Marquette War Year

The majority of Indian tribes in WI have no issues with the Warrior mascot name.

Even the one tribe leader from the Red Cliff tribe had no issues until Father Obi Won Kenobi Wild got a hold of him and convince the tribal leader that he should have an issue with the Warrior name. "These aren't the droids you are looking for...."

Marquette Alums need to go nuclear just like the Republicans are threatening to do with the filibuster. We need to contact the tribes that own the major casinos in this state i.e. Potowanomi, Ho-Chunk and Oneida. Let it be known that Marquette Alums will not be "doubling down" at any of their establishments until they put pressure on Father Wild and the Bored of Trustees.

The name change was not a result of any outrage on the part of any Indian tribes. The name change was a result of liberal, never put on a Jacques strap high brows who forced this name change on the University and it's alums.

A member of the Winnebago tribe called a local talk radio station and mentioned that Native Americans enlist in disproportionate numbers for the Armed Services and that on the day after 9/11, the Winnebago tribe declared war on the Terrorists. He said that they are proud to be Warriors.
How about that Mr. Fung!

Senator Kohl. Stop fillibustering the Bucks fans, the City and coach Porter..

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/buck/may05/324082.asp

Herb please sell the team if you don't plan on brining in enough talented players so that coach Porter has something to work with. You owe it to the fans and the city.

If your heart isn't in it then sell. You can't do it on the cheap. There is no Money Ball in the NBA.

DNC Inc. "We Scare Because We Care."

Just like the motto in Monsters Inc, whether it is: Social Security, Education Reform, Taxes, The Draft, etc., the Democrats never fail to distort issues to scare their constitutes. There is no substance just self serving spin. It is all about the party and not about their base.

How about the Marquette Tillmans?

How about naming Marquette's mascot in honor of a real life Warrior and American hero that gave up Gold(an NFL contract) and his life for his country?

NPR(Never Praise Republicans) Bias

http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006657

TASTE COMMENTARY

A Turn of the Dial
Is NPR's "On the Media" guilty of media bias?

BY JACOB LAKSIN
Friday, May 6, 2005 12:01 a.m.

One of the most ferocious battles in the culture wars--one that, at times, makes the trench warfare of World War I seem short and sweet--has to do with the true character of National Public Radio. It is argued on one side that NPR is not exactly a model of pristine objectivity--that it skews leftward in its coverage and commentary. Naturally, NPR's officials and its supporters are inclined to see such charges as the ravings of an overheated "right wing" much too eager to find bias where none exists. How to test the theory?

Well, one way is to look at an NPR show that is itself devoted to the media. Surely this is one place where NPR's objectivity would be thunderously vindicated, assuming that it exists at all. And indeed, NPR's "On the Media," a weekly half-hour program set up a few years ago to take on media excess and error, is a perfect test case. Styling itself as a "critical watchdog," the show was intended, in part, to expunge the image, painted by critics, of a public broadcasting world in thrall to left-wing politics.

It has instead reproduced it.

In theory, "On The Media" disclaims any partisan agenda. It is concerned only with "finding fault and poking fun at all sorts of media institutions." More often than not, however, it focuses on that all-seasons bugbear of the political left: Fox News. It is taken as an established fact by the show's hosts, the irrepressibly snide duo of Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield, that Fox is a mere propaganda organ of the right and that its supposed sins of bias trump all others.

When Fox bested other networks in ratings during the Republican National Convention, Ms. Gladstone said: "So how do you explain the success of Fox News this week? Simply that the converted were being gathered in front of the electric fireplace." (It is impossible to imagine such a comment being directed at CNN or any other network for a seemingly Democrats-related ratings bump.) Ms. Gladstone nurses a particular distaste for Fox personages, most notably Bill O'Reilly. In February 2003, she sneered, on no compelling evidence, that the Fox pundit was "willing to attack families of the victims of 9/11 in his pursuit of the war." Fair and balanced media criticism this was not.

Still, at least it was media criticism. This is rarely a given with "On the Media." Even more than barking at Fox, the show relishes attacking the Bush administration. When mainstream media outlets scored the president's speech at the GOP convention, Ms. Gladstone, in a revealing burst of on-air candor, cheered their instincts: "I don't know where this new knife-wielding impulse comes from--maybe testosterone or guilt--maybe it was all the free massages the media got at the convention. I only know--I like it."

Similarly, when Dan Rather came under fire for using fraudulent evidence to cast aspersions at President Bush's service in the National Guard, host Bob Garfield rallied to the anchor's defense. Mr. Garfield stressed that "evidence of military dereliction by a future war president is also news." Of the president's visit to Baghdad in December 2003, Ms. Gladstone insisted that "a number of observers see it as yet another taxpayer-subsidized PR stunt by President Bush." There was little doubting that the hosts of "On the Media" were among them.

When President Bush held a press conference on Social Security several weeks ago, he touched off a barrage of criticism. But the commentary of Mr. Garfield had a distinctive edge. What riled him was less the content of Mr. Bush's words than the composition of his audience. In Mr. Garfield's estimation, this was a "vain and bizarrely deferential press corps" whose members were "not so much being journalists as playing ones on TV." They had failed miserably, in his view, to contest "the president's 70-minute political commercial." A first-time listener to "On The Media"--wrongly assuming a fair treatment of such matters--might have been forgiven for thinking that the press had been giving Mr. Bush a free pass on Social Security reform.

