1. Focus primarily on repeating the arguments of your favored party. After all, anything worth saying once is worth being said by everyone who wants to say it. The official term for this (originally from Law French) is the "moi aussi principle."

2. If you do have a genuinely original twist to add to the analysis, don't just stick with it -- that's bad form. Be sure to surround it with lots of other points that echo what your favored party says (see item 1 above). A ratio of 10 page of repetition to 1 page of new material is the norm, though experts believe that even this is too low.

3. Always include lots of general rhetoric, such as "The importance of the timeless guarantees of the First Amendment cannot be overstated in our marketplace of ideas, and the republic on which it rests." Judges and law clerks just love that sort of stuff. This is especially true when filing briefs before the Supreme Court. The sorts of close and difficult cases that the Court hears are almost always decided primarily by applying general slogans. In fact, it's considered disrespectful of the Court to focus on mere factual details, or to use more mundane language.

4. Always keep in mind that (according to Rule 3.7), "The primary purpose of an inimicus curiae brief is to allow the inimicus to tell donors and other supporters that the inimicus Has Filed A Brief Before The Court expressing the timeless verities for which the inimicus and its supporters stand." Any departure from this purpose is frowned on.

Steel analysts agree that consolidation can only help a global market burdened with oversupply. Anti-trust regulators could differ with this consensus, however, to the detriment of the U.S. steel industry. Consolidation cops have an undistinguished record on blocking steel mergers, such as preventing U.S. Steel's attempt to buy National Steel in 1994.

In the coal industry, there has been more recent evidence of overzealous anti-trust policing that analysts say augurs badly for future steel mergers, with the Federal Trade Commission giving Arch Coal a second information request on its bid to buy Triton Coal. "This is a review," said Merrill Lynch metals analyst Dan Rolling, "that should have taken five minutes," since there is a gross overabundance of coal. Instead, regulators are effectively suspending a merger that should have gotten speedy approval.

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

UPDATE: Novak has changed or updated his story. From the Drudge Report, with no attribution:

'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'

You may have heard how hard it is to find enough teachers -- and therefore how necessary it is to raise salaries, in order to attract more people into this field. One example can demonstrate what is wrong with this picture, though there are innumerable other examples.

A young man who graduated summa cum laude from elite Williams College decided that he wanted to be a teacher. He sent letters and resumes to eight different school districts. Not one gave him even the courtesy of a reply.

Does that sound like there is a teacher's shortage? Moreover, any number of other highly qualified people have had the same experience.

The joker in the deal is that, no matter how highly qualified you are, your desire to become a teacher is not likely to get off the ground unless you have jumped through the bureaucratic hoops that keep people out of this field -- thereby protecting the jobs of unionized incompetents who are already in our schools.

The most important of these hoops is taking unbelievably dreary and stupid courses in education. Using these costly and time-consuming courses as a barrier, those in the education establishment "maintain low standards and high barriers at the same time," as Secretary of Education Rod Paige has aptly put it.

Factual studies show no correlation between taking these courses and successful teaching. Private schools are able to get good teachers by hiring people who never took any such courses. That is where our Williams graduate finally found a job.

The very people in the education establishment who maintain barriers to keep out teachers are the ones constantly telling us what a shortage of teachers there is -- and how more money is needed. This is a scam that has worked for years and will probably work for more years to come.

Ayn Rand knew that big government ruins all it touches while freedom leads to incredible prosperity. I know, as did she, that the economy will roar to life if we liberate it from excessive taxation and abusive regulation. See the work of freedom in grocery stores filled with food, hospitals filled with lifesaving technology, and a computer industry filled with innovation. See the work of big government in power blackouts, failing schools and traffic jams. The more important the task, the more reason it should be handled by resourceful companies motivated by profit, not bumbling politicians motivated by power.

Past government leaders have failed to address the growing burdens American businesses carry. Inaction in the 1990s on problems such as growing health care costs, runaway junk lawsuits, insufficient energy and unreasonable business regulations now are forcing businesses to lay off employees.

The Bush administration came to office to solve problems — not pass them on to future generations. The president is working with Congress to create the conditions under which businesses can grow and create jobs.

The president's tort reform and medical liability reform will make our businesses more competitive. Junk lawsuits — especially the ones aimed at our doctors — might enrich trial lawyers, but they bankrupt good businesses and put blue-collar Americans out of work.

As far as this nonsense that the draft eligibility rule isn't really part of the current agreement as has been reported in some places, [former NFL assistant general counsel David] Cornwell points out that the NFL and NFL Players Association wrote the rule into the constitution and by-laws in 1988 (allowing Barry Sanders to enter after his third year instead of four full years). Why wasn't it in the CBA originally? Because there was no CBA at the time. The league was coming off its 1987 work stoppage. But Paragraph 1 of the CBA adopts the constitution and by-laws, including the draft eligibility rule.

This Agreement represents the complete understanding of the parties on all subjects covered herein, and there will be no change in the terms and conditions of this Agreement without mutual consent. Except as otherwise provided * * * the NFLPA and the Management Council waive all rights to bargain with one another concerning any subject covered or not covered in this Agreement for the duration of this Agreement, including the provisions of the NFL Constitution and Bylaws; provided, however, that if any proposed change in the NFL Constitution and Bylaws during the term of this Agreement could significantly affect the terms and conditions of employment of NFL players, then the Management Council will give the NFLPA notice of and negotiate the proposed change in good faith.

The NFL and NFLPA also found through a ton of research that players who earn their college degrees fare much better and have much longer careers than players who don't. In other words, the NFL is like most industries. An apprenticeship helps. "It's a way more mental game than people think," [Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar] Arrington said. "I wouldn't have come out [of Penn State] as a sophomore because there's still too much education involved in the game, to become a better player. I mean, Ohio State is a great program. . . .

"Why are you in such a rush? You can't let greed blind you from having a good experience in college, man. The money is going to be there. I don't know what his reasoning is. Maybe there are some people who really, really need him to make money. But I look at it like this: He's been in the financial situation that he's been in thus far, so what's another year? What's another year or two?"

He's in a rush because he didn't want to go to school and probably went to the wrong school in the first place. He's in a rush because he wanted to go straight to the pros like his boy LeBron James. He's in a rush because, just as Arrington suspects, there are folks around him who want to get paid, who have seen him as a lottery ticket since he turned 15. So the NFL, because Clarett is in a rush, ought to capitulate and take on not just this kid, but everybody who'll rush in once the flood gates are open? At a time when patrons and viewers and sponsors are demanding more standards, Clarett and his supporters want fewer standards.

There will be irreparable harm if a stay is not granted. Already, consumers have registered more than 50 million telephone numbers onto the registry. By doing this, millions of consumers have indicated that they find unwanted telemarketing calls to be abusive and they want them stopped. Again, as this Court noted, “protecting the well-being, tranquility, and privacy of the home is of the highest order in a free and civilized society.” Order at 20. The Rule’s registry provisions that protect consumers were scheduled to take effect on October 1,
2003. If this Court’s Order is not stayed, these consumers will continue, after that date, to receive abusive telemarketing calls. There is no remedy for the countless intrusions on privacy such abusive calls will impose on these consumers during the time an appeal in this case is pending.

But two years before that 1993 agreement was signed, Eric Swann, a 300-pound defensive lineman who had been out of high school in Lillington, N.C., for only two years, was drafted by the Arizona Cardinals with the sixth pick in the first round of the 1991 draft.

Swann, who never enrolled in college, had been playing semipro football for the Bay State Titans, according to the Cardinals media guide, while lugging pipe for an electric company and running errands for a restaurant.

The three-year rule had been inserted in the N.F.L. constitution in 1990, but when Swann's eligibility for the draft developed in 1991, the N.F.L. was involved in other legal cases, notably those involving Freeman McNeil and Marvin Powell. It chose to ignore Swann's situation. Despite chronic knee injuries, Swann, a Pro Bowl alternate in 1993, endured for a decade with the Cardinals and the Carolina Panthers.

The N.F.L. will argue that Swann's arrival predated the 1993 collective bargaining agreement, but it remains a precedent that could haunt the league in the Clarett case. Why is the three-year rule so vital now, the judge may want to know, when Swann was out of high school for only two years when he was drafted?

Rather than harass those who voted against creating a federal "do not call" list, I'm inclined to recognize these members of Congress as profiles in courage for recognizing that this sort of thing is simply not a proper responsibility of the federal government. There are voluntary, albeit imperfect, private do not call list, as well as numerous services and technologies that can block unsolicited calls. It is rare for a member of Congress to stand up and say a popular initiative is beyond the scope of federal power. On such rare occasions, we should applaud those who stand on such principle.

“As fast as the world's computing infrastructure is growing, vulnerability to attack is growing faster still,” said Dan Geer [the principal author of CCIA’s paper]. “Microsoft’s attempts to tightly integrate myriad applications with its operating system have significantly contributed to excessive complexity and vulnerability. This deterioration of security compounds when nearly all computers rely on a single operating system subject to the same vulnerabilities the world over.”

* * *

“This report underscores and explains many of the dangers that we have warned of for some time,” said Ed Black, President and CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “Microsoft’s monopoly threatens consumers in a number of ways, but it is clear that it is now also a threat to our security, our safety, and even our national security.”

