Financial Times Editorial - Republicans and America’s blacks

Financial Times Editorial - Republicans and America’s blacks
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 28 2006 19:29 | Last updated: July 28 2006 19:29

A week ago, President George W. Bush made his first speech in six years to the oldest American civil-rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Opinion since then has been divided on whether the visit, politically speaking, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship or a waste of time.

Polls show that black Americans are more conservative than their fellow citizens on such matters as gay marriage, school vouchers and religious involvement in public life – but far less inclined to support conservative Republicans. So there have always been Republican strategists who think the party could profit from courting them. Bill Brock, the Republican National Committee chairman in the late 1970s, tried to get the party to focus on the safety of urban neighbourhoods. Lee Atwater, the blues-playing RNC chairman under Bush père, held similar views. Their successor at the RNC, Ken Mehlman, has been travelling the country, speaking to dozens of black groups. He has even apologised for the way his party made use of whites’ fears in the first decades of racial desegregation. This autumn, Republicans will run black candidates for high-profile offices including the Ohio and Pennsylvania governorships.

This strategy has never quite worked and there are Republicans who doubt it can. Mr Bush got only 8 per cent of the black vote in 2000 and 11 per cent in 2004. All 39 black representatives in Congress are Democrats. In Maryland, 28 per cent of the population is black, including the lieutenant governor, a quick-witted conservative named Michael Steele. Last week, Mr Steele admitted to The Washington Post that his Republican affiliation was a drag on his campaign for the US Senate. “If this race is about Republicans and Democrats, I lose,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Mehlman strategy of mending relations between Republicans and blacks is smart. It is an important development of this year’s campaign and ought to ring alarm bells among Democrats.

Republicans do start at a disadvantage. During the 2000 campaign, Mr Bush visited a southern university that forbids interracial dating. A year ago, he mishandled Hurricane Katrina, which left mostly black victims in its wake. Republicans may have taken the lead in ending slavery in the 19th century, but they stood sullenly by as segregation was ended in the 20th. They have generally sided with the majority of non-blacks in opposing positive discrimination. There is, however, another side to the story. Three years ago, Republicans demoted their most powerful senator, Trent Lott, for speaking in favour of segregationists of the 1940s. Mr Bush has made Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and Colin Powell, her predecessor, the two highest-ranking black officials in US history. He made an ambitious reform of urban schools the foremost domestic priority of his first term.

Eleven per cent is not much to show for such a record. There must be some deeper, structural explanation for Republican weakness among blacks. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks it lies in the party’s heartlessness. “GOP [Grand Old Party] policies,” he writes, “consistently help those who are already doing extremely well, not those lagging behind – a group that includes the vast majority of African-Americans.” But this explanation is out of date. Fewer black people are poorer than when they shifted en masse to the Democrats in the 1960s. Three-quarters are above the poverty line and the richest are no more friendly to Republicans than the poorest.

Besides, Democrats can no longer offer blacks what they accuse Republicans of withholding. A modern-day anti-poverty programme might focus more on the challenges of Puerto Ricans or Mexican- Americans, both of whom have higher poverty rates than African-Americans. Of course, classic anti-poverty programmes – such as urban renewal and welfare and job schemes – are no longer politically practicable and have been repudiated by both parties.

Overwhelming black support has disguised the erosion of the Democratic party’s support elsewhere. When we shift our attention to the non-black vote, Democrats appear to be at the edge of a precipice. Shortly after the 2004 elections, the National Journal magazine looked at 30 states where a reliable racial breakdown exists and found that Mr Bush had won a majority of the white vote in all but two of them. In Mississippi, John Kerry got just 14 per cent of the white vote. So any erosion of the last remaining monolithic bloc in the Democrats’ coalition could be fatal to the party. Such an erosion is under way in key states. In both Ohio and Pennsylvania, to take just the two states where Republicans are running black candidates for governor, Mr Bush roughly doubled his share of the black vote in 2004, to 16 per cent.

The very strength of Democrats among black Americans may be self-defeating. The NAACP has lost influence as it has come to be perceived as a mere Democratic pressure group and Mr Bush’s visit a week ago owes much to the new, less partisan leadership of the entrepreneur Bruce Gordon. A constituency that gives 90 per cent of its votes to one party can be taken for granted, as religious conservatives often are by Republicans. Although he is one of the more conservative members of his party, Ken Blackwell, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, stressed structural, not ideological, considerations when describing his political outlook to The Washington Post.
“I thought it was in the interest of the African-American community to reconstruct a competitive two-party system,” he said. If Mr Blackwell is right, then black interests and Republicans are converging.

The idea that Democrats favour blacks’ interests more than Republicans do is firmly entrenched. It will take more than a few easy gestures – and more than a few election cycles – before Republicans can win a lot of black votes. But they do not need a lot.

The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard

Let’s talk about the weather - again

Let’s talk about the weather - again
By Matthew Engel
Published: July 28 2006 19:29 | Last updated: July 28 2006 19:29
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006


This column comes to you from Manchester, the English city whose propensity for cold drizzle has long been part of folklore (with reason, in my experience). Travelling up from the south on Friday, I did not even bother to bring a sweater, never mind an umbrella. There is a change in the weather, and it is psychological as well as meteorological.

The weather has always gone weird now and again, wherever we are. In every place, extremes turn into conversational touchstones that last as long as living memory. The British have the winter of 1963, the summer of 1976 and the storm of 1987; Chicago had the killer heatwave of 1995; the French shudder thinking about the heat of 2003.

But normally these great exceptions are local, caused by strange goings-on in the jet stream. A drought in Manchester may mean that the Côte d’Azur is getting Mancunian rain. This summer is different. Day after day, the newspapers tell the same story across the northern hemisphere: from Abu Dhabi, Ajaccio and Algiers to Vienna, Washington and Zurich – temperatures above 30, 35 or even 40°C.

Coastal California, usually balmy, has been nudging 45°C (113°F), a phenomenon described by Bill Patzert, a Nasa scientist in Pasadena, as “extreme makeover warming”, saying that the state’s overdevelopment is partly to blame. Moaning Californians are unlikely to have noticed the similar temperatures in Iraq, where they are accompanied by the absence of fripperies such as electricity and water.

For a global phenomenon, although colder, we might have to go back to 1816, “the year without a summer”, when the world was shrouded in ash from the eruption of Mount Tamboro, causing global crop failure and food riots in Paris. This hot season may not have a name; it may hardly be remembered; it may be the first of many.

How are we coping? We will talk about the politicians another day. The rest of us are beset by paradox. Air-conditioning companies cannot keep up with demand, even though we know that the installation of air conditioning in itself hastens climate change. Prices of coastal properties – even minuscule beach huts – are climbing towards the troposphere, in spite of the predictions of inundation from rising sea levels. In places such as Manchester, where summer used to be “three fine days and a thunderstorm”, we relish the endless sunshine, even while fearing what it might mean.

In that mood we approach August, the traditional time for Europeans and North Americans to bask, bake and relax while, perhaps, in the back of our minds, formulating ways of resolving our own problems in the cooler months ahead.

But now it is the summer sunshine that is itself the problem. Perhaps the heat might force everyone – leaders and led – to return to work with a new realisation and determination that fatalism and complacency are no longer sensible options.

The writer is an FT commentator on politics and sport

US in quiet U-turn on Iraq troop numbers

US in quiet U-turn on Iraq troop numbers
By Edward Luce and Caroline Daniel in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 28 2006 22:04 | Last updated: July 28 2006 22:04


The US administration has quietly reversed its goal from whittling down troop numbers in Iraq before the mid-term congressional elections in November.

A Pentagon spokesman on Friday confirmed that US troop levels in Iraq rose to 132,000 during the past week – the highest since late May – from 127,000 at the start of the week. The spokesman said troop numbers often fluctuated and “there might be temporary spikes during periods of troop rotation”.

However, analysts said an increase in troop numbers was more likely than a reduction because the number of sectarian killings in Iraq had almost doubled since the start of the year. The rise will prompt fears that the US is becoming increasingly bogged down in an unwinnable conflict.

On Thursday, the Pentagon said it would extend for up to 120 days the 3,700-strong deployment of the 172nd Stryker brigade in Iraq, among other rotations. There were 3,169 Iraqis killed in June, compared with 1,778 in January.

Richard Armitage, who was US deputy secretary of state until January 2005, said: “The US has almost totally reversed the troop situation from two months ago. The danger is that this is too little and too late and that the US will turn into a bystander in an Iraqi civil war it does not have sufficient resources to prevent.”

The rise in US troop levels comes as the world’s attention is on Lebanon but also coincides with a reported upsurge in anti-US sentiment in Baghdad’s Shia neighbourhoods following the launch of the US-backed Israeli campaign against Hizbollah.

This week Nouri al-Maliki, Iraqi prime minister, agreed to a joint US-Iraq military operation to regain control of Baghdad.

