THE FULCRUM

"If the Congress and the president delay unnecessarily, and it's difficult again for me to say exactly when they should act,'' Mr. Kean said, "but if it seems that they are delaying, I think they are going to be held responsible by the American people, especially if the experts are right and there is another terrorist attack."

Mr. Bush, who began a weeklong vacation on Friday at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., ordered his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to lead an administrationwide review of the recommendations and to report to him "as quickly as possible," a spokeswoman said.

Musings about a second Bush term typically assume another four years of the same right-wing policies we've had to date. But it'd likely be far worse. So far, the Bush administration has had to govern with the expectation of facing American voters again in 2004. But suppose George W. Bush wins a second term. The constraint of a re-election contest will be gone. Knowing that voters can no longer turn them out, and that this will be their last shot at remaking America, the radical conservatives will be unleashed.

Of the four state high school health textbooks under consideration in Texas this summer, one says teenagers should “get plenty of rest” if they want to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. It also suggests students can help prevent pregnancies by respecting themselves. The book avoids any discussion of condoms.

[snip]

"Texas has the nation’s highest teen birth rate among girls age 15 to 17, and nearly half of all new sexually transmitted disease infections occur among people age 15 to 24,” Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network told the Dallas Morning News.

The U.S. military has spent most of the $65 billion that Congress approved for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is scrambling to find $12.3 billion more from within the Defense Department to finance the wars through the end of the fiscal year, federal investigators said yesterday.

[snip]

The strain is beginning to add up, the GAO said. The hard-hit Army faces a $5.3 billion shortfall in funds supporting deployed forces, a $2 billion budget deficit for the refurbishing of equipment used in Iraq and a $753 million deficit in its logistics contract. The Army also needs $800 million more to cover equipment maintenance costs and $650 million to pay contractors guarding garrisons.

The Air Force has decreased flying hours for pilots, eliminated some training, slowed civilian hiring and curtailed "lower priority requirements such as travel, supplies and equipment," the report said.

Despite public claims that recruiting is on track, senior military officials involved in U.S. Army recruiting say that the service is cutting deeply into its delayed-entry pool of recruits, which likely will create a shortfall later this year.

[snip]

Already, the strains of those deployments are showing. Last month, Army officials announced that thousands of active-duty soldiers who are nearing the end of their volunteer service could be forced to serve an entire 12-month tour overseas if their units are tapped for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

"We are facing a serious manpower crunch," said a senior defense official.

By the time the 9/11 commission releases its final report today, President Bush will be well into a day of White House events designed to bolster his image as a defender of the homeland.

In the Oval Office this morning, Mr. Bush will sign a law giving police officers added authority to pack weapons while off duty. By midafternoon, Mr. Bush will have beaten a trail to a police training academy in Illinois, where he plans to deliver a speech on domestic security. The theatrics underscore the lengths to which the White House will go to protect what have been Mr. Bush's biggest political assets: his launching of the war on terrorism and his image of resoluteness. But the need to go to such lengths also suggests that the Bush team worries that the president's edge on national-security issues may be eroding.

The tightness of the race and diminished backing for Mr. Bush's handling of the war on terror underscore the danger the commission's final report poses for Mr. Bush, particularly if voters conclude the administration was negligent in handling the terror threat. Mr. Bush's leadership in the war on terror "is the underpinning of Bush's support right now," says Frank Luntz, a pollster who has worked with top Republicans in past elections. "If that underpinning comes apart, then so does his support."

The bill, explicitly requiring people who have never been in combat to serve in the wars they start, would affect thousands of neoconservatives in Washington and New York. It was strongly opposed by the Bush Administration on the grounds that it would leave most of the Administration's upper-level positions vacant, including the presidency and vice-presidency, but it was left unattended on President Bush's desk and he inadvertently signed it after deciding it looked too long and too hard to read first.

In a statement, Sen. Kerry described Mr. Berger as a friend who "has tirelessly served this nation with honor and distinction. I respect his decision to step aside as an adviser to the campaign until this matter is resolved objectively and fairly."

Singer Linda Ronstadt was thrown out of the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas on the weekend after dedicating a song ("Desperado") to liberal film maker Michael Moore and his movie "Fahrenheit 9/11," a casino spokeswoman said on Monday.

[snip]

"Ms. Ronstadt was hired to entertain the guests of the Aladdin, not to espouse political views," the casino said.

Joshua Berry and Ricky Williams, both Houstonians, have seen two very different economic recoveries.

Mr. Berry, an entrepreneur, has profited handsomely from the stock market, in the real-estate boom and by selling a business. Mr. Williams, an airline baggage handler, has been waiting since 2001 for a pay raise.

[snip]

Hotel revenue was up 11% in the first five months of 2004 at luxury and upscale chains, but up just 3% at economy chains, according to Smith Travel Research, a market-research firm. At the five-star Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colo., $600-a-night lakeside suites are sold out every day through mid-October.

At high-end Bulgari stores, meanwhile, consumers are gobbling up $5,000 Astrale gold and diamond "cocktail" rings made for the right hand, a spokeswoman says. The Italian company's U.S. revenue was up 22% in the first quarter. Neiman Marcus Group Inc., flourishing on sales of pricey items like $500 Manolo Blahnik shoes, had a 13.5% year-over-year sales rise at stores open at least a year.

By contrast, such "same store" sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., retailer for the masses, were up just 2.2% in June. Wal-Mart believes higher gasoline costs are pinching its customers. At Payless ShoeSource Inc., which sells items like $10.99 pumps, June same-store sales were 1% below a year earlier.

A similar pattern shows up in cars. Luxury brands like BMW, Cadillac and Lexus saw double-digit U.S. sales increases in June from a year earlier. Sales of lower-tier brands such as Dodge, Pontiac and Mercury either declined or grew in the low single digits.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

1. A politician may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. I would interpret harm to mean physical or psychological or developmental harm. So that international aid, education and universal health care debates would have entirely different articles of debate.

2. A politician must obey desires expressed to them by citizens, regardless of political affiliation, except where such desires would conflict with the First Law. No longer would some political doors remain closed because of a citizens political party. No longer would the majority - or a vocal and well funded minority - be able to impose its bigoted or uneducated will on the rest of the citizenry.

3. A politician must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. I see this as addressing not only the political existence of the candidate, but of the politician's actions concerning the continued existence of the country. This would force consideration of the cost in lives of not only our own citizens but of the rest of the world.

The [Minnesota] state Republican Party has developed a Web site that allows its activists to tap into a database of voters whose political allegiances and concerns it would like to know. But it is not just any group of voters -- they are the activists' neighbors.

The project, dubbed WebVoter, gives GOP activists the names and addresses of 25 people who live, in most cases, within a couple of blocks from them. The party has asked 60,000 supporters from across the state to figure out what issues animate their neighbors and where they stand in the political spectrum, and report that information back to the party -- with or, possibly, without their neighbors' permission.

The anticipated disclosure by the 9/11 Commission of contacts between Iran and al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks could ratchet up pressure on the White House to explain its subsequent emphasis on a threat from Iraq despite apparently far greater evidence of Iran's terrorist dealings.

People familiar with the report, expected to be released Thursday, say it will detail evidence that Iran instructed its border guards in late 2000 to allow al Qaeda operatives to pass freely from Afghanistan into Iran, and back, and that at least eight of the Sept. 11 hijackers passed through Iran from late 2000 through February 2001. At least some were allowed to pass without having their passports stamped, allowing them to conceal trips to training camps in Afghanistan.

The eight to 10 hijackers who crossed through are said to have been among the so-called muscle hijackers whose job was to overcome resistance by flight crews and passengers during the hijackings.

The panel's findings are also said to note that Iranian officials contacted al Qaeda leaders after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and proposed a collaboration on terrorist attacks. But Osama bin Laden spurned the offer because of fear of a backlash by supporters in Saudi Arabia. The commission information is based on reports of statements by al Qaeda detainees during interrogations, and numerous electronic intercepts by the National Security Agency.
The report will say, however, that there isn't any evidence that Iran knew in advance of the Sept. 11 plot. Details of the commission's findings on Iran and al Qaeda were reported earlier on Time magazine's Web site.

Although President Bush some time ago labeled Iran a member of the "axis of evil" along with pre-war Iraq, the administration's main focus consistently was on a military response to Iraq. Both Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney cited alleged evidence of al Qaeda contacts with Iraq to justify the war.