I have often said that the two people who have most profoundly impacted my thinking on economics are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. At Christmas I sometimes annoy some of my more liberal Hollywood friends by sending them a gift of Mr. Friedman's classic economic primer, "Free to Choose." What I learned from Messrs. Friedman and Smith is a lesson that every political leader should never forget: that when the heavy fist of government becomes too overbearing and intrusive, it stifles the unlimited wealth creation process of a free people operating under a free enterprise system.

And that is the essence of the economic and fiscal crisis that confronts the state of California today. Over the past five years our state budget has grown nearly three times the pace of inflation. Our debt burden has risen by more than the other 49 states combined. The matrix of onerous regulations we impose on property owners and businesses has made the cost of doing business in California almost twice as high as in neighboring states. Our tax rates have become among the highest in the nation.

And perhaps worst of all our governor, Gray Davis, has created a counterproductive culture in Sacramento where businesses and entrepreneurs that dare make a profit are treated as if they are enemies of the state. Mr. Davis says he wants jobs, but he has done everything possible to chase away job creators. Thanks to the economic policies of this administration, for the first time in California history more native-born Americans are leaving this state than are moving here. No one would confuse the destructive economic policies of Gov. Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante with the pro-growth ideas of Milton Friedman or Adam Smith.

California does not have a taxing problem, it has a spending problem.

Southern Methodist University shut down a bake sale Wednesday in which cookies were offered for sale at different prices, depending on the buyer's race or gender.

The sale was organized by the Young Conservatives of Texas, who said it was intended as a protest of affirmative action.

A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks.

Members of the conservative group said they meant no offense and were only trying to protest the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions.

Similar sales have been held by College Republican chapters at colleges in at least five other states since February.

A black student filed a complaint with SMU, saying the sale was offensive. SMU officials said they halted the event after 45 minutes because it created a potentially unsafe situation.

"This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created."

The sale drew a crowd outside the student center and several students engaged in a shouting match, Moore said.

David C. Rushing, 23, a law student and chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU and for the state, said the event didn't get out of hand. At most, a dozen students gathered around the table of cookies and Rice Krispies treats, he said.

"We copied what's been done at multiple campuses around the country to illustrate our opinion of affirmative action and how we think it's unfair," he said.

Matt Houston, a 19-year-old sophomore, called the group's price list offensive.

"My reaction was disgust because of the ignorance of some SMU students," said Houston, who is black. "They were arguing that affirmative action was solely based on race. It's not based on race. It's based on bringing a diverse community to a certain organization."

Under republican government, the citizens select official representatives, for defined terms, with specific powers. The officials then administer the government. The people may not demand the removal of an elected official unless his actions are manifestly illegal. This is so even if the majority favors the recall. The requirements of the constitution elevate the rule of law over the short-term desires of the people.

In contrast to a republic, a democracy runs on direct citizen action. The citizens may assemble, in the voting booth, and exercise their power directly, by affirming particular policies. This is what voters do when they remove sitting officials in the mid-term, in defiance of the terms mandated by the constitution.

The recall is a solidly democratic action. Power is no longer delegated by the people, but exercised directly, in the form of popularity contests that may descend on an official at any moment. This is a repudiation of republicanism in favor of democracy.

The clause in California’s constitution that permits this is a deadly concession to democracy, and a repudiation of the constitution’s own principles. A constitution that allows the people to override its own mandates provides no means to stop such popular referenda from becoming the norm. Such a constitution sows the seeds of its own destruction.

I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote.

But what I cannot get over, is the singular fact that athletes in many other sports regularly turn professional before their 18th birthdays. Here in North America, we've been conditioned to simply shrug when we see teenage girls become instant millionaires after stepping of the balance beam, ice rink, or tennis court.

In Europe, professional soccer teams regularly sign boys before their 18th birthday, and most maintain a feeder system of players that can include local pre-teens who aspire to one day don their kits as professionals. In Canada, parents enthusiastically ship their sons across the country in their early teens to play major junior hockey -- a de facto professional league that is acknowledged as the best path to the NHL.

Are the young men who play college football any less professional than their counterparts in the minor leagues of any other sport? I don't think so, and the rules and regulations governing their conduct ought to be radically changed to acknowledge that fact.

At bottom, college football players at larger institutions essentially function as full time employees, albeit ones charged with the responsibility of representing thier institution and helping to raise its public profile. It's far past time that their work as professionals be recognized by the rules of the NCAA, and the rule of law as well.

A group of surgeons in Yakima, Washington, has settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it increased the cost of health care for consumers in Yakima by jointly fixing prices in contract negotiations with insurers in violation of federal laws. The proposed consent order with Surgical Specialists of Yakima, P.L.L.C. (SSY) and two of its members – Cascade Surgical Partners, Inc., P.S. (CSP) and Yakima Surgical Associates, Inc., P.S. (YSA) – is designed to remedy SSY’s allegedly anticompetitive collective-bargaining practices. According to the FTC, such conduct is detrimental to consumers in the Yakima, Washington, area and has resulted in higher prices for services SSY’s doctors provide.

Delivering a 20-minute policy speech at a park along [New York's] East River, Mr. Clark said he would take the money that Mr. Bush gave the wealthy in tax cuts and create three funds: for homeland security, business tax incentives and relief for state governments.

Mr. Clark, who declared his candidacy last week, said he would allocate $40 billion for improvement of homeland security and the creation of security-related jobs such as police, fire and the Coast Guard.

Another $40 billion would be earmarked for state governments struggling under federal tax cuts, and $20 billion would be used as tax incentives for businesses that hire new employees.

The plan, Mr. Clark said, "will not increase the deficit. It simply moves $100 billion from tax cuts for households making more than $200,000 a year and directs it into job-creating funds that will help middle-income and working-class families."

"This job creation plan is part of my overall approach — one that I will be explaining over the course of the campaign," he said.

U.N. atomic experts have found traces of weapons-grade uranium at a second site in Iran, diplomats said Thursday. The development heightened international concerns about the nature of Tehran's nuclear activities.

The diplomats said minute quantities of the substance were found by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Kalay-e Electric Co., just west of Tehran. They did not specify where at the site the uranium was found.

Earlier this year, U.N. inspectors found weapons-grade highly enriched uranium particles at a plant in Natanz that is supposed to produce only a lower grade for energy purposes.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said it had been informed of the new discovery and was evaluating the report.

Iran says traces of the new material were imported on equipment purchased from abroad, while the United States and its allies say it is further of evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

"These are part of a long-standing pattern of evasions and deception to disguise the true nature and purpose of Iran's nuclear activities," said Scott McClellan, spokesman for President Bush.

The U.N. agency has set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to prove that its nuclear program is for energy purposes, as it claims, and not for weapons.

Activists are poised to ask a federal appeals court to overturn a Federal Communications Commission order allowing Univision Communications Inc. to buy Hispanic Broadcasting Corp.

Though the National Hispanic Policy Institute has yet to make a final decision about whether to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to intervene, Arthur Belendiuk, a lawyer who represents the New York advocacy group, said Tuesday, Sept. 23, he fully expects to force the FCC to defend its order. "This is not the last you have heard of this case," said Belendiuk, a partner in Washington law firm Smithwick & Belendiuk. "There are serious legal flaws in the FCC decision."

BAPP will be authorized to contract with any payer on behalf of physicians whose minimum payment requirements are at or below the payer's offer. The BAPP messenger also will notify those physicians whose minimum payment demand exceeds the offer that they have one opportunity to "opt in" to a contract containing the payer's offer. This notice will not reveal the number or percentage of BAPP physicians whose payment levels met or were below the payer's offer. BAPP also might provide objective information to its members to help them understand the contract terms. You have represented that BAPP and its messenger will not recommend that the physicians accept or reject an offer, opine on the appropriateness of price or other competitive terms, present contract information that suggests an opinion on whether the physicians should accept a particular contract term, or otherwise attempt to facilitate any coordination among the physicians on such terms.

Unfortunately, the tobacco companies seem to have learned nothing from their experience with anti-smoking zealots and are actually opening the door to lawsuits against their food divisions. They don't seem to understand that their enemies are not driven by genuine concerns about health or even by greed, but by ideology. They bring a religious fervor to their efforts that combine a Marxist hatred of capitalism with extraordinary naivete about human nature, mixed together with a tort liability system that is eager to award large damages based on the flimsiest of evidence.

Nevertheless, Kraft Foods, a division of Altria Group (formerly known as tobacco giant Philip Morris), thinks it can buy off its prosecutors by cutting portion sizes, reducing fat and sugar in its products, and scaling back marketing to children. These may all be worthwhile things to do, but to its enemies it is virtually an admission of guilt. Just as warning labels on cigarettes proved to be no defense against tobacco lawsuits, neither will Kraft's pre-emptive capitulation. It will only embolden its enemies and provide new lines of legal attack.

Adelstein said the "FCC is turning a deaf ear to millions of Spanish-speaking Americans."

"By allowing this transaction to go forward with no protections for consumers, the FCC denies Spanish speakers their right to receive a diversity of perspectives over the nation's airwaves," Mr. Adelstein said.

Had Clarett been eligible for the 2003 [NFL] Draft, it is almost certain he would have been selected in the beginning of the First Round and would have agreed to a contract and signing bonus worth millions of dollars.

Suspended Ohio State tailback Maurice Clarett sued the NFL on Tuesday, asking a judge to throw out a league rule preventing players from entering the draft until they have been out of high school three years.