George W. Bush, US president, also faces growing difficulties with Iraq’s new government, which is making anti-US noises to shore up its credibility with Iraqis. Mr Maliki is under domestic pressure to demand that trials of US soldiers take place in Iraq. The US says this is not possible.

However, US officials deny that the new campaign to stabilise Baghdad undermines Mr Bush’s promise that “as the Iraqis stand up we will stand down” – a phrase he has almost stopped using. In a departure from Mr Bush’s normally upbeat language, he this week said the violence in Baghdad was “terrible”.

Although the violence has shifted from an anti-US insurgency to a sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia groups, Iraq experts fear Shia militias will see US troops as an easy target. There are also concerns that the combined US-Iraqi force of 75,000 will be insufficient to regain control of Baghdad.

Kenneth Pollack, a former US National Security Council official, said: “The numbers should probably be roughly double what they are. We are seeing the right plan but completely inadequate resources to make it work.”

New York Times Editorial - NASA: What about us?

New York Times Editorial - NASA: What about us?
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 28, 2006

At a time when global warming has become an overriding issue, NASA has been delaying or canceling programs that could shed light on how the climate changes. The shortsighted cutbacks appear to result from sharply limiting NASA's budget while giving it hugely expensive tasks like repairing the stricken shuttle fleet, finishing construction of the space station and preparing to explore the Moon and Mars.

Something had to give, and NASA's choices included research into how the planet's climate is responding to greenhouse gas emissions.

The agency's shifting priorities may have been signaled by subtle changes in its mission statement this year. Although the agency had previously led off its goals with "to understand and protect our home planet," a new mission statement reads simply, "To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."

Agency officials note that sub-goal 3A still proposes to "study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs." But Earth studies seem to be in trouble.

The agency has canceled a deep space observatory to monitor solar radiation, water vapor, clouds, aerosols and other things important to climate change. It has delayed a mission with Japan to measure global precipitation, decided not to pay for a mission to measure soil moisture around the world, and reduced the money available to analyze data. Under Congressional pressure, the agency has reinstated a mission to study aerosols and solar radiation from orbit. But it has little money to do much else in coming years. A National Academy of Sciences panel warned that the nation's system of environmental satellites was "at risk of collapse."

The problems in earth sciences are part of a broader slowdown in science missions as NASA tries to do too much with too little. NASA officials sometimes say that they are slowing the rate of growth in science budgets. But congressional analysts say the agency cut its science spending in 2006 to cover unexpectedly expensive shuttle repairs. It now plans small increases that won't keep up with inflation or bring spending back to previous levels for many years.

A Senate committee has approved $1 billion in emergency funds to reimburse programs that were cut to pay for the shuttle repairs. If that doesn't fly, count home-planet studies and other science programs as a casualty of the administration's insistence on completing the space station.

Lebanon: Room for diplomacy

Lebanon: Room for diplomacy
Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Copyright by The Boston Globe
Published: July 28, 2006


WASHINGTON Lebanon

With the crisis in Lebanon and speculation that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may return to the region, there is a chance to reassert American leadership and salvage U.S. interests. Hanging in the balance is the relative strength of moderates and extremists in the most volatile part of the world. A return to the status quo ante, where Hezbollah could hit Israel at will, also would embolden Hamas to step up terrorist attacks in Israel, invite Damascus to continue destabilizing Lebanon, reinforce Iranian recalcitrance on its nuclear program, and embolden radical fundamentalists everywhere.

As bad as the situation looks, there is an opportunity for an outcome that sets back the extremists and benefits the moderates. Producing that outcome requires imaginative, energetic, and sustained diplomacy, led by the United States. A remarkable confluence of views - and interests - can be the foundation for this effort. Not just the United States and Israel, but the European powers, Russia, and Sunni Arabs all hold Hezbollah and its patrons in Syria and Iran responsible for the breach of the peace.

The Group of 8 leaders recognized Israel's right to self-defense and stated that "the immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region." Saudi Arabia was remarkably blunt in blaming Hezbollah for "miscalculated adventures" and assessing to it "full responsibility of these irresponsible acts." Most Arab governments, already concerned that Iran has extended its influence to Iraq, view Hezbollah's actions as a proxy for more Iranian expansionism.

In Lebanon itself, there is profound anger at Hezbollah for its recklessness, which has shattered the progress in rebuilding the country after the civil war and Syria's suffocating occupation. I observed the first day of voting in last year's Lebanese elections. They propelled to power an anti-Syrian coalition, but also reinforced the strength of Hezbollah. I heard the intense pleas of the Lebanese to live a normal life in a normal country. They no longer want to be the battleground for proxy wars cynically directed from Tehran and Damascus.

U.S. diplomacy should unite these strands of common interest into an effective policy. But there are considerable challenges. Syria's Bashar al- Assad is weak and unreliable. We lack a comprehensive dialogue with Iran. Emotions are running high in the Arab world and Israel. And the diplomatic record of the Bush administration doesn't inspire confidence.

In joining with Europe (particularly France), the United Nations and Saudi Arabia, the administration succeeded in forcing Syria to withdraw from Lebanon in 2005 under the terms of Security Council Resolution 1559. But it failed to follow through on the other two requirements of 1559 - the disarmament of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese Army to the south. Iran, Syria and Hezbollah filled the vacuum. Iran has outspent the United States by as much as 5-to-1 in Lebanon, enabling Hezbollah to out-compete the Lebanese government in building social services and military might.

The challenge for the administration is to reconstruct the alliance that ejected Syria from Lebanon, with a clear commitment to three main objectives.

First, deploy the Lebanese Army to the border, with the possibility of an international/UN force in the interim to augment it. To prevent a repeat of past painful experiences with peacekeeping in Lebanon, there has to be widespread political support, in Lebanon and beyond, for an international force. It also has to have the ability to physically prevent Hezbollah from moving back to the border.

Second, set up a mechanism to disarm Hezbollah of its remaining rockets and missiles and for preventing resupply from Syria and Iran.

Third, build up the Lebanese government and army to shift the balance of power away from Hezbollah. That will require a significant reconstruction effort in Lebanon when the guns fall silent. We should be working with this coalition in organizing that effort now, so that no time is lost.

America need not carry the burden alone; it should organize a division of labor. Europe, with France in the lead, can help rebuild the Lebanese Army and provide the core of an effective international stabilization force. Egypt and Saudi Arabia can bring pressure to bear on Damascus. The Saudis and other oil-rich Gulf states can help pay for Lebanon's reconstruction.
None of this will happen without U.S. leadership. It won't be easy, but if we succeed, we can do what our misadventures in the region have so far failed to accomplish: Shift the balance in the Middle East in favor of progress and moderation.

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. is a Democrat from Delaware.

Who do you write for? That is the question

Who do you write for? That is the question
Orhan Pamuk
Copyright by The New York Times Syndicate
Published: July 28, 2006


ISTANBUL That is the question

For the last 30 years - since I first became a writer - this is the question I've heard most often from both readers and journalists. Their motives depend on the time and the place, as do the things they wish to know. But they all use the same suspicious, supercilious tone of voice.

In the mid-'70s, when I first decided to become a novelist, the question reflected the widely held philistine view that art and literature were luxuries in a poor non-Western country troubled by premodern problems.

There was also the suggestion that someone "as educated and cultivated as yourself" might serve the nation more usefully as a doctor fighting epidemics or an engineer building bridges.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave credence to this view in the early 1970s when he said that he would not be in the business of writing novels if he were a Biafran intellectual.

In later years, those asking, "Who do you write for?" were more interested in finding out which part of society I hoped might read and love my work.

I knew this question to be a trap, for if I did not answer, "I write for the poorest and most downtrodden members of society" I would be accused of protecting the interests of Turkey's landowners and its bourgeoisie.

This despite the fact that any goodhearted writer who was so naïve as to claim to be writing for peasants and workers would be quickly reminded that his books were unlikely to be read by people who were barely literate.

In the 1970s, when my mother asked, "Who are you writing for?" her mournful and compassionate tone told me she was really asking, "How are you planning to support yourself?"

When friends asked me who I wrote for, they were mockingly suggesting that no one would ever want to read a book by someone like me.

Thirty years on, I hear this question more than ever. The question has more to do with the fact that my novels are now translated into more than 40 languages.

Especially during the past 10 years, my ever-more-numerous interrogators seem worried that I might take their words the wrong way, so they are inclined to add: "You write in Turkish; so do you write just for Turks, or do you now also have in mind the wider audience you reach through your translations?"

Whether we are speaking inside Turkey or outside it, the question is always accompanied by that same suspicious, supercilious smile, leaving me to conclude that if I want to ensure the authenticity of my work, I must answer: "I write only for Turks."

To understand the significance of this question, we must remember that the rise of the novel as an art form coincided with the emergence of the nation state. When the great novels of the 19th century were being written, the art of the novel was in every sense a national art.

