THE FULCRUM

From Merriam-Webster:

1 obsolete : supreme excellence or an example of it 2 a : supreme power especially over a body politic b : freedom from external control : AUTONOMY c : controlling influence 3 : one that is sovereign; especially : an autonomous state

From this morning's New York Times:

The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

The Pentagon has reacted angrily to the publication on US websites of photos of America's war dead arriving home.

[snip]

"They're not happy with the release of the photos," said Dover Air Force base spokesman Col Jon Anderson of the Pentagon.

"The photos will not be released through Air Force channels," said Air Force spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Cassidy, who added that requests for their release could be made under the same act [Freedom of Information Act - FOI].

Bill Lets Doctors, Nurses Refuse To Treat Homosexuals

Mar 28, 2003 9:07 am US/Mountain
DENVER (AP) State representatives have removed a provision protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination by health care workers.

Rep. Don Lee, a Jefferson County Republican, took a run-of-the-mill measure dealing with agency regulations and amended it to remove protection for gays under rules set by the Medical Services Board. It was approved by the House Thursday.

Lee argued that gays don't have state legal claims against discrimination now and the rules would create a special protection for them.

Senate Bill 88 passed on a 34-29 party-line vote, with a lone Republican, Rep. Gregg Rippy of Glenwood Springs, siding with Democrats.

An angry Rep. Jennifer Veiga, a Denver Democrat and House minority leader, said Lee's approach also would allow for discriminating against people who are older, believe in a certain religion, belong to an ethnic group or have a physical disability.

"Does it create a special protected class? It absolutely does not," Veiga said. "It provides some assurance to large sections of our society that they will get treatment."

Rep. Shawn Mitchell, a Broomfield Republican, said that any medical professional who chooses not to treat someone would be disciplined under medical ethics or have a lawsuit slapped against them.

"They will be sued for medical incompetence, but not for political incorrectness," Mitchell said.
Several Democrats argued that the rule change would be unconstitutional.

In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Colorado's Amendment 2, which barred laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.

"We went down this road in Colorado with Amendment 2," said Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder. "It wasn't a pretty trip."

10,261: Number of children of Wal-Mart employees in Georgia who are enrolled in the state's PeachCare for Kids health insurance program, which provides medical coverage to children whose parents cannot afford it.

Silicio was let go yesterday for violating U.S. government and company regulations, said William Silva, president of Maytag Aircraft, the contractor that employed Silicio at Kuwait International Airport.

[snip]

Maytag also fired David Landry, a co-worker who recently wed Silicio.

[snip]

Maytag's Silva said the decision to terminate Silicio's and Landry's employment was made by the company. But he said the U.S. military had identified "very specific concerns" about their actions. Silva declined to detail those concerns.

This is the BushCo way: To apologize is to show weakness. To say you might've made some mistakes whilst tromping blindly down the warpath, well, that sort of humility doesn't sit well with the hawks and the corporate profiteers. There is only the push toward bigger, toward stronger, toward nastier and angrier and more troops and more weaponry and more draconian Patriot Acts and more enraged anti-U.S. fundamentalists and more dead soldiers in Iraq.

The FBI is investigating an e-mail sent to the El Paso Islamic Center that threatened to make it "the center of death and destruction" if hostages in Iraq weren't released.

The message was discovered on Sunday after it was sent to the center's main e-mail address from a person called "freedom lover." It said the threat would be carried out in three days if hostages in Iraq were not freed.

The note also said, "The will of the people has been portrayed to you and your Satan worshipping faith."

The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.

[snip]

Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen."

The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too."

All told, the Pentagon transcript omits a series of eight questions and answers, some of them just a few words each. Yesterday Rumsfeld described the deleted passages as "some banter."

At least 10 people were killed and dozens wounded Wednesday when a car bomb destroyed a Saudi security service building in the capital, witnesses said.

Saudi officials described it as a "terrorist attack" and Arab television said the body of suicide bomber had been found.

[snip]

"We believe it is a terrorist attack," a Saudi Interior Ministry source told Reuters. He said a car packed with explosives blew up in al-Murabaa district.

The kingdom, a key U.S. ally and the world's largest oil exporter, is battling a tide of Islamist militancy linked to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

[snip]

Saudi Arabia last week defused five cars rigged with explosives in Riyadh, security sources said. Suspected Muslim militants also killed at least five Saudi policemen last week.

Also last week, a wanted Saudi militant called on Muslims in a video distributed on the Internet to kill Americans.

A series of explosions ripped through three police stations and a police academy in the southern Iraqi city of Basra Wednesday, killing at least 55 people, including some 10 schoolchildren, and injuring at least 238, officials said.

Three near-simultaneous blasts targeted police stations at rush hour in Basra. At about the same time, a fourth explosion ripped through the police academy in the Basra suburb of Zubair. An hour later another blast targeted the same police academy.

Forty-five people were killed in the police station blasts and 10 were killed in the police academy explosions, officials and witnesses said. The injured included two British soldiers at the police academy, Maj. Hisham al-Halawi, spokesman for British forces in Basra, told Al-Arabiya television.

The attacks came a day after Iraqi leaders named a tribunal of judges and prosecutors to try Saddam Hussein, placing a longtime opponent of the ousted dictator in the forefront of the case against him and his former Baathist inner circle.

Meanwhile, U.S Marines backed by tanks and helicopter gunships battled insurgents in northern Fallujah on Wednesday, killing nine, as a day-old attempt to bring peace to the besieged city hit snags, with Marines saying guerrillas were not turning in weapons.

Explosions were heard coming from the scene of the fighting, and Cobra helicopter gunships were blasting with Gatling guns from the air. Tanks moved into the Julan neighborhood from which Marines said insurgents their positions.

The attack came as U.S. Marine commanders said no guerrillas have come forward so far to turn in their heavy weapons, a key tenet of an agreement reached by negotiators that began being implemented on Tuesday. The Marines, in response, halted a key commitment on their side in the deal, the return of Fallujah residents to the city.

President Bush holds significant advantages over John F. Kerry in public perceptions of who is better equipped to deal with Iraq and the war on terrorism, and he has reduced the advantages his Democratic challenger held last month on many domestic issues, according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

The poll also found that Iraq and the war on terrorism have surged in importance, and rank with the economy and jobs as top voting issues. Despite signs of concern among Americans about the violence in Iraq, the poll showed Bush's approval ratings holding steady and Kerry's slipping on a variety of issues and attributes.

By 49 percent to 44 percent, Bush is viewed as better able to deal with the country's biggest problems. Five weeks ago, those numbers were reversed. By comfortable margins, voters see Bush as stronger than Kerry on key national security issues.