Clarett, who rushed for 1,237 yards and led Ohio State to a national championship last year as a freshman, is not eligible for the draft until 2005 under current rules.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, claims the NFL rule violates antitrust law because it is separate from the NFL's current collective bargaining agreement with its players' union.

"The rule is a restraint of amateur athletes who were strangers to the collective bargaining process," the suit says.

In a staff report released today, the Federal Trade Commission’s State Action Task Force concludes that the scope of the antitrust state action doctrine has expanded dramatically since first articulated by the Supreme Court in 1943. The doctrine has become unmoored from its original objectives, the report concludes, and is frequently invoked to protect private commercial efforts with no relation to state policy. Accordingly, the “Report of the State Action Task Force” recommends a number of specific clarifications of the doctrine, including more rigorous application of the “clear articulation” and “active supervision” requirements.

“The state action doctrine can have significant benefits, but over-broad interpretations impose significant costs on consumers,” said FTC Chairman Timothy Muris. “The Task Force has identified instances in which parties with a direct financial interest in the regulated field have attempted to characterize their own protectionist efforts as the will of the state. The Supreme Court never intended to shield such conduct from antitrust enforcement.”

The report identifies recurrent areas of concerns in recent state action case law, and challenges the conventional wisdom that the anticompetitive impact of an over-broad interpretation of the doctrine can be limited to a single state.

“The Task Force Report confirms once again why exemptions from the antitrust laws must be construed narrowly,” noted Todd Zywicki, Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning. “Extending the protection of the state action doctrine to parties operating under a vague grant of authority, with little or no state supervision, not only harms consumers in the state in question, but frequently results in harm to consumers outside the state imposing the restraint.”

An Air Force translator at the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists has been charged with espionage and aiding the enemy, a military spokesman said Tuesday.

Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi is being held at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, facing 32 criminal charges, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said.

Al-Halabi worked as an Arabic language translator at the prison camp for al-Qaida and Taliban suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Shavers said. The Air Force enlisted man knew the Muslim chaplain at the prison arrested earlier this month, but it's unclear if the two arrests are linked, Shavers said.

The translator was arrested more than six weeks before the chaplain, Shavers said.

Al-Halabi is charged with nine counts related to espionage, three counts of aiding the enemy, 11 counts of disobeying a lawful order, and nine counts of making a false official statement.

Al-Halabi was based at Travis Air Force Base in California and assigned to a logistics unit there, Shavers said.

Pentagon officials said an investigation into possible security breaches at Guantanamo Bay continues.

In an attempt to make a law professor in the other Washington look silly, a popular restaurant here is requiring customers to sign a liability waiver before they eat a fat-by-design dessert called The Bulge.

The waiver, a semi-serious gimmick that might be the first of its kind in the United States, is displayed in poster-sized dimensions near the front door of the 5 Spot, an eatery on Seattle's affluent Queen Anne Hill.

"I will not impose any of sort of obesity-related lawsuit against the 5 Spot or consider any similar type of frivolous legislation created by a hungry trial lawyer," the release says. After a diner signs it, a waiter hauls out a sugarcoated, deep-fried, ice cream-swaddled, caramel-drizzled, whipped-cream-anointed banana.

"We thought, what can we do to illustrate how stupid it is to make restaurants responsible for monitoring the eating habits of Americans?" said Peter Levy, co-owner of the 5 Spot. "We came up with the most fattening and delicious dessert we could think of."

In the week since The Bulge appeared on the menu (and has been ordered by more than 150 patrons, most of them women), Levy said he has been besieged by calls from foreign radio stations. "They all ask the same question: 'What are you crazy Americans doing now?' "

The lawyer being mocked by the fat banana is John F. Banzhaf III, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University Law School. He is a successful anti-tobacco litigator who recently turned his attention to America's obesity epidemic.

To my mind, the most important thing about Clark is that he was a Rhodes Scholar. Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge ambition and no concept of what to do with it.

[W]hy (other than having such a large population) has the US been able to produce constantly such outstanding inviduals (sic) in all of these categories? Because the meritocratic order taps the vast potential inhrent (sic) in that great unwashed mass once consigned to irrelevance by the old aristocracies.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a Consumer Alert, “After a Disaster: Repairing Your Home,” that warns consumers of potential “home repair rip-off artists” who may overcharge, perform shoddy work, or skip town without finishing the job. After a natural disaster, the demand for qualified contractors usually exceeds the supply. Because many legitimate companies are booked for months, frustrated consumers may not take the necessary precautions when hiring contractors.

If you are an intelligent, thoughtful person who cares about the developing world, there are two possible opinions for you to hold about brands and sweatshops.

The first was best articulated by the Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, well known in activist circles for his work with Bono on the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign. In the New York Times in June 1997, Sachs wrote: “my concern is not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are too few…those are precisely the jobs that were the stepping stones for Singapore and Hong Kong, and those are the jobs that have to come to Africa to get them out of back-breaking rural poverty.” In other words, sweatshops and all they represent are a positive symbol of economic development, part of the reason that lives are getting better in those countries which have welcomed Nike, Reebok, adidas and all the other alleged globalization “exploiters.”

We may feel guilty about less well-paid people in factories on the other side of the globe producing consumer products on our behalf, but the truth is that working for a multinational corporation will almost certainly provide better pay and conditions than any other type of work that’s available. It’s frequently the only way that women can escape the second-class citizen status that is their lot in many traditional rural areas, and it creates not just jobs but a lasting legacy of new skills and technological expertise that is the foundation for future prosperity, leading to better educational provision, higher standards of public health and longer life expectancy.

If you take this robust view of the benefits of globalization, you will resist the simplistic bans, boycotts and bellyaching that so disfigures much discussion of this issue. You will resist them because you know that by trying to close down sweatshops and “eliminate” child labor (the vast majority of which occurs in the rural agricultural sector, incidentally), you will probably be throwing young women -- and yes, girls -- into poverty, oppression, the sex trade or all three. . .

But if this line of argument is too rich a sauce for your liberal sensibilities, try the second sensible opinion that you might hold about brands and sweatshops. The next time someone throws the Naomi Klein book at you, respond by saying: no logo, no knowledge of what’s going on in the developing world.” Global brands make the connection on a mass scale between consumer choices “here” and economic and social realities “there.” Brands are a battering ram for positive social change. In part, positive social change is a natural process that goes hand in hand with economic development, in the same way that social conditions in the rich West have improved since the Victorian era. But in the developing world today, it’s happening more quickly than it otherwise would specifically because of corporations’ need to protect brand value by meeting consumers’ expectations.

So whichever way you look at it, brands are not the enemy of those wanting to make world a better place, but their greatest ally.

The Club for Growth is a fiscally conservative organization with links to all sorts of Republicans. Its president, Stephen Moore, is not a homophobe, by all accounts. But like many tolerant conservatives, he has to work and cooperate with people who cannot abide homosexuals and will not tolerate them in any positions of authority. So he fires a gay man in charge of a state chapter, after complaints from "pro-family" (i.e. anti-gay) groups and leaders. This isn't a huge story in and of itself. But I think it does show how hard it is for any openly gay person to work or cooperate with much of the Republican apparatus. If you're closeted, you can rise to the very, very top. If you're honest and principled, you're finished. These people insist they're not prejudiced. They just support people who are.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said the Bush administration is trying to impose a "radical right-wing agenda" on the United States and is attempting to dismantle social programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

Clinton made the comments at a fund-raiser for Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

Clinton targeted the president's handling of the economy, and said the Bush administration was out to extinguish the legacy of her husband, Bill Clinton, who was in the White House from 1993 to 2001, and other Democratic presidents.

"I've got to realize it's nothing personal," Clinton said. "They want to undo Johnson, Truman, Franklin Roosevelt. They want to undo the New Deal ... It boggles the mind."

kangaroo court of liberal-leaning journalists and Democratic state treasurers charged and convicted former New York Stock Exchange CEO Dick Grasso with an unpardonable sin — success.

This collection of class-envy warriors put such relentless pressure on the NYSE that Grasso was finally forced by his board to resign. Grasso, of course, was the man whose Herculean efforts were behind the reopening of the stock exchange only four business days after the terrorist bombing of downtown New York. But the so-called titans of finance who sit on the NYSE board were so mau-maued by the media and political onslaught that they actually sided against the man who inflicted the first major blow on Osama's terrorism.

There was no scandal here. Dick Grasso accepted a big pay package endorsed on two occasions by the NYSE board in return for 35 years of successful service. What is scandalous is that key Big Board officials — like Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs, Philip Purcell of Morgan Stanley, and William Harrison of JP Morgan Chase — succumbed to the pressure of newspaper headlines and abandoned Grasso.

Not only did Grasso start America's economic recovery immediately after 9/11, he also saved the NYSE from a late-1990s assault by the Nasdaq. At the time, the technology stock market threatened to induce numerous Big Board companies to switch their listings, and at one point cautioned that it might even take over the NYSE. But it was the diminutive son of Italian immigrants who defended NYSE floor brokers and retail investors from a new era of impersonal electronic trading. Some thanks he got: Many of these same floor brokers helped push Grasso over the edge.

Let's be very clear about this: Grasso has done nothing wrong. Nothing, that is, except believe his own board when they offered him a large pay package for his long-term service.

Instead of offering us a new vision of global development, on the scale of Winston Churchill's historic 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech, the current administration has reduced its foreign policy to a vehicle of crisis micro-management.

