By: Brock N. Meeks  

With America looking more like a nation running scared than a nation standing strong, our leaders here in Washington are rolling back privacy protections or launching proposals that will have us all hard-wired into some all-seeing government database faster than they can evacuate their offices during an anthrax scare.

Am I the only one to notice how sick and twisted it is for Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy to be vocally advocating the establishment of a national ID card system? Just a few years ago, these two baby billionaires couldn’t be dragged kicking or screaming to Washington, and now they’re pimping for a national database system that could track you and me from cradle to grave?

The word “evil” is being tossed around a lot these days, and it rightly applies to the concept of a national ID card. Even conservative icon Ronald Reagan brushed off that idea. During Reagan’s presidency, national ID cards were proposed as a way of dealing with illegal immigration. But Reagan feared they could be abused for, say, tracking all gun owners or gun purchases. Even after he was shot, Reagan rebuffed the lunacy of a national ID card. Legend has it that during a Cabinet meeting, when the ID card topic was raised in relation to immigration, Reagan deadpanned: “Maybe we should just brand all babies.”

By: Kenneth S. Deffeyes  

Global oil production will probably reach a peak sometime during this decade. After the peak, the world's production of crude oil will fall, never to rise again. The world will not run out of energy, but developing alternative energy sources on a large scale will take at least 10 years. In the meantime, there will be chaos in the oil industry, in governments, and in national economies. What will happen to the rest of us? In a sense, the oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s were a laboratory test. We were the lab rats. You might remember it. Most Americans' real standard of living dropped progressively lower for several years. And those crises were far less severe than what's coming this time.

Editorial from:  

The Bush administration is treating energy policy and Social Security on a top-secret, need-to-know basis. Officials could tell you what they're planning, but if they did, they would have to kill you.

By: Damien Cave  

The Bush administration's ties to oil and gas are as deep as an offshore well. President George W. Bush's family has been running oil companies since 1950. Vice President Dick Cheney spent the late 90's as CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice sat on the board of Chevron, which graced a tanker with her name. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans was the CEO of Tom Brown Inc. - a natural gas company with fields in Texas, Colorado and Wyoming - for more than a decade.

The links don't end with personnel. The bin Laden family and other members of Saudi Arabia's oil-wealthy elite have contributed mightily to several Bush family ventures, even as the American energy industry helped put Bush in office. Of the top 10 lifetime contributors to George W.'s war chests, six either come from the oil business or have ties to it, according the Center for Public Integrity.

"We all have to change. The world's poor cannot be led by people like Mr. bin Laden who think they can find their redemption in our destruction. But the world's rich cannot be led by people who play to our shortsighted selfishness, and pretend that we can forever claim for ourselves what we do not for others."

- Bill Clinton, in a speech at Harvard University (11/19/01)

By: E. C. Fish  

Not that it makes a damn bit of difference. Back on the home front, the war is over, and it was a complete rout. We lost, at least to the extent that we were fighting for democracy, justice, and American values. A regime of questionable legitimacy and no real democratic mandate has seized power, overturned the constitution, and assumed unilateral control, suspending the usual checks and balances. All this occurred without a shot fired or voice raised, and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

By: Garrett Epps  

Attorney General John Ashcroft is the latest offender. Earlier this month, the Attorney General (who apparently felt that the anthrax scare and terrorism were pretty much under control) moved against the real menace to the nation: Oregon's Death with Dignity Act.

As governor of Missouri, Mr. Ashcroft once remarked: "Those in Eastern Europe and the Russian republics know that it's futile to have an all-powerful centralized bureaucracy. And we pray that someday those on Capitol Hill will learn the same." Now, however, he has become the ultimate federal nurse, interposing himself - and the Drug Enforcement Administration - between Oregon physicians and their dying patients.