Balzac, Dickens, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy wrote for the emerging middle classes of their nations, who could open their books and recognize every city, street, house, room and chair; they could share in the same tastes as they did in the real world and discuss the same ideas.

In the 19th century, novels by these great authors appeared first in the art and culture supplements of national newspapers, for their authors were speaking to the nation.

Behind their narrative voices one can sense an observer troubled by the nation's state of health. By the end of the 19th century, to read and write novels was to join a national discussion that was closed to the outside.

But today the writing of novels carries an entirely different meaning, as does the reading of literary novels. The first change came in the first half of the 20th century, when the literary novel's engagement with modernism won it the status of high art.
Just as significant are the changes in communication that we've seen over the past 30 years: In the age of global media, literary writers are no longer people who need address only the middle classes in their own countries, but people who can address - and address immediately - readers of "literary novels" all the world over.

Today's literary readers await a new book by Gabriel García Márquez, J.M. Coetzee or Paul Auster the same way their predecessors awaited the new Dickens novel - as the latest news. The world readership for literary novelists such as these is far larger than the readership their books reach in their countries of origin.

Writers write for their ideal reader, for their loved ones, for themselves or for no one. All this is true. But it is also true that today's literary writers also write for those who read them. From this we might infer that today's literary writers are gradually writing less for their own national majorities (who do not read them) than for the small minority of literary readers in the world who do.

So the needling questions, and the suspicions about these writers' true intentions, reflect a disquiet about this new cultural order that has come into being over the past 30 years.

The people who find it most disturbing are the representatives of non- Western nations and their cultural institutions. Crisis-ridden non-Western states that are anxious about national identity - and reluctant to face up to the black marks in their histories - are suspicious of creative novelists who view history and nationalism from a non-national perspective.
In their view, novelists who do not write for national audiences are exoticizing that country for foreign consumption and inventing problems that have no basis in reality.

There is a parallel suspicion in the West, where many readers believe that local literatures should remain local, pure and true to their national roots: Their secret fear is that a writer who addresses an international readership and draws from traditions outside his own culture will lose his authenticity.

Behind this fear is a reader who longs to enter a foreign country that has severed its ties with the world, and to listen in while it argues with itself - much as one might overhear a family argument next door. If a writer is addressing an audience that includes readers living other cultures and speaking other languages, then this fantasy dies, too.

It is because all writers have a deep desire to be authentic that even after all these years I still love to be asked for whom I write. But while a writer's authenticity does depend on his ability to open his heart to the world in which he lives, it depends just as much on his ability to understand his own changing position in that world.

There is no such thing as an ideal reader, free of narrow-mindedness and unencumbered by social prohibitions or national myths, just as there is no such thing as an ideal novelist. But a novelist's search for the ideal reader - be he national or international - begins with the novelist's imagining him into being, and then by writing books with him in mind.

Orhan Pamuk is Turkey's best-known novelist. His most recent book, "Istanbul: Memories and the City," was published in English in 2005. This article was translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely.

Tide of Arab opinion turning to Hezbollah

Tide of Arab opinion turning to Hezbollah
By Neil MacFarquhar
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: July 28, 2006


DAMASCUS At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.
Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for 15 days, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah's main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting U.S. plans for a "new Middle East" that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman with the independent International Crisis Group, said, "The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world."

Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world.

This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams "for the victims of Israeli aggression." Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan - offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab- Israeli war - could well perish.

"If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance," it said, "then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

U.S. officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.

There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah - and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long - would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority.
Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.

But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.

Egypt's opposition press has had a field day comparing Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.
An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.

After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Nasrallah.

"People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped," Negm said in an interview. "I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: 'Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!'"

In comparison, Rice's brief visit to the region sparked widespread criticism of her cold demeanor and her choice of words, particularly a statement that the bloodshed represented the birth pangs of a "new Middle East."

That catchphrase was much used by Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli leader who was a principal negotiator of the 1993 Oslo Accords, which ultimately failed to lead to the Palestinian state they envisaged.

A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj in Jordan labeled "The New Middle East" showed an Israeli tank sitting on a broken apartment house in the shape of the Arab world.

Fawaz al-Trabalsi, a columnist in the Lebanese daily As Safir, suggested that the real new thing in the Middle East was the ability of one group to challenge Israeli militarily.

Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah's rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight.

Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Zawahiri. Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center in New York as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters supporting the Palestinians.

Zawahiri tried to argue that the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name.

Zawahiri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. Previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiite Muslims as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.
But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. "Everyone will be asking, 'Where is Al Qaeda now?'" said Adel al- Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists.

Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah's ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah.
"Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?" Rabbani said. "In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs."

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and Suha Maayeh from Amman.

Gay bar thrives in suburb - Forest Park tavern marks 30th anniversary

Gay bar thrives in suburb - Forest Park tavern marks 30th anniversary
By Russell Working
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 28, 2006

Back when owner Mike Zych first started at the Nutbush City Limits, he kept a Louisville Slugger under the bar to chase off punks who threatened his gay clientele.

Once, a group of teens showed up yelling slurs and menacing customers in the parking lot of the Forest Park tavern. Zych, a Vietnam veteran and South Sider, says he persuaded them to move along by smashing the headlights of their station wagon with his bat.

This week the Nutbush celebrates its 30th anniversary--and a history that coincides with sweeping changes in the way gays are perceived, both in the nation at large and in the suburbs where homosexuals long lived closeted lives and had few public places to socialize.

"Don't forget, back in the early years, gay people didn't have no place to go," said Zych, a no-nonsense saloonkeeper in a white shirt and black vest. "Nowadays, pretty much everything is open and people can go where they want to go. But in those days, it was rough. I got three concussions out of the deal. Bottles over my head outside in the parking lot."

Despite the assaults, the Nutbush became a rare haven in the western suburbs where an openly gay couple could sip a beer without worrying some bully across the bar might pick a fight or lob a verbal stink bomb into their evening.

The bar has its bawdy side: It sometimes hosts "leather nights" and strippers, and its newsletter contains a photo of the backside of a man dropping his pants. But it is the tavern's more ordinary qualities that its customers emphasize. There's a softball team, and the Nutbush competes in a Forest Park dart league against other bars, something patrons say they never would have done a few years back.

Wayne Matulionis, a regular, compares the Nutbush to a bar in a sitcom of the 1980s and '90s.

"I call it `Cheers' for queers," said Matulionis, who raises money for AIDS and HIV victims through the bar. "It's the kind of place where, if you don't show up for a week, someone will call and see how you're doing."

Added customer Eddie Messina, "I'm a 16-year regular, and I've always felt comfortable here. It's not a pickup spot. It's a neighborhood bar."

Wayne Brekhus, a University of Missouri-Columbia sociologist who has studied suburban gays, said the situation has changed radically in recent years. Once it was rare to find gay bars outside urban centers. Now such establishments are more commonplace, though they tend to be more generic--like the Nutbush--and less focused on a particular theme or ethnicity.

Also, suburban gays live more openly than they once did as stigmas wane, said Brekhus, the author of "Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity."

"There are obviously still people in the suburbs who are very closeted and leading double lives," Brekhus said, "but much less than before. It's not so unusual for a male couple to live openly in a small city or a suburb, whereas 10 years ago that was unusual and 20 years ago, if it happened, it was very hidden."

Twenty-five years ago, gay bars tended to last little more than four years, facing pressure from police and other authorities, said Art Johnston, an owner of Sidetrack, which opened on North Halsted Street in 1982. Where such bars have succeeded, they have tended to be surrounded by a large gay and lesbian clientele, as on North Halsted, which has become "the Main Street of gay Chicago," Johnston said.

"The Nutbush has been going it alone for a long time," Johnston said. "So what they've done really is quite amazing."

Located on Harlem Avenue a block south of the Green Line `L' station, the Nutbush presents a poker face to the middle-class community around it. It is a nondescript wood-and-brick structure, its windows bricked in to provide the privacy and safety its customers once demanded.

There is a door out in back for those who, in the past, wanted to slip in without being noticed. Inside, the lights are dim and regulars start gathering in the afternoons.

Zych's former partner, who opened the bar, borrowed the name from Tina Turner's song about her hometown in Tennessee. Zych joined the Nutbush about a year after it opened.

The Nutbush itself is marking 30 years, but the building has a storied if boozy history that stretches back to the 1920s. For a time, it operated as a speakeasy with a hidden system of tubes that brought liquor from the second floor down to hidden taps, Zych said. Legend has it that Al Capone once ran a still downstairs.

Perhaps because of its free-living speakeasy roots, the tavern developed a reputation as a gay-friendly place decades before the Nutbush opened in 1976. In 1984, the Tribune stated that it had been known as a gay bar since 1961.

The Nutbush once drew gays from downtown Chicago in search of anonymity, Matulionis said. They could take the Green Line out and slip in the back door, confident that they wouldn't be recognized.