President Putin was quick to phone George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. But as the Bush administration built its case for war against Iraq, he preferred the company of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, not to mention the business of Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, Russia continues to supply Iran with nuclear technology and has done next to nothing to thwart the North Koreans' pursuit of Russian technology to advance their intercontinental-ballistic-missile program.

Indeed, President Putin has been playing a clever game of reaping benefits from both sides of every major international crisis. While the Russian Foreign Ministry kindly offers the U.S. its mediating services, Russia's military and security wings work behind the scenes to bolster rogue regimes, thus adding value to Mr. Putin's bargaining chips at the geopolitical table.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court's antitrust ruling against Visa and MasterCard, dealing a blow to the credit card associations' efforts to prevent member banks from issuing cards from rivals American Express Co. and Discover.

Visa and MasterCard both said they would likely appeal the decision.

The decision was made by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The suit, which argued that a rule by Visa and MasterCard preventing banks from issuing credit cards from their rivals hurts competition and stifles innovation, had been brought by the U.S Department of Justice.

If ultimately upheld, the decision would be a major boost to American Express and Morgan Stanley's Discover, allowing them to put their cards in the hands of more consumers by striking deals with the tens of thousands of banks that Visa and MasterCard have as members.

"The defendants have failed to show that the anti-competitive effects of their exclusionary rules are outweighed by pro-competitive benefits," Judge Pierre Leval wrote in the 23-page decision by a three-judge panel.

"Today's decision means that consumers can enjoy the benefits of competition by having more choices for their credit needs," said Hewitt Pate, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division.

Visa and MasterCard have argued that even though banks do not issue the cards of American Express and Discover, those companies are not prevented from reaching consumers through their own marketing.

Little did she know that the state requires an "independent contractor's license," which entails no additional qualifications, merely a $65 fee. This license is, as far as I can tell, purely a shakedown. You pay your money and give them your address. The license has nothing to do with either professional qualifications (that's the cosmetology license) or tax payments (that's another state department). But those $65 fees add up. And if you don't have the independent contractor's license, you get socked with a $500 fine--precious working capital Denise had planned to use for supplies. (Her landlord got hit with a $1,000 fine for each contractor who lacked the required license.) She is not a happy entrepreneur.

After a bit of rooting around, I managed to find some some mention of the independent contractor's license on the state cosmetology commission's website. But it would be very easy to overlook that information, which isn't featured on the home page. From a first glance, you'd think the commission was concerned with professional qualifications and protecting the public from bad perms and mangled manicures. But you'd be wrong.

This harassment is happening in business-loving, entrepreneur-celebrating Texas. It persists because this sort of petty bureaucratic hassle--and the associated hidden taxes--is so routine that it doesn't constitute "news" and hence never becomes a political cause. But it's stifling business expansion just when the economy most needs it, and it's punishing bold, productive people.

This agreement included provision for the Palestinian elections which took place in early 1996, and Arafat was elected President of the Palestine Authority. Like other Arab regimes in the area, however, Arafat's governing style tended to be more dictatorial than democratic. When the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel in 1996, the peace process slowed down considerably. Much depends upon the nature of the new Israeli government, which will result from the elections to be held in 1999.

After voters in this caffeine capital rejected a proposed 10-cent tax on espresso drinks, cafe owners celebrated with beer, wine and — what else? — lattes.

With 97 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday, 69 percent of voters opposed the tax. The initiative served a jolt of controversy to an otherwise sleepy off-year primary election.

"You can't tax coffee. It just doesn't work," said coffee shop owner Jeff Babcock, celebrating the victory at a downtown espresso store.

The measure would have taxed espresso drinks a dime per cup, with the revenue going to fund preschool and day-care programs. The tax would have been levied on any drink with half an ounce or more of espresso.

Initiative sponsor John Burbank said people who spend $3 to $5 on coconut mochas or iced vanilla lattes could afford an extra dime for kids. "It's a disappointing vote," he said.

--Tomorrow millions of California consumers and businesses will begin receiving forms allowing them to claim up to $1.1 billion in benefits from the settlement of an antitrust class action lawsuit against Microsoft Corporation. Over 10 million forms will be mailed during the next 60 days. Claim forms may also be obtained immediately online at www.microsoftcalsettlement.com or by calling 1-800-203-9995.

California consumers and businesses will now have an opportunity to recover a substantial portion of the prices they paid for all of their Microsoft operating system, spreadsheet and word processing software purchased during a seven year period ending in December 2001. Consumers can recover the first $100 of their benefits just by listing their eligible Microsoft product purchases on a claim form and signing their names. Even larger recoveries will be obtained by those who provide documentation of more than five purchases of eligible Microsoft products.

The settlement is expected to provide substantial relief to the thousands of California businesses whose technology budgets have been cut drastically in recent years, according to Eugene Crew and Richard Grossman, co-lead attorneys for the consumer class. Grossman observed, "Medium and large businesses will recover tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits. Even the smallest businesses are likely to recover thousands of dollars." He added, "A computer systems manager would be derelict in his duties if he passed up this opportunity to beef up his technology budget. The claims process is pretty simple so we expect business owners and executives to quickly file their claims and pass along the news of this fabulous opportunity to their colleagues."

After years of antitrust litigation directed at Microsoft, this is the first time that Californians will be able to recover the overcharges that Microsoft allegedly imposed upon its customers as a result of its monopoly in key software markets. While prior antitrust claims against Microsoft focused only upon its monopoly in desktop operating system software, the California class action settlement also covers alleged overcharges in word processing, spreadsheet and office productivity suite software.

The police chief in the dangerous "Sunni Triangle" town of Khaldiya was killed in a roadside ambush as he was returning to his home in Fallujah, scene of rising criminal violence and guerrilla resistance to the American occupation of Iraq. . .

Policemen from Khaldiya said they have frequently come under attack because of their perceived association with the American occupation force, despite the American withdrawal from inside the cities in July. Many in the town, they said, shunned policemen.

Monday's killing of Ali underlines the risks facing Iraqis in the area, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Iraq, when they join U.S.-backed security forces that the Americans have set up with the aim of allowing them to gradually take over security.

In many cases, they are seen as collaborators who sold out in exchange for an income at a time when unemployment in Iraq is as high as 60 percent.

"We are not in the police to serve the Americans, but to protect our community," said Abdel-Salam Elaiwah, a policeman from Khaldiya. "Those who attack us are just thieves."

Lawyers from Cozen O'Connor filed the suit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York but eventually hope to consolidate it with separate suits filed in New York and Washington directly by the families of 9/11 victims, Cozen partner Elliott Feldman said. . .

Feldman said his clients have paid $4 billion in reserve claims and there are more than 300 wrongful-death claims and more than 100 personal injury claims. He said the potential damages from those claims are "dozens of billions" of dollars. That number is tripled because the money sought in the lawsuit can be trebled under RICO and antitrust legislation. And then Feldman said there is another increase when factoring in punitive damages, leading to the $300 billion figure mentioned in the complaint.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom Monday dismissed comments by a cabinet minister that Israel could kill Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, but the remarks served to increase international pressure for caution.

[* * *]

Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom, responding to Olmert's comments, told foreign journalists at a briefing:

"There will be no immediate action. It's not official policy of the Israeli government...We don't speak about killing (him). We didn't speak about it before, and we don't speak about it today."

RAGE THOUGH THE ARAB WORLD?

The United States has voiced opposition to any attempt to kill or expel Arafat, moves that Secretary of State Colin Powell said would spread "rage throughout the Arab world."

Former President [Jimmy] Carter on Monday criticized Israeli threats to kill Yasser Arafat saying they send "a wave of increasing animosity not only through the Palestinians but the entire world."

Carter told The Associated Press that statements by Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials are "totally contrary to the position of the U.S. government" and U.S.-backed road map for peace in the Middle East even rules out a threat to exile the Palestinian leader.

Speaking by phone from his home in Plains, Ga., the former president said Arafat could be more forceful in condemning violence, but can't control Hamas, which is responsible for scores of suicide bombings in Israel. The State Department calls Hamas a terrorist organization.

"I don't think he is in charge of everything, but I know he can be a stronger leader," Carter said, however.

But Anoush Ehtesami, professor of international relations at Britain's University of Durham, said some in Iran's military wanted to quit the NPT and follow Pakistan and India's example.

"The lesson Iran has learned...is that you can have a clandestine program, and when you complete it you declare your nuclear status and after a little period of economic sanctions the world moves on," he told the BBC.

Federal agents arrested a 25-year-old member of a co-op dedicated to peace and environmentalism in connection with arson fires and vandalism that did $1 million in damage to a Hummer dealership.

Joshua Thomas Connole, of Pomona, was arrested at home Friday, said Cpl. Rudy Lopez, a West Covina police spokesman. He was booked for investigation of felony arson and vandalism and jailed $825,000 bail.

The fires Aug. 22 gutted a parts warehouse and destroyed 20 Hummer H2 sport utility vehicles at a West Covina dealership. Another 20 Hummers and several Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs were badly damaged by fire and spray paint.

Three other dealerships and at least four privately owned vehicles in the area also were damaged during the vandalism spree.

Words such as "ELF," "Fat, Lazy Americans" and "I (heart) pollution" were painted on the SUVs.