Arguably the show's lowest point came in November 2001. For a report about truth in wartime, the hosts invited author Alan Winkler to compare the Nazi propaganda ministry to President Bush's press briefings. Wary of furnishing any grist for the "liberal bias" mill, Ms. Gladstone ended the segment by reflecting that, all things considered, the analogy was a bit of a stretch. "Goebbels had a stranglehold on information, and that is not possible here, today," she observed. Listeners acquainted with her tirades against the Patriot Act--part of the show's continuing effort to convict the Bush administration of contempt for press freedoms--would have been struck by her sudden equanimity.

"On the Media" has even managed to turn an admission of its liberal slant into an attack on Mr. Bush. In a November 2004 segment, Mr. Garfield conceded that the show had indeed been critical of the president's first term: "Over the past four years, we have received mail from many listeners impugning our objectivity--mostly charging that we were biased against the president. After reviewing our four year record, we readily admit that we can detect an increasingly critical tone." But he went on to explain that, as a media "watchdog," "On the Media" was determined to safeguard the press from the Bush White House. The administration's disdain for freedom of the press was taken as a fact beyond dispute. Ms. Gladstone made the point still more starkly: Throughout the Bush presidency, she explained, there was a "sense that people in America aren't getting the truth." Her proposed remedy was to "use even higher wattage in the effort to peer in." Left unanswered was why this was the business of a program ostensibly devoted to media criticism.

Yes, NPR's attempt at media-critique is an egregious example of the kind of problem that, in a better world, such a show might point up or correct. Perhaps grasping the failure, NPR recently appointed an ombudsman to address public concerns about everything from reportorial accuracy to editorial bias. But its choice of Jeffrey Dvorkin, a former NPR executive, does not inspire confidence. In a March interview he assured NPR listeners that he was an "equal opportunity shin-kicker." Then he dismissed conservative criticism of public radio.

NPR "comes under attack quite frequently for its apparently left-wing bias," he explained, "but most of these criticisms come from media organizations that are openly conservative. So I take those kinds of criticisms with a certain amount of salt." Mr. Dvorkin also noted that liberal bias, far from being a problem, should be seen as an occupational quirk among journalists: "There is some kind of liberal empathy on the part of some journalists, because their curiosity about how other people live tends to involve a certain liberal stance," he said. An incident this week inadvertently revealed the reflexive character of this "curiosity." Tom Magliozzi, co-host of the NPR staple "Car Talk," described President Bush as what the Washington Post termed an "unprintable vulgarity." NPR spokeswoman Jenny Lawhorn offered the classic defense: "I'd like to point out that 'Car Talk' is editorially independent." How comforting.
Mr. Laksin is a writer at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

Marquette's Board of Trustees Gone "Wild"

Father Wild vows to stand firm with Mascot name change.

"It's Gold Jerry. Gold!- Kenny Banyon.

At least now Loyd Brawn is off the hook for his name tag campaign. Marquette has topped his marketing genius.

"Wild Fire"

It's Gold. Period.

Marquette officials stand by nickname despite negative reaction of alumni, fans

By DON WALKER and TOM HELD
dwalker@journalsentinel.com

Posted: May 5, 2005

Despite a steady drumbeat of heavy criticism and derision over the choice of Gold for the school's nickname, top Marquette University officials insisted Thursday that there was no turning back.

We're done," an upbeat John Bergstrom, the chairman of the school's Board of Trustees, said in an opinion echoed by Father Robert A. Wild, the university's president. "This is not an optional program. This is going to be a brand that we're going to build."

Clinton Lied. 800,000 Rwandans Died!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1183889,00.html
US chose to ignore Rwandan genocide

Classified papers show Clinton was aware of 'final solution' to eliminate Tutsis

Rory Carroll in Johannesburg
Wednesday March 31, 2004
The Guardian

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/

The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994

Information, Intelligence and the U.S. Response

by William Ferroggiaro

The U.S. and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994

Information, Intelligence and the U.S. Response

by William Ferroggiaro

http://idcs0100.lib.iup.edu/~tconelly/Africa/Reading/RwandaViolenceUSPolicy.htm

March 26, 1998
NY Times

Critics Say U.S. Ignored C.I.A. Warnings of Genocide in Rwanda

By TIM WEINER

President Clinton. When is Ricky Ray going to get his Pecan Pie?

President Clinton approved of the killing of Ricky Ray Rector. Ricky Ray didn't even know what was happening. He set aside his pecan pie for "later". There would be no later for him.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1112-04.htm

