, regulatory policy requires articulated justifications and objective standards. So policy makers emphasize measurable factors and ignore subjective pleasures.

The President has been quiet about his tariffs ever since he imposed them in March 2002, and with good reason. The evidence is that they've done far more economic harm than good, especially to American manufacturing. Designed to help only a single industry, the tariffs have instead punished the far more numerous industries that use steel.

In the wake of the tariffs, domestic steel prices have risen by 30% or more. The price of hot-rolled steel, a major industrial commodity, nearly doubled from late 2001 to July 2002. Shortages in specific products abound, as foreign steel makers have sent their steel to suppliers in other countries. Many steel consumers have struggled to find reliable, quality product at prices that keep them competitive with foreign manufacturers.

This has all cost American jobs. A study done this year for the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition found that higher steel prices cost some 200,000 American jobs and $4 billion in lost wages from last February to November. That compares to employment in the entire domestic steel industry of only 188,000. No fewer than 16 states lost at least 4,500 steel consuming jobs, including the key Presidential election states of Pennsylvania and Florida that each lost nearly twice that number. (Karl Rove, see Electoral College map.)

The specific job consequences were laid out in illuminating detail on the Senate floor last month by Tennessee's Lamar Alexander. The Republican noted his state is now home to 900 auto supply companies that employ 100,000 workers. When those companies couldn't raise prices to cover increased steel costs, they "suffered losses and began to lay off employees. In a few instances entire plants closed." Auto supplier ArvinMeritor closed a plant employing 317 in Gordonsville. A plant in Pulaski laid off 100 more.

Rarely do American Presidents get such a clean chance to amend their economic blunders as Mr. Bush now has with steel. Lifting the tariffs would do more to help workers and create jobs than all of the media road shows and economic summits from here to Election Day.

SHANGHAI, China - An aspiring businessman hoping to tap China's growing enthusiasm for capitalism is suing communist bureaucrats who vetoed his plan to register a company whose name includes the once-taboo word, "capitalist."

Lu Yuzhang tried to register his "Shanghai Capitalist Competition Capability Consulting Co. Ltd." as a private company earlier this year, but he said officials rejected the name as "politically sensitive" and detrimental to national interests.

Seeking recourse through the courts, Lu sued the city commercial bureau officials, demanding they reverse their decision and approve his company name.

"Capitalists and capitalism exist in China. That's a fact," said Lu, a recent college graduate. "The calling of capitalism is absolutely legal and in line with the national benefits."

***
Lu's suit has prompted a minor debate in Shanghai's state-run media, with some experts accusing the young businessman of seeking publicity and others backing his demands as reasonable and legal.

"Western multinationals have been asked to invest in China to `exploit' Chinese workers. Leading capitalists from those countries are serving as advisers to the mayors of Shanghai and Beijing," noted a commentary in the Shanghai Star.

"All these things would have been regarded as sheer capitalism three decades ago," it said.

Lu said he plans to appeal if he loses.

"I will insist," he said.

A group of independent music retailers has filed a class-action lawsuit against Best Buy Co. Inc., alleging that the chain violates U.S. antitrust laws, as well as California state laws, that govern loss-leader selling, the strategy of pricing product below cost.

In the lawsuit -- filed Aug. 6 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division -- the plaintiffs charge that Best Buy uses its clout to receive benefits from the major labels that are not generally available to the chain's competitors. The plaintiffs in the case are Mad Rhino, Boo Boo Records, Lou's Records, Dimple Records and Rand Foster of Fingerprints.

The lawsuit says Best Buy is "able to extract from the major record companies an additional 10% discount vis-a-vis other purchasers" and receives advertising and other allowances not generally granted to other merchants. According to the complaint, these favorable prices, terms and conditions allow Best Buy to sell new albums as loss leaders, diverting massive amounts of business away from its competitors.

The complaint alleges that Best Buy has knowingly received favorable and discriminatory prices on new albums, a practice that violates the Robinson-Patman Act. Also, the complaint says that Best Buy's below-cost pricing is a way of injuring competitors or destroying competition, in violation of the California Business and Professions Code. California has a state law that merchants must price product at least 6% above cost.

The lawsuit asks for treble damages and legal fees.

Voters will get to decide this November whether the city should do more to reduce stress.

City council members said Monday they were forced to put the question on November's ballot because resident Jeff Peckman collected 2,462 certified signatures, slightly over the required number.

***

Peckman said the council members should favor his proposal because it supports their duty under the U.S. Constitution to provide for the common defense and ensure domestic tranquility.

According to one promising theory, warfare and other social violence are caused by social stress. If the stresses in the social atmosphere mount too high - if political, economic, religious and ethnic tensions reach the breaking point - then they erupt as crime, warfare and terrorism. To reduce social violence, therefore - to reduce crime, warfare and terrorism, social stress and tension must be reduced.

One example of a peace-creating program: Many approaches exist for reducing stress in individuals, families and communities through proper behavior, wholesome food and herbal medicines, natural healthcare and exercise, holistic education and specific types of meditation and music, etc. At least one program for dissolving social stress on a national and global scale, as well, has already been scientifically validated. This consciousness-based approach has worked every time - as measured by reduced crime, accidents, fires, substance abuse, warfare and terrorism, and yet in a completely peaceful way.

Medical science has already accepted that meditation by any one individual will dissolve stress in that individual. The result is reduced anxiety, heart disease and other stress-related disorders. The new research - 50 demonstrations written up in 23 scientific studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals - shows that meditation by large groups dissolves stress in society as a whole, and even around the world. The result: reduced crime, war and terrorism.

