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"I warn the forces of terror once again,We will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis."

'There Is No Way to Turn Back,' New Iraqi President Declares

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Chris Bouroncle/Agence France-Presse—Getty Images

"I warn the forces of terror once again," Iyad Allawi said today after being sworn in as Iraq's interim prime minister. "We will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis."

Agence France-Presse—Getty Images

L. Paul Bremer, right, the outgoing U.S. ambassador, handed over sovereignty to Midhat Mahmoud, left, the head of the Iraqi Supreme Court, as Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, center, and other government officials, watched.

Agence France-Presse—Getty Images

L. Paul Bremer III, the top U.S. administrator, today left behind a country stunned by the sudden transfer of authority.

AGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 — In a surprise, secret ceremony that was hastily convened to decrease the chances of more violence, United States officials today handed over sovereignty to Iraqi leaders, formally ending the American occupation two days earlier than scheduled.

In a tightly guarded room behind high walls, L. Paul Bremer III, the top United States administrator, presented a formal letter recognizing Iraq's sovereignty to Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Just 30 or so people were present for what Dr. Allawi described as the "historic" handover.

A few hours later, Mr. Bremer flew off on a military plane, leaving behind a country stunned by the sudden transfer of authority. Shortly afterward, Dr. Allawi was formally sworn in as Prime Minister.

"This is a historic day," said the Iraqi interim president, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar . "We want a free, democratic Iraq that will be a source of peace and stability for the region and the whole world. We would like to express our thanks to our friends in the Coalition for the efforts and dedication they have spent."

The president added: "We want to tell them all their sacrifices will not go in vain. We are determined, we are committed, there is no way to turn back."

United States officials said the handover — to an interim government, in advance of general elections expected in January — is the crucial first step on Iraq's path to democracy.

"We welcome Iraq's steps to take its rightful place with sovereignty and honor among the free nations of the world," Mr. Bremer said.

But one of the new government's first actions as a sovereign power may be the imposition of martial law to crack down on guerrillas. Insurgents have stepped up attacks in recent weeks, presumably in an effort to disrupt a peaceful and orderly transition. Last Thursday, more than 100 people were killed in a series of apparently coordinated explosions in five Iraqi cities.

Already security forces, responding to today's announcement, were locking down sections of the capital. Several hotels refused to let guests go in or out, thousands of police stepped into the streets and American fighter jets cut arcs in the sky over Baghdad. Both American and Iraqi officials said they were expecting the handover to be marred by significant terrorist attacks.

President Bush, gathered with world leaders around a table at the summit in Istanbul, Turkey, marked the transfer with a whispered comment and a handshake with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, according to a report by The Associated Press.

Looking at his watch to make sure the transfer had occurred, Mr. Bush put his hand over his mouth to guard his remarks, leaned toward Mr. Blair and then reached out to shake hands, the A.P. reported.

After the handover in Baghdad, the members of the interim government moved to a stage to be sworn in. They pledged to uphold a unified, democratic system; to take care of Iraq's people and resources, and to apply all legislation with sincerity.

Thanking Iraq's Arab neighbors and the coalition forces that "liberated Iraq," Dr. Allawi then laid out a broad agenda that included tackling unemployment, developing resources, rethinking investment laws, promoting the private sector, developing a national army and restoring full capacity to the oil sector, which has been damaged in sabotage attacks.

He also referred to the challenges of unifying a country with diverse ethnic groups including Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens, and he promised to uphold Islamic values, according to a CNN translation of his Arabic remarks.

"Iraq is now at a setback but it is temporary," Dr. Allawi said, standing before members of the government seated in front of a row of Iraqi flags. "We will rise up like mountains, standing firm, and we will protect all people regardless of religion, color and every other consideration.

"Pluralism should be a factor of progress, not divisiveness," he said.

He also made it clear that the new government would be tough on insurgents.

"We will be on the lookout for them and chase them and bring them to justice to get their fair punishment," he said.

Although Dr. Allawi's government will have "full sovereignty," according to a United Nations Security Council resolution earlier this month, there will be limits. more...

Here's the transcript of a great exchange between Neil Cavuto and the Vice President on the confrontation with Leahy:

NC: "What happened?"