Published on Monday, November 11, 2002 by the

Dems Have Only Themselves To Blame

by Harley Sorensen

A date which ought to live in infamy for the Democratic Party is Jan. 24, 1992. That's the day Rickey Ray Rector was executed in Arkansas while Gov. Bill Clinton stood by and did nothing. On that day in Arkansas, the Democratic Party also died. Its body is still with us, to be sure, but its heart and soul died 10 years ago. Rickey Ray Rector, for those who would like to forget, shot and killed police officer Bob Martin in Conway, Ark., in 1981. After firing on Martin, Rector shot himself in the head. He botched the job, succeeding only in turning himself into an idiot. His brain was so wrecked that before going to the execution chamber, Rector saved part of his last meal "for later." Bill Clinton was running for president in 1992 when Rector was put to death. Clinton ran as a Democrat. In those days, only 10 years ago, most Democrats opposed capital punishment. It is safe to say that nearly all Democrats then were opposed to executing retarded people, no matter how severe their crimes. But Clinton remembered the downfall of one Michael Dukakis four years earlier. Dukakis, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, saw his presidential aspirations go up in smoke partly because he was perceived to be soft on crime. In politician-speak, and particularly Republican-speak, any public official who doesn't have a brutish attitude toward society's losers is soft on crime. In Dukakis' case, rapist-murderer Willie Horton was rather stupidly furloughed from a Massachusetts prison, only to escape to Maryland to rape again. He was caught and quickly became a political liability to Dukakis, who was castigated in the 1988 Democrat primary by one Albert Gore Jr., another failed presidential aspirant of recent fame. Willie Horton went on to become a legend in dirty politics when the friends of George H.W. Bush used him in campaign ads against Dukakis. As you'll recall, the tactic was successful, so King George I had the opportunity over the next four years to wreck the American economy, a job his son is now seeking to finish while conquering the world in his spare time. In any case, Bill Clinton was resolved in 1992 not to face a "soft on crime" rap, so -- although he had it within his power to grant executive clemency -- he stood by and did nothing while an idiot was deliberately put to death in his state. Clinton's success as a politician was not lost on other Democratic hopefuls, nor on Democratic voters, so they followed his lead in abandoning all liberal principles in favor of expediency. Tired of losing to criminals like Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, or amiable clowns like Ronald Reagan, or ex-CIA chiefs like George H.W. Bush, the Democrats decided that the only way to beat 'em was to join 'em. So they did. In 1999, when Bill Clinton sent our frighteningly eager military machine off to ravish Yugoslavia, nary a discouraging word was heard from the Democrats. A few months earlier, ironically, Serbs in Belgrade had met and shared memories with a few of the hundreds of shot-down American airmen they had rescued during World War II. There is no word on whether our old Serb friends survived the 1999 bombings, but best estimates are that 3,000 Yugoslav civilians did not. And the Democrats, not wanting to appear soft on tyrants, cheered Clinton's war, which was billed as "a just war." (They got it wrong. It wasn't a just war; it was just a war.) Part of the reason Clinton was so roundly hated by conservatives was his knack for stealing all their issues. He was so "hard" on crime that he appeared regularly in photo ops with uniformed officers behind him as he proposed or signed legislation narrowing civil liberties or expanding federal punishments. Clinton didn't make up stories about ungrateful welfare recipients the way Reagan did, but he did propose, as a candidate, that anyone deemed capable of working be kicked off welfare after two years. (Most liberals wouldn't object to that if it included the provisos that living-wage jobs be available and the hapless welfare recipients be trained to fill them.) In short, many of Clinton's views and policies were just a little to the right of those once espoused by Barry Goldwater, who in his day was considered a right-wing extremist. Now, he'd be a middle-of-the-roader. So, in this election season, which ended last Tuesday with a magnificent victory for the forces of darkness and a solid defeat for the Democrats, the Democrats presented themselves as . . . nothing. Instead of presenting a vision for the future, their strongest selling point was that they were not as bad as the Republicans. In California, that worked. Even though the Democratic candidate for governor was an abomination, the Republican seemed worse, a man determined to lead us back into the Dark Ages, if we were dumb enough to elect him. But California was the exception, and elsewhere in the country the Democrats came across as unconvincing mini-conservatives. They deserved to lose. They didn't offer a choice. So they were defined by their opponents, who zeroed in on the excesses of liberalism. The candidates themselves rarely made a case for the finer points of liberalism. This week, as the Democrats lick their wounds and try to regroup, it seems they'll be trying to figure out how to be even more like their Republican conquerors. This does not bode well for the republic. And, if you like, you can blame Clinton for it. Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and iconoclast. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at ©2002 SF Gate

Vikings Sold! Hollywood to tackle the NFL

Vikings Sold! Hollywood to tackle the NFL
For Immediate Release
nflwire.com

Los Angeles, CA
The Minnesota Vikings have been sold to a group from
Los Angeles.  The team will move from Minneapolis to
Los Angeles in 2006.  A Hollywood celebrity super
group led by David Geffen, Tom Hanks, Barbara
Streisand, Madonna and Oprah Winfrey will comprise the
new ownership team.  In order to give the team instant
credibility, Bill Clinton will serve as the teams'
president of football operations.

The name "Vikings" will be dropped as it refers to a
"barbaric culture" that prospered by conquering and
pillaging other civilizations.  The new name will be
the "Sirens".  The name was chosen from Greek
mythology and refers to Sea Nymphs that seduced
sailors into crashing their ships into the rocks.  The
"new name will be more politically correct at the same
time remaining a sense of power" according to
Streisand.  "Besides, the whole yellow braid wearing
thing is silly."

As part of the agreement, the team will continue to
hold their pre-season training in Minnesota but will
play their regular season games in Los Angeles. 

Red McCombs stated that the lack of a new stadium and
his dislike of brutally cold winters prevented the
club from staying in the twin cities.  Paul Tagliabue
has given his blessing to the sale and the move back
to the 2nd largest media market in the United States.
"This is a great move for the NFL."

-30-

Forget the ID's for voting. Let's use fingerprinting.

Forget the ID's for voting. Let's use fingerprinting.

Finger printing is being used in Germany in supermarkets. Why not use it to clean up voter fraud?

A friends brother designed a finger print system for a Las Vegas Hotel that was losing money when co-workers let family and friends swipe their work cards for free meals. The finger print scan nuked that scam entirely.

Unfortunately, it isn't fool proof especially when you will see a lot of liberals walking around with nine fingers.

Paying by Fingerprint at the Supermarket

Mon Mar 14,10:31 AM ET

Oddly Enough - Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) - Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out, saving the time spent scrabbling for coins or cards.

An Edeka store in the southwest German town of Ruelzheim has piloted the technology since November and now the company plans to equip its stores across the region.

