THE FULCRUM

For the past month, Kathryn Harrington has stared down the possibility of a criminal trial, a $10,000 fine and the stigma of being deemed a security risk at Tampa International Airport.

The reason? She had a bookmark with her as she passed through airport security screening.

According to the TSA's official prohibited items list, anyone who brings any banned item to a screening checkpoint, even accidentally, may be criminally or civilly prosecuted. Even items that are not specifically listed, but could be considered dangerous, are illegal.

Myers: Call-ups expected after election

Pentagon plans call for a temporary increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq early next year that would coincide with elections there in January and could be used to bolster the newly elected Iraqi government.

The personnel surge, part of a long-planned force rotation, will occur from January to April as new units rotate into the country and those finishing their tours prepare to return home. An Army official said as many as three additional Army brigades -- about 15,000 troops -- could be in Iraq around the time of the elections and thereafter. Plans call for the U.S. to return to the current level of 138,000 troops by the end of April.

Standing beside Iraq's interim leader, President Bush contended Thursday that insurgents could "plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations," if the United States pulled out.

Congressional negotiators beat back efforts yesterday to expand and preserve tax refunds for poor families, even as they added $13 billion in corporate tax breaks to a package of middle-class tax cuts that could come to a vote in the Senate today.

Mohammed Mohaqiq says he was getting ready to make his run for the Afghan presidency when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad dropped by his campaign office and proposed a deal.

Mohaqiq was still determined to run for president — though, he said, the U.S. ambassador wouldn't give up trying to elbow him out of the race.
"He left, and then called my most loyal men, and the most educated people in my party or campaign, to the presidential palace and told them to make me — or request me — to resign the nomination. And he told my men to ask me what I need in return."

Iran has said it will react "most severely" to any Israeli action against its nuclear facilities, issuing the warning after Israel said the United States was selling it 500 bunker buster bombs.

Israeli military officials said Tuesday that the Jewish state will receive nearly 5,000 smart bombs, including the 500 one-ton bombs that can destroy two-yard-thick (two-meter-thick) concrete walls.

Luxury German car maker Porsche AG Wednesday said sales and earnings rose in fiscal 2004, as gains from the Cayenne sports utility vehicle more than offset heavy declines in the core 911 and Boxster sports cars.

Eighty-two of the country's largest profitable corporations paid no federal income tax for at least one year of the Bush administration's first three years, a study found.

The study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, and the affiliated Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, examined 275 Fortune 500 corporations with total cumulative profits of $1.1 trillion in 2001, 2002 and 2003. One-third paid no federal income taxes in at least one of those years, and many received refunds of taxes paid in prior years.

The think tank's 1988 survey of large corporations found the overall effective tax rate was 26.5%; a survey of companies in 1996-98 found the rate dropped to 21.7%. The latest survey showed the effective rate fell to 17.2% in 2001-03.

Clashes also erupted after sunset Wednesday in the central city of Samarra, where U.S. forces had earlier claimed success against militants waging a 17-month insurgency, police said.

Did you know that the military won't cover the cost of abortion, even if the servicewoman has been raped? But the military does cover the cost of cosmetic surgery, including breast implants, nose jobs, and liposuction!

A ban on military abortions forces soldiers who become pregnant while serving overseas to seek abortions at private clinics and to pay for the procedure themselves, making it difficult and costly to end a pregnancy. Worse yet, the ban leaves women serving in countries where abortion is illegal - like Iraq and Afghanistan - nowhere to turn, effectively depriving them of freedom of choice.

Click here to sign a petition asking your members of Congress to lift the ban.

Bottom line on this sideshow: Would those who say that Dan Rather should not be trusted, now that he seems to have used forged memos in a portion of a single report, ever say the same thing about George Bush when he led us to war based on "misleading" information about WMDs, including, well, forged documents? Howzabout a trade? We won't trust Rather anymore if you don't trust Bush. Deal? No? Then go fuck yourself with your memos.

The matter of the seized bicycles has been a little-noticed footnote to the ongoing legal disputes over mass arrests during the demonstrations, with complaints that innocent people were swept up in them and many were detained for long periods in violation of court orders.

[snip]

To retrieve a bicycle, the owner must present the property voucher, given at the time of arrest, at the district attorney's office and obtain a release form to show to the property clerk in Brooklyn. Bicycles played a significant role during the Republicans' visit. On Aug. 27, the Friday before the convention, about 5,000 bicyclists shouting "No more Bush!" hurtled past Madison Square Garden. Later that night, more than 250 of them were arrested after a protest ride that ended in the East Village. Many of the arrests were made outside St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery Church on Second Avenue, and most were on charges of disorderly conduct or obstructing traffic. Many bicyclists said they were arrested even though they had broken no traffic laws.

The Transportation Security Administration proposed an order that would compel 77 airlines to provide names, addresses and other information collected through carriers' reservation systems for domestic travel during the month.

All passenger records will be compared with a newly concentrated security watch list, compiled by federal law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies.

A posting on an Islamic Web site claimed Tuesday that an al-Qaida-linked group has slain a second American hostage in Iraq and threatened to kill a third hostage.

The claim that Jack Hensley, a civilian contractor, had been killed could not be verified immediately.

Who'd like to be the last man to die for that? I'm looking for a show of hands. But more than that, I'm looking for someone to raise questions that go to the heart of this matter of life and death. In this sense, Iraq is fast becoming Vietnam -- only the stakes are higher. (Vietnam had no oil.) It is also Vietnam in the way the presidential campaign is handling it. Once again the GOP is playing the odious patriotism card to silence dissent. As for Bush, he talks about Iraq with the same loopy unreality as he does his National Guard service. He's a fabulist.

She [Rice] said ``there's no evidence'' that Iraq is falling into a state of civil war and said things are better than three months ago even though the Iraqi people ``are facing a very tough and daring insurgency.''

Secretary of State Colin Powell, interviewed Tuesday on ABC's ``Good Morning America,'' called the situation ``a difficult struggle'' but said ``to say we can't deal with it, this sort of attitude that we're on the verge of defeat is absolutely wrong.''

Deadline looms for American, British captives in Iraq
American contractor beheaded in Iraq
Iraq bombs cause civilian deaths
Iraq: busload of corpses discovered
Camp Pendleton Marine killed in Iraq
Ex-Michigan man killed by homemade explosive in Iraq
Senior Sunni clerics assassinated in Iraq

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told reporters in Vienna Iran had begun converting 37 tonnes of raw uranium into material which is fuel for nuclear centrifuges -- the machines that enrich uranium.

One nuclear expert has said that, if enriched, that would be enough material for five nuclear weapons.

Ed Wasserman, among others, has looked closely at the impact on journalism of this growing conglomeration of ownership. He recently wrote: "You would think that having a mightier media would strengthen their ability to assert their independence, to chart their own course, to behave in an adversarial way toward the state." Instead "they fold in a stiff breeze" - as Viacom, one of the richest media companies in the history of thought, did when it “couldn’t even go ahead and run a dim-witted movie” on Ronald Reagan because the current president’s political arm objected to anything that would interfere with the ludicrous drive to canonize Reagan and put him on Mount Rushmore. Wasserman acknowledges, as I do, that there is some world-class journalism being done all over the country today, but he went on to speak of "a palpable sense of decline, of rot, of a loss of spine, determination, gutlessness" that pervades our craft. Journalism and the news business, he concludes, aren’t playing well together. Media owners have businesses to run, and "these media-owning corporations have enormous interests of their own that impinge on an ever-widening swath of public policy" - hugely important things, ranging from campaign finance reform (who ends up with those millions of dollars spent on advertising?) to broadcast deregulation and antitrust policy, to virtually everything related to the Internet, intellectual property, globalization and free trade, even to minimum wage, affirmative action and environmental policy. "This doesn’t mean media shill mindlessly for their owners, any more than their reporters are stealth operatives for pet causes," but it does mean that in this era, when its broader and broader economic entanglements make media more dependent on state largesse, "the news business finds itself at war with journalism."

Gunmen killed a Sunni Muslim cleric as he entered a mosque in Baghdad to perform noon prayers Monday, the second slaying of a cleric from the influential Association of Muslim Scholars in as many days, the group said.

With 95% of precincts reporting, the amendment won approval with 79% of the vote and support for it was evident statewide. Only in New Orleans, home to a politically strong gay community, did the race appear to be close, and even there the amendment was passing by a small margin.

"It's gratifying to see the people of Louisiana had an opportunity, as distinguished from judges, having the final say on the issue of whether traditional marriage will continue to be the fundamental institution in our state," said Darrell White, a retired state judge and consultant for Louisiana Family Forum, which pushed hard for the amendment.

President Bush is moving to control the Iraq debate with a weeklong effort that signals U.S. resolve to see through that country's chaotic experiment in democracy while tapping the power of incumbency for his re-election campaign.