"ELF" stands for Earth Liberation Front, a loose association of militant environmentalists. The group, which has taken responsibility for other acts of arson and vandalism, claimed in an unsigned e-mail that the SUV fires were "ELF actions."

Families who have taken the federal compensation have, so far, received average awards of $1.6 million, tax-free. Families of the United States personnel murdered by Al Qaeda in the Kenya and Tanzania terror attacks of 1998 received, on average, nothing. Families of the several hundred United States military personnel killed in Afghanistan fighting to destroy al Qaeda, and killed in Iraq fighting at least in part against terrorism, received, on average, $9,000, taxable.

Now some 9/11 families are saying $1.6 million isn't enough. Set aside whether they should be receiving anything from taxpayers, given the myriad other circumstances in which Americans die in various horrible events every bit as traumatic and devastating to their families, who receive nothing at all. Assume for the sake of argument that something about 9/11 justifies offering victims' estates a very large special payment. Yet some 9/11 families are saying very large is not large enough. This is greed; it is employing the memory of lost loved ones for gold-digging.

But we need a lawsuit to find out the truth, some families say. Every single person in the world already knows the central truth of 9/11, that United States airport and airplane security was poor. There isn't any hidden secret about how knives got through shoddy security checks, or flimsy cockpit doors were kicked in. We were all going through those checkpoints and riding on those planes, all as a society sharing the risk--including the federal judge who himself was getting on those planes though he now says it could have reasonably been foreseen they would be crashed into buildings. How odd he himself didn't foresee it.

If the families for whom $6.1 million is not enough persist in their avaricious desire to sue--and if the lawyers who would get shares of court awards, but get no shares of federal fund awards, persist in their ghoulish desire to encourage such suits--the country's two largest airlines, and largest aircraft manufacturer, may fail. This will cause significant harm the United States. And it seems unlikely that the dying thoughts of the noble victims of 9/11 were, "I hope my survivors really screw the United States for money."

Three Fort Worth companies, who own and operate retail automotive replacement glass stores, today were charged with participating in conspiracies to raise and maintain the prices of automotive replacement glass in the central North Texas and Lubbock areas of Texas, the Department of Justice announced.

Windshield Sales and Service Inc., Windshield Sales & Service of Dallas Inc., and Mesquite Auto Glass Inc. were charged in U.S. District Court in Lubbock, with conspiring with others in central North Texas from February 1998 until May 1998 to raise and maintain prices for the purchase of automotive replacement glass. Additionally, Windshield Sales & Service Inc. was charged with conspiring with competitors to raise and maintain the prices of automotive replacement glass in the Lubbock area from March 1998 until May 1998.

Automotive replacement glass is sold to retail customers for the replacement of windshields, side glass, back glass, and other types of automotive glass in pick-up trucks, passenger vehicles, and other vehicles.

"Today's charges reflect the Division's commitment to prosecute those who seek to deny the benefit of competition to American consumers," said James M. Griffin, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division's Criminal Enforcement Program.

In settling with Kasky, Nike has ratified the constitutional segregation of commercial speech, even if the settlement technically admits no legal fault and establishes no formal legal precedent. We have seen time and again how a single settlement empowers the parasites of the American trial bar to file greater and bolder complaints. It is only a matter of time, perhaps just days or weeks, before other major companies (including those that filed briefs in support of Nike) find themselves at the mercy of California’s citizens, each of whom possess the power under state law to sue any company they dislike for whatever reason.

Defenders of Nike’s decision will offer pragmatic arguments. They’ll claim the cost of refuting Kasky’s claim through discovery, trial, and another round of appeals is too much for Nike to bear, and that it’s in the best interest of Nike and its shareholders to pay Kasky off now and live to fight another day. This form of pragmatism is known as appeasement: If we give our enemy what he wants now, maybe he’ll leave us alone.

Yet reason dictates that appeasement almost always leads to more appeasement, and ultimately to wholesale capitulation. Whatever short-term benefit Nike gained from this settlement will be lost under the weight of the numerous lawsuits that are sure to come from other opponents of the company. Nike’s own press release justifying its settlement with Kasky underscores this point: Nike says that due to the difficulties posed by the California law, it has decided not to issue its corporate responsibility report externally for 2002 and will continue to limit its participation in public events and media engagement in California. What could possibly be more important to Nike than its freedom to participate in public events and media engagement in California, or any other state in the union?

God forbid that people get their "news and information" (as the local news shows put it) from sources other than government-certified journalists. This contempt for unorthodox sources is particularly disingenuous coming from [Schwartzman] whose organization supposedly "promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media of today and tomorrow."

The very silliness of having to declare Howard Stern a journalist reveals how ridiculous and antithetical to the free flow of ideas our broadcast regulation is. As [CBS late night host Craig] Kilbourn points out in his [New York] Times op-ed, cable shows don't suffer from the same constraints. Like print, they're free to provide whatever interviews, information, and entertainment, they think will serve their audience, without government editors telling them what to include or omit. That's called freedom of speech and the press. It ought to apply to radio and over-the-air TV as well--with no Stern exceptions needed.

Sen. Edward Kennedy plans to do everything he can to defeat the proposed use of school vouchers in the nation's capital, his spokesman said Thursday.

(Reuters) - Nike Inc. said on Friday it will settle a lawsuit that had become a constitutional battle over whether free-speech rights protected a publicity campaign by the company to counter accusations that Asian sweatshops made its footwear.

Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike, the world's largest maker of athletic shoes, said it will pay an additional $1.5 million on workplace-related programs over the next three years. The sum will be paid to Fair Labor Association, a Washington D.C.-based group that promotes workers' education and economic welfare.

The lawsuit was filed in 1998 by Marc Kasky, a San Francisco consumer activist, under a California consumer protection law aimed at eliminating unfair competition and false advertising.

The lawsuit claimed Nike misled the public about working conditions for its Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian laborers, and that its statements amounted to false advertising.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June cleared the way for the suit to proceed by refusing to decide whether the U.S. Constitution's free-speech rights protected Nike's publicity campaign.

Death came from the skies. A building --a symbol of the nation-- collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11.

But the year was 1973, the building Chile's White House, La Moneda, and the event a coup staged by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Now, after decades of silence, Chileans are protesting in the streets for the reversal of amnesty laws that block prosecutions for the killings after the coup. The face of Salvador Allende, the overthrown Socialist president, is everywhere, and now behind La Moneda is a new statue of him wrapped in the Chilean flag. Chile's president, Ricardo Lagos, is proposing a truth commission to look into reports of torture, special judges to find the disappeared, new pensions for victims' families and an amnesty program for former soldiers who tell where the bodies are buried.

Chile is not the only country in South America focused today on the crimes of decades ago. In Peru, the truth commission investigating the guerrilla wars of the 1980's and 1990's just released a report concluding that more than 69,000 people were killed or made to disappear. In Argentina, a new president has just annulled two amnesty laws that the military forced through Congress after the "dirty war" ended in 1983.

In the United States, Sept. 11 will forever be a day to remember our victims of terrorism. Yet our nation's hands have not always been clean, and it is important to recall Chile's Sept. 11, too.

In the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, the view of the United States as a victim of terrorism that deserved the world's sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.

"A lot of people had sympathy for Americans around the time of 9/11, but that's changed," said Cathy Hearn, 31, a flight attendant from South Africa, expressing a view commonly heard in many countries. "They act like the big guy riding roughshod over everyone else."

Even at this low point, millions of people still see the United States as a beacon and support its policies, including the war in Iraq, and would, given the chance, be happy to become Americans themselves.

Some regions, especially Europe, are split in their view of America's role: The governments and, to a lesser extent, the public in former Soviet-bloc countries are much more favorably disposed to American power than the governments and the public in Western Europe, notably France and Germany.

[ * * * ]

Still, a widespread and fashionable view is that the United States is a classically imperialist power bent on controlling global oil supplies and on military domination.

That mood has been expressed in different ways by different people, from the hockey fans in Montreal who boo the American national anthem to the high school students in Switzerland who do not want to go to the United States as exchange students because America is not "in." Even among young people, it is not difficult to hear strong denunciations of American policy and sharp questioning of American motives.

"America has taken power over the world," said Dmitri Ostalsky, 25, a literary critic and writer in Moscow. "It's a wonderful country, but it seized power. It's ruling the world. America's attempts to rebuild all the world in the image of liberalism and capitalism are fraught with the same dangers as the Nazis taking over the world."

[W]hile the United States probably feels more threatened now than in 1989, when the cold war ended, Europe is broadly unconvinced of any imminent threat.

"There were deep structural forces before 9/11 that were pushing us apart," said John J. Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics." "In the absence of the Soviet threat or of an equivalent threat, there was no way that ties between us and Europe wouldn't be loosened.

"So, when the Bush Administration came to power, the question was whether it would make things better or worse, and I'd argue that it made them worse."

"In the cold war you could argue that American unilateralism had no cost," Professor Mearsheimer continued. "But as we're finding out with regard to Iraq, Iran and North Korea, we need the Europeans and we need institutions like the U.N. The fact is that the United States can't run the world by itself, and the problem is, we've done a lot of damage in our relations with allies, and people are not terribly enthusiastic about helping us now."