"All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop straight away," said store manager Roland Fitterer.

The scanner compares the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details.

Edeka bosses said they were confident the system could not be abused.

Time for a Kofi Break II

Kofi's Accountability ( From the WSJ)
If he were a CEO, he'd be out on his ear.

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 12:01 a.m.

Following yesterday's publication of Paul Volcker's second interim report on the U.N.'s Oil for Food program, Kofi Annan issued a statement saying "the inquiry has cleared me of any wrongdoing." Later, asked if had any plans to resign, he answered, "Hell no!" Question for the Secretary General: How do you define "wrongdoing"?

In the narrowest sense, Mr. Volcker's Committee found "no evidence" that the Secretary General influenced the U.N.'s 1998 selection of Swiss inspections company Cotecna for an Oil for Food contract. It also found that "the evidence is not reasonably sufficient to show that the Secretary-General knew that Cotecna had submitted a bid on the humanitarian inspection contract in 1998."

In a broader sense, however, what Mr. Volcker's report reveals is an "adverse finding" against the Secretary General: That is, patterns of willful neglect, conflict of interest and incompetence that would have any business CEO out on his ear.

Consider just a few salient details that emerge from the 90-page report. In November 2004, Mr. Volcker's Committee asked Mr. Annan if he had ever met Cotecna's owner Elie Massey prior to the U.N.'s awarding the inspection contract in December 1998. Mr. Annan said he had met Mr. Massey only once, and briefly, in Geneva in late 1999.

In fact, Mr. Annan had met Mr. Massey twice before the contract was awarded. The first time, in February 1997, he and Mrs. Annan met privately with Mr. Massey and his wife for evening cocktails in Davos, Switzerland, on the sidelines of a meeting of the World Economic Forum. The second time, Mr. Annan met with Mr. Massey privately in his office in New York, apparently to discuss a lottery scheme to raise money for the U.N.

In a subsequent interview with the Committee, Mr. Annan remembered "brief encounters" with Mr. Massey, the purposes of which he could not precisely recall. But given that Mr. Annan's schedule in Davos was otherwise cluttered with meetings with world leaders, why would he choose to spend his dinner hour in the company of a relatively obscure businessman, save for the fact that Mr. Annan's son Kojo was employed by him?

Or consider Mr. Annan's September 1998 luncheon in Durban with Kojo and French businessman Pierre Mouselli. As we reported yesterday--and as the Volcker report confirms--Mr. Mouselli had sought and obtained the meeting with the senior Annan as a prerequisite for going into business with Kojo. In Mr. Mouselli's recollection, he and Kojo discussed Cotecna with the Secretary General, along with their other business plans.

In his meeting with the Committee, the Secretary General initially acknowledged only a brief encounter with his son and Mr. Mouselli. According to the report, "when shown his appointment schedule indicating lunch with 'Kojo & his friend,' the Secretary General stated he did not 'recollect having lunch with Kojo and a friend' and that it was a 'hectic time for me.' The Secretary-General denied that he was present with Kojo Annan and any business associates at any time that Cotecna's business was discussed."

Since Kojo refuses to cooperate with the Volcker Committee (he calls it "part of a broader Republican political agenda"), the question of what was discussed at the Durban lunch is a matter of Mr. Mouselli's word against Mr. Annan's. But we have interviewed Mr. Mouselli and find his testimony convincing--more so than a Secretary General whose memory seems repeatedly to have been "refreshed" by Committee investigators.

Still, the matter of Mr. Annan's credibility as a witness is almost trivial next to what the report reveals about the U.N.'s mismanagement of the Cotecna bid, which is merely symptomatic of its larger management and conflict-of-interest failures.

Throughout Mr. Volcker's investigation, the U.N. has steadfastly maintained that it hired Cotecna because it put in the lowest bid--$499 per man-day rate against $600 for the next-lowest bidder. But as we have previously reported, Cotecna upped its asking price within days of winning the contract without triggering a competitive rebid. Then too, at the time the U.N. awarded the contract to Cotecna Mr. Massey was under criminal investigation by a Swiss magistrate on money laundering charges.

U.N. procurement officials claim to have been ignorant of Cotecna's legal troubles, despite their having been the subject of a front page story in the New York Times. Yet according to the report, Mr. Annan himself had known of the allegations against Cotecna since 1998, but had been reassured by his son that "there was not much to it." And it finds that had there been more than a "one day inquiry" into 1999 news reports that Kojo worked for Cotecna, it is "unlikely that Cotecna would have been rewarded renewals" of its U.N. contracts. The man who ordered that perfunctory probe, Mr. Annan's then-chief of staff Iqbal Riza, shredded potentially relevant documents last year.

What we have summarized here provides merely a taste of the full report, which can be found at http://www.iic-offp.org/documents/InterimReportMar2005.pdf. Anyone who still thinks Mr. Annan has been acquitted of "wrongdoing" would do well to read it, as would anyone who still believes Mr. Annan is fit to lead the United Nations.

Liberals cheered when Janet Reno defied the courts to seize Elian Gonzalez.

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Selective Restraint
Liberals cheered when Janet Reno defied the courts to seize Elian Gonzalez.

Monday, March 28, 2005 12:01 a.m.

The sad case of Terri Schiavo has raised passions not seen since five years ago. Then another bitterly divided family argued in Florida courts over someone who couldn't speak on his own behalf: Elian Gonzalez.