I never knew Herb Brooks. I never saw him in person, and after the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, never rooted for a team he coached.

Then why have I been walking around all evening feeling like I've been gut punched?

It may be hard for readers even just a few years younger than me to understand, but even back then as a 12-year old, I could tell that things just weren't right in America. The nation was locked in a recession, with gasoline rationing a recent memory. Our nation seemed impotent in the face of a radical Islamic regime in Iran that invaded our Embassy and took its staff hostage. The Cold War was real, and we didn't know if the good guys were going to win.

Enter Brooks and a team of college kids he had molded into a fiery squad that at times may have hated and resented him more than the Olympic opposition. Brooks had taken the 1980 team on a brutal pre-Olympic tour that culminated in an exhibition against the powerful Soviets at Madison Square Garden just a week before the start of the Games in Lake Placid.

I can still remember begging my father to take me. And I should feel lucky that he didn't, as the Russians cruised to a 10-3 victory, hardly noticing the Americans at all. Heading to Lake Placid, expectations couldn't have been lower.

Which made what happened next all the more delightfully improbable. The Olympic Tournament started quietly enough, as the team salvaged a last-minute tie with Sweden, then rolled through the rest of the preliminary round without a loss and earned another date with the Soviets in the medal round.

In a 300-channel universe with satellite tv and digital cable, can anyone still understand the concept of tape delay? But that's what the geniuses at ABC served up for us on that February evening, not starting the telecast until 5:00 p.m. in the East, several hours after the game had already begun.

But this was a miracle we're talking about, and the weekend would be magic. Even today, nearly a quarter century later, when I watch the highlights of Al Michaels counting down the final seconds of the 4-3 win over the Soviets the tension all comes flooding back, as if the Soviets might actually be able to tear a rift in time and come out on top.

But it wasn't over yet. Team USA still had to beat Finland on Sunday morning in order to win the gold medal. How Brooks was able to bring his team down from such an emotional high on Friday, and then have them focused for success on Sunday has to be one of the greatest coaching achievements of all time.

But bring them down he did, and a 4-2 win secured the gold for the Americans. And then, over the next few weeks, something equally improbable happened. All over the country, after being out of fashion for some time, it became ok to say you loved your country again. Full throated, flag waving patriotism was back, and it was Brooks and 20 kids with names Eruzione, Schneider, O'Callahan, Craig, Christian, and all the others, that made it happen.

Yesterday, on a highway outside of Minneapolis, America lost a hero. A team lost it coach. A family lost its father. And I said goodbye to a cherished piece of my childhood. Rest in peace, Herb Brooks. And thank you. Thank you for more than you could ever know.

Under terms of the deal, General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and Isuzu will not challenge new regulations for creating low-polluting and nonpolluting cars. In turn, the state will drop its appeals of lawsuits brought by automakers, said Jerry Martin, an Air Resources Board spokesman.

The settlement, scheduled to be announced Tuesday, strengthens the possibility that automakers will be forced to build cleaner cars rather than continue fighting to weaken the emissions rules.

"We get to start getting the cars on the road so California breathers can get what they expect from us, cleaner air," Martin said.

A GM spokesman in California who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the settlement and said it depends on the air board adopting the rules as they now stand. The board changed its emissions regulations in April, but they are still in a public comment period and subject to change.

The automakers and car dealers in the San Joaquin Valley successfully challenged California's landmark 1990 requirement that 10 percent of cars sold in the state this year — about 100,000 vehicles — be nonpolluting.

They charged that the state overstepped its authority and was setting fuel efficiency policy that can only be set by the federal government.

A federal judge in Fresno agreed in June last year and ordered the state to put the regulations on hold. Automakers also won a round in state court.

The air board appealed the federal ruling, claiming they enacted sound air pollution control policy and that any improved mileage was a benefit to drivers. Environmentalists joined state regulators in the appeal, while the Bush administration sided with automakers.

Last August WNEW-FM in New York ran an Opie & Anthony show which allegedly contained a broadcast of sexual activity at St. Patrick’s Cathedral as part of an on-air stunt. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received numerous outraged e-mails and phone calls complaining that this broadcast violated a federal law against indecent programming.

One year later the FCC has failed to even address these complaints. Commissioner Michael J. Copps reacted: “When we allow complaints to languish for a year, the message is loud and clear that the FCC is not serious about enforcing our nation’s laws. Congress expected action from the FCC, but all too often our citizens’ complaints are ignored.”

Copps continued: “I wonder when the FCC will finally take a firm stand against the ‘race to the bottom’ as stations continue to push the envelope of outrageousness even further.” Recently, the FCC proposed a mere $27,500 fine against another station owned by this same company – on WKRK-FM in Detroit – after it aired some of the most vulgar and disgusting indecency that the Commission has examined.

Copps stated: “Nothing has changed over the past year in the FCC’s enforcement of the indecency laws. And at the same time, the Commission’s actions have ensured that things will get even worse.” Instead of enforcing indecency laws, the FCC recently rewarded giant station owners by dismantling the FCC’s media concentration protections. The FCC took this action without even considering whether there is a link between increasing media consolidation and increasing indecency on our airwaves. Copps explained: “It stands to reason that as media conglomerates grow ever bigger and control moves further away from the local community, community standards go by the boards. It is a time to increase, not diminish, our vigilance and our enforcement of the law.”

Copps concluded: “The time has come for the Commission to send a message that it is serious about enforcing the indecency laws. Yet, we continue to turn a deaf ear to the millions of Americans who are fed up with the patently offensive programming coming their way so much of the time.”

