THE FULCRUM

[Andrea] Seabrook: Well, well I'm not...the Secret Service has blocked off that area. They're calling it a...a hazard because of the number of people who are a gathered around him. There aren't that many people, but the Secret Service won't let me around him anymore, so I think a the access to him might be cut off for a moment. We'll try to get back with him.

[snip]

Seabrook: Yes, I am in the middle of a...you might be able to hear the Secret Service yelling into my mic at the same time. There, there are a bunch of Secret Service that have surrounded Michael Moore's section. There are three or four reporters with him right now, but they are trying to kick all of the reporters and press photographers who are around him out of his area. The convention staff is also here. They're standing here telling us that we have to move from this are...they're obviously disturbed by the fact that Michael Moore is here and want as little public here as possible.

Delegates to the Republican National Convention found a new way to take a jab at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service record: by sporting adhesive bandages with small purple hearts on them.

Morton Blackwell, a prominent Virginia delegate, has been handing out the heart-covered bandages to delegates, who've worn them on their chins, cheeks, the backs of their hands and other places.

An Iraqi militant group said it had killed 12 Nepali hostages and showed pictures on an Islamist Web site on Tuesday of one of them being beheaded.

"We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalis who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians...believing in Buddhah [sic] as their God," said the statement by the military committee of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.

Sen. John McCain swept aside his differences with President Bush tonight and urged voters to re-elect him, heartily endorsing the Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of his 2000 rival for the White House.

[snip]

Mr. McCain said Mr. Bush has earned re-election because of his resolute actions since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 -- a key theme on the convention's opening night.

Last Thursday, my organization, People Reluctant To Kill for an Abstraction, orchestrated an overwhelming show of force around the globe.

At precisely 9 in the morning, working with focus and stealth, our entire membership succeeded in simultaneously beheading no one. At 10, Phase II began, during which our entire membership did not force a single man to suck another man's penis. Also, none of us blew himself/herself up in a crowded public place. No civilians were literally turned inside out via our powerful explosives. In addition, at 11, in Phase III, zero (0) planes were flown into buildings.

The five-day tribute, "Beam Me Up Scotty ... One Last Time," had been in the planning stages for more than a year before it was revealed, earlier this summer, that the 84-year-old [James] Doohan, who lives in Redmond, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Coming so soon after the death of the similarly afflicted former president, Ronald Reagan, the family's announcement added greater urgency — and no small degree of poignancy — to preparations.

Instead of going ahead with a purely festive "retirement party" for the beloved actor, Planet XPO elected to join forces with the Fisher Center for Alzheimer's Research Foundation to raise awareness of the disease. With the cooperation of Doohan's family, representatives of both groups quickly were able to refocus the event's theme, turning Saturday night's banquet into a benefit.

Doohan's final formal public appearance is expected tomorrow morning, when his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is unveiled, in front of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

In the past year, violence has escalated across Afghanistan despite the presence of NATO forces, including 18,000 U.S. troops. Taliban insurgents, remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and others have been waging hit-and-run attacks against military and civilian targets throughout the country.

Hundreds of Afghans have been killed, and humanitarian relief workers have halted operations in many rural areas.

Iraqi National Guard troops are supposed to police their own hometowns and villages. But in many cases the soldiers refuse to arrest anyone for fear the insurgents will seek revenge against their families.

"I've seen insurgents put [remote-detonated roadside bombs] 100 meters from my Iraqi National Guard checkpoints," said Staff Sgt. Nicholas Fox, who oversees a company of about 90 Iraqi soldiers outside Fallujah. When Sgt. Fox asked the Iraqi soldiers why they didn't stop the insurgents, the soldiers replied that they were afraid their families would be targeted.

Two Iraqi National Guard units in al Anbar province, which encompasses Fallujah and Ramadi, were overrun earlier this month by insurgents who stormed their headquarters. The insurgents kidnapped the units' battalion commanders. The dead body of one of the commanders was found a few days later; the other man is still missing. The insurgents also took most of the two 800-soldier battalions' guns, helmets and body armor.