In both cases, those who were unhappy with the courts' decisions strained to assert the federal government's power to produce a different outcome. The difference is that in Mrs. Schiavo's case, Congress backed off after passing a bill that merely asked a federal court to hear the case from scratch, something that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore declined to do. By contrast, those who wanted the federal government to intervene in Elian Gonzalez's case went all the way, supporting a predawn armed federal raid on the morning before Easter to seize the 6-year-old boy despite a federal appeals court's refusal to order his surrender.

Both cases were marked with hypocrisy and political posturing galore. Both times some conservative Republicans talked about issuing subpoenas to compel the person at the center of the case to appear before Congress; they swiftly backed down when public opinion failed to support their stunt. Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, argued that by opposing Elian's return to his father in communist Cuba, conservatives were abandoning the principle that "the state should not supersede the parents' wishes." In the case of Terri Schiavo, many conservatives who normally support spousal rights decided that Michael Schiavo's decision to abandon his marital vows while at the same time refusing to divorce his wife rendered him unfit to override the wishes of his wife's parents to have her cared for.

But liberals have gotten off easy for some of the somersaulting arguments they have made on behalf of judicial independence and states' rights to justify their position that Terri Schiavo should not be saved. Many made the opposite arguments in the Elian Gonzalez case.

Elian was plucked from the ocean off the coast of Florida on Thanksgiving Day 1999. after his mother died in an ill-fated attempt to bring him to freedom. Before he became a political football and Fidel Castro demanded his return, the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted him immigration "parole," which gave him the right to live in the U.S. for one year until his status was determined. Because Elian was underage, his fate would therefore be decided by local family courts. On Dec. 1, the INS issued a statement saying, "Although the INS has no role in the family custody decision process, we have discussed the case with the State of Florida officials who have confirmed that the issue of legal custody must be decided by its state court."

Then the Clinton administration reversed course after protests from the Castro regime reached a fever pitch. On Dec. 9, the INS declared its previous position "a mistake" and said that state courts would not have jurisdiction in Elian's case. They claimed that because Elain was taken directly to a hospital he was therefore never formally paroled into the U.S.--even though he was then turned over to his Miami relatives rather than the INS. "Technically, he was not paroled in the usual sense," said a Justice Department spokesman. But she could come up with no previous case in which a Cuban refugee had had his parole revoked and then had the INS move to return him to Cuba.

But it quickly became clear that was the INS's intent. Over the Christmas holidays the agency dispatched agents to Cuba to interview Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. After the interview, Mr. Gonzalez told reporters the agents and an accompanying U.S. diplomat had assured him Elian would be returned. The Clinton administration disputed those statements, although one of the government officials later privately acknowledged they had been made. Nonetheless, INS bureaucrats in Washington quickly determined that a man who had abandoned Elian and his mom for another woman was a "fit parent" who could "properly care for the child in Cuba." No public consideration was given to the fact that his father, a member of the Communist Party, might have been coerced.

If a state court had been allowed to hear the custody case, INS officials would not have been able to testify as to what Mr. Gonzalez told them to support his claim because it would have been hearsay. He would have had to come to the U.S. to testify on his own, subject to cross-examination. Even if the state court had granted him custody, it would have had to decide whether it was in the child's best interest to be returned to Cuba.

That's what Judge Rosa Rodriguez of Florida Family Court, complying with the original INS ruling, tried to do when she ruled in early January 2000 that her court had jurisdiction over the boy and gave Elian's great-uncle legal authority to represent him. Her order contravened an INS ruling that only Elian's father could speak for the boy and that he should be immediately returned to Cuba. Attorney General Janet Reno than promptly declared that Judge Rodriguez's ruling had "no force or effect." At the same time, INS officials assured reporters that under no circumstances did they intend to seize Elian by force.

The stalemate continued for another three months. On Thursday, April 20, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals--the same court that rejected the pleas of Terri Schiavo's parents last week--turned down the Justice Department's request to order Elian removed from the home of his Miami relatives. Moreover, the court expressed serious doubts about the Justice Department's reading of both the law and its own regulations, adding that Elian had made a "substantial case on the merits" of his claim. It further established a record that Elain, "although a young child, has expressed a wish that he not be returned to Cuba."

The Reno Justice Department acted the next day to short-circuit a legal process that was clearly going against it. On Good Friday evening, after all courts had closed for the day, the department obtained a "search" warrant from a night-duty magistrate who was not familiar with the case, submitting a supporting affidavit that seriously distorted the facts. Armed with that dubious warrant, the INS's helmeted officers, assault rifles at the ready, burst into the home of Elian's relatives and snatched the screaming boy from a bedroom closet. Many local bystanders were tear-gassed even though they did nothing to block the raid. Elian was quickly returned to Cuba; because he was never able to meet with his lawyers a scheduled May 11 asylum hearing on his case in Atlanta became moot.

Of course, there are differences between the Gonzalez and Schiavo cases. But clearly many of the people who approved of dramatic federal intervention to return Elian to Cuba took a completely different tack when it came to the argument over saving Terri Schiavo. Rep. Frank makes a compelling argument that Congress took an extraordinary step when it met in special session to create a procedure whereby the federal courts could decide whether Ms. Schiavo's rights were being violated. He may have a point when he accuses Republicans of "trying to command judicial activism and dictate outcomes when they don't like" rulings. But where were Mr. Frank and other liberals when the Clinton administration decided to sidestep a federal appeals court and order an armed raid against Elian Gonzalez? While Mr. Frank allowed that the use of assault rifles in the Elian raid was "excessive" and "frightening," he also defended the Justice Department's view that "of course [agents] had to use force." According to some reports, Gov. Jeb Bush considered seizing Mrs. Schiavo, à la Elian, and taking her to a hospital so she could be fed. But he did not do so. "I've consistently said that I can't go beyond what my powers are, and I'm not going to do it," the governor says. Janet Reno and the Clinton administration showed no such restraint when it came to Elian Gonzalez.