I’ve no doubt that if Seattle or Boston or Manhattan goes up in a bright white flash there will be those who blame it all on Bush. We squandered the world’s good will. We threw away the opportunity to atone, and lashed out. Really? You want to see lashing out? Imagine Kabul and Mecca and Baghdad and Tehran on 9/14 crowned with mushroom clouds: that’s lashing out. Imagine the President in the National Cathedral castigating Islam instead of sitting next to an Imam who's giving a homily. Mosques burned, oil fields occupied, smart bombs slamming into Syrian palaces. We could have gone full Roman on anyone we wanted, but we didn’t. And we won’t.

Which is why this war will be long.

[. . .]

Two years in; the rest of our lives to go.

Contrary to the leading pro-war voices, we will find that on many important fronts, American policy is failing miserably. Contrary to those who characterize America’s war as overly aggressive or unilateral, we will argue that the war has hardly begun. And contrary to those who argue that war is anathema to morality, we will argue that at root, the American reluctance to commit fully to war stems from a failure of moral clarity.

[I]t is not the rebuilding of Iraqi economic infrastructure, but the rebuilding of a government charged with the protection of Iraqi lives and property that should be a concern for American occupiers. As recent attacks on oil pipelines have demonstrated, insurgents will destroy any rebuilt infrastructure in the attempt to foil American success. It is the insurgents, then, who need to be targeted by a strong, American-led, military government. It was wrong to portray the Iraq war by the moniker “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” because its aim should have been to protect American lives. But if we intend to stay in Iraq, it is a government protecting Iraqi freedom that will be required, not one concerned with the impossible and undesirable task of creating and running a centrally planned economy.

From the beginning, the United States chose to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan, by exploiting the assistance of the Northern Alliance, rather than taking direct military control of Afghan territory. The inevitable result of this policy has been continued control of the vast majority of the country by a hodge-podge of warlords. This has meant that the pro-American Karzai government controls little beyond the region of Kabul. It has meant that warlords have been free to oppose the central government, fight among themselves, and permit the presence of terrorist groups often under the influence of foreign powers. Examples of this last include the resistance of the Iranian-linked forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in western Afghanistan, and the continued infiltration of Taliban forces into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan.

A South Korean protester killed himself during a clash with riot police protecting ministers meeting on Wednesday in the Mexican resort of Cancun to jump-start stalled world trade talks.

The middle-aged farmer, named by friends as Lee Kyung-hae, climbed onto a high security fence during a violent protest against the World Trade Organization and waved a banner that read "WTO Kills Farmers."

He then stabbed himself in the chest and later died in hospital. A friend said his suicide was an "act of sacrifice" to show his disgust at the WTO and its policies.

About 5,000 activists joined the protest and about two dozen broke through eight-foot-high metal barriers to attack police on the edge of Cancun's upscale hotel zone.

"We are going in. We are going in," a South African trade unionist screamed through a loudspeaker, urging protesters to storm a long strip of beach hotels and fast food restaurants.

Demonstrators threw chunks of paving stones, sticks, metal bars and bottles at police, who fought back with batons and tear gas. More than a dozen people were inured as police held off the protesters.

Charles D. McKinley had himself shipped from New York to Dallas in an airline cargo crate, startling his parents — and a deliveryman — when he broke out of the box outside their home.

"My husband asked him, `Man, what are you doing in this crate?' He said he was coming home," his mother told KDFW-TV in Dallas.

Federal officials want to know how the stowaway bypassed airport security.

A 12-year-old girl in New York who was among the first to be sued by the record industry for sharing music over the Internet is off the hook after her mother agreed Tuesday to pay $2,000 to settle the lawsuit, apologizing and admitting that her daughter's actions violated U.S. copyright laws.

The hurried settlement involving Brianna LaHara, an honors student, was the first announced one day after the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) filed 261 such lawsuits across the country. Lawyers for the RIAA said Brianna's mother, Sylvia Torres, contacted them early Tuesday to negotiate.

"We understand now that file-sharing the music was illegal," Torres said in a statement distributed by the recording industry. "You can be sure Brianna won't be doing it anymore."

Brianna added: "I am sorry for what I have done. I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love."

The case against Brianna was a potential minefield for the music industry from a public relations standpoint. The family lives in a city housing project on New York's Upper West Side, and they said they mistakenly believed they were entitled to download music over the Internet because they had paid $29.99 for software that gives them access to online file-sharing services.

The RIAA said this week it already had negotiated $3,000 settlements with fewer than 10 Internet users who learned they might be sued after the RIAA sent copyright subpoenas to their Internet providers. But lawyers negotiated those settlements before the latest round of lawsuits, and the RIAA had said any further settlements would cost defendants more than $3,000.

Even in the hours before the settlement was announced, Brianna was emerging as an example of what critics said was overzealous enforcement by the powerful music industry.

The top lawyer for Verizon Communications Inc., William Barr, charged earlier Tuesday during a Senate hearing that music lawyers had resorted to a "campaign against 12-year-old girls" rather than trying to help consumers turn to legal sources for songs online. Verizon's Internet subsidiary is engaged in a protracted legal fight against the RIAA over copyright subpoenas sent Verizon customers.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., also alluded to Brianna's case.

"Are you headed to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?" Durbin asked RIAA President Cary Sherman during a Senate Judiciary hearing.

Durbin said he appreciated the piracy threat to the recording industry, but added, "I think you have a tough public relations campaign to go after the offenders without appearing heavy-handed in the process."

As of yesterday, record companies--via the Recording Industry Association of America--have sued more than 250 of their customers, sent subpoenas to Internet service providers demanding the names of flagrant file-sharers and even threatened to unleash worms and viruses on file-sharing Web sites.

But c'mon, no one outside the insurance industry really thinks it's a great long-term strategy to scare your customers. Alienate 16-year-olds, and all you'll ever sell are Rolling Stones albums to boomers.

Fifteen years ago, the software industry had a huge piracy problem, one of the main reasons being that Microsoft Word or Excel cost hundreds of dollars. Borland cut the price of its Quattro Pro spreadsheet program to $79, and people bought it instead of copying it. Sales went up. Economists call this elasticity.

The same thing may happen in the music biz. The vast majority of music listeners are honest, property-loving citizens, and my guess is we would all gladly pay a fair price for music. Ten dollars per album may still be high--who knows? The industry still needs to figure out how to transition to an online-only model. Without shiny discs, and the markup brigade, they can charge 50 cents a song and $5 an album and still make as much as they do today via stores. It shouldn't be that hard--the cellphone industry does $1 billion a year in ring-tone sales. Surely the music industry can sell songs online in even bigger numbers.

Long term, the music industry needs technology, not lawyers, to fix its problems. Hire a few of those hackers you are now threatening with jail time. Don't sell dumb data, sell software. Each song or album could eventually come with its own code, its own little operating system, to play the song on the next generation of players.

Last month, Canadian authorities arrested 19 foreign students suspected of ties to al Qaeda.

One of the students attended a Canadian flight school and liked to fly over the local nuclear plant. Others were apprehended outside a nuclear facility in the middle of the night.

With the second anniversary of 9/11 approaching, the arrests serve as a reminder that Canada and the United States share a 5,500 mile border that is largely unguarded.

As 60 Minutes first reported over a year ago, Canadian intelligence admits the country has become a sanctuary, staging ground and fund-raising base for hundreds of terrorists from all over the world.

They are drawn to Canada by its liberal immigration and refugee policies, and they have transformed Canada into a potential launching pad for attacks against the United States.

The lawsuits, which were filed in federal courts across the country, are the RIAA's latest tactics in its war against the illegal file sharing that record companies blame for plummeting CD sales.

In June, the RIAA promised to sue hundreds of Internet users suspected of illegally trading music using file-swapping services like Kazaa and Morpheus. The association in August clarified that it only would target the most egregious file sharers.

RIAA President Cary Sherman in a teleconference today characterized the people who were sued as "major offenders" who distributed about 1,000 copyrighted music files on average.

The West Nile virus surged again across the western half of the United States last week, doubling its death toll and almost doubling the number of people infected by the mosquito-borne virus.

According to the latest U.S. government statistics reported Thursday, there have now been 43 deaths and 2,267 human infections in 35 states this year. Exactly a week ago, those tolls stood at 21 deaths and 1,442 cases of infection, which was double the numbers from the previous week.

Colorado remains the hardest-hit state, with 940 cases and 11 deaths, according to the latest figures on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site.

Nebraska now has 326 cases and has had eight fatalities. South Dakota has the third-highest number of cases, 250, but only three deaths. Texas and Wyoming round out the Top 5 list, with 164 cases each.

Long lauded for their Teutonic efficiency and hard work in rebuilding the country after World War II, Germans are now among the world's top slackers and politicians and industry leaders say that must change to kickstart the sagging economy.

"We need longer and more flexible weekly working hours -- 40 hours instead of the average of 37 hours is more reasonable than lower income. It would improve the competitive position of firms and bring more innovation and investment," said Ludwig Georg Braun, president of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

According to International Labour Organization statistics, the average German worked 1,444 hours in 2002, compared to 1,815 hours for the average U.S. worker and 1,707 for the average Briton. Only the Norwegians and Dutch worked fewer hours.

Germans also have more holidays than most other nations -- 30 days leave is standard plus about 12 public holidays.

The Cologne Institute of the German Economy (IW) estimates the average German takes off about another 12 days a year due to sickness, training, maternity and other leave entitlements, meaning most people work the equivalent of a four-day week.