Shares of printer-maker Lexmark International Inc. fell sharply Monday morning after a news release was issued praising North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley's decision to sign into law a bill giving printer users in the state the right to refill any inkjet cartridge. The law essentially voids contracts or purchase agreements that ban some cartridges from being remanufactured.

The law stems from lawsuits between Lexmark and Greensboro, N.C.-based Static Control Components over rights to refill some inkjet cartridges manufactured by Lexmark for its printers. Lexmark has accused Static Control of selling chips that disarm Lexmark's "technological controls" and infringe on its patents.

Static Control alleges that Lexmark has attempted to monopolize the market for toner cartridges that are used in Lexmark printers and contends the Lexington company is in violation of antitrust laws.

Officials with Lexmark could not immediately be reached for comment.

Company officials previously have defended the company's "prebate" program, which sells discounted printer cartridges to consumers who agree to return empty cartridges to Lexmark to be refilled.

Tim King, director of corporate public relations at Lexmark, told Business First in March that rather than stifling competition from competitors, the prebate program "adds another layer of choice" for Lexmark customers. He said that competitor companies still are able to refill basic Lexmark printer cartridges that are not discounted.

On Monday, Static Control issued a news release touting the North Carolina law as a victory in its battle with Lexmark.

"I think the issues are extremely simple," Static CEO Ed Swartz said in the release. "Does the (original-equipment manufacturer) have the right to tell as a matter of public policy that their product cannot be remanufactured and therefore it must go into landfills? I am glad that the legislature intervened to protect the jobs of North Carolinians and our environment."

Any provision in any agreement or contract that prohibits the reusing, remanufacturing, or refilling of a toner or inkjet cartridge is void and unenforceable as a matter of public policy. Nothing in this section shall prevent any maintenance contract that warrants the performance of equipment under the contract from requiring the use of new or specified toner or inkjet cartridges in the equipment under contract.

A judge in the U.S. District of Delaware recently ruled in favor of Dentsply International’s distribution practices of artificial teeth.

The decision came down late Friday afternoon and the outcome is positive for the company and its shareholders, said John C. Miles II, chairman and CEO of the dental product designer and manufacturer.

Though artificial teeth represent about 5 percent of the company’s business and don’t have a great impact on earnings per share, Miles said the decision removes a level of uncertainty and could save legal fees if the government decides not to appeal.

Gina Talamona, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said it’s too soon to say if the department will appeal.

The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice began investigating the company for antitrust violations in 1995, Security and Exchange Commission documents state.

Within the company’s Trubyte Division’s distribution clause, Dentsply maintains the right to pull its products from the distributor if the distributor decides to carry competing products.

In 1999, the federal government filed suit against the company saying that this clause affected 80 percent of dealers nationwide because they don’t carry brands that compete closely with Dentsply’s products.

In April and May 2002, a trial took place leading to the recent decision.

On Monday, Miles said the company holds the distribution policy because it invests time and money into training the distributor’s employees on the products, which are similar among competing products. If it allowed its distributors to carry other products, it would be training them for free, he said.

California State Bar's Antirust and Unfair Competition Law Section is proud to announce that Latham & Watkins' San Francisco partner J. Thomas Rosch, has been named Antitrust Lawyer of the Year for 2003. The State Bar will officially honor Rosch at its 13th Annual Antitrust Lawyer of the Year Award Dinner on October 23, 2003.

"We're very pleased to honor Tom with this award. His work and achievements of the past thirty-eight years clearly show Tom is a leader in the field," said James E. Herman, President of the State Bar of California.

Rosch, internationally regarded as one of the preeminent practitioners in the areas of antitrust and trade regulation law, has been with Latham for nearly a decade. He has been lead counsel in more than one hundred federal and state court antitrust cases. He has successfully tried many of them and has won summary judgments in many more. Additionally, Rosch has acted as antitrust counsel in the planning and implementation of numerous joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions.

* * *

"This richly-deserved award recognizes Tom's exemplary career," said Robert Dell, Chairman and Managing Partner of Latham & Watkins. "Tom's encyclopedic knowledge of the antitrust laws combined with his years of experience in the courtroom make him a treasured resource among clients and colleagues alike."

Once in college — government funded and free of charge like lower schools — students take an average of seven years to earn a degree. And 32 percent of them actually do so, well below the average of 48 percent for industrialized nations.

Germany has relatively few private schools, and they are expensive. Private universities are almost nonexistent.

Dennis Redovich's latest weekly column is particularly inane. He first predicts a world-wide depression similar to the Great Depression. No data are provided to back up that prediction (NOTE: data "are", right?). It then goes from bad to worse, promoting g-schools as an engine of prosperity. Or, more precisely, promoting the money spent on the schools as creating wealth.

Government spending on programs that benefit largely low and middle class income citizens for education, health and welfare is the greatest stimulus for an expanding and prosperous economy and “also” improve the quality of life for individuals and the entire population. The Milwaukee Public Schools is the largest employer in Milwaukee, and with a budget in 2002-2003 of more than $1 Billion is the largest single source of money for consumer spending in the entire southeastern area of Wisconsin. Public school systems and universities are the largest employers in many communities in the State of Wisconsin. (Education jobs are stable and better than average paying jobs. Better in most cases than the jobs created with millions of corporate welfare that may be gone tomorrow when someone offers a better deal)

Sure, except for the fact that the money for those high-paying education jobs came from TAXES. Last time I checked, taxes were a drag on the economy. So, schools are just a form of welfare for educrats? Good to know. The rest of the column is no better. Give it a click only if you want to see how the other half thinks.