Regular Chuck Plimmer, who grew up in Oak Park, says the Nutbush was the first gay bar he ever visited. But he can recall a time when he was one of the troublemakers.

"I remember when I was 14, I was throwing firecrackers through the front door," Plimmer said. "A few years later, I was walking in through the door myself."

Lt. Mike Cody of the Forest Park Police Department said there have been few reports of trouble in recent years.

"Any time you have a gay bar, you're going to have that," Cody said. "But it's infrequent."

Zych said that for many years, he tried to avoid trouble and handle incidents without calling the cops, fearing a crime report might become a pretext to shut down the bar.

Others in the community agree the tavern has kept a low profile. Said Rev. David Steinhart, pastor of Forest Park Baptist Church just down the street: "Other than just being there, they certainly haven't been in your face in any way."

Recently, Kelly Carrasco of Berwyn shared a pitcher of beer with her partner, Cyndee Kayes, as they explained why they hang out here, even though women are in the minority. It's a friendly place, she said.

"We walk in, and it's like, `Oh, the lesbians have arrived,'" she said. "It's more of a men's bar."

Kayes said the bar serves a deeper purpose than mere socializing. Many gays and lesbians become estranged from their families when they come out. At the Nutbush, they find a new circle of friends.

"This is where we do business," she said. "This is where I get a mortgage. This is where we buy a house or a car. Somebody wants to take a trip to Honduras or Cancun, we've got guys who are travel agents. This is family. We keep it in the family."

----------

rworking@tribune.com

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Copyright by The Washington Post
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A01

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales's remarks.

The Justice Department's top legal adviser, Steven G. Bradbury, separately testified two weeks ago that Congress must give new "definition and certainty" to captors' risk of prosecution for coercive interrogations that fall short of outright torture.

Language in the administration's draft, which Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. -- not foreign -- understandings of what the Conventions require.

The aim, Justice Department lawyers say, is also to take advantage of U.S. legal precedents that limit sanctions to conduct that "shocks the conscience." This phrase allows some consideration by courts of the context in which abusive treatment occurs, such as an urgent need for information, the lawyers say -- even though the Geneva prohibitions are absolute.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, has repeatedly said that foreign interpretations of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions should at least be considered by U.S. courts.

Some human rights groups and independent experts say they oppose undermining the reach of the War Crimes Act, arguing that it deters government misconduct. They say any step back from the Geneva Conventions could provoke mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel. They also contend that Bush administration anxieties about prosecutions are overblown and should not be used to gain congressional approval for rough interrogations.

"The military has lived with" the Geneva Conventions provisions "for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?" asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq have been accused by the Army of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First. The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by troops ignoring their orders.

Defense attorneys for many of those accused of involvement have alleged that their clients were pursuing policies of rough treatment set by officials in Washington. That claim is amplified in a 53-page Human Rights Watch report this week that quoted interrogators at three bases in Iraq as saying that abuse was part of regular, authorized procedures. But this argument has yet to gain traction in a military court, where U.S. policy requires that active-duty service members be tried for any maltreatment.

The War Crimes Act, in contrast, affords access to civilian courts for abuse perpetrated by former service members and by civilians. The government has not filed any charges under the law.

The law's legislative sponsor is one of the House's most conservative members, Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-N.C.). He proposed it after a chance meeting with a retired Navy pilot who had spent six years in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," a Vietnamese prison camp. The conversation left Jones angry about Washington's inability to prosecute the pilot's abusers.

Jones's legislation for the first time imposed criminal penalties in the United States for breaches of the Geneva Conventions, which protect detainees anywhere. The Defense Department's deputy general counsel at the time declared at the sole hearing on it in 1996 -- attended by just two lawmakers -- that "we fully support the purposes of the bill," and urged its expansion to cover a wider range of war crimes. The Republican-controlled House passed the bill by voice vote, and the Senate approved it by unanimous consent.

The law initially criminalized grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions but was amended without a hearing the following year to include violations of Common Article 3, the minimum standard requiring that all detainees be treated "humanely." The article bars murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." It applies to any abuse involving U.S. military personnel or "nationals."

Jones and other advocates intended the law for use against future abusers of captured U.S. troops in countries such as Bosnia, El Salvador and Somalia, but the Pentagon supported making its provisions applicable to U.S. personnel because doing so set a high standard for others to follow. Mary DeRosa, a legal adviser at the National Security Council from 1997 to 2001, said the threat of sanctions in U.S. courts in fact helped deter senior officials from approving some questionable actions. She said the law is not an impediment in the terrorism fight.

Since September 2001, however, Bush administration officials have considered the law a potential threat to U.S. personnel involved in interrogations. While serving as White House legal counsel in 2002, Gonzales helped prepare a Jan. 25 draft memo to Bush -- written in large part by David Addington, then Vice President Cheney's legal counsel and now Cheney's chief of staff -- in which he cited the threat of prosecution under the act as a reason to declare that detainees captured in Afghanistan were not eligible for Geneva Conventions protections.

"It is difficult," Gonzales said in the memo, "to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to bring unwarranted charges." He also argued for the flexibility to pursue various interrogation methods and said that only a presidential order exempting detainees from Geneva protections "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution." That month, Bush approved an order exempting those captured in Afghanistan from these protections.

But the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld effectively made Bush's order illegal when it affirmed that all detainees held by the United States are protected by Common Article 3. The court's decision caught the administration unprepared, at first, for questions about how its policy would change.

On July 7, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England signed a memorandum ordering all military departments to certify that their actions in the fight with al-Qaeda comply with Article 3. Several officials said the memo, which was reviewed by military lawyers, was provoked by the renewed threat of prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

England's memo was not sent to other agencies for review. Two White House officials heavily involved in past policymaking on detainee treatment matters, counsel Harriet Miers and Addington, told friends later that they had not been briefed before its release and were unhappy about its language, according to an informed source. Bradbury and Gonzales have since drafted legislation to repair what they consider the defects of the War Crimes Act and the ambiguities of Common Article 3.

Several officials said the administration's main concerns are Article 3's prohibitions against "outrages upon personal dignity" and humiliating or degrading treatment. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters on July 12 that he supported clearing up ambiguities so that military personnel are not "charged with wrongdoing when in fact they were not engaged in wrongdoing."

Several advocates and experts nonetheless said the legal liability of administration officials for past interrogations is probably small. "I think these guys did unauthorized stuff, they violated the War Crimes Act, and they should be prosecuted," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that has provided lawyers for detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ratner said authorized interrogation techniques such as stress positions, temperature extremes and sleep deprivation are "clearly outlawed" under Common Article 3. But he added that prosecutions are improbable because the Justice Department -- which has consistently asserted that such rough interrogations are legal -- is unlikely to bring them. U.S. officials could argue in any event, Ratner said, that they were following policies they believed to be legal, and "a judge would most likely say that is a decent defense."

Some officials at the Pentagon share the view that illegal actions have been taken. Alberto J. Mora, the Navy's general counsel from 2001 until the end of last year, warned the Pentagon's general counsel twice that some approved interrogation methods violated "domestic and international legal norms" and that a federal court might eventually find responsibility "along the entire length of the chain of command," according to a 2004 memo by Mora that recounted the warnings. The memo was first obtained by the New Yorker magazine.

At a July 13 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Air Force's top military lawyer, Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, affirmed that "some of the techniques that have been authorized and used in the past have violated Common Article 3" of the Geneva Conventions. The top military lawyers for the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, who were seated next to Rives, said they agreed.

Researchers Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

Bush Signs Voting Rights Act Extension

Bush Signs Voting Rights Act Extension
President Vows to Build on 'Legal Equality' Won in Civil Rights Era
By Hamil R. Harris and Michael Abramowitz
Copyright by The Washington Post
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A03

Joined by stalwarts of the civil rights movement, President Bush yesterday signed into law a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act, the historic legislation that opened the ballot box to millions of blacks across the South in the 1960s.

Under the legislation, the Justice Department will maintain the authority to review changes in ballot procedures, legislative districts and other electoral rules in several states, mainly in the South, to ensure that African Americans and other minorities maintain influence in elections.

"By reauthorizing this act, Congress has reaffirmed its belief that all men are created equal," Bush said as he looked into a crowd of people waving church fans bearing the image of the American flag. He vowed "to continue to build on the legal equality won by the civil rights movement to help ensure that every person enjoys the opportunity that this great land of liberty offers."

GOP leaders have been eager to renew the act before the fall elections, but the measure had faced trouble in the House over concern from some Republicans that it unfairly targeted certain Southern states. But House leaders managed to defeat amendments they regarded as politically embarrassing, and the Senate passed the measure last week with little debate.

Bush signed the bill with considerable fanfare on the White House's South Lawn, joined by civil rights leaders who often have been at odds with his administration. They included NAACP Board Chairman Julian Bond, Jesse L. Jackson and Al Sharpton. Also present were family members of three prominent civil rights figures whose names are attached to the legislation: Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Fannie Lou Hamer, who was beaten and jailed in 1962 trying to register to vote in Mississippi.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) called the ceremony historic because of those who attended. "It is enormously impressive to see George Bush and Julian Bond exchange salutes. It is a great day for America," he said. Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) said that even though Bush signed the Voting Rights bill, the relationship between Bush and black America has not changed. "He is the same George Bush; on some issues we work together, and on most issues we are not able to work together," he said.

Also present at the ceremony was Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who is under federal investigation in a corruption case. Jefferson said he felt compelled to come to the White House because, he said, "I grew up in a time when my mother couldn't vote. This is real big step for many of us."

International Herald Tribune Editorial - More hope for the rich

International Herald Tribune Editorial - More hope for the rich
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: July 27, 2006

For the past five years, Congress has passed every tax cut championed by President George W. Bush - except one. A handful of Senate Republicans and most Senate Democrats have, to their credit, blocked four attempts since 2001 to repeal the estate tax on America's wealthiest families.

But the heirs to America's mightiest fortunes may be shielded from taxes anyway. This week, David Cay Johnston reported in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune that the government is on the verge of eliminating the jobs of nearly half of the Internal Revenue Service lawyers who audit estate-tax returns - 157 of the agency's 345 estate-tax auditors. The IRS says the layoffs are warranted because the Bush tax cuts mean fewer people are obliged to pay estate taxes.
That's not very reassuring. Fewer of the smaller estates - those currently worth up to $2 million - are subject to the tax today than when Bush first took office. But large estates are still taxed, and with inequalities in income and wealth producing ever more billionaires and millionaires, there's ever more gold in those hills for auditors to mine.

The IRS also says that it's confident it is catching estate-tax cheats because a mere 10 percent of estate audits brought in 80 percent of the additional taxes. The logic is that auditing a greater percentage would yield diminishing results.
Maybe. But six years ago, the IRS said that most of the taxable gifts it audited had shortchanged the government, and it pledged to hire more lawyers to audit big gifts.

The underlying fact of the matter is that the IRS hasn't released the data that would allow the public to verify whether cutting back on estate-tax audits represents sound tax enforcement. A research organization at Syracuse University, called TRAC, used to routinely request and receive comprehensive IRS audit figures - by size of the estate, the number of hours spent and the amount of extra recommended tax.

Researchers analyzed the data and posted it on the organization's Web site, so the public had a continuing sense of the IRS' fairness, efficiency and effectiveness. But in 2004, the IRS stopped giving TRAC the data. In 2006, a federal court ordered the agency to provide the requested records. But the information released since then has not been comprehensive. If the IRS wants to avoid suspicion that its actions are politically motivated, it should release all the data that researchers need to evaluate its actions.

For the past five years, Congress has passed every tax cut championed by President George W. Bush - except one. A handful of Senate Republicans and most Senate Democrats have, to their credit, blocked four attempts since 2001 to repeal the estate tax on America's wealthiest families.

But the heirs to America's mightiest fortunes may be shielded from taxes anyway. This week, David Cay Johnston reported in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune that the government is on the verge of eliminating the jobs of nearly half of the Internal Revenue Service lawyers who audit estate-tax returns - 157 of the agency's 345 estate-tax auditors. The IRS says the layoffs are warranted because the Bush tax cuts mean fewer people are obliged to pay estate taxes.
That's not very reassuring. Fewer of the smaller estates - those currently worth up to $2 million - are subject to the tax today than when Bush first took office. But large estates are still taxed, and with inequalities in income and wealth producing ever more billionaires and millionaires, there's ever more gold in those hills for auditors to mine.

The IRS also says that it's confident it is catching estate-tax cheats because a mere 10 percent of estate audits brought in 80 percent of the additional taxes. The logic is that auditing a greater percentage would yield diminishing results.
Maybe. But six years ago, the IRS said that most of the taxable gifts it audited had shortchanged the government, and it pledged to hire more lawyers to audit big gifts.

The underlying fact of the matter is that the IRS hasn't released the data that would allow the public to verify whether cutting back on estate-tax audits represents sound tax enforcement. A research organization at Syracuse University, called TRAC, used to routinely request and receive comprehensive IRS audit figures - by size of the estate, the number of hours spent and the amount of extra recommended tax.

Researchers analyzed the data and posted it on the organization's Web site, so the public had a continuing sense of the IRS' fairness, efficiency and effectiveness. But in 2004, the IRS stopped giving TRAC the data. In 2006, a federal court ordered the agency to provide the requested records. But the information released since then has not been comprehensive. If the IRS wants to avoid suspicion that its actions are politically motivated, it should release all the data that researchers need to evaluate its actions.

For the past five years, Congress has passed every tax cut championed by President George W. Bush - except one. A handful of Senate Republicans and most Senate Democrats have, to their credit, blocked four attempts since 2001 to repeal the estate tax on America's wealthiest families.

But the heirs to America's mightiest fortunes may be shielded from taxes anyway. This week, David Cay Johnston reported in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune that the government is on the verge of eliminating the jobs of nearly half of the Internal Revenue Service lawyers who audit estate-tax returns - 157 of the agency's 345 estate-tax auditors. The IRS says the layoffs are warranted because the Bush tax cuts mean fewer people are obliged to pay estate taxes.
That's not very reassuring. Fewer of the smaller estates - those currently worth up to $2 million - are subject to the tax today than when Bush first took office. But large estates are still taxed, and with inequalities in income and wealth producing ever more billionaires and millionaires, there's ever more gold in those hills for auditors to mine.

The IRS also says that it's confident it is catching estate-tax cheats because a mere 10 percent of estate audits brought in 80 percent of the additional taxes. The logic is that auditing a greater percentage would yield diminishing results.
Maybe. But six years ago, the IRS said that most of the taxable gifts it audited had shortchanged the government, and it pledged to hire more lawyers to audit big gifts.

The underlying fact of the matter is that the IRS hasn't released the data that would allow the public to verify whether cutting back on estate-tax audits represents sound tax enforcement. A research organization at Syracuse University, called TRAC, used to routinely request and receive comprehensive IRS audit figures - by size of the estate, the number of hours spent and the amount of extra recommended tax.

Researchers analyzed the data and posted it on the organization's Web site, so the public had a continuing sense of the IRS' fairness, efficiency and effectiveness. But in 2004, the IRS stopped giving TRAC the data. In 2006, a federal court ordered the agency to provide the requested records. But the information released since then has not been comprehensive. If the IRS wants to avoid suspicion that its actions are politically motivated, it should release all the data that researchers need to evaluate its actions.

International Herald Tribune Editorial - An electrifying car

International Herald Tribune Editorial - An electrifying car
Copyright by The International Herald Tribune
Published: July 27, 2006


Virtue alone will not break the grip that petroleum holds on the automobile market. That's why the introduction of a sleek, high-performance roadster that happens to be electric rather than gasoline-fueled is worth noting.

Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley start-up, has developed a two-seater that goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, leaving the days of electric cars as glorified golf carts in the dust. The company seems to understand what it means to love cars as well as the environment. (On its Web site, Tesla revels in the power of the car's acceleration pinning passengers to their seats.)

With a range of about 250 miles, the Tesla Roadster can go much farther on a single charge than earlier electric cars. And 150 of those miles cost about the same as one gallon of gas. But the car itself will not be cheap, running from $85,000 to $100,000. Rather than a stumbling block in this case, it's actually a selling point.

Martin Eberhard, the company's chief executive, understands that new technologies usually start out as high-end products. He and his team are making their car the newest hot gadget, a status symbol. If rappers and football stars buy them, maybe the company can make a dent in the market.

Tesla already has plans for a mainstream vehicle down the road if it can expand its business. Perhaps this is one area where trickle-down theories could really work.

Virtue alone will not break the grip that petroleum holds on the automobile market. That's why the introduction of a sleek, high-performance roadster that happens to be electric rather than gasoline-fueled is worth noting.

Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley start-up, has developed a two-seater that goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, leaving the days of electric cars as glorified golf carts in the dust. The company seems to understand what it means to love cars as well as the environment. (On its Web site, Tesla revels in the power of the car's acceleration pinning passengers to their seats.)

With a range of about 250 miles, the Tesla Roadster can go much farther on a single charge than earlier electric cars. And 150 of those miles cost about the same as one gallon of gas. But the car itself will not be cheap, running from $85,000 to $100,000. Rather than a stumbling block in this case, it's actually a selling point.

Martin Eberhard, the company's chief executive, understands that new technologies usually start out as high-end products. He and his team are making their car the newest hot gadget, a status symbol. If rappers and football stars buy them, maybe the company can make a dent in the market.