The police haven't performed well, either. Recently the Marines detained the police chief for the province, who is suspected of cooperating with the insurgents. His officers were guarding the provincial governor's home when it was attacked by insurgents and the governor's two sons were abducted. The police didn't fire a shot.

Did W not read the bill he signed into law?

If he did read the bill and felt that 527 groups were "shadowy," why did he sign it?

If he did read the bill and agreed with the provisions for 527 groups at the time, what has caused him to flip-flop now?

If he didn't read the bill and signed it anyway, doesn't that make him a fool who is now being hoisted by his own petard?

Just what is a petard and why would anyone get hoisted by it?

The number of Americans living in poverty rose last year, as did the number of those without health insurance, according to government data that immediately stoked debate over President Bush's economic policies.

Mr. Bush, speaking at a campaign rally in Las Cruces, N.M., didn't mention the Census Bureau data. He focused on the economy's resilience in the face of a rash of bad news in the past three years. He also defended the role of his tax cuts, while conceding that "we have more to do to make this economy stronger."

• Saboteurs Attack About 20 Iraq Pipelines


• Dead Marine's Father Sets Himself on Fire


• Iraq's Sistani Arrives in Najaf; 74 Dead in Attacks


• Italy Ready to Pull Troops Out of Iraq on Government Request


• 14 [More] Nepalese Taken Hostage in Iraq

Amid the confusing debate over John Kerry's Vietnam record, one thing is clear: war - particularly the trauma of war - corrodes memory.

[snip]

So, then, what about John Kerry and the Swift boat crew? Enough already. There are some things we'll never know. But there are also some things that are beyond dispute - even in the chaos of war. Mr. Kerry went. He served. Lucky for him, he got to come home and raise his daughters.

The backbone of security is being provided by the 37,000-member New York Police Department, which has a budget larger than all but 19 of the world's standing armies.

President Bush didn't tell the full story on Monday when he denounced TV ads by such "527s" as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But not because he didn't agree to the Kerry campaign's demand that he repudiate the specific Swift Boat ads. Our gripe is that Mr. Bush assailed the very campaign-finance system that he helped create.

[snip]

In our view, this was among the worst moments of Mr. Bush's term. Having helped to midwife the current campaign-finance system, it ill behooves him to blame others for the way this world works.

Senior Pentagon military and civilian officials share part of the blame for creating conditions that led to the prisoner abuse scandal at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, an independent commission of U.S. defence experts has concluded.

The panel, appointed by U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and headed by former defence secretary James Schlesinger, was released on Tuesday.

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

...Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

The Bush administration has successfully overcome Cuban jamming of U.S. government radio and television broadcasts through transmission from a military aircraft, the State Department said Monday.

Spokesman Adam Ereli said the transmissions of Miami-based Radio and TV Marti took place for several hours on Saturday from an aircraft flown by the Air National Guard.

"These broadcasts will give the Cuban people uncensored information about their country and the world, and will help bring about a rapid and peaceful transition to democracy," Mr. Ereli said.

Assailants on Tuesday targeted the convoys of the interim government's ministers of environment and education in two separate bombings in Baghdad, officials said.

Neither of the ministers was hurt, but at least five people were reported dead.

Meanwhile in Najaf, plumes of black smoke rose above the embattled city after American warplanes bombed insurgent positions overnight and supporters of a radical cleric charged that shrapnel from a U.S. attack had hit parts of the Imam Ali Shrine. The military denied the claim.

A Democrat can't win a statewide election in Florida without a high voter turnout - both at the polls and with absentee ballots - of African-Americans," said a man who is close to the Republican establishment in Florida but asked not to be identified. "It's no secret that the name of the game for Republicans is to restrain that turnout as much as possible. Black votes are Democratic votes, and there are a lot of them in Florida."

On the campaign trail, Mr. Bush tends to play up the state jobs data when they are favorable. In Florida on Aug. 10, for example, he said that because of his tax cuts, "Florida has added nearly 300,000 jobs since the end of 2001."

But last Monday, in Michigan, which has lost 142,000 jobs since the end of 2001 (108,000 before Friday's data were available) and whose 6.8% unemployment rate is well above the national average, Mr. Bush only cited nationwide job data and acknowledged, "I fully understand we face challenges in some of our manufacturing communities. In some parts of Michigan, the recovery has lagged."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com, a West Chester, Pa., firm specializing in state and local economic analysis, said Florida's job market likely will continue to do well while Ohio's and Michigan's will remain weak between now and Election Day. Florida, he said, is about to receive a $20 billion influx of insurance money and state and federal disaster aid as a result of Hurricane Charley. Meanwhile, "Ohio and Michigan are very dependent on the domestic auto industry, which is struggling to hold onto sales and jobs."

The leader of the attack, John O'Neill, a Swift boat veteran and Texas lawyer, has been a detractor of Mr. Kerry for decades, ever since the Nixon White House recruited him to rebut Mr. Kerry's criticism of Vietnam policy. And the chief donor to the Swift boat broadside is a Texas businessman, Bob Perry, who is known for giving millions to the campaigns of President Bush and other Republicans.

Voters should also know that the group is one of the new "shadow party" efforts of supposedly independent ( but, in truth, transparently partisan) activist groups that have been set up to evade campaign laws and take advantage of nonprofits' tax breaks. One of the more prominent of these groups, the leftist MoveOn.org, is running ads attacking President Bush's Air National Guard service.

"Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD (weapons of mass destruction) arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified."

As a result of the war, he said, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened."

"I was shocked by the letter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R., Ill.), who has served on the House intelligence panel where Mr. Bereuter has been vice chairman. "I never heard Doug express these doubts, but he is one of the most serious legislators I've ever met. This is a double-barrel shotgun blast for the Democrats."

"He's a very serious guy and cares deeply about these issues. He's a credible witness," said former Nebraska Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Mr. Bereuter

[snip]

But Mr. Bereuter is well-respected in both parties and, however surprised they were by his essay, Republicans uniformly praised him as a serious figure on foreign-policy issues.

The White House declined to comment on the letter, but campaigning in Wisconsin, President Bush said: "Knowing what I know today, I would have made the same decision. America and the world are safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell."

An Army investigation into the role that military-intelligence specialists played at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison will recommend that about two dozen soldiers be disciplined for alleged mistreatment of Iraqi detainees there last fall, but won't pass blame for the scandal to senior commanders, a Pentagon official said.

The scandal has proved an embarrassment for the Bush administration, especially after a number of memos leaked out showing that its lawyers spent more than a year seeking a legal definition of torture and debating the limits soldiers could go to when questioning prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, conditions at the prison continue to fester. U.S. military police shot and killed two detainees and wounded five others during a brawl yesterday, Pentagon officials said. Several detainees attacked an inmate with rocks and tent poles in a fight that soon encompassed 200 people, and military guards responded with force.

The average unpatched Windows PC lasts less than 20 minutes on the Internet before it's compromised, according to data from the Internet Storm Center.

[snip]

In June 2003, the "survival time" of an unpatched PC was approximately 40 minutes. As of Wednesday, the average was less than half that: only 16 minutes.

The under-20 minute period isn't long enough to pull down major updates, such as Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), acknowledged Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research, in an online posting.

Last week four screeners for the Transportation Security Administration were arrested at Kennedy and La Guardia airports for stealing money, jewelry and other valuables from checked bags. The agents were caught in a sting operation after a torrent of complaints about luggage thefts. These arrests likely represent only a fraction of the abuses nationwide.

[snip]


In some ways, the thefts are not surprising. The transportation agency has done an abysmal job of managing its workforce. In June 2003, the agency admitted that it had failed to screen its own screeners and fired more than 1,200 employees after they failed criminal background checks or other internal investigations.

[snip]

President Bush said in 2002 that the law that created the T.S.A. "greatly enhanced the protections for America's passengers.'' But it takes more than long lines and delays at airport checkpoints to defeat terrorist threats. Is it wise to trust the T.S.A. to make air travel safe when it has a hard time protecting Americans from its own agents?

"I think those who oppose this ballistic missile system don't understand the threats of the 21st century," the president told applauding workers at defense contractor Boeing Co. in Pennsylvania, a crucial state in President Bush's bid for re-election. "We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world: 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down,'" President Bush said.
WSJ (subscription).

After the 9/11 Commission recommended major restructuring of U.S. intelligence-gathering, President Bush publicly embraced the plan's outlines. It turns out that his top advisers and key members of Congress haven't.

A month after the 9/11 Commission issued its report, the push for overhaul is being undercut, raising serious doubts about whether intelligence-gathering will change in more than a cosmetic way despite intense lobbying by commission members.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent much of his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday explaining that Congress should be cautious about far-reaching changes to the current intelligence system. He and other top administration officials appear especially uncomfortable with the commission's main recommendation: creating the position of a national intelligence director with budget and personnel authority over Pentagon intelligence agencies that report largely to Mr. Rumsfeld.

"We need to remember that we are considering these important matters while we are waging a war. If we move unwisely and get it wrong, the penalty would be great," Mr. Rumsfeld warned the panel.

But it isn't just at the Pentagon that the 9/11 Commission's plan is running into determined opposition. Mr. Rumsfeld's call for restraint was echoed yesterday by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia, a central figure in the overhaul debate. His committee has long been a fierce defender of the Pentagon's intelligence role and is loath to see that role curtailed. Mr. Warner, openly dubious about a national intelligence director, called for Congress to pass a small package of incremental changes instead.

"It's important we try to do what we can," Mr. Warner said. "But I'm of the opinion that we should not try to do the whole 9/11 [recommendations] in a single stroke."

Are you registered to vote? Are you sure you're registered? I am currently pissed off. Let me tell you why. Today, around lunchtime, I went with my parents to the polls to vote in our primary election. When I got there, I found that I had somehow been removed from the books, and hence could not vote. Frustrated, I took the day off work and my mom took me down to the Election Board at 18th and Walnut. When we got there, we found that the reason I was not on the books is that SOMEONE had sent in an address change card for me. I live near 76th and Troost, but the voting database now had me down as living at 52nd and Locust - I've NEVER lived there, and have in fact lived at this address all of my life (well, except for the year in England, and even then this was my "permanent address"). It took about two hours, but the elections commission director straightened it out and I was finally able to vote. However, she told me why this has been happening, and it's very worrisome. Apparently there are groups out there who buy copies of the voter registration rolls, then send in new registrations for registered voters giving them a new address.

President Bush's team exerts close control over admission to his campaign events. Dissenters and would-be hecklers are turned away, campaign officials say. On several occasions in recent weeks, Democrats who have gotten in have been ejected because they wore pro-Kerry T-shirts.

[snip]

Last month, some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President Dick Cheney speak near Albuquerque, N.M., were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse Bush. The Bush campaign described the measure as a security step designed to avoid a disruption it contended had been planned.

[snip]

Bush's admission policy can leave the impression that the president has strong support wherever he goes.

Labor unions traditionally align with Democrats and have not been particularly friendly to Bush. So when Bush spoke at a Las Vegas union hall Thursday, the campaign used its usual ticket distribution policy to pack the hall with backers.

The crowd roared its approval throughout the speech. Some tickets were also given to union members. A few of them sat silently in the back rows.

Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.

By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.

Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary.

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

[snip]

The long and ugly tradition of suppressing the black vote is alive and thriving in the Sunshine State.

President Bush's plan to call tens of thousands of U.S. troops home from Europe and Asia could gain him election-year applause from military families, but won't ease the strain on soldiers still battling violent factions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Law enforcement sources said that in recent weeks, federal agents have begun interviewing people in the New York City area they believe might know about any plots to cause mayhem at the convention, and have used surveillance against possible suspects.