Noting that German growth could be 0.5 percent higher than usual next year as several public holidays fall on weekends, Economy Minister Wolfgang Clement has said Germany is at the limit of what it can afford in holidays and working hours.

Hagen Lesch, an IW labor expert, said if the working week were extended by an hour, economic growth next year could be 3.1 percent, double the institute's current expectations.

Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the influential Ifo institute, says an increase in the average working week to 42 hours would restore German competitiveness lost in the past two decades.

Trade unions have slammed such calls, saying an increase in the working week of just an hour could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and that the debate ignores productivity.

Incoming freshmen at colleges across the U.S. are getting a primer this month in an unexpected subject: The legal ramifications of file sharing.

It's a clear sign that last year's Recording Industry Assn. of America initiative to work with U.S. colleges and universities on combating campus peer-to-peer piracy is bearing fruit.

During a conference call Sept. 2, the co-chairmen of the Joint Higher Education and Entertainment Group cited as a sign of progress the P2P education and enforcement policies initiated this year by university administrators across the country. The joint group kicked off last December.

Recent newspaper stories have documented freshman orientation programs that include P2P policies and warnings at several universities, including American University in Washington, D.C., and many University of California campuses.

In addition, Colby College, University of Denver, Stanford University, University of Utah, Columbia University, University of Rochester, University of North Carolina and Harvard and Yale have instituted education initiatives or e-posted campus P2P policies.

"Just a year ago, you didn't see these efforts," says group co-chair Graham Spanier, president of Penn State University. "The progress in charting solutions and in awareness has been dramatic in recent months."

Spanier shares chairman responsibilities with RIAA president Cary Sherman. The two attribute greater campus awareness of the issue to better communication between the RIAA and higher-education institutions.

But certainly the greater responsiveness has been motivated in large part by the RIAA lawsuits this spring, some of which were directed at students on college campuses. At least 10 universities have been served with subpoenas calling for the identity of egregious infringers.

"Universities don't want their students to be sued," Spanier says. "We're working hard to prevent that. We're also sympathetic to the losses in the music industry."

Sherman said he is gratified by the attention copyright violations are getting on campuses. "There's a world of difference this year just a year ago in terms of the seriousness universities are taking this issue," he says.

Spanier says that at Penn State, which has a student body of 83,000, the policy is to warn a student twice about what officials consider serious infringement, and, if it occurs again, "we shut them off." Further violations could lead to expulsion.

Firefighters in formal dress and others in work attire were among hundreds of people who gathered Sunday to pay respects to Michael Ragusa, the last firefighter killed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center to receive a memorial service.

The 29-year-old's remains have never been identified, so his family chose to bury a vial of blood he had donated to a bone marrow center. A funeral was scheduled for Monday.

Bush's rhetoric continues to have two major problems, neither of which is likely to disappear. The first, and most obvious, is that he says the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism using terrorism as a weapon (including against Muslims). The second, less obvious, is that he says we are fighting to defend democracy, when in fact we are fighting to defend liberalism (or liberal democracy). Iran is a democracy, in the normal sense of holding real elections, but it is not liberal.

The fundamental conflict is over whether the systems of limited, non-theocratic, individual-rights-bsed governments that developed over centuries in the West are good or bad. Outside of the academy and other intellectual circles, however, American political discourse has literaly lost the words to describe what the "civilized world" has in common. We think "liberal" means Hillary Clinton, when it also means George Bush.

An experimental genetically modified (GM) maize crop in southern France, owned by U.S. seeds giant Monsanto, has been attacked and destroyed, police said on Saturday.

Police did not say who was behind the attack on the approximately half hectare field, isolated in a forest in Magnesq, but added that it had occurred a few hours after an anti-GM demonstration on Friday.

Another of Monsanto's GM fields, also in the southwest of France near Toulouse, was destroyed in July.

While GM crops are common in the United States, France and other European countries are dubious about using the new genetic technology in agriculture. France grows experimental GM crops on around 100 sites, all approved by the farm ministry.

Supporters say the crops could lead to the development of hardier strains to help feed the world's poor. Opponents say they could trigger an uncontrolled spread of modified genes, harming the environment and people's health.

This February, I attended my first Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference, in the great media incubator of San Francisco. It's impossible to walk a single block of that storied town without feeling the ghosts of great contrarian media innovators past: Hearst and Twain, Hinckle and Wenner, Rossetto and Talbot. But after twelve hours with the AAN, a much different reality set in: never in my life have I seen a more conformist gathering of journalists.

All the newspapers looked the same — same format, same fonts, same columns complaining about the local daily, same sex advice, same five-thousand-word hole for the cover story. The people were largely the same, too: all but maybe 2 percent of the city-slicker journalists in attendance were white; the vast majority were either Boomer hippies or Gen X slackers. Several asked me the exact same question with the same suspicious looks on their faces: "So . . . what's your alternative experience?"

At the bar, I started a discussion about what specific attributes qualified these papers, and the forty-seven-year-old publishing genre that spawned them, to continue meriting the adjective "alternative." Alternative to what? To the straight-laced "objectivity" and pyramid-style writing of daily newspapers? New Journalists and other narrative storytellers crashed those gates long ago. Alternative to society's oppressive intolerance toward deviant behavior? Tell it to the Osbournes, as they watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Something to do with corporate ownership? Not unless "alternative" no longer applies to Village Voice Media (owned in part by Goldman Sachs) or the New Times chain (which has been involved in some brutal acquisition and liquidation deals). Someone at the table lamely offered up "a sense of community," but Fox News could easily clear that particular bar.

No, it must have something to do with political slant — or, to be technically accurate, political correctness. Richard Karpel, the AAN executive director, joined the conversation, so I put him on the spot: Of all the weeklies his organization had rejected for membership on political grounds, which one was the best editorially? The Independent Florida Sun, he replied. Good-looking paper, some sharp writing but, well, it was just too friendly toward the church. "And if there's anything we all agree on," Karpel said with a smile, "it's that we're antichurch."

I assumed he was joking — that couldn't be all we have left from the legacy of Norman Mailer, Art Kunkin, Paul Krassner, and my other childhood heroes, could it? Then later I looked up the AAN's Web site to read the admission committee's rejection notes for the Florida Sun (which was excluded by a vote of 9-2). "The right-wing church columnist has no place in AAN," explained one judge. "All the God-and-flag shit disturbs me," wrote another. "Weirdly right-wing," chimed a third.

The average blog, needless to say, pales in comparison to a 1957 issue of the Voice, or a 1964 Los Angeles Free Press, or a 2003 Lexington, Kentucky, ACE Weekly, for that matter. But that's missing the point. Blogging technology has, for the first time in history, given the average Jane the ability to write, edit, design, and publish her own editorial product — to be read and responded to by millions of people, potentially — for around $0 to $200 a year. It has begun to deliver on some of the wild promises about the Internet that were heard in the 1990s. Never before have so many passionate outsiders — hundreds of thousands, at minimum — stormed the ramparts of professional journalism.

And these amateurs, especially the ones focusing on news and current events, are doing some fascinating things. Many are connecting intimately with readers in a way reminiscent of old-style metro columnists or the liveliest of the New Journalists. Others are staking the narrowest of editorial claims as their own — appellate court rulings, new media proliferation in Tehran, the intersection of hip-hop and libertarianism — and covering them like no one else. They are forever fact-checking the daylights out of truth-fudging ideologues like Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, and sifting through the biases of the BBC and Bill O'Reilly, often while cheerfully acknowledging and/or demonstrating their own lopsided political sympathies. At this instant, all over the world, bloggers are busy popularizing underappreciated print journalists (like Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn), pumping up stories that should be getting more attention (like the Trent Lott debacle), and perhaps most excitingly of all, committing impressive, spontaneous acts of decentralized journalism.

"At a time when the city struggles tremendously to give its public school teachers the pay raises they deserve, I cannot understand why the mayor wants to divert public money to private schools."

Making health care costs more affordable and predictable. President Bush proposes to allow small businesses to pool together to purchase health coverage for workers at lower rates.

Their god is the market -- every human problem, every human need, will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the creation story in Genesis where humans are to have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing ..." The administration has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the corporate ethos of profits at any price. And the result is the politics of exploitation with a religious impulse.

Meanwhile, over a billion people have no safe drinking water. We're dumping 500 million tons of hazardous waste into the Earth every year. In the last hundred years alone we've lost over 2 billion hectares of forest, our fisheries are collapsing, our coral reefs are dying because of human activity. These are facts. So what are the administration and Congress doing? They're attacking the cornerstones of environmental law: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act]. They are allowing l7,000 power plants to create more pollution. They are opening public lands to exploitation. They're even trying to conceal threats to public health: Just look at the stories this past week about how the White House pressured the EPA not to tell the public about the toxic materials that were released by the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center.

It stuns me that the people in power can't see that the source of our wealth is the Earth. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a capitalist. I don't want to destroy the system on which my livelihood and my journalism rest. I am strongly on behalf of saving the environment [in no small part] because it is the source of our wealth. Destroy it and the pooh-bahs of Wall Street will have to book an expedition to Mars to enjoy their riches. I don't understand why they don't see it. I honestly don't. This absence of vision as to what happens when you foul your nest puzzles me.

For a second time this year, a federal judge threw out a class-action lawsuit Thursday that blamed McDonald's for making people fat.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said the plaintiffs failed to show that the fast-food chain misled consumers into believing its food was nutritious and part of a healthy diet.