"VP: "You could say we had a little floor debate in the United States Senate."

NC: "I heard it was more than a debate."

VP: "Well, it was, I expressed myself rather forcefully. Felt better after I had done it."

NC: "Alright. Did you use the "F" word?"

VP: "Ahhh, that's not the kind of language I usually use."

NC: "The reports were that you did."

VP: "That's not the kind of language that I ordinarily use."

NC: "So what did you tell him?"

VP: "I, ah, I expressed my, ah, dissatisfaction with Senator Leahy."

NC: "Over his comments about you and Halliburton?"

VP: "No. It was partly that, it was partly also it had to do with, ahh, he is the kind of individual who will make those kinds of charges and then come act as though he's your best friend, and I expressed in no uncertain terms my views of his conduct, and walked away."

NC: "Did you curse at him?"

VP: "Probably." (laughter by the VP)

NC: "Do you have any regrets?"

VP: "No. I said it. And I..."

NC: "So let me understand. He comes up and he sees you, says 'Mr. Vice President,' and he's a little nice, shakes your hand, and then what do you do, lit into him?

VP: "Ah. Expressed my unhappiness with the way he conducted himself. Part of the problem here is that instead of having this substantive debate over important policy issues, ah, he had challenged my integrity, and I didn't like that, but most of all I didn't like the fact that after he'd done so, then he wanted to act like, ah, now things are peaches and cream, and I informed him of my view of his conduct in no uncertain terms, and as I say, I felt better afterwards."

NC: "Alright. Now they say you broke decorum for normally a Senate or Congressional session. Technically, I guess, it wasn't in session."

VP: "No we weren't in session. What we were doing was waiting to take our pictures, our official Senate photos, and I go up and sit in the chair as president of the Senate and preside."

NC: "What was reaction from the crowd?"

VP: (Vice President laughing) "I think a lot of my colleagues felt that, ah, what I said badly needed to be said. That it was long overdue."

NC: "Pretty feisty guy, aren't you?"

VP: "Well, I am usually calm, cool, and collected, and ordinarily I don't express myself in strong terms, but I thought it was appropriate here."

Appropriate indeed. And long overdue. After listening to Leahy serially slander numerous judicial nominees, then John Ashcroft last week and the Vice President this week, it was to Cheney's great credit that he let the small man from the small state know what most Americans think of such Uriah Heep-like conduct.

More Vice President Cheney, on Your World with Neil Cavuto:

"Charles Duelfer, who is now in charge of the Iraq Survey Group, was, just yesterday, made announcement that they'd found additional shells which have tested positive for sarin." More evidence of Saddam's noncompliance with the U.N. resolutions, and more evidence that will be ignored by a blinkered left. How can you trust John Kerry and his advisors to run the country's national security when they won't even acknowledge the WMDs that have already been found? Answer:

You can't.

Name:	NuTone
To:	Over the top extremists

Message:
Well, yesterday we had fun with Rex Reed, who’s a gassy dolt. Glib Nazi comparisons. Ooh! Naughty. But today we had something different; today Al Gore upped the ante. He coined a new term for the Internet critics of his positions:

Yes, yes, it’s over the top. But it’s not the sentiment that raises eyebrows, it’s the position of the person who’s saying it. We don’t expect presidential candidates past or present to indulge in Usenet flame-war lingo. We don’t expect serious party elders to call the other side Nazis, and for good reason: it’s obscene. The brownshirts were evil. The brownshirts kicked the Jews in the streets and made the little kids put their hands on their heads as they stumbled off to the trains. The brownshirts were not interested in refuting arguments. They were interested in killing the people who dared argue at all.

At some point, I fear, the political discourse of 2004 is going to seem horribly irrelevant and misplaced in the face of some loud new wretched horror; it will seem as oddly disconnected from reality as the Condit / Killer-Shark news reports of August 2001. An indolent luxury.

Digital stormtroopers. Tell me again who’s stifling debate? Remind me again who’s questioning people’s patriotism?