From:  

Taking credit for something he didn't do was a common strategy for George W. Bush when he was governor of Texas. During the presidential campaign, Bush regularly claimed credit for a patients bill of rights passed by the Texas legislature that he didn't sign and that he actually campaigned against. (And as president, he has worked to pass a patients bill of rights - misnamed, of course - that would reverse the important provisions in the Texas law.)

Now he has taken a similar strategy with the recent aviation security bill. He fought for a version that would leave the private companies that now handle security in place. The House passed that version because of his lobbying. But the Senate bill (passed 100-0) required baggage screeners to be federal employees, and this version prevailed in a conference committee. Now Bush has signed the bill (the political pressure is too great for him not to), and he'll take credit for a bill he didn't support. Come 2004, there's no doubt that this bill will be on his list of accomplishments. But it was a failure for Bush, one we should all be thankful for.

Industrial Output Fell 1.1% in October

From:  

U.S. industrial output last month took its biggest dive in nearly 11 years and extended a string of monthly declines that was the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930's, the Federal Reserve said on Friday.

The output of the nation's factories, mines and utilities fell 1.1% in October, the biggest decrease since it plunged 1.3% in November 1990, it said.

The latest decline, which followed a 1% drop in September, marked the 13th consecutive fall in output, the longest string of declines since the 15 months ended July 1932, it added.

"Samuel Johnson’s saying that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels has some truth in it but not nearly enough. Patriotism, in truth, is the great nursery of scoundrels, and its annual output is probably greater than that of even religion. Its chief glories are the demagogue, the military bully, and the spreaders of libels and false history. Its philosophy rests firmly on the doctrine that the end justifies the means - that any blow, whether above or below the belt, is fair against dissenters from its wholesale denial of plain facts."

- H. L. Mencken

By: David Podvin  

America's foremost philosopher and etymologist, Ann Coulter, has recently redefined the words "man" and "woman". No longer are these terms related to gender; "man" now means logical and strong, whereas "woman" now means emotional and weak.

By this new standard, the only man currently serving in the Congress of the United States of America is named Barbara Lee.

The other 534 politicians in the federal legislative branch comprise a mélange of fascists, demagogues, opportunists, and cowards who all agree that this is the ideal time to wave the flag with one hand while burning the Constitution with the other. They have voted to give George W. Bush more power than any president has ever possessed, even the elected ones.

Only Barbara Lee had the big brass ones to opine that maybe the document written by Madison and Jefferson should not now be destroyed in order to give virtual dictatorial power to someone who has never even heard of Madison and Jefferson.

By: Bob Herbert  

Seldom in the last half-century has the U.S. been so poorly prepared to assist individuals and families struggling with the effects of a recession. Example: the unemployment insurance system, which was established to ease the pain of temporary joblessness, covers less than 40 percent of the people who are out of work. Example: the food stamp program, which was supposed to slam the door on hunger in the world's greatest nation (and which once served 90 percent of eligible families), now serves just 60 percent of the poverty-stricken folks who qualify for help.

Editorial from:  

For most Americans there is no more frightening threat than terrorists with nuclear weapons. Assuming Osama bin Laden does not already have them - the assumption most experts make - everything possible must be done to prevent him or other terrorists from obtaining them.

The starting point is Russia, where poorly protected nuclear bombs and materials remain vulnerable to theft. It is not enough that President Bush and Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, have agreed to greatly reduce the number of nuclear missiles in each country's arsenal. The two leaders must also do more to safeguard the remaining weapons and any vulnerable nuclear materials in Russia that could be used to make bombs if stolen.

'Not All Muslims Evil' but Only Christians Will Go to Heaven

By: Nick Schou  

Ollie North has the answer: Muslim radicals hate us not because we're free and rich nor because U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been designed to guarantee the unfettered flow of oil.

No, North tells us, Muslim fundamentalists hate us because they "know what the scripture tells us, which is that the only path to God in heaven is through his son, our savior, Jesus Christ".

Bush Team Is Reversing Environmental Policies

By: Katharine Q. Seelye  

In the last two months, the Bush administration has proceeded with several regulations, legal settlements and legislative measures intended to reverse Clinton-era environmental policies.