Sweet tossed out an earlier version of the lawsuit in January that claimed McDonald's food causes health problems in children.

On Thursday he rejected a request that the plaintiffs be permitted to file a new version, which claimed that McDonald's violated New York's consumer protection laws and engaged in deceptive advertising.

The Oak Brook, Ill.-based company called the ruling a "total victory" and said its menu options can fit into a healthy, well-balanced diet.

A message left for the plaintiffs' lawyer was not immediately returned.

In a statement, the National Restaurant Association said Sweet's decision demonstrated that "reason and common sense have prevailed."

The judge said the lawsuit failed to back allegations that any injuries resulted from McDonald's representations about its french fries or hash browns.

In his earlier ruling, Sweet said consumers cannot blame McDonald's if they choose to eat there.

"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain ... it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses," Sweet wrote at the time.

Last week, Mr. Bustamante proposed amending the California state constitution to allow the Public Utilities Commission to regulate gasoline prices. "Californians are being gouged," he charged. His proposal would require oil companies to justify price increases and regulate their profits in the state.

The price control plan has universally been condemned on economic and legal grounds. "It's a terrible idea," says energy expert Philip Verleger. He warned that it will lead to gas lines as oil companies export gasoline production from California refineries to other states and reduce imports of gasoline from Canada, the Caribbean and others places that now serve the California market.

The state would have no power, even if the constitutional amendment were adopted, to compel oil companies to keep supplies in the state or bring gasoline in from elsewhere. Any effort to do so would be a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution and surely be thwarted.

Says law professor Anthony Sabino, "Gasoline and the business of selling gasoline is part of interstate commerce that belongs to Congress to regulate, if at all." He added that Mr. Bustamante "is either very ignorant of the law or he's getting incredibly bad advice from his advisers or it's a publicity stunt."

Unfortunately, the movement to control gasoline prices is not limited to California. Last year, Hawaii enacted a law giving it the power to regulate gasoline prices. It is scheduled to go into effect next year. In Washington, Rep. Edward Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut Democrat, have been pressuring the Energy Department to take action against high gasoline prices.

Apparently, neither has bothered to learn the facts of the situation before lashing out at the oil companies — always convenient whipping boys for liberal politicians. If they checked, they would see that real (inflation-adjusted) gasoline prices are about where they have been for most of the last 20 years. The recent runup is from a historically low level. Even so, they are still substantially lower than they were in 1981: $1.79 per gallon now versus $2.74 then. And contrary to popular belief, oil company profits are not rising. According to Business Week, the profit margin in the oil industry is only 5.4 percent, compared with 6.4 for all industries.

The main reason why gasoline prices rise and fall is because of fluctuations in the world price of oil, which oil companies have little control over since they import most of it from places like Saudi Arabia. California, however, has deliberately imposed higher costs on itself by requiring that gasoline sold there be specially formulated to reduce pollution. With a limited number of refineries able to produce the kind of gasoline California demands, prices there have long been higher than in the rest of the country.

A lawsuit against bookstore chains filed five years ago by a former independent book store owner in North Carolina is expected to reach a courtroom this fall.

Wallace Kuralt, the brother of the late CBS newsman Charles Kuralt, filed a federal lawsuit in 1998 seeking $38 million in damages from Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. The former owner of a Chapel Hill independent bookstore said the Intimate Bookshop, which at one point had grown into a nine-store regional chain, was a victim of industry competition as big-box bookstores sprouted in area shopping centers.

Kuralt accused the chains of bullying publishers into providing deep discounts not available to smaller stores. He alleges the companies are violating the Robinson-Patman Act, enacted in 1936 to keep large businesses from using their buying power to get volume discounts.

The chains will answer the antitrust charges in the Southern District of New York on Nov. 10 before Judge William Pauley.

Borders and Barnes & Noble state in documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that they plan to "vigorously defend the action."

"I believe that if we had all the benefits that they [sic] the big chains had, we could have done incredible things," Kuralt said Tuesday.

Kuralt said the chains illegally pressured publishers to give breaks not available to the smaller bookstores, including what he alleges were illegal promotional fees, rebates of shipping charges and inflated discounts.

Two years ago, the American Booksellers Association settled a similar lawsuit filed on behalf of 26 independent bookstores in California for $4.7 million. The settlement with Borders and Barnes & Noble represented about a quarter of the ABA's legal fees.

The ABA also won a consent order in 1998 that kept publishers from favoring certain retailers.

Stefan Sharkansky notes that the District of Columbia is a quagmire of violent resistance to peaceful government, despite the efforts of American authorities:

According to this week's story from Scripps Howard News Service, there are 140,000 troops in Iraq, and there have been 286 fatalities from all causes since the war began in March (about 24 weeks ago). That gives us an annualized death rate of 443 per 100,000. Only about half of these deaths (147) were in combat, for a combat death rate of 228 per 100,000.

According to Center for Disease Control / National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, there were 21,836 young black men (age 18-30) in Washington DC in 2000, the latest year that mortality data is available. The total number of deaths in this group from all causes was 132, with 95 homicides. i.e. the death rate for this group was 604 per 100,000 and the murder rate was 435 per 100,000.

In other words, a young black male soldier from Washington DC would have been 36% more likely to die by staying at home than by serving in active duty in the Iraq war, and almost twice as likely to be murdered at home than to be killed in combat. Yes, that's horribly sad, but it puts a few things in perspective.

The following is a sampling of book selections by category from Business 2.0's list of the "The Books That Matter":

Pillars of Capitalism: The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776)
Management: The Principles of Scientific Management, by Frederick W. Taylor (1911)
Strategy: The Art of War, by Sun Tzu (c. 300 B.C.)
Innovation: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S. Kuhn (1962)
Leadership: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)
Marketing: The Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen (1899)
Investing: The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham (1949)
Booms and Busts: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay (1841)
The Business of Technology: Fire in the Valley, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine. (1984)
Greed: Liar's Poker, by Michael Lewis (1989)
Working Life: Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow (1956)
Biography: Wheels for the World, by Douglas Brinkley (2003)
Envisioning the Future: The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov (1951-1953)

"Before businesspeople take that last long weekend of the summer over Labor Day, we thought we'd help them choose a great business book," said Josh Quittner, editor of Business 2.0. "At first glance, some of our choices may seem unusual--such as the inclusion of Moby-Dick--but each of the selected books spotlights examples of business savvy and ideas that we're sure will resonate with our readers."

Titles that made the editors' "Remainder Bin" of overrated business books include the best-selling Who Moved My Cheese?, Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged, the management blockbuster In Search of Excellence, and Mark Twain's first novel, The Gilded Age.

Students arriving for fall classes at colleges across the country are facing technological hurdles and stern warnings aimed at ending swapping of music and movie files over high-speed campus Internet connections.

Several of the universities are responding to a recording industry campaign to control the rampant copying of files over peer-to-peer networks.

Among other things, campuses are distributing brochures, running ads in student newspapers and devoting school Web pages to information on copyright infringement.

Some are even using software to choke the amount of data that can flow in or out of a computer when students use Kazaa and other file-sharing programs.

"We're feeling a great deal of pressure as a result of what the entertainment industry is doing, and we're stepping up a lot of activities to address it," said Jim Davis, associate vice chancellor for information technology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At this very moment, the CNN.com Web site has the following banner headline across the top in white letters on a red background: "BREAKING NEWS: Federal appeals court in San Francisco overturns an estimated 100 death sentences. Details soon." Of course, I posted that news online here at "How Appealing" approximately two hours ago.

Update: The Associated Press, at least, was only an hour and a half behind me in reporting on the news[.]

The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States. And the allegations of linkages to al Qaeda are as tenuous as the claims made about Iraq. As Yogi Berra said, it's déjà vu all over again.

It would be folly for the United States to wage another war against another Muslim nation after Afghanistan and Iraq. Such action would likely be interpreted as a war against Islam by the rest of the Muslim world. If anything, the United States needs to avoid turning the war on terrorism against al Qaeda into a larger holy war against Islam and the more than one billion Muslims around the world.

Dozens of men—mostly with long beards and either skull caps or strange-looking hats (the likes of which I had never seen before)—approached me. This was understandable since not only had they never seen me before, but I was dressed in long khaki pants and a casual blue button-down shirt—a far cry from the black slacks and pressed white dress shirts almost everyone else was wearing. But rather than scorning me as an outsider, they embraced me and welcomed me to their house of worship.

Less than 48 hours later, at a funeral for a Hamas terrorist responsible for repeatedly plotting mass murders of innocent Israelis, this was the scene as described by the New York Times:

“‘We want martyrs, more sacrifice,’ blared a voice amplified through loudspeakers as more than 1,000 Palestinians marched through Gaza City today during the funeral procession.”

Anyone who thinks that the battle in Iraq is a distraction from the war on terror should tell it to the Marines of the 1st Marine Division who comprised the eastern flank of the force that fought its way to Baghdad last April. When I met recently with their commander, Maj. General Jim Mattis in Hillah, he said that the two groups who fought most aggressively during the major combat operations were the Fedayeen Saddam--homegrown thugs with a cult-like attachment to Saddam--and foreign fighters, principally from other Arab countries. The exit card found in the passport of one of these foreigners even stated that the purpose of his "visit" to Iraq was to "volunteer for jihad."

We face that poisonous mixture of former regime loyalists and foreign fighters today.