Find me again the story where Bob Dole called the Dixie Chicks “musical Mukhabarats”? Look. We don't have to agree on the big hard issues, but we can certainly agree that we share common values that set us apart, and that it profits no one to identify the opposition as something outside the American experience. Liberals are not Communists. Republicans are not fascists. We have a nice window of opportunity here where we can come together by choice, instead of being thrown together by events. I say we get a head start on national unity, and turn on anyone who floats the Nazi analogy. Shun 'em. No links, no reviews, no radio interviews, no newspaper pieces, nothing. From now on, the Nazi parallel buys you bupkis. This means that the right doesn't get to parade around the mutterings of high-profile wackjobs as illustrative of the heart of everyone who votes D, and the left doesn't get to do the whole "he's wrong in his overheated critique, BUT" dodge. Enough. ENOUGH! For Christ's sake, enough!

If you don't agree, fine, but spare me the angry replies. Write me when Al Gore gives a big long angry speech about the consequence of Iran having nuclear weapons. Write me when this Al Gore returns. Back then the man knew a brownshirt when he saw one. No more, alas.

Name:	Gas Saver
To:	Gas Waster
Re:	Space Elevators

Message:
WASHINGTON - President Bush wants to return to the moon and put a man on Mars. But scientist Bradley C. Edwards has an idea that's really out of this world: an elevator that climbs 62,000 miles into space.

Edwards thinks an initial version could be operating in 15 years, a year earlier than Bush's 2020 timetable for a return to the moon. He pegs the cost at $10 billion, a pittance compared with other space endeavors.

"It's not new physics — nothing new has to be discovered, nothing new has to be invented from scratch," he says. "If there are delays in budget or delays in whatever, it could stretch, but 15 years is a realistic estimate for when we could have one up."

Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, W.Va. NASA already has given it more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more.

"A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea," said Robert Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta.

Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to the planets.

Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes — tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons.

The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites.

David Brin, a science-fiction writer who formerly taught physics at San Diego State University, believes the concept is solid but doubts such an elevator could be operating by 2019.

"I have no doubt that our great-grandchildren will routinely use space elevators," he said. "But it will take another generation to gather the technologies needed."

Edwards' institute is holding a third annual conference on space elevators in Washington starting Monday. A keynote speaker at the three-day meeting will be John Mankins, NASA's manager of human and robotics technology. Organizers say it will discuss technical challenges and solutions and the economic feasibility of the elevator proposal.

The space elevator is not a new idea. A Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, envisioned it a century ago. And Arthur C. Clarke's novel "The Foundations of Paradise," published in 1979, talks of a space elevator 24,000 miles high, and permanent colonies on the moon, Mercury and Mars.

The difference now, Edwards said, is "we have a material that we can use to actually build it."

He envisions launching sections of cable into space on rockets. A "climber" — his version of an elevator car — would then be attached to the cable and used to add more lengths of cable until eventually it stretches down to the Earth. A counterweight would be attached to the end in space.

Edwards likens the design to "spinning a ball on a string around your head." The string is the cable and the ball on the end is a counterweight. The Earth's rotation would keep the cable taut.

The elevator would be powered by photo cells that convert light into electricity. A laser attached to the platform could be aimed at the elevator to deliver the light, Edwards said.

Edwards said he probably needs about two more years of development on the carbon nanotubes to obtain the strength needed. After that, he believes work on the project can begin.

"The major obstacle is probably just politics or funding and those two are the same thing," he said. "The technical, I don't think that's really an issue anymore."

Name:	Go Howard!
To:	Ralp Nader
Re:	send donations please

Message:

CHASE ON FOR SEALED KERRY DIVORCE DOCUMENTS; PAPER FRENZY AFTER ILLINOIS SENATE RACE RELEASE

After last week's front page headlines over ugly unsealed divorce record in the Republican Illinois senate race, media outlets now face a dilemma: What to do about Democrat presidential hopeful John Kerry's sealed divorce records!

The race is on in political and media circles to gauge the import of Kerry's sealed July 25, 1988 divorce from his first wife, Julia Stimson Thorne.

TRIBUNE, which successfully sued a court to gain access to Illinois Republican Jack Ryan's divorce papers and child custody records [over the objection of both Ryan and his former wife], is considering a similar push on Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

[TRIBUNE owns WLVI-TV Channel 56 in Boston. It could use its Massachusetts connection as a jumping point to petition the court which granted Kerry a divorce, sources explain.]

