Unfortunately, I have not seen an alternative proposal that I found to be compelling. Every design I have reviewed seemed like a compromise to fear. Almost all evoked the feeling of a tomb, not a productive space.

That is, until now. The World Trade Center II Design by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton restores the New York skyline with a new interpretation of Yamasaki Twin Towers design, with several enhancements and modifications over the originals. The effect of resorting the original shape and purpose of the twin towers is striking; is says in effect, we will have what we had before and we will have it better.

I think the effort by Gardner and Belton is laudable and I wish them every success. It will require significant political support to compel a change in plans for the World Trade Center site. I think it is a worthwhile goal though.

Anything less than what the World Trade Center site was before September 11th is a moral surrender to militant Islam. The new structure should be a defiant re-affirmation of who we are as a people and what the Trade Center was to New York. It’s time to write some letters to our elected officials.

The Libertarian Party is the party of unapologetic pacifism. They make John Kerry blush. Their 2004 presidential candidate proposes, for example, that all U.S. troops everywhere be sent home immediately. Why? Because, apparently, all government is bad. Anything the government does to intervene in the rest of the world--even if those interventions are to protect the United States at home--is bad.

Even worse, statements on the official Libertarian Party website imply that the United States is to blame for terrorism: For example: "How long can politicians pretend to be surprised when terrorist threats turn into bloody reality? How many more innocent Americans have to lose their lives before U.S. policy makers come to their senses and stop interfering in other nations' affairs?"

The implication of this statement is clear. If the United States did not have a military presence in the Middle East, and elsewhere, terrorists would leave us alone. America is to blame, not the terrorists.

This is as profound an evasion as I could ever imagine. It is the single worst example of blaming the victim that I have ever encountered in this age of blaming the victim (i.e., the United States).

I don’t care what other points the Libertarian Party might make on the subject of taxes or limited government with which I might agree, in an out-of-context fashion. Evasions and errors of the magnitude just described come from a place I do not want to enter or go near. This viewpoint is unforgivable and inexcusable. Total surrender of the Middle East and our objective national interests to the likes of Osama bin Laden and the mullahs in Iran--not to mention other terrorist dictators throughout the world--wipes out any value from reducing the role of government in the economy. How can a capitalistic America flourish under the threat of a nuclear cloud, biological warfare or worse? If you think America is in danger with a troop presence in the Middle East and elsewhere, just imagine if we gave up the fight altogether.

A Pentagon investigation has concluded that a senior military intelligence officer violated regulations by failing to make clear he was not speaking in an official capacity when he made church speeches casting the war on terrorism in religious terms, a senior defense official said Thursday.

In most instances the officer, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, was wearing his Army uniform.

The probe by the Defense Department's deputy inspector general also found that Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, violated Pentagon rules by failing to obtain advance clearance for his remarks, which gained wide publicity last fall.

In one appearance, Boykin told a religious group in Oregon that Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan," according to news reports last fall.

Discussing a U.S. Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told one audience, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." [AP]

Within one hour of the gathering, just over 100 of Lt. Col. Chávez's supporters, many of them brandishing his trademark army parachutist beret, began moving down the main avenue towards the crowd in the square. Encouraged by their leader's victory, this bully-boy group had been marching through opposition neighborhoods all day. They were led by men on motorcycles with two-way radios. From afar they began to taunt the crowd in the square, chanting, "We own this country now," and ordering the people in the opposition crowd to return to their homes. All of this was transmitted live by the local news station. The Chávez group threw bottles and rocks at the crowd. Moments later a young woman in the square screamed for the crowd to get down as three of the men with walkie-talkies, wearing red T-shirts with the insignia of the government-funded "Bolivarian Circle," revealed their firearms. They began shooting indiscriminately into the multitude.

A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.

I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."

Debbie Majoras takes over as Acting Chair of the FTC, along with Jon Leibowitz. Both are very able lawyers and people of great character, smarts, and integrity. Which will be needed, of course, to help the Commission recover from the "Zywicki interregnum." Seriously, Majoras and Leibowitz are excellent choices to continue the amazing successes of the FTC over the past few years, under the leadership first of my new colleague Bob Pitofsky and then my old colleague Tim Muris.

All of the doctors in Elgin, Illinois, get together over lunch and say, "We are not making enough money, our kids are going to expensive colleges, and we are not driving the luxury car that we prefer. Let's go to this one HMO that is committed to cost containment, and we will say we are going on strike. Unless you pay us twice as much money, we are going on strike. We are not going to take care of people in your organization."