These include moves to allow road-building in national forests, reverse the phaseout of snowmobiles in national parks, make it easier for mining companies to dig for gold, copper and zinc on public lands, ease energy-saving standards for air-conditioners, bar the reintroduction of grizzly bears in the Northwest and, environmentalists say, make it easier for developers to eliminate wetlands.

Editorial from:  

On Sept. 11, though, the real costs of our failed energy policy should have become more visible.

Yet Congress continues to seek 19th century solutions to a 21st century energy problem. The Republican leadership insists that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is the answer to our energy needs. That's a remarkably silly energy security strategy, given that any oil that would come from there is 10 years from market and would be but a relatively brief source of oil.

The House of Representatives' energy bill, passed in August, gets it exactly backward. It gives generous tax breaks to the oil, electric and nuclear industries but comparatively paltry ones to development of conservation and the renewable energy solutions that can provide genuine energy independence. The Senate has yet to act.

By: Ellen Goodman  

Let me see if I have this straight.

We have terrorists on the loose, anthrax wafting through the mail and the Justice Department is in hot pursuit of... terminally ill patients?

We have another plane crash to investigate, a network of foreign "sleepers" apparently eluding the FBI, and Attorney General John Ashcroft is taking aim at... the state of Oregon?

By: Warren Pease  

The fact is, whether anyone cares to admit it or not, the Usurper in Chief was an inflexible ninny on September 10 and he remains one today. How anyone can emerge from both Harvard and Yale without any perceptible effect is astonishing, but the evidence seems clear. This intellectually lazy, incurious, verbally challenged incompetent ranks far below even the abysmal standards of contemporary American politics.

We watch in stupefaction as the Moppet in Chief blends mangled syntax, simplistic moral absolutes and historical hogwash into a cheap, pre-fab, Kindergartenish world view. "This is an evil man we're dealing with and I wouldn't put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it", he said of Osama bin Laden after a recent meeting with French president Jacques Chirac and, in the process, breaking Pat Robertson's world record for use of the word "evil" in a single month.

By: David Teather and Larry Elliott  

"The system has not been tested yet", Ms. Pace says of the welfare reforms brought in by Bill Clinton back in 1996. "Now it is. The same rules can't apply in a bad economy as in a good economy."

But the problem for Ms. Pace and her clients is that the same rules are being applied. A system that seemed to epitomise the tough love of the new left when jobs were plentiful in the mid-1990s now looks brutal and callous in the recession of 2001. State and federal budgets are under pressure as a result of the recession, so the same message is going out to those at the very bottom of the labour market: go out and find work. Or go hungry.

By: Bruce S. Ticker  

Slightly two centuries after George Washington became our first president, a man can move into the White House with insufficient experience and qualifications.

A candidate can come before the public and talk in platitudes yet avoid explaining in detail what he will do. And even when he does, many voters don't pay attention.

By: Dave Conroy  

George Bush is one of those people. To be honest, I would be almost as outraged that he is President if he had not had the election stolen for him. He is the antithesis of everything this country should be.

This is a man who literally has had everything handed to him on a silver platter due solely to his family name. He was average in high school but got into Yale. He was average at Yale but got into Harvard. He had one failed business after another but still got more and more capital. He drank like crazy until he was forty, held only one very week political office for a grand total of six years, but here he is as President of the United States.

By: Lefty Dal Vero  

You want to know what's unpatriotic? Not giving a rat's ass about last year's election results. It is, quite frankly, our patriotic duty to be mad as hell about what happened last year, because what happened last year made a mockery of democracy. It made a mockery of America. So getting mad about last year's farce is a hell of a lot more patriotic than wearing your American flag pin on the 10 o'clock news.

Let's remember what happened last year. Seven out of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices decided that the tallying standard Gore sought would deny Bush the equal protection of the law. That means the vote count scenario the papers are focusing on would never have been realized. Never. Rather, the Supreme Court's implication was that a statewide, uniform tallying procedure was constitutionally required. As shown by the consortium's study, if such a vote count had been implemented, Gore might have won.