Other news outlets may soon follow.

CAMPAIGN CALLS DIVORCE DIGGING 'GUTTER BALL'

The Kerry campaign late Sunday called any old divorce digging a game of political "gutter ball."

"This is a trash hunt," said a senior Kerry source, who asked not to be named.

"No, I do not have a clue what is in the papers," explained the source. "But it is none of my business. And its none of your business, or any one's business... You're playing a game of gutter ball, Drudge."

"I would argue, adamantly, the records should remain sealed. And out of the hands of John's political enemies."

JUDGE: PUBLIC'S RIGHT TO KNOW

The Los Angeles judge which ordered the release of Ryan's sealed divorce ruled that the public interest in having access to the case records outweighed the Ryans' interest in protecting their child from the publicity that would follow the documents' release.

Ryan and his former wife released a statement saying they were "disturbed and angered" by last week's ruling by Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider, who was named a full judge by California Democrat Gov. Gray Davis.

"They were aware they were in a public court system and protection from embarrassment cannot be a basis for keeping from the public what's put in public courts," said Schnider, referring to Ryan and his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan. "The openness of court files must be maintained, so that the public ... can be assured that there is no favoritism shown to the rich and powerful."

MORE

In 1991, a court also sealed a complaint amending the Kerry-Thorne divorce, concerning economic and child visitation issues.

In her 1996 book, "Change of Heart," Thorne said that playing the role of wife to the rising political star had made her so depressed she wanted to kill herself.

Name:

NuTone

Message:
Seymour Hersh's latest in the New Yorker confirms his status as the Page Six of international correspondents, and for all of its huffing and puffing about Israelis in Kurdistan and chaos in Baghdad, doesn't tell us anything that even casual observors didn't already know. The war has turned all of the tables over, and many intrigues are underway. After reading it I fetched my copy of Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game and paged through the 500 pages of improbable alliances, desperate journeys, and courageous missions throughout the region that stretches from India to the Persian Gulf. A very similar scramble is underway today, and Hersch has a few details and much gossip from the region.

Very glum, of course, and full of the standard shots at the neocons and the Bush Adminsitration generally. But there's a map in the very beginning of Hopkirk's book, one that ought to give pause to critics like Hersch.

The big problem in the region remains the mullahs of Teheran, and their nuclear ambitions. In November of 2000, we faced not only that menace, but also the Taliban in Afghanistan which was allowing Al Qaeda to nest and metasticize, and Saddam in Baghdad, always scheming and always arming, but also with oil-for-food millions, corrupting the West and the U.N., and a pipeline of money for the radicals of the West Bank perfecting suicide bombings.

Now Teheran sees U.S. forces anchored to its west and its east, with democracies planted in both places. Hersch uses the final few pages of his piece to slam Allawi's credentials and suggest he is a thug, and to speculate about the consequences of civil war in Kirkuk.

But do you suppose the mullahs would prefer to have the world as it was in 2000 or the world as it is today? Would Zarqawi? Would bin Laden?

Hopkirk's book emphasizes that there was never a straight line to travel in the century of manuevering between the Queen and the Tsar. The aim was to win more matches than were lost, and over time, to improve the prospects for security for the British people. The Sy Hersch's of the world love the drama and the whispered aside, but never seem to step back and ask: Are we winning? And not just in the short term, but over a generation? The answer has to be an unqualified yes.

"Would you do it over again, knowing everything you know now?" is another way of putting the key question. I am certain the president would give the go ahead again, and almost as certain that John Kerry would say no. That's the big difference between the men, and the single most improtant issue in the election. Playing offense and playing to win, or thinking you are playing defense when instead you are waiting to get whacked.

A US marine captured by a purported Iraqi resistance group is to be decapitated unless certain prisoners held in occupation prisons are released.

In a video broadcast by Aljazeera on Sunday, the Islamic Retaliation Movement/Armed Resistance Wing said US marine Hassoun Wassef Ali would be beheaded if detainees in US-led occupation prisons were not freed.

The group claims to have taken Ali - of Pakistani origin - captive after "infiltrating a US military base in Iraq".