"Johnny Knoxville". Coach Pearl takes Tennesse job.

He had a great 4 years at UWM. His biggest knock was that he ratted out notorious cheat Lou "Mel Brooks" Henson and equally notorious cheat Jimmy Collins some 16 years ago.

The biggest rat is his former mentor, Tom Davis, who never came to Pearl's rescue.

I wish coach Pearl well and how he turns Knoxville into Loxville.

The "Juice-ters" crowed 3 times....

Isn't it ironic that former baseball players were called to testify before Congress regarding substance abuse in baseball on a "National Day" of subtance abuse, St Patrick's Day.

On this Palm Sunday, I was reminded of the story of the rooster crowing 3 times. So did former players and their commissioner when it came to the subject of steriod use in baseball.

I think their silence answers the question.

What ever happened to sportsmanship? by James Bowman of the WSJ

TASTE COMMENTARY

Honor Among Thieves
What ever happened to sportsmanship?

BY JAMES BOWMAN
Friday, March 18, 2005 12:01 a.m.

This week's hearings by the House Committee on Government Reform into steroid use in baseball are only the latest sign of the extent to which the win-at-any-cost ethos dominates Washington. Oh, and professional sports, too.

The official reason for the hearings is to call attention to the fact that younger athletes are learning from their professional-sports heroes how to use steroids and in some cases wrecking their lives as a result. The real reason, of course, is to allow politicians to grandstand and show their "concern"--very late into this long-simmering scandal, even after Major League Baseball itself has changed its look-the-other-way policies. So yesterday the committee's members began lecturing and bullying celebrity athletes, as if the drug-addled pros were to blame only for setting a bad example.

But the blame is bigger than bad "role models," and it has less to do with drugs than with honor.

There is a reason why all the major team sports enjoyed by Americans--as well as the modern Olympics--date from the 19th century. During that century, especially in Britain and America, traditional ideas of honor were undergoing a process of evolution that culminated in the distinctly Western, distinctly Victorian, idea of gentlemanly sportsmanship.

Soccer, known to the rest of the world as "football," goes much further back in time than the other sports--so far, indeed, that in some legends of its origins the ball is said to have been a human head. In medieval and Renaissance times, village football matches were often indistinguishable from riots. When Kent in Shakespeare's "King Lear" calls the loathsome Oswald a "base foot-ball player," he means to say that he is a low-life and an unscrupulous thug, someone who could not be expected to act with decency or decorum.

But in Victorian times, even soccer underwent a process of gentrification, and under Dr. Thomas Arnold, at Rugby School, the modern game of rugby football evolved out of it. (American football evolved out of rugby.) At Dr. Arnold's and other British public--i.e., private--schools, sports were seen as a way of teaching boys the ways of manliness and sportsmanship. Catering to upwardly mobile middle-class boys, these schools--which were imitated in America--were both cause and consequence of honor's democratization. The formerly aristocratic standard of honor was adapting itself to new social realities, with the help of Romantic ideas of chivalry learned from Sir Walter Scott.

In the early years of American football, deaths on the field were also not unusual--it was common to regard the endurance of pain and injury without flinching as character-building. The "injuries incurred on the playing field," said Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in a speech at Harvard, "are part of the price which the English-speaking race has paid for being world conquerors." President Theodore Roosevelt didn't like the idea of "college men who shrink from physical effort or from a little physical pain," but he urged colleges to get together in 1906 to change the rules of football and outlaw punching, kicking, elbowing and kneeing, among other standard features of the game at the time.

As for baseball, its origins are murkier. A form of it was a popular pastime for Union soldiers during the Civil War, but less so among Confederates. The honor-obsessed South clung to an older standard that thought it shameful to play a game that involved running away from the ball.

As the first and, for a long time, only professional sport in America, baseball had more in common with British soccer than with the gentlemanly game of (college) football. Both were mainly working-class pastimes that did not place a particularly high valuation on gentlemanly behavior. Nevertheless, they too were influenced by the standards of sportsmanship that rubbed off on them from the dominant culture. Without up-to-date notions of Victorian honor, they probably would not have survived.

Central to the New Honor was the never-quite-successful attempt to take away the stigma from losing. Old Honor, with its emphasis on avenging any insult, could never allow a game to end, since the losers would always be bound in honor to strike back at the winners. New Honor invented the notion of losing graciously. Also winning graciously. The way to honorable manhood, wrote Kipling, was clear: "if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same." This attitude marked an epoch in human consciousness and was what made modern amateur and professional sports possible.

Well, the New Honor has taken a beating of late, losing so graciously that almost no one seems to have noticed or cared. Vince Lombardi's famous dictum that "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing" has become the primary ethical standard of all sports. The desire to make money is now the raison d'etre--not only of professional but increasingly of college sports as well.

The steroid scandal captures this quality perfectly. Steroid use, although illegal for such purposes, became rampant in the 1990s because it conferred an unfair advantage on those who were prepared to flout the rules of fair play. And it persisted in a state of collusion and secrecy. A primitive standard of honor took hold: baseball's own version of the code of omertà, according to which players kept their secret and owners allowed them to, all the while reaping profits from the juiced-up game.