Tesla already has plans for a mainstream vehicle down the road if it can expand its business. Perhaps this is one area where trickle-down theories could really work.

Virtue alone will not break the grip that petroleum holds on the automobile market. That's why the introduction of a sleek, high-performance roadster that happens to be electric rather than gasoline-fueled is worth noting.

Tesla Motors, a Silicon Valley start-up, has developed a two-seater that goes from zero to 60 miles an hour in four seconds, leaving the days of electric cars as glorified golf carts in the dust. The company seems to understand what it means to love cars as well as the environment. (On its Web site, Tesla revels in the power of the car's acceleration pinning passengers to their seats.)

With a range of about 250 miles, the Tesla Roadster can go much farther on a single charge than earlier electric cars. And 150 of those miles cost about the same as one gallon of gas. But the car itself will not be cheap, running from $85,000 to $100,000. Rather than a stumbling block in this case, it's actually a selling point.

Martin Eberhard, the company's chief executive, understands that new technologies usually start out as high-end products. He and his team are making their car the newest hot gadget, a status symbol. If rappers and football stars buy them, maybe the company can make a dent in the market.

Tesla already has plans for a mainstream vehicle down the road if it can expand its business. Perhaps this is one area where trickle-down theories could really work.

Emboldened aldermen challenge Daley's leash on council

Emboldened aldermen challenge Daley's leash on council
BY RICH MILLER
July 28, 2006
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times


Most pundits have decided that they no longer want Mayor Daley's political machine running things, but almost no thought has been given to what could happen if the "enemy" is ever vanquished.

It's a little bit like the debate over enforcing democracy in the Middle East. Is the end result worth the chaos?

Unlike Iraq, there won't be gun battles in Chicago's streets if the Machine finally falls, but there will be plenty of political chaos.

On paper, Chicago has a "weak mayor" form of government. The City Council has the real power. Daley has gotten around the law by taking complete control of the city's political process and using that to force his way on City Council members.

Until recently, aldermen were deathly afraid to cross Daley. The fact that the mayor has never once had to veto an ordinance passed by the City Council since he was elected in 1989 gives you a good idea of how he governs.

But the devastating federal investigations into Daley's government have emboldened the city's aldermen.

Their newfound "independence" reached a fever pitch this week when the council passed a "living wage" ordinance by a veto-proof majority -- even though Daley forcefully opposed the plan.

Is this really the dawning of the "Age of the Aldermen," as some have predicted? Nobody can really know that until we see where the federal investigation goes, and how high up the U.S. attorney decides to reach. But a line has obviously been crossed.

Daley is a pro-big business, moderate Democrat. Chicago doesn't have some of the wackier liberal laws on its books that other large cities do mainly because of Daley's influence.

But now, things are starting to change. The once ultratight leash has been loosened.

"They want to put microchips on dogs," Daley complained this week about the council. "We've got [the ban on] foie gras. We've got pay raises. They've got all of these things going."

One alderman previously thought to have been a voice of moderation has turned way-out California liberal.

Ald. Ed Burke (14th) wants to ban drivers from smoking in their cars if any of their passengers are under the age of 8. Burke also introduced a ban on restaurants serving any food containing trans fats.

One restaurant owner told the Sun-Times that Burke is becoming "the next Burt Natarus."

Ah, yes. Ald. Burt Natarus.

Natarus is probably best known for making extremely goofy public comments and introducing ordinances like forcing horses that pull the Loop tourist carriages to wear diapers.

The guy really doesn't like horses.

"The neighing of horses in a city where people are not used to such noises can be more piercing than a car alarm," Natarus once told the council.

These are the people who will be setting the agenda if Daley's power is completely breached. Without a strong leader to contain their zanier impulses, they'll probably go off in a zillion different directions, each one more bizarre than the others. I'm sure it will be quite the show. Reporters and columnists will love the fresh material. Citizens and business leaders might not.

Am I saying that Chicago should keep the Machine in place to prevent a messy democracy from sprouting? Heck no. What I am saying is that it's not enough to change the man at the top or diminish his awesome powers. Voters and reporters have to get more involved as well. The past few months have made it clear that everyone needs to start paying much closer attention to aldermanic elections, or the "City that works" could become a national laughingstock.


Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter. He can be reached at thecapitolfaxblog.com.

Who grieves for dead Iraqis? BY ANDREW GREELEY

Who grieves for dead Iraqis? BY ANDREW GREELEY
July 28, 2006
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times

What is the worth of a single Iraqi life?

The New York Times reported that during recent months a hundred Iraqis die violently every day, 3,000 every month. In terms of size of population, that is the equivalent of 300,000 Americans a month, 10,000 every day. Yet the typical television clip on the evening news -- an explosion, automatic weapon fire, dead bodies on the streets -- has become as much a cliche as the weather report or another loss by the Cubs. The dead Iraqis are of no more value to us than artificial humans in video games. The Iraqis seem less than human, pajama-wearing people with dark skin, hate in their eyes, and a weird religion, screaming in pain over their losses. Weep with them, weep for them?

Why bother?

Rarely do Americans tell themselves that the United States of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is responsible for this slaughter. In a spasm of arrogance and power, we destroyed their political and social structure and are now unable to protect them from one another. Their blood is on the hands of our leaders who launched a war on false premises, without adequate forces, without plans for the time after the war and then sent in inept administrators who could not provide even a hint of adequate public services.

As Colin Powell, who knows something about war, unlike the president and his top thinkers, told President Bush, "If you break it, you own it." If you shatter a society, it is yours, and you're responsible for it. The United States shattered Iraq and we are responsible for the ensuing chaos that we are unable to control. So a hundred human beings are killed every day, and the most powerful military in the world (as Messrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney insist) is unable to stop the killing.

On most of the standards for a just war, the invasion of Iraq was criminally unjust. Messrs. Wolfowitz, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq the day after the World Trade Center attack. They tried to persuade the people that Iraq was somehow involved in the attack. They insisted that the Iraqis possessed weapons of mass destruction. Their arguments for the war, we all know now, were not true.

There was, therefore, no just cause, no attempt to exhaust all possible alternatives short of war, no real hope for victory, no postwar plan, and no ability to prevent the postwar butchery that was easily predictable to those who understood Iraq. The war leaped from slogan to slogan -- weapons of mass destruction, the critical front in the global war on terror, stay the course, freedom and democracy in Iraq. All these slogans are false.

Were America's leaders deliberately lying? Did they really believe that the Shiites and the Sunnis would not murder one another, or did they know better? One must leave the state of their consciences to God. However, they should have known, and in the objective order, they are criminally responsible for the hundred deaths every day. They should be tried for their crimes, not that such trials are possible in our country.

The hundred who die every day are not merely numbers, they are real human beings. Their deaths are personal disasters for the dead person and also for all those who love them: parents, children, wives, husbands. Most Americans are not outraged. Iraqis are a little less than human. If a hundred people were dying every day in our neighborhoods, we would scream in outrage and horror. Not many of us are lamenting these daily tragedies. Quite the contrary, we wish the newscast would go on to the weather for the next weekend.

Is blood on the hands of those Americans who support the war? Again, one must leave them to heaven. But in the objective order it is difficult to see why they are not responsible for the mass murders. They permitted their leaders to deceive them about the war, often enthusiastically. How can they watch the continuing murders in Iraq and not feel guilty?

How would you feel if the street were drenched with the blood of your son or daughter, if your father was in the hospital with his legs blown off?

We cannot permit ourselves to grieve for Iraqi pain because then we would weep bitter and guilty tears every day.

Big-box vote too hot for Alderman Shiller

Big-box vote too hot for Alderman Shiller
Copyright by Crain's Chicago Business Newsroom
July 27 17:02:00, 2006
By Lorene Yue and Greg Hinz

(Crain's) - Helen Shiller was nowhere to be found. As the Chicago City Council was voting on the controversial proposal to mandate a minimum wage for large-format retailers, the alderman from the 46th Ward was absent.

The measure passed 35-14, an outcome that likely robs Mayor Richard M. Daley, who opposes the ordinance, of a veto. A mayoral veto can be overridden by 34 votes.

Ms. Shiller, who is entangled in an ambitious and contentious mixed-use development in her ward, did not return phone calls Thursday for comment about her absence. A spokeswoman from her office said Ms. Shiller was not commenting to the media until after she issues a statement to her constituents.

But remarks made prior to the vote suggest she was conflicted on the issue.

She told Crain's Chicago Business on Wednesday afternoon that she couldn't vote against the ordinance because doing so would help a "predatory" Wal-Mart Stores Inc. At the same time, Ms. Shiller said the ordinance, which phases in a minimum wage for so-called big-box retailers of $10 an hour plus $3 an hour in fringe benefits, could unfairly hurt other companies that have a better track record treating their employees than does Wal-Mart.

She said she wished both sides had sat down and negotiated a proposal that would have satisfied all involved, but the issue became polarized by Wal-Mart's involvement.

Retailers affected by the ordinance, those with stores of at least 90,000 square feet and with $1 billion or more in annual sales, have cried foul. Target Corp. has halted its Chicago expansion efforts, including development of a store in the Wilson Yard project located in Ms. Shiller's ward.

The project, expected to cost about $110 million, is planned for Chicago Transit Authority's Wilson Yard property, a nearly 6-acre site at Montrose and Broadway avenues. Community residents have battled over the housing component, which would accommodate low- to moderate-income individuals. Kerasotes Theatres recently pulled the plug on a movie theater in the development, but construction is moving forward on an Aldi grocery store. Target officials have told developers and alderman that the chain won't open any Chicago stores should the wage ordinance pass.

For news headlines throughout the business day, go to: http://www.chicagobusiness.com

Also don't miss.....
********************BIG BOX & Wilson Yard on WYCC TV********************

The impact of the Big Box on Wilson Yard will be featured on WYCC. (channel
20) Tune in...Friday, July 28, 6:30 p.m.WYCC, Public TV

Lebanon ceasefire talks fail

Lebanon ceasefire talks fail
By Roula Khalaf in Romeand Sharmila Devi in Jerusalem
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 27 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 27 2006 03:00


An international crisis meeting on Lebanon yesterday failed to agree on a call for an immediate ceasefire in the two-week conflict between Israel and Hizbollah fighters, pledging only quick humanitarian relief and support for Lebanon's reconstruction.

Nearly all the participants at a Rome conference called for an immediate ceasefire, leaving the US isolated, according to Arab officials.

Foreign ministers from the US, Europe and the Arab world ended the talks with a stated determination to work towards the end of the conflict with "utmost urgency". Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, said: "We all agreed we want most urgently to end violence on a basis that is sustainable."

The meeting came as the Israeli army suffered its highest casualties for years in the fighting in southern Lebanon. Last night it said eight soldiers had been killed and 22 wounded in an assault on the town of Bint Jbail.

Israeli air strikes hit more than 50 targets across Lebanon yesterday, while Hizbollah, the Shia Islamist group, fired 125 rockets into northern Israel.

Major-General Udi Adam, Israel's head of the northern command, said: "Given the progress over the last two weeks, I reckon it [the offensive] will continue for several more weeks."

Participants at the Rome talks agreed conditions for a lasting peace required the Lebanese government to deploy its forces throughout its territory and disarm all militias, a reference to Hizbollah, which sparked the conflict with the capture of two Israeli soldiers. The meeting also agreed that an international force should be authorised under a United Nations mandate to support the Lebanese army.

The mandate of the international force will be discussed over the next few days as the debate on Lebanon moves to the UN Security Council. Diplomats said the US appeared to be suggesting the force should deploy to assist the truce, while France said it should follow a political agreement that settles all disputes between Lebanon and Israel.

Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's prime minister, said his country was being "cut to pieces". Lebanon needed humanitarian assistance, he said, but it needed an immediate ceasefire more.

Israel's campaign has killed 418 people, mostly civilians, devastated Lebanon's infrastructure and displaced more than half a million people. In Israel at least 42 people have been killed in rocket attacks and border fighting.

Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader, told al-Arabiya television yesterday: "We fight a guerrilla warfare . . . the important thing is what losses we inflict on the Israeli enemy." His group, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has vowed it would not accept "humiliating" terms in a truce.

Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, told the Rome meeting the crisis remained "horrendous".

China called on the Security Council to condemn the "co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack" by Israel on a UN observer post in Lebanon that killed as many as four people. The US rejected any suggestion of deliberate targeting.

Additional reporting by Mark Turner at the United Nations

Murtha rises as belief in Iraq war slips

Murtha rises as belief in Iraq war slips
By Holly Yeager in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 27 2006 03:00 | Last updated: July 27 2006 03:00


John Murtha's journey from backroom Washington operator to leader of the anti-war movement was neither happy nor expected.

But the 74-year-old - who has become a hero to some Democrats and a favourite target for many Republicans - says he has spoken out against the war in Iraq for several reasons.

"I see kids blown apart," Mr Murtha said last week, describing his weekly visits to military hospitals. "I see the morale changing. I see the attitude changing . . . I heard [US soldiers] say they had gotten to hate the Iraqis because they didn't know who the enemy was."

He recognised, from his long experience as the top Democrat on the defence appropriations committee in the House of Representatives, that the high cost of operations in Iraq was eating away at the military's ability to fight other battles, now and in the future. "The army is struggling every day to meet their bills."

Mr Murtha also studied the situation in Iraq and said progress in key areas such as employment, oil production and security was lagging too far behind. "We cannot win this militarily. I decided this over a year ago, but I hesitated to say anything. I waited probably too long."

A former marine and decorated Vietnam veteran, Mr Murtha has close ties to young enlisted men and senior officers and his call for the speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, first made publicly in November, was especially powerful because it was thought to reflect the private beliefs of top generals. He argues that they should be redeployed to other countries in the region, available to return to Iraq if the situation warrants.

Mr Murtha also helped bring to light allegations that US marines murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, a result, he said, of the terrible strain troops were under.

But despite his outspokenness, Democrats remain divided on Iraq. Many are torn between a desire to bring troops home and worries that calls for a prompt withdrawal will subject them to Republican charges that they favour a "cut and run" policy and draw fresh accusations that the party is weak on national security.

Mr Murtha recently began circulating a memo about the costs of the war - "$8bn a month . . . $11m an hour" - and the many other ways that money could be spent. One example: doubling the community police grants programme for $1.4bn (€1.1bn, £750m) a year, the same as the US spends in Iraq in five days.

Mr Murtha voted for the use of force in Iraq in 2002. But he says it is now clear that the US cannot impose stability on Iraq. "To me, the alternative is, let them handle it themselves."

His conservative, rural Pennsylvania roots, military experience and imposing frame have lent credibility to a movement whose previous leader was Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who set up camp outside President George W. Bush's Texas ranch last summer.

Since then, as opposition to the war has increased, his national profile has risen steadily. "Usually I can change things by working behind the scenes," he said, but now he gets stopped in the airport and at Wal-Mart, mostly by people who thank him for speaking out. He was the star attraction at a New Hampshire fundraiser for Democrats at the weekend.

His new stature also encouraged him to announce that he would run for Democrat majority leader, the number two spot in the House leadership, if Democrats take control after the November elections. "I think I can help, because I'm more conservative," Mr Murtha said. "There is an idea that [Democratic] leadership is very liberal and I think I bring some balance."

His critics would find that hard to swallow. When the Center for National Policy, a Washington think-tank, honoured him last week, a handful of protesters stood outside, holding signs that read, "John-Cut and Run-Murtha" and "Honor their Sacrifice: Complete the Mission".

At a campaign stop in Iowa last week, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, sharply criticised Mr Murtha's call for the withdrawal of troops. "That's a bad idea," he said. "Americans and our Iraqi allies need to know that decisions about troop levels will be driven by conditions on the ground and by the judgments of our military commanders, not artificial timelines set by politicians in Washington."

But Mr Murtha is not likely to quieten down. "This is a tough job for me," he said, trying to balance his concerns about the mission with his respect for the troops who are struggling to do their jobs. "I think so much of them. And I see the hurt in their eyes."

Tomorrow: Jim Webb's run for the Senate in Virginia

Shoe is on the other foot in gay resort town - Heterosexuals see an anti-straight bias

Shoe is on the other foot in gay resort town - Heterosexuals see an anti-straight bias
By Ling Liu
Associated Press
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published July 27, 2006

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- Heterosexuals in this overwhelmingly gay resort town on the tip of Cape Cod are complaining that the oppressed have become the oppressors.

Some straight people say they have been taunted as "breeders." One woman who signed a petition against same-sex marriage says she was berated as a bigot by a gay man, and another complained that dog feces were left next to her car.

"The gay community is not immune to having potential prejudices. We're all human, including gay people," said Tom Lang, director of KnowThyNeighbor.org, a non-profit group that supports same-sex marriage.

Provincetown has long attracted writers, artists, and gays and lesbians, and it is known as a place where people can feel free to be themselves. New England's unofficial gay capital has 3,400 year-round residents; summer tourism brings nearly 10 times as many people.

Locals say the intolerance from those who have long pleaded for tolerance has been stirred, in part, by the dispute over Massachusetts' becoming the first and only state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Tensions boiled over this year after the names and addresses of nearly 5,000 Massachusetts residents--43 of them from Provincetown--who signed a petition seeking a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage were published on the KnowThyNeighbor Web site.

This month, a gay man got into a shouting match at a grocery store with a straight woman, calling her a bigot for signing the petition.

A week afterward, Police Chief Ted Meyer held a town meeting that drew about 50 people to discuss that argument and wider issues of civility.