The video received by Aljazeera shows a kneeling blindfolded moustached man in camouflage military garb. A hand holding a long sword is seen standing behind Ali.

US marine corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has been missing in Iraq since last Monday, a spokesman for the US Marine Corps confirmed in Baghdad late on Sunday.

"Although we can't conform that he has been taken hostage, we can confirm that that he has been absent from his unit since June 21," Major Douglas Powell said.

Hassoun was attached the the First Marine Expeditionary Force, and his unit was operating west of Falluja, Powell said.

Pakistani driver seized

Just hours earlier, an unidentified group of purported Iraqi fighters threatened to behead a Pakistani driver working for a US-occupation contractor within three days.

The captors also urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to shut down his country's embassy in Iraq.

The second captive was named as Yusuf Amjad, an employee of US contractor Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR).

Video sent to Aljazeera included
proof of marine's identity

KBR is a subsidiary of the giant Halliburton company which was once headed by US Vice President Cheney.

Like other contractors for the US-led occupation, it has suffered mounting attacks on its staff.

"This man was taken after an attack on a US base in Balad," said one of the masked fighters on a tape obtained by Al-Arabiya.

"You must release our prisoners held near the US base in Balad, in Dujail, in Yathrib, in Samarra and near Abu Ghraib. You have three days from the date of this recording and after that we will behead him. We have warned you."

Name:	Nurse Fuzzy Wuzzy
To:	Geraldine Ferraro
Re:	Na na na na na

Message:
Theresa Heinz F-ing Kerry's Fortune Doubled Under Bush Administration

Teresa Heinz Kerry, through a network of investments in blue-chip corporations, venture capital funds and municipal bonds, controls a family fortune worth an estimated $1 billion, an examination of public records shows.

The $1-billion figure is double the estimates of her wealth that are widely cited in news stories about her husband, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

The couple would rank as the wealthiest to occupy the White House, far surpassing such storied presidential fortunes as the Kennedys'. Their assets are so vast and far-reaching that they mirror the U.S. economy, and will likely raise questions about conflicts of interest.

"She represents a new ballgame in terms of her wealth and in terms of the wealth she controls," said Kevin Phillips, a political commentator and author of the history "Wealth and Democracy."

Heinz Kerry's investments, worth an estimated $500 million in 1995, have grown over the last nine years to $1 billion or more, even accounting for large living expenses and charitable contributions, according to an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) filings, Senate financial disclosure reports, probate documents and other public records.

Since key details of Heinz Kerry's investments are not in the public record, a precise valuation is not possible. The Times analysis produced estimates as low as $900 million and as high as $3.2 billion.

Three senior executives at investment firms that handle accounts for wealthy clients reviewed The Times' study and said the $1-billion valuation was a fair and conservative estimate.

Heinz Kerry has declined requests by The Times in recent months for interviews. Campaign representatives for Sen. Kerry and his wife said the couple regarded their assets as private. The representatives also declined to provide answers to written questions over the last two weeks.

Heinz Kerry's money is actively managed every day of the year, providing capital to Gannett, Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble, among many others. It helps finance municipal sewer systems, technology start-ups, schools and more.

The trust accounts are held at Mellon Financial Corp., the Pittsburgh institution that has long handled the affairs of the Heinz family. She inherited the family's fortune in the food business 13 years ago.

In 2003, the Heinz trusts made 890 trades in stocks, bonds, funds and other investments — more than three trades for every day that securities markets were open. In dozens of cases, the trades were for assets valued above $1 million, and scores of other trades involved assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Heinz Kerry's net worth is usually estimated at half a billion dollars, though these estimates are not explained in documentation. In its latest annual ranking, Forbes magazine did not include her among the world's billionaires; the last time the magazine estimated her wealth was in 2002, when it said she was worth $550 million.

But The Times examined financial disclosures as far back as 1982 filed by Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), who died in 1991, and Kerry. In 1995, H.J. Heinz Co. filed an SEC document that showed Heinz Kerry was the beneficiary of trusts that held $400 million of Heinz stock. Separately in 1995, the year they married, Kerry filed a Senate disclosure report that showed Heinz Kerry had other assets worth an estimated $100 million.