The headline-grabbing number of 2.4 percent growth, immediately applauded throughout the media as strong, is about double the real rate that the private economy grew. While the private economy grew at about 1.3 percent, the federal government component of GDP increased by a staggering 25 percent, the largest quarterly increase in more than three decades. The increase was due almost entirely to the high cost of the war in Iraq. But even domestic agencies saw growth in their budgets far surpassing private sector growth.

The important word here is "cost." Wars are a cost, not an asset.

You fight wars because you have to — because there are bad people in the world. But to suggest the war was good for the economy would be as dimwitted as suggesting Saddam Hussein deserves a medal of honor for helping revive the U.S. economy.

Defending U.S. interests militarily is a legitimate and necessary function of government, but it eats up resources and reduces growth, rather than enhancing it. So to a large extent, the growth reported this past quarter is a statistical mirage. The way we currently measure GDP makes billions of dollars spent on military expenditures look like productive economic activity.

Baptist Health South Florida has reached an agreement to buy Doctors' Hospital of Coral Gables, giving the nonprofit health giant its sixth medical center in South Florida and making it Miami-Dade County's biggest employer.

The deal, announced Friday, would extend Baptist Health's coverage area from northern Monroe County into Coral Gables and boost its Miami-Dade workforce to more than 9,800 employees. The acquisition would give Baptist Health more leverage in negotiating agreements with insurance providers, doctors and suppliers.

Mercy Hospital, which lost out on the bidding for Doctors', said it would challenge the sale.

''We do not believe that this transaction is in the best interest of the community and will result in higher healthcare costs to employers and consumers,'' John E. Matuska, Mercy president and chief executive, said in a statement.

The Department of Justice is scrutinizing Premier Health Partners, apparently to see if the seven-year-old hospital merger has violated antitrust law by resulting in higher prices than would have happened otherwise.

"We have no reason to believe that the action is anything but a routine investigation," Dale Creech, Premier's chief legal counsel said Friday. The Justice Department indicated several months ago that it would review some of the many U.S. hospital mergers in the 1990s, he said, and Premier is among more than a dozen to have received requests for information.

A Justice spokeswoman declined to comment on the investigation, or even to confirm its existence, citing office policy not to discuss any ongoing matters.

"We're providing a lot of documentation about what we've done since the affiliation in terms of cost-savings and improving efficiency," Creech said. "We are cooperating fully."

Miami Valley and Good Samaritan hospitals have operated jointly as Premier since 1996, when the Federal Trade Commission decided not to challenge the affiliation on antitrust grounds. Fidelity HealthCare, Samaritan North Health Center, Maria-Joseph Living Care Center and a physicians network are also part of Premier.

The entities have cut costs by consolidating administrative departments, purchasing in greater quantities, avoiding duplication of medical equipment and sharing more effective medical and administrative practices, Creech said. The savings have grown year by year to more than $50 million annually "that the citizens of the Miami Valley no longer have to pay," he said.

For Zimbalist, the roots of baseball’s problems are clear: Major League Baseball is an unregulated monopoly. The Supreme Court’s 1922 Federal Baseball decision exempted MLB from the nation’s antitrust laws on the grounds that baseball did not constitute “interstate commerce;” baseball has enjoyed exempt status ever since. This exemption is unique to MLB; football fans may recall that Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis successfully brought an antitrust suit against the NFL and was able to move his team to Los Angeles in 1980. Applying antitrust law, the judge in that case held that the NFL engaged in an “unreasonable restraint of trade” by preventing the Raiders from moving out of Oakland. If Congress were to remove MLB’s antitrust exemption, MLB would be unable to prevent teams from changing cities – except when preventing such movement was “reasonable.”

Like most monopolists, MLB artificially restricts supply to increase demand, according to Zimbalist. The “restriction of supply” takes the form of limiting the number of Major League ballclubs. The most glaring example of this restraint on trade is the lack of a baseball team in Washington, DC, the nation’s sixth-largest market. According to Zimbalist, MLB uses Washington as economic leverage against current baseball cities. MLB threatens to relocate teams to Washington if current host cities fail to publicly finance stadiums for their teams. On the other hand, if MLB were subject to antitrust regulation, it would be unable to prevent the creation of an expansion team in Washington unless such action was found to be “reasonable.” Nor could MLB prevent an owner from moving its team to Washington -- or any other city -- unless such action was deemed “reasonable.”

* * *

What is needed is not antitrust regulation but a salary cap or a strong luxury tax. Repealing MLB’s antitrust exemption seems like a way of avoiding confrontation with those most responsible with maintaining the status quo – the players union and the high-revenue owners.

And it is not clear why Zimbalist thinks MLB is a “monopoly” anyway. He states that baseball is a monopoly because “it is the only provider of top-level professional baseball in the country.” But so is the Professional Bowlers Tour, and is anyone clamoring for increased antitrust scrutiny of bowlers?

The root cause of all this trouble in professional athletics is money. We are all culprits who supply it in irrational, unbelievable quantities to undereducated, exploited youngsters, who have little understanding of its value or how to manage it. They are not atypical in their age group. They are just wealthy enough to indulge the normal excesses of youth. Add that wherewithal to environmentally and socially deprived backgrounds and the combination is lethal.

Worshiping fans must bear part of the blame. But a major share belongs to the corporations that fuel the entire big-time sports industry. They buy the overpriced boxes and blocs of seats in the arenas for clients and pay the hefty endorsements to sell the shoes and paraphernalia for which less fortunate children have been known to kill one another. Their advertising supports the huge television revenues distributed among the various teams. The average NBA fan can't afford to see a game first-hand, so high are the prices for anything close to a decent seat and minimal concessions. Often the corporate seats are empty in surreal defiance of the announced "sell-out."

In a perfect world, no one whose only skill is throwing a ball through a hoop would be paid anywhere near the kind of money that Kobe Bryant and his fellow players enjoy, and in the old days they weren't. The great player and coach, John Wooden, used to get $5 a game as a professional, the same as a Ford assembly worker. But that was before endorsements and television. This is a world intoxicated by the vicarious thrill of celebrity. It is a world where hitting a baseball can earn a person a million times more than a distinguished teacher or an artist of immense talent would be paid, where the athletes are far more valued than the doctors who must constantly patch them together.

Attorney General Charlie Crist today presented a $50,000 check to Broward Children's Center, using proceeds from the state's settlement of an antitrust case against two major hospital corporations.

The nonprofit Broward Children's Center in Pompano Beach helps more than 360 children with various handicaps and their families throughout South Florida and around the state. The center also provides residential programs for medically fragile youngsters at three group homes and two preschools.

The settlement between the attorney general's office and Hospital Corporation of America and Cleveland Clinic Florida came in April. The two companies were accused of secretly agreeing to reduce competition by dividing up certain medical services. That's a violation of state and federal antitrust laws.

Each corporation was required to make restitution payments of $100,000 for medical and social services to under-served populations in Broward and Collier counties.

Presentations to several other South Florida charities will be announced later.

Vigorous competition underlies much of what we value as a society, forming the foundation of our economic and political system. It is a principle the parties to this action are intimately familiar with - they compete in lecture halls and laboratories, on their playing fields, to recruit new students and faculty members, to establish alumni bragging rights, and for public and private funds. Underlying competition are the freedom to contract and to freely associate, and fundamental to those freedoms are the abilities to both join and leave the voluntary relationships so created. These principles inure to the benefit of us all, helping to create a dynamic society whose members are motivated to strive for the best, and the Attorney General of Florida has intervened in support of the jurisdictional motions to dismiss because of his concern that Plaintiffs' action could cause long-term harm to these principles.

Mergers that need reviewing have fallen 75% since 2000 because of the sluggish economy and a policy change that raised the value of mergers that must be reported to the government. But that means the 250-lawyer staff that Creighton heads can focus on anti-competitive behavior that costs consumers money.

Since the start of the Bush administration, the FTC has opened more than 100 investigations and taken enforcement action in 25, a 30% jump over any two-year period since the mid-1980s.

While some expect a lighter touch with business from Republicans, Bush-appointed FTC Chairman Tim Muris and former antitrust chief Joseph Simons brought a series of cases against brand-name and generic drug firms whose deals were believed to be keeping low-cost drugs off store shelves. Creighton, a Republican who was Simons' deputy for two years, is said to have been a driving force behind the cases.

Those who know Creighton have only high praise. "She's very, very bright with an intellectual quietness," says William Baer, who had Creighton's job for much of the Clinton administration. Adds former FTC mergers chief George Cary: "She's extremely bright, very thoughtful and understands the legitimate purpose of antitrust enforcement without being at all reflexive."

Creighton is widely considered to be the behind-the-scenes brains that launched the Justice Department probe-turned-lawsuit against Microsoft. Her law partner in a Silicon Valley law firm, Gary Reback, was the public pitchman for their client, Netscape. But it was Creighton who wrote the report laying out the complaints about Microsoft's tactics that helped antitrust enforcers make their case.

Creighton is a loyal member of the government team now but once fought the FTC in court. Creighton represented VISX, maker of laser-eye-surgery equipment, against charges that it broke antitrust laws when it formed a joint venture with Summit Technology, the only other laser maker, and fraudulently obtained the patent. Creighton successfully defended VISX against some of the FTC charges. She also helped negotiate a settlement of the rest of the case.

Creighton says that even though she was working against the government, the VISX position was defensible for consumers because if the companies had not teamed up, there's a good chance neither would have entered the market, leaving consumers without any source for the surgery.

One of Creighton's major projects now is an ongoing review of some hospital mergers approved during the Clinton administration. People familiar with the agency's work say the FTC is expected to challenge some of those mergers because they ultimately led to higher prices for health care.

Confusion about the wording of a resolution caused the Episcopal House of Deputies to reject "blessing gay unions" yesterday.

The resolution was returned to committee for more research to determine exactly which unions are 'gay'.

While members of the United Auto Workers, for example, earn relatively high wages, frequent labor disputes lead many Episcopalians to believe that they're not really gay.

"How could you be happy with so much labor strife," said one unnamed church deputy. "We're not opposed to blessing these unions, but we just want to make sure we have agreement on what we mean by 'gay unions'."

In other action, the Episcopal church approved allowing local churches to "celebrate and bless" pairs of homosexuals who pledge mutual sexual fidelity for life.

The CBLDF has been providing counsel for Castillo since his arrest in 2000 when he was charged with two counts of obscenity for selling adult comic books to adults. The Fund's lawyers persuaded the court to try the two counts separately and waged a fierce courtroom battle that included expert testimony from Scott McCloud and Professor Susan Napier. The State prosecutor did not offer contradictory testimony, but secured a guilty verdict with a closing argument stating, "I don't care what type of evidence or what type of testimony is out there, use your rationality, use your common sense. Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids. This is in a store directly across from an elementary school and it is put in a medium, in a forum, to directly appeal to kids. That is why we are here, ladies and gentlemen. … We're here to get this off the shelf." Castillo was found guilty and sentenced to 180 days in jail, a year probation, and a $4,000 fine.

Immediately following the first trial, the State dropped the second obscenity count while the Fund prepared its appeal. In 2002 the Appeals court rendered a 2-1 split decision upholding the conviction. Justice Tom James, writing in dissent, would have reversed the conviction on the ground that the State did not provide sufficient evidence that Castillo had knowledge of the content and character of the offending comic book. On the strength of James' dissent, the Fund filed a Petition for Discretionary Review to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which was denied. At the end of the road for Texas Justice, the Fund took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Fund Legal Counsel Burton Joseph explains, "It is rare that the Supreme Court accepts individual criminal cases for consideration. In the Castillo case, in spite of the odds, CBLDF appealed to the Supreme Court on the chance that they would reverse what appeared to be an unjust and unconstitutional decision in the Texas courts. The principle was important, but we knew the odds were long."

A final philosophical question: Whose business is it really what modeling agencies charge for their services? They don't own an "essential facility" necessary for life and well-being. The investigators should think hard about what public purpose is served by chasing down people who've entered into voluntary contractual relationships in a business that is beyond the Justice Department (or anyone else) to make economic sense of.

"Those who create," Coco Chanel said, "are rare. Those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger." That is the bureaucrat's ode, illustrated again by the antitrust division's attempt to force another industry into a facile economic mold.

Fewer than 100 pilots have been trained to carry guns in the cockpit in the eight months since Congress approved the idea, and hundreds more are waiting, but pilots and members of Congress say the program is not moving fast enough.

Pilots say it's more important than ever to get weapons in the cockpit because the Transportation Security Administration froze hiring in the air marshal program in May and the government is warning al-Qaida may try more suicide hijackings.

"Between the air marshals and the federal flight deck officer force, we should cover a vast majority of the domestic flights," said Capt. Bob Lambert, president of the Airline Pilots' Security Alliance. "It just seems like we haven't learned very much from Sept. 11."

"I knew I was a winner. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way."

In one week, the number of West Nile virus cases has tripled, and a U.S. health official warned Thursday that this year's outbreak may top last year's record.

The numbers are starting to change very, very quickly," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites). "That is very concerning."

So far there are more than 153 cases in 16 states, an explosion of the mosquito-borne virus in just a week, she said. That doesn't include 39 new cases Colorado officials reported Thursday.

A week ago, there were 59 cases nationwide. Health officials had expected the disease to spread this year, invading Western states previously unscathed. But they appeared somewhat surprised at its speed.

The new numbers compare with 112 cases in four states for this date last year.

"It indicates we are starting the epidemic with more cases than last year," the CDC director said. She warned of "a great number of infected people."

Last year, 4,156 people caught the virus, and 284 died. The United States also suffered the biggest reported outbreak of West Nile encephalitis in the world in 2002.

The European Union intends to fine Microsoft for past antitrust abuses regardless of how the software giant changes its future business practices, an EU spokesman said Thursday.

"We are minded to impose a fine for the past and minded to impose remedies for the future, and we will adopt a final decision which does exactly that," said Tilman Lueder, a spokesman for the EU's antitrust office, the European Commission.

The EU can fine violators up to 10 percent of their worldwide sales — which would be more than $3 billion in Microsoft's case. In practice, fines have never exceeded 1 percent, which would still be an EU record but easily managed by a company with cash reserves of $49 billion.

The EU sent Microsoft a statement of objections Wednesday accusing it of trying to monopolize new markets, namely servers, which tie desktop computers together, and audiovisual players, which allow users to play music and video on their computers.

Arguing that new market surveys found the abuses continuing despite the settlement last year of the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in the United States, the EU spelled out steps it wanted Microsoft to take to address those complaints.

audio/video streaming and playback software (including digital rights management software);
e-mail client software;
instant messaging software and services;
server operating system software;
authentication services;
consumer Internet portals;
web services;
handheld computing device operating systems and applications software;
smart phone operating systems and applications software;
server applications (notably, mail server and media server software).

Conservative dismay over Taft's liberal agenda led directly to massive Democratic gains in Congress in 1910 and his own loss in 1912. The same dismay over Nixon's liberal agenda led to massive Democratic gains and his ouster from office in 1974.

I am sorry to say that I see Bush traveling the same path. He has concluded that the Democrats are very likely to nominate a candidate so far to the left as to be unelectable. Howard Dean's ascension to the head of the Democratic pack supports this conclusion. But ironically, rather than making Bush feel more comfortable pursuing a conservative agenda, he continues to move left on domestic issues -- especially the budget-busting prescription drug subsidy bill.

Bush has also signed into law a campaign finance reform bill that most conservatives view as blatantly unconstitutional, endorsed an education bill written by Ted Kennedy and initiated more trade protectionism by any president since Nixon. But against these, Bush continually plays his trump card: the war against terrorism. And just as Nixon played the anticommunist card in terms of the Vietnam War, it has been enough to keep most Republican voters under control -- so far.

[I] think Bush is a "lock" for re-election, regardless of whom the Democrats nominate. Yale economist Ray Fair predicts he will get 56.7 percent of the vote based on economic data already in hand. If the economy does better than expected, his vote total will only rise.

But conservatives still need to ask themselves: to what end? Do we want another Taft or Nixon, who imposed liberal policies no Democratic president could achieve as the price for keeping a Republican in the White House? It is a question worth asking.