Now it's all come undone, but only because of public exposure--mainly in Jose Canseco's recent book, "Juiced," in which he ratted on some of his former teammates while admitting to steroid-use himself--not because of any sense of what is owed to fair play. Canseco now stands to enrich himself as a whistle-blower, as he once did as a steroid-user, and can hardly be counted an honorable example.

Why has the New Honor lost the day? The reasons are complicated--if you say the word "chivalry" to a feminist you'll get an idea. Yet somewhere out of sight New Honor remains the foundation of the big-money spectator sports, and its lingering memory is the reason for the hypocrisy that has produced this week's congressional hearings. Officially, baseball has had to continue to pretend to be founded on the principles of sportsmanship and fair play even though for years it has abandoned them.

Oddly, in the pretense lies a hope: that the ghost of New Honor--the honor of Dr. Arnold and Rudyard Kipling and Teddy Roosevelt--might still retain just enough power to make some of our new-old sports heroes feel ashamed.

Mr. Bowman is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

Copyright © 2005 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy: 'We'll Go Through Iran'

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4110

Thank you "onion"!

"Nostra-Don Mus Driver wrong. Favre to Return!

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2009750

Brett Favre is returning to Green Bay for the 2005 season, Packers coach Mike Sherman told The Associated Press.

Sexual Predators deserve a place to live..How about a 10 year trial with Judge Franke?

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar05/307513.asp

Why don't we have the sexual predators live with the judges and the members of the panels that want to place these predators anywhere but their neighborhoods? Isn't the Jessica Lunsford tragedy evidence enough that these creatures can not be cured?

Jesuits Dis the Military. "Mar-"Quette the Foc out of here."

Marquette has a long tradition of supporting the Navy ROTC Program. The current administration's PR blunder is an insult to my fellow classmates that were in the ROTC program.

In fact, Navy pilot John "Skip" Lussier who flew President Bush onto the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. John was a year behind me at Marquette and was in the Marquette's Navy ROTC program. Don't think for a minute that Marquette didn't include a 3 or 4-page story including pictures of John with President Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Alumni Newsletter. Which they should have done but let's be consistent and not support the military when it only suits Marquette.

It appears that the Mascot survey was a complete waste of money, as it is apparent that Marquette doesn't deserve to use the name "Warriors".

Signed one thoroughly disgusted Marquette Alum.

Senator Byrd Grills Condi. What a "Sheet Head!"

Former Ku Klux Klansmen, Robert Byrd of West Virginia grilled Condi Rice today. Where's the outrage in the African American community.

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050126/2005-01-26T011422Z_01_N25379705_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CONGRESS-RICE-DC.html

Robert Byrd of West Virginia said her confirmation would be viewed "as another endorsement of the administration's unconstitutional doctrine of pre-emptive war, its bullying policies of unilateralism, and its callous rejection of our long-standing allies."

Republicans pointed to the sparkling resume of the 50-year-old Rice who grew up in the segregated South, the daughter of a preacher. She became provost at Stanford University and later served in the top echelon of the Bush White House as one of his closest advisers.

"Fili-Buck-ster"

I am in year two of a Milwaukee Bucks filibuster. I have not watched, listened to, read about or attended any Milwaukee Bucks games. As long as Senator Kohl, the owner of the Bucks, refuses to allow the Presidents judicial nominees to get floor vote, I will continue my boycott.

I think if we turn up the heat here in Milwaukee we can spread to the other NBA cities in which the Bucks are the opponent that night. For those who have already purchased season tickets, they can participate by not purchasing any concessions at the game or at any bars and restaurants before or after the game. This may not hurt the wealthy Senator but it may cause the vendors, bartenders etc. to complain as they feel the impact of the boycott.

Conservatives need to re-visit and refute Moore's Movie

Many who saw Michael Moore's movie are unaware of all of the untruths. Conservative talk shows should read Christopher Hitchen's comments so that the record is set straight. This will help not only those that were swayed by the movie but it will also help Bush supporters refute Moore's falsewhoods. Let's face it. His movie had a big impact on America. It is time to show that none of it ways true.

fighting words
Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

Senator Biden. Great Questions of Condi. Who did you plagiarize?

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/6/4/170345.shtml

Kerry's DNC Enforcer Outed Biden as 'Plagiarist'

The man tapped by Sen. John Kerry to enforce loyalty at the Democratic National Committee had to resign in disgrace from Michael Dukakis' 1988 presidential campaign, after revealing that then-Dukakis presidential rival Sen. Joe Biden was a plagiarist.

John Sasso, who managed the failed Dukakis campaign, has been installed as Kerry's key man at the DNC, the New York Post reported Friday, in a bid to keep an eye on Clinton loyalist, DNC chair Terry McAuliffe.

"[Sasso] is totally loyal to Kerry," the Post's source said.

But what the Post didn't say was that the top Kerry aide was forced to resign from the Dukakis campaign in September 1987, after admitting he distributed a videotape that proved rival candidate Biden had been using verbatim excerpts from speeches of British Labour political leader Neil Kinnock without attribution.

The revelation prompted increased scrutiny of Biden's record, which turned out to include a case ofplagiarism committed in law school. Biden also was forced to admit he had lied about his academic record.

The Delaware Democrat withdrew from the presidential race on Sept. 23, 1987.

After firing Sasso, Dukakis told angry Biden supporters, "There is no place in American politics for this type of thing."

Apparently Sen. Kerry disagrees.

O.I.C "Oh I See Corrupt People" Milwaukee's Oil For Food Scandal

Just like the UN Oil for Food Scandal, corrupt individuals punish the poor, especially children by stealing aid that was intended for them.