The intelligence unit of the New York Police Department has been closely monitoring Web sites run by self-described anarchists. It also has sought to infiltrate protest groups with young, scruffy-looking officers posing as activists.

Enormous national events will inevitably be terror targets. So will the president. But before we single out the anarchists and the environmentalists and the puppet-guys for diminished constitutional protections - before we herd them into what are speech-free zones - we might question whether they represent the real danger. If we don't recognize the distinction between passionate political speech and terrorism now, it may be too late to protest later.

President Bush pushed back Wednesday against Sen. John Kerry’s criticism of his handling of Iraq, saying, “I know what I’m doing when it comes to winning this war.”

Thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi soldiers launched a major assault Thursday on militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric in Najaf, with explosions and gunfire echoing around the holy city's revered Imam Ali shrine and its vast cemetery.

Nevertheless, leading Democrats have approached the question of felons' voting rights gingerly. Their dilemma: While talking up the issue would reap votes and goodwill in some African-American communities, which are disproportionately affected by voting restrictions, it also could prompt Republican attacks.

"The Democrats are scared to death of being accused of being soft on crime," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington group that works on prison issues. Nonetheless, he says, the voting-rights issue "seems like a golden opportunity for [Democrats] and they should jump on it."

Much of the controversy surrounding felons' voting rights involves purge lists. Problems with the lists have emerged most dramatically -- and repeatedly -- in Florida. The state, which bars felons from voting unless they win clemency through a personal appeal to the governor, first restricted felons' voting rights in 1868 by adopting a constitution that critics say discriminates against African-Americans. Today, one in three black men in Florida can't vote because of the restrictions.

Florida's purge list, and a host of other voting problems, became after the 2000 election, when George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. A lawsuit by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People questioned the validity of 90,000 names on the list. People who shared names or addresses with convicted felons ended up on list. And some former prisoners were included even though their voting rights had been restored.

This year's purge list, which the state was forced to release after being sued by the media, also had problems. More than 2,000 of the 48,000 names on the list were legitimate voters, activists say. Also, because of problems with the databases used, only a few dozen Hispanic felons were on the purge list, compared with many thousands of African-Americans. That ignited racial and political tensions because many Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican and African-Americans usually support Democrats. In mid-July, the state threw the list out.

Employee 1: "All the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers in California?

Employee 2: "Yeah, Grandma Millie man.

Employee 1: "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a—for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour."

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, signaling his energy views for the first time, endorsed a plan to restore an open-market energy structure by 2006, five years after "customer choice" was suspended due to a massive energy crisis and market meltdown.

A new portrait of Al Qaeda's inner workings is emerging from the cache of information seized last month in Pakistan, as investigators begin to identify a new generation of operatives who appear to be filling the vacuum created when leaders were killed or captured, senior intelligence officials said Monday.

[snip]

For the past several months, the president has claimed that much of Al Qaeda's leadership has been killed or captured; the new evidence suggests that the organization is regenerating and bringing in new blood.

Your article regarding layoffs among older executives and managers ("In the Lead: Older Executives Find Job Losses Often Mean Having to Retire Early," July 20) really hit home. I was 55 years old when I lost my job. After a one-year search and 14 interviews I landed a job at nearly the same salary but with better benefits with an institution, it turns out, that is an absolute joy to work for. But I am the exception. Many others who were terminated with me are still looking for full-time work three years later.

This experience and the recent wave of corporate corruption and executive greed have profoundly changed my attitudes. My previous obsessions with tax cuts, deregulation and smaller government have been replaced by concerns over maintaining Social Security and Medicare, providing medical care for the uninsured and efforts to curtail tax evasion by businesses and wealthy individuals. I guess reality got in the way of my good theories.

Kenneth Susinka
Elmhurst, Ill.

Najaf is a mess.

Al Qaeda has thought about using tourist helicopters to attack targets in NYC (but how long ago?).

And the drumbeat against Iran continues apace in the White House.

... Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.