Alleging that Aspen Technology, Inc’s (AspenTech) $106.1 million acquisition of Hyprotech, Ltd. (Hyprotech) in 2002 was anticompetitive and led to the elimination of a significant competitor in the provision of process engineering simulation software for industry, the Federal Trade Commission today authorized its staff to file an administrative complaint challenging the transaction, which was exempt from the reporting obligations of the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Premerger Notification Act.

“AspenTech’s purchase of Hyprotech directly led to the combination of two of the three largest firms in the development and sale of certain process engineering simulation software,” said Susan Creighton, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Although the fact that a merger has been consummated increases the complexity of the Commission’s decision to seek relief, that hurdle is not sufficient for the agency to forgo a challenge to a transaction that is likely to lead to anticompetitive effects.”

Tech lobbyists welcomed Creighton's appointment, saying her depth of knowledge about the industry is a good sign for enforcement of fair competition in the industry.

"She's a very smart, very savvy player,'' said Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black.

She is one of the few people who was able to combine her understanding of technology, antitrust law, and the economics of the industry to articulate the competitive problems associated with Microsoft, Black said.

Clear Channel Communications Inc. said a district court Wednesday denied a motion by Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. for reconsideration of an antitrust lawsuit filed against Clear Channel and Hispanic Broadcasting Corp.

According to Clear Channel's quarterly report filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the court's ruling concludes the case in the district court.

Spanish Broadcasting filed a lawsuit against the company and Hispanic Broadcasting in June 2002 alleging that Clear Channel was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Miami-based Spanish Broadcasting also made various other claims such as unfair trade practices and defamation.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, was dismissed on Jan. 31.

On Feb. 14, Spanish Broadcasting filed a motion for reconsideration of the court's order.

America is disfigured by high rates of sexual disorders, including unnecessary divorce, unmarried childbearing, sexually transmitted diseases, a pornographic culture, and the progressive normalization of alternative sexual lifestyles, along with the sudden real threat that courts will impose gay marriage. A Vatican statement simply repeating a 2,000-year-old ethical tradition about marriage and sex has prompted a flurry of threats, overt and implicit, around what we used to call the Free World.

The present may look bleak, but the future belongs to those people and cultures that deeply commit to ideas grounded in human nature: Men and women are not interchangeable units, sex has a meaning beyond immediate pleasure, society needs babies, children need mothers and fathers, marriage is a word for the way we join men and women to make the future happen.

Human beings are free to adopt self-destructive ideas, but we are not free to make them work. Ideas based on a faulty view of human nature can grip the imagination of the powerful for decades, wreak havoc and suffering on untold millions, but they cannot triumph in the end. What is contrary to nature, including human nature, cannot ultimately survive.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced today that it would provide free wireless Internet access to visitors at its Washington, D.C. office.

“When you come to the FCC, leave the cords at home,” said FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell. “We’re embracing the power of WiFi and the freedom and convenience of wireless Internet access it gives to consumers.”

Last year, Powell directed his staff to take the steps needed to make the FCC one of the first federal agencies to provide public WiFi access. Visitors bringing their own hardware and software can use the service on the Twelfth Street, Courtyard, and Eighth Floor levels of the headquarters located at 445 12th Street, SW in Washington, D.C.

In my experience in two decades as an appellate judge, however, it is very rare for an amicus curiae brief to do more than repeat in somewhat different language the arguments in the brief of the party whom the amicus is supporting. Those who pay lawyers to prepare such briefs are not getting their money's worth.

Getting audio recordings of landmark legal arguments is becoming as easy as downloading the latest Snoop Dogg single.
For the first time, Internet users can download, edit and swap many of the U.S. Supreme Court's greatest hits.

Oral arguments available include those for the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights case and the disputed 2000 presidential election.

The audio files come from the OYEZ Project, a multimedia archive that gets its name from the synonymous phrase "Hear ye, Hear ye."

"There's so much more information and emotion in the human voice that a transcript can't do it justice," said Jerry Goldman, the project's director and a professor at Northwestern University.

Goldman said the bitterness in Justice Thurgood Marshall's voice is apparent when he explains his views in Regents v. Bakke, a 1978 affirmative action case. And the silence is deadening in Roe v. Wade when Jay Floyd, representing Texas, makes a joke but no one laughs.

Since 1994, the OYEZ Project, run out of Northwestern, has made audio of the cases available in a "streaming" format that requires a continuous Internet connection. Available were some 2,000 hours of audio dating to 1955, when taping of oral arguments began.

The project is converting the files to the MP3 format, which permits offline listening, use of portable devices and sharing through the same peer-to-peer networks used to swap music and movies. The first batch of MP3 files was released in late June.

Goldman said he ultimately wants to make available in MP3 every bit of Supreme Court recordings, about 6,000 hours in all. He also wants them easily searchable.

Backed by new evidence, the European Union on Wednesday accused Microsoft Corp. of trying to monopolize markets for server software and audiovisual players and gave the U.S. giant a last chance to defend itself before demanding changes in its Windows operating system.

The EU's executive Commission, which has been investigating Microsoft for four years, said recently collected information from businesses across Europe and the United States confirmed that abuses were "still ongoing."

Specifically, it charges Microsoft with unfairly leveraging the "overwhelmingly dominant position" Windows has in personal computers into the market for servers, which tie those desktop computers together.

It also alleges that Microsoft's inclusion of Windows Media Player in the Windows operating system hurts competing audiovisual software such as Apple QuickTime and Real Networks.

"In light of this evidence, the Commission's preliminary conclusion is that Microsoft's abuses are still ongoing," it said in a statement.

EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said the charge sheet sent to Microsoft also identifies "appropriate remedies," including additional code Microsoft would have to disclose to competitors in the low-end server market to ensure interoperability.

It also would have to either offer a version of Windows without the Media Player, or agree to carry rival players with Windows.

Lawyers with the Justice Department antitrust division have conducted interviews in connection with antitrust complaints leveled in a civil class action lawsuit against the agencies, the sources said.

A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment on the case or whether department was investigating.

Last month a federal judge granted class action status to a complaint against several modeling agencies, including Elite Model Management and Ford Models Inc.

The class is expected to be made up of thousands of models. The judge appointed the law firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner as lead counsel.

Elite and Ford are both top modeling agencies. Elite models include actress Lara Flynn Boyle as well as Lauren Bush, niece of President Bush. Ford represents supermodels like Christie Brinkley, Jerry Hall, Frederique, and Rachel Hunter.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges the agencies fixed models' commission rates at 20 percent, twice the 10 percent allowed by state law for employment agencies. The models alleged that the defendants conspired to evade state pricing regulations by calling themselves model management companies.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say price-fixing in the industry stretches back to the 1970s. They contend the agencies used a trade association called the International Model Management Association as a clearinghouse to discuss rates and other competitive terms.

I am completely for capitalism and individual rights. However, my complaints are with consumerism in America. I see so many overweight, greedy Americans. So many of them risk their lives to be two yards ahead of someone else while driving in an oversized unnecessarily large S.U.V. . I can see the difference between excessive consumerism and capitalism, but is one not an inevitability of the other. I'm just completely disenchanted with American excess. Maybe I have a point maybe you will not even read this email. However If you do then I would like some sort of feed back of any kind about contemporary society, consumerism, and capitalism.

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Attorneys general from about 30 U.S. states are cooperating in federal antitrust enforcers' review of Oracle Corp.'s ORCL.O $7.3 billion hostile bid for PeopleSoft Inc. PSFT.O, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

"This is purely procedural and a matter of course," Oracle spokeswoman Jennifer Glass told Reuters on Friday.

Glass said all of the information Oracle provides for the Department of Justice's antitrust review is also available to the state attorneys general, who are also invited to attend the company's ongoing meetings with regulators.

The attorneys general, including those from New York, Texas and California, have already spent more than a month reviewing the deal. They have agreed to share information and costs associated with their investigations, and to divide up tasks related to the probe, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

"As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood."

"Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children..."

"...doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development."

Were I in [Clarett's] shoes, knowing that my athletic talent might be lost forever on my next carry up the gut, I might seriously consider leaving Columbus early and challenging the NFL policy on drafting underclassmen (a situation where he would prevail in court, and quite easily, just like Spencer Haywood in the NBA).

Although the combination of the college draft and salary cap may seem unique in collective bargaining (as are the team salary floor and 53 percent revenue sharing agreement), the uniqueness is strictly a matter of appearance. The nature of professional sports as a business and professional sports teams as employers calls for contractual arrangements suited to the unusual commercial context. However, these arrangements result from the same federally mandated processes as do collective agreements in the more familiar industrial context. Moreover, examination of the particular arrangements arrived at by the NBA and NBPA discloses that they have functionally identical, and identically anticompetitive, counterparts that are routinely included in industrial collective agreements.

Among the fundamental principles of federal labor policy is the legal rule that employees may eliminate competition among themselves through a governmentally supervised majority vote selecting an exclusive bargaining representative. Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act explicitly provides that "representatives . . . selected . . . by the majority of the employees in a unit . . . shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining." 29 U.S.C. § 159(a). Federal labor policy thus allows employees to seek the best deal for the greatest number by the exercise of collective rather than individual bargaining power. Once an exclusive representative has been selected, the individual employee is forbidden by federal law from negotiating directly with the employer absent the representative's consent, NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 175, 180, 18 L. Ed. 2d 1123, 87 S. Ct. 2001 (1967), even though that employee may actually receive less compensation under the collective bargain than he or she would through individual negotiations. J.I. Case Co. v. NLRB, 321 U.S. 332, 338-39, 88 L. Ed. 762, 64 S. Ct. 576 (1944).

The gravamen of Wood's complaint, namely that the NBA-NBPA collective agreement is illegal because it prevents him from achieving his full free market value, is therefore at odds with, and destructive of, federal labor policy. It is true that the diversity of talent and specialization among professional athletes and the widespread exposure and discussions of their "work" in the media make the differences in value among them as "workers" more visible than the differences in efficiency and in value among industrial workers. High public visibility, however, is no reason to ignore federal legislation that explicitly prevents employees, whether in or out of a bargaining unit, from seeking a better deal where the deal is inconsistent with the terms of a collective agreement.

R. Hewitt Pate, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department's Antitrust Division, issued the following statement today after the Department announced the closing of the Orbitz joint venture investigation:

"After an extensive investigation of the available facts, the Antitrust Division concluded that the Orbitz joint venture has not reduced competition or harmed airline consumers. This thorough review involved interviewing numerous interested parties, reviewing many documents that were produced by Orbitz as well as by third parties, engaging in extensive empirical analyses of airline booking data, and examining the analyses suggested by third parties.

"The Division considered several theories of harm none of which was ultimately borne out by the information collected by the Antitrust Division. These concerns included whether certain Orbitz contract terms would facilitate coordination among the participating airlines or reduce their incentives to discount resulting in higher fares and whether those contract terms would make the Orbitz joint venture dominant in online air travel distribution. The Division found that those terms did not result in higher fares or make Orbitz dominant in online air travel distribution."