Of course, that never happened. After ruling on the equal protection argument, five out of nine of the justices, in a scene straight out of Kafka, handed the matter over to the state of Florida to devise a recount standard in under an hour. It was democracy, Lens Crafters style.

Tobacco Firm to Profit from Cancer Genes

By: Sara Boseley  

One of the world's biggest tobacco companies aims to make billions of pounds from the diseases caused by cigarette smoking through deals with biotech companies for the exclusive rights to market future lung cancer vaccines.

By: David Corn  

Either you're with us or not, on the side of good or on the side of the evil ones. That's been the mantra of George W. Bush and his advisers as they have endeavored to gather overseas support for their global war on terrorism. If they consider taking such a position to be an effective tool of diplomacy, perhaps the rest of the world ought to adopt a similar stance regarding the United States and global warming: either you join us and give a damn about the future of the climate, or you don't and are an enemy of the atmosphere.

As Bush enjoyed a fortunate stretch (the encouraging collapse, or strategic retreat, of the Taliban and the successful, arms-cutting down-home summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin), the good news from Afghanistan overwhelmed the few media reports on the agreement reached by 165 countries - not including, notably, the United States - on a climate control treaty that establishes mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. As these nations hammered out pesky details of the Kyoto Protocol during a session in Morocco, the Bush administration lazed about on the sidelines.

By: Patrick Healy  

A conservative academic group founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, fired a new salvo in the culture wars by blasting 40 college professors as well as the president of Wesleyan University and others for not showing enough patriotism in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

"College and university faculty have been the weak link in America's response to the attack", say leaders of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in a report being issued today. The report names names and criticizes professors for making statements "short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation".

Several of the scholars singled out in the report said yesterday they felt blacklisted, complaining that their words had been taken out of context to make them look like enemies of the state.

By: John Balzar  

By insisting on secrecy, by showing the world how easily we will forgo two of America's most precious rights - the right to know and the right to believe in the justness of justice - the administration could hand Al Qaeda what it cannot win on its own and does not deserve: a victory.

By: Jeff Manning  

On Oct. 17, Houston-based Enron "locked down" the 401(k) accounts. The lockdown made it impossible for employees, including about 2,700 at Portland General Electric, to roll their Enron stock into a different investment or make any other changes in their accounts. The freeze, which lasted until Wednesday, coincided with Enron's sudden downfall.

Some employees are furious, noting that Enron executives and directors sold off more than $100 million worth of company stock in recent months.

"I just feel like I've been stolen from and lied to," said Alan Kaseweter, 43, a special tester for PGE's service department who had almost all of his 401(k) invested in Enron stock. Kaseweter, of Redlands, said his account has dwindled from $348,000 a year ago to $115,500 at the time of the freeze to $36,000.

"History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure."

- Justice Thurgood Marshall

By: Chris Floyd  

The U.S. media's long-delayed recount of the disputed Florida ballots from last year's presidential election is finally in, and the winner is - George!

George Orwell, that is.

Hee Hee Hee Look at Me Piss'n on the Economy 'Cause I'm Just a Brat-Baby!

"I was on Air Force One the day of the attack, working my way back to Washington via Louisiana and Nebraska making sure that the president was safe and secure."

- pResident George 'ain't I great' Bush, speaking at a high school in Crawford, Texas (11/15/01), showing who he really cares about!

"That's the two-question limit. Thank you all for coming. Our food is getting cold. The prime minister is hungry, and so am I."

- pResident George 'whiner' Bush, to the foreign news corps covering the visit of India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee

By: Richard Reeves  

With a stroke of the pen on Nov. 1, President Bush stabbed history in the back and blocked Americans' right to know how presidents (and vice presidents) have made decisions. Executive Order 13223 ended more than 30 years of increasing openness in government.

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