The Times examined the portfolio of stocks and bonds for each year since 1995, and concluded that it grew to roughly $1.3 billion, in part by diversifying out of Heinz stock.

Records and public statements show that charitable contributions and family living expenses could have drained no more than $300 million out of the trust fund. Last month, she disclosed that she had income of about $5.1 million in 2003, apparently representing some of the income generated by the trusts.

"If you had $500 million in 1995, I don't see how you couldn't be close to $1 billion today with any reasonable equity strategy," said L. David Tisdale, chief executive of Starbuck, Tisdale & Associates, a Santa Barbara investment advisor who reviewed The Times' work.

Certainly, the Kerrys would be among the richest families to ever occupy the White House, eclipsing even President Kennedy and well ahead of the other moneyed chief executives over the last century.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt died in office, he left an estate valued at $1 million, according to his presidential library. That would be worth about $11 million today when adjusted for inflation. Herbert Hoover had roughly $8 million when he entered office in 1929, according to archivists at the Hoover presidential library — an amount worth $88 million today.

Lyndon B. Johnson was worth an estimated $14 million in 1966, Life magazine said at the time. That would be worth $82 million today. The magazine Trusts & Estates estimated Johnson's worth at $20 million in 1973, worth $85 million today.

President Bush (news - web sites)'s disclosure statement shows assets estimated by The Times at about $13 million, including his large ranch in Texas. The value of the Bush family assets, managed by former President George H.W. Bush, is not known.

The most difficult former president to assess is Kennedy, whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was still alive during his presidency and was worth perhaps $200 million to $400 million, according to historians at the Kennedy library — an amount equal to $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion when adjusted for inflation.

President Kennedy's share of the income from the Kennedy trust was $500,000 annually, according to the book "Wills of the Presidents." Political experts say that Kennedy was personally worth perhaps only $20 million when he was elected president, or $124 million today. But Kennedy enjoyed the largess of his father, including payments for his wife's personal expenses, the use of family yachts, and access to estates in Cape Cod and Florida.

If Kerry is elected, he will join a long list of presidents who were helped by their wife's wealth. Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler, LBJ and William McKinley also married into wealth, said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a leading authority on first ladies.

"George Washington married the wealthiest woman in the colony of Virginia," he added.

Heinz Kerry inherited a vast fortune from Sen. Heinz, who was killed in a 1991 private aircraft accident. Heinz, formally H.J. Heinz III, was the fourth generation of the Pittsburgh family famous for its ketchup and other food products.

The money is held mainly by seven trust funds and several other investment accounts set up to benefit her and her three children, as well as to provide for charitable contributions. Heinz Kerry's money is generally kept separate from her husband's, according to the Senate disclosure report.

The business affairs are managed by the Heinz Family Office, located in an upscale office building just two blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides overseeing the family business, the office helps manage Heinz Kerry's many public policy programs.

In addition to her family holdings, Heinz Kerry controls three large nonprofit corporations in Pittsburgh and Washington that have a combined $1.2 billion in assets, according to Internal Revenue Service (news - web sites) filings. They have a wide-ranging agenda, supporting the arts, education, women's health, the environment and much more.

Tax records show that she supplements those activities with separate money from family trusts. For example, she provides at least $6.5 million annually to the Heinz Family Foundation, a nonprofit corporation, to help its activities.

She also separately supports half a dozen programs that involve environmentalism and archeology in another unregistered organization — the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation — that does not file tax returns.

Political experts predict the Kerrys will be compelled to disclose more about their assets and perhaps place them in a blind trust if Kerry wins the election.

Heinz Kerry has not said whether she will continue to oversee her personal assets or the family trusts if Kerry is elected. A Kerry spokesman said Friday that these issues had yet to be seriously considered. However, she has said repeatedly that she would not step down from her leadership of her philanthropic corporations.

A key issue is whether a Kerry presidency would be hobbled by conflicts of interest or the appearance of them because of her holdings or active trading. "It is hard to imagine that it would not cause conflicts," said Phillips, the author. "They should have thought of this long ago."