Meyer said two others who signed the petition felt targeted after the Web site published their names. One woman charged that same-sex marriage supporters put dog feces next to her car, an accusation Meyer said would be impossible to prove. Another woman found a copy of the KnowThyNeighbor list on her windshield.

Some straight tourists also have complained of being called "breeders," a joking or derogatory slur used by homosexuals to describe heterosexuals.

"It's a term of divisiveness," said Town Manager Keith Bergman.

Most of the Provincetown residents who signed the petition are members of St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, according to its pastor, Rev. Henry Dahl. The majority of the church's 750 parishioners are Portuguese families who are not gay, though St. Peter's is listed as a "gay-friendly" church by various gay Web sites.

Dahl said he is offended that some proponents of same-sex marriage have equated the opposing view with bigotry. "I'll take ownership of being a Catholic and being a signer of the petition, but I won't take ownership of being a bigot," he said.

He said he believes the list was publicized to intimidate opponents of same-sex marriage.

But Lang said the list was published to encourage discussion of the gay marriage issue. And he condemned disrespectful behavior on the part of gays toward straight people.

"Despite all that's been thrown at the gay community, it's no excuse for being rude or using derogatory terms to anyone," he said.

Look at the politics outside the big box

Look at the politics outside the big box
By John Kass
Copyright by The Chicago Tribune
Published July 27, 2006

Recently, Mayor Richard Daley and President Bush were publicly cozy, officially celebrating the presidential birthday but informally advertising mayoral clout.

City Hall's political message was clear: Rich Daley has nothing to worry about. Federal subpoenas? C'mon, just look at him there with the president, laughing, eating cake.

But on Wednesday, Chicago aldermen blew out all the pretty candles in a 35-14 veto-proof vote, passing the big-box ordinance that will lead to a $10-per-hour starting salary for unskilled workers at select Chicago stores.

The measure was backed by the city's labor unions and opposed by Daley, who had never lost a vote to a council that he has, until Wednesday, appointed, intimidated and dominated.

As public policy, the big-box ordinance is certainly unconstitutional. It is an insidious attempt by Chicago politicians to squeeze businesses that hoped to open new markets--particularly underserved minority neighborhoods--while providing tax revenue and thousands of desperately needed jobs to unskilled workers, many of them black and Latino.

"I've got these white liberals telling me what's good for my community. But this big-box thing will cost black people jobs," Ald. Ike Carothers (29th) told me during Wednesday's pontifications.

"If I put out a notice that there were 500 jobs waiting in my ward--what Wal-Mart was offering for each store--you'd see a line of people from my ward all the way to Mississippi. People want jobs. That's it."

Eventually, Wednesday's histrionics will cost taxpayers even more money, once lawyers start generating billable hours. Ultimately, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, requiring equal protection under the law, should trump the council's economic populism.

But what interests me is the power politics, which played out when the president breezed into Chicago on the day the mayor's political underlings were convicted in federal court. They were found to have illegally built Daley's giant political patronage armies that he used in the precincts to crush political dissent, including aldermen.

With federal heat on him, and political Chicago speculating that he had been weakened, Daley showed why he's a political mastermind. He cozied up to the president and took him to a couple of clout cafes, the Chicago Firehouse for dinner and the next day there was breakfast at Lou Mitchell's.

For years, Mitchell's was the place where mayoral political brains Jeremiah Joyce and Tim Degnan held court. There, they'd meet with petitioners, including labor leaders seeking help from City Hall. They'd arrange things.

So the meals with the president were an inside joke aimed at the city's political elite, who snickered that the president of the United States had been reduced to a mayoral prop. George loves Rich, went the song, so don't worry about federal heat, the mayor is strong, and since the mayor's strong, beware.

That was part of the subtext Wednesday at the City Council, with aldermen in the back-room annex speculating on the mayor's strength. They already knew he'd lost the Wal-Mart vote.

At his news conference afterward, Daley said Chicago is in dire need of sales tax revenue that flees to the suburbs as big boxes open up on the city's borders.

"I have to keep sales tax here somewhere," the mayor said. "It can't be all on Michigan Avenue."

That's one of his problems. The other is that the aldermen didn't buy the strong-mayor argument, otherwise they'd never have opposed him and would have rolled over, as they have in the past.

The other problem is that there is another voice giving commands now: the labor unions. Labor is led by people like Tom Balanoff of the Service Employees International Union, and Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, representing thousands of workers.

For years, Daley has slapped unions around, particularly those representing city workers, police officers, firefighters, clerks and truck drivers, some of whom were tipsters to the feds years ago, when the FBI began investigating the Hired Truck scandal.

The mayor would cry poor, holding back contracts and pay for his union workers, while they seethed, watching mayoral cronies rake in millions upon millions of dollars in deals.

Now the unions see weakness. They know aldermen require street troops to run campaigns. And the mayor doesn't know anything about patronage anymore.

The aldermen "were worried about the unions running candidates against them," Daley said.

That's significant, because now it also demonstrates that most aldermen are no longer afraid of the mayor running candidates against them.

Yet don't consider this a council revolt. Aldermen are waiting. They don't know yet how weak Daley is. They don't know yet how strong the unions are. Chicago's aldermen are cautious, but they like cake as much as mayors and presidents. And they're tired of the crumbs.

----------

jskass@tribune.com

Washington State Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

Washington State Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
By Blaine Harden
Copyright by The Washington Post
Thursday, July 27, 2006; Page A03

SEATTLE, July 26 -- Deferring to state lawmakers and agreeing with most other U.S. courts, the highest court in Washington state on Wednesday upheld a state law that bans same-sex marriage.

The Washington Supreme Court, though, was bitterly divided in its 5 to 4 decision, producing six separate opinions in rejecting the claim of 19 gay couples that they are victims of state-sanctioned discrimination that harms their children and their financial security.

In its lead opinion, the Washington court insisted repeatedly that elected lawmakers have wide discretion to define marriage -- while judges do not.

"At the risk of sounding monotonous," the lead opinion said, "legislative bodies, not courts, hold the power to make public policy determinations." It added that where "no fundamental right is at stake, that power is nearly limitless."

The court ruled that gay couples challenging Washington's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act had failed to show that it denies them either a "fundamental right" or equal protection under the law.

"Although marriage has evolved, it has not included a history and tradition of same-sex marriage in this nation or in Washington State," the opinion said. It added that because state law prevents both sexes from entering into a same-sex marriage, it does not discriminate on the basis of sex.

The opinion dismissed a lower-court ruling, which had found a fundamental right to same-sex marriage, as "astonishing, given the lack of any authority supporting it."

Only one state, Massachusetts, allows same-sex marriage, and then only for its own residents. If the Washington court had overturned the ban, state law here would have allowed nonresident gay couples to come here and get married. Earlier this month, the high courts in New York and Georgia also ruled against same-sex marriage. At least a half-dozen other states have legal challenges about same-sex marriage pending.

Wednesday's decision here shows the continued difficulty that proponents of same-sex marriage have in their legal challenges.

The Washington court's lead opinion suggested several times that the majority of justices may disagree with the state's ban on same-sex marriage but that they had ruled narrowly on its constitutionality. The decision "is not based on an independent determination of what we believe the law should be," the opinion said.

A sharply worded dissent, written by Justice Mary E. Fairhurst and signed by three other justices, said the court was using "the excuse of deference to the legislature to perpetuate the existence of an unconstitutional and unjust law."

The majority ruling condoned "blatant discrimination against Washington's gay and lesbian citizens in the name of encouraging procreation" and raising children in homes with opposite-sex parents, Fairhurst wrote. She argued that the court ignored "the fact that denying same-sex couples the right to marry has no prospect of furthering any of those interests."

Senior political leaders in Washington state, where Democrats control most top offices, were critical of the much-anticipated ruling on a case that was heard by the state's high court more than 15 months ago.

Arguing that marriage "is not the business of the state," Gov. Christine Gregoire said she does not believe government should discriminate against any citizen. But she urged respect for the ruling "whether we agree with it or not."

At a news conference in downtown Seattle, King County Executive Ron Sims, who two years ago had encouraged gay couples to sue him to overturn the state ban on same-sex marriage, stood with dozens of disappointed plaintiffs and compared Wednesday's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson , which affirmed the principle of separate but equal in race relations.

"This is an unwise decision," said Sims, who is black and who said that gays must continue to fight for change, just as blacks did. "Sometimes it takes longer than we might like to bring about needed social change."

As for the plaintiffs, they said they were surprised and angry, and determined to press the state legislature to overturn the marriage law.

"We are reeling today," said Elizabeth Reis, a Seattle health teacher who has been together with her partner, Barbara Steele, a retired researcher in communicable diseases, for 29 years. They raised four children together and have 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"Courts have said you can get married if you have been married six times before," Reis said. "Courts have said you can get married if you owe your children entire childhoods of back child support. But this court says I cannot marry a woman I have loved nearly my entire adult life."