OIC board resigns as affiliations end

Agency report says members felt pressure from state to depart

By STEVE SCHULTZE
sschultze@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Jan. 14, 2005

The ailing Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee took its first big steps to recast itself Friday after a criminal scandal, announcing that its entire board had quit and that several affiliates were being eliminated.

OIC Troubles Related Coverage Editorial: A new board, a new start? Previous Coverage Archive: Previous coverage of troubles at the Opportunities Industrialization Center of Greater Milwaukee

Two new board members also were announced: Milwaukee businessman Fred Jones; and Richard Cox, the former superintendent of the Milwaukee County House of Correction.

Recruiting people to fill the rest of the seven vacant slots on the board of the tainted agency has been difficult because of ongoing news coverage of the agency's woes, according to an OIC progress report delivered to state lawmakers Friday.

The Rev. Fred Crouther, OIC's outgoing board chairman, and the other eight OIC board members agreed to quit at a meeting Wednesday, but OIC announced their departure Friday in a statement that suggested pressure from the state was the cause.

Conversations with the officials at the state Department of Workforce Development made it clear they "desire the resignations of the OIC-GM board of directors" and felt that was necessary to protect OIC's diminished role as a Wisconsin Works contractor, the OIC statement says.

The departing board members "regret that the agency has recently faced a series of misfortunes and setbacks that have impacted its effectiveness and diverted the agency from its mission," the statement says.

The state last month trimmed OICs W-2 contract by about two-thirds, or $23 million, after a kickback scandal resulted in the conviction of former OIC President Carl Gee, further findings of improper spending of taxpayer money and poor performance in helping W-2 participants.

About $500,000 in taxpayer W-2 money from OIC was paid to former state Sen. Gary R. George, according to criminal indictments in the case. George is serving a prison term. Gee's sentencing is Jan. 25.

The agency also has lost its state contract for weatherizing low-income families' homes, which was worth nearly $11 million last year. And OIC has been rocked by two new unsettling disclosures: Its recently resigned chief financial officer spent $45,000 in OIC money for cell phones to be sent to Africa; and OIC came up short $370,000 in its weatherization program.

Accountability necessary

Bill Clingan, who oversees W-2 for Wisconsin, said state officials did not seek the resignation of OIC's board.

"That never came from us," said Clingan, administrator of the state Division of Workforce Solutions. Instead, he said, the state has pushed for quality service to W-2 clients from OIC.

Some lawmakers, however, have called for a new board at OIC. They have warned that and other steps must be taken if the firm wants to keep any state contracts. Lawmakers warned OIC officials during a hearing last month that senior management and board members with any links to the scandals should be purged from the organization.

OIC announced these changes Friday:

The resignations of Crouther, Jim Copeland, Carole Culbreath, the Rev. Clarence Robinson, James Elliott, the Rev. Michael Cousin, Carrie Banty, Linda Stewart and Douglas Brodzik. All except Stewart, a former state official, have sat on the OIC board for a decade or more.

Three of the resigning board members will stay on for six weeks to help in the transition, but those three weren't identified. Mae Bolden, an OIC senior vice president, declined to comment Friday and said Crouther, the board chairman, would have no comment.

None of the resigning board members returned phone calls Friday.

OIC affiliates Opportunities Investments Associates and the Garfield Foundation have begun the process of dissolution, which was required as part of a plea deal in federal court. The affiliates this week agreed to plead guilty to felony charges in connection with OIC payments to George and a falsified document submitted to a federal grand jury.

The Garfield Foundation, which controls $4 million in real estate, "is no longer controlled by OIC-GM," according to a letter to lawmakers. Unspecified properties will be "divested," the letter says, without elaboration.

OIC will close its investment arm and sell its holdings in a corn roasting company and Urban Developers, a development partnership with John Bowles.

Two other affiliates - Inner City Redevelopment Corp. and New Concept Self Development Center - are being spun off as independent companies.

Project Respect will be dissolved as a company but survive as an OIC program.

One affiliate not embroiled in criminal controversy - Learning Opportunities Center Inc. - will remain as OIC's sole subsidiary.

A committee of bankers from three big OIC lenders is helping OIC work out the financial details, the report says. Those lenders are M&I Bank, Legacy Bank and North Milwaukee State Bank. Outgoing OIC board member Stewart is president of North Milwaukee State Bank.

Pared-down operation

"Upon completion of all the dissolution and close-out processes, this will leave a much smaller, simpler organization," the OIC letter to lawmakers says.

Tyrone Dumas, the interim executive director, said in a brief interview Thursday this year's budget was about $18 million. The agency operated on a $65 million budget last year, according to OIC's Web site.

Dumas also has said the agency is several million dollars in the red. He couldn't be reached Friday.

State lawmakers praised OIC for the resignation of its board Friday, but some also had harsh words.

Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) said the board change "shows a commitment to getting back to the mission and getting rid of any appearance of the old way of doing things.

"I don't think the agency needs to disappear," Taylor said. "The good OIC has done surely outweighs the bad."

But Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said the board resignations were too little, too late. The state should cut its losses and sever all ties with OIC, Darling said.

"I can't see how they are going to be able to pick up and meet the needs of the clients they have," she said.

State Sen. Robert Cowles (R-Green Bay) also was skeptical.

"I see this as a colossal waste of money," he said of the state's ongoing W-2 pact with OIC. The agency is expected to get about $16 million this year for operating a smaller W-2 caseload.

Cowles said Dumas needs to be empowered to fire top OIC managers linked to Gee, his predecessor.