Leon E. Panetta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton (news - web sites), agreed that although the amount of Heinz Kerry's wealth was not a campaign issue, it could cause problems if Kerry were elected.

"They will have to seriously consider putting it in a blind trust," Panetta said. "All of us who have served in government have had to do that. In the end, it is the better way to go, because it removes any suspicion that a decision is self-serving. You have enough problems just making a decision, without dealing with the concern you may be putting money in your pocket."

(Trusts are legal vehicles dating back hundreds of years that hold assets for the benefit of others. They are generally used by the wealthy to minimize taxes and eliminate long probate proceedings. A blind trust puts management of money outside the view of its beneficiaries.)

No specific law requires the president, much less the first lady, to put assets in a blind trust, said Stan Brand, a federal government ethics expert and Washington attorney. In fact, federal law says almost nothing about the first lady, though she does get protection and funding for an office.

Since Heinz Kerry owns such a broad portfolio of U.S. and foreign stocks, the actions of a Kerry administration could have a daily effect on companies in which his wife has millions of dollars invested, said Robert M. Stern, a financial disclosure expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies.

"Almost any decision Kerry makes will affect one of her companies," Stern said. "It might help the situation if the wealth were put into a blind trust."

President Bush has placed his assets in a trust that is invested almost exclusively in certificates of deposit, according to his financial disclosure statement on file with the federal Office of Government Ethics.

Political experts say Americans have a natural curiosity about the personal wealth of their leaders, though it seldom becomes a central political issue. Far from holding grudges against the rich, voters often elect wealthy individuals and even admire their lifestyles, the experts say.

Heinz Kerry owns a Gulfstream jet and several properties around the country, including a $5-million ski chalet in Idaho, a $9-million oceanfront summer house in Nantucket, Mass., and a $4-million estate in western Pennsylvania. After marrying nine years ago, the couple purchased a five-story mansion assessed at $6.9 million in one of Boston's poshest neighborhoods.

For all the wealth, however, the couple does not live ostentatiously, according to friends and associates. Among Heinz Kerry's vehicles is a 1989 Jeep that she keeps in Idaho, state records show. "If you go to Teresa's homes, you could take the furniture and put it in any home," Jeffrey Lewis, chief of staff for Heinz Kerry, said in an earlier interview. "It is comfortable, not ostentatious."

Maxwell King is president of the Heinz Kerry endowments in Pittsburgh. He said the 65-year-old heiress, who was born in Mozambique to a prominent doctor and was educated in South Africa and later Geneva, has her mind on many matters other than her wealth.

"For some people, having great wealth is a heavy burden," said King, a former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "She doesn't carry it heavily at all. She has a pragmatic view of her money. She doesn't view it as important, but as a vehicle to do things. She holds close to Heinz values."

The Heinz family has long been known for its philanthropy, and Heinz Kerry is but one wing of a family that has funded art museums, scholarships, university chairs, charities for the poor, hospitals, literary awards, symphonies, public service television, programs for women's health, architectural competitions and much more.

Still, the fortune helped elect Sen. Heinz, and it has played a limited but key role in Kerry's primary campaign.

At a pivotal juncture, Kerry took out a $6.4-million loan in December on the Boston property. The big loan, requiring interest payments that exceed Kerry's Senate salary of $154,700, is nearly as much as the assessed value of the property. It came from Mellon Trust of New England.

"It was absolutely necessary for him to do that, and the wealth at that point helped him," said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. "It was not an issue in the primaries, and I do not think it will become an issue in the campaign. There is so much money rolling in now from small contributions that he doesn't need to go to the personal wealth."

Name:	Da Nuze
Re:	Movie Goer Assaulted at Fahrenheit 9/11 Showing

Message:
Chris Saldaña, Reporter (Jun. 25) -- The highly anticipated film, Fahrenheit 9/11, came with more than just controversy at one Las Vegas movie theatre. Moviegoer, Richard Streeter, was one of the many who made his way to a theatre to see what the hype was about. After viewing the film, he was greeted outside the theatre by members of the Las Vegas MoveOn.org.

The group was handing out leaflets on the importance of the film. Streeter voiced his view on the movie, "I made the comment, apples and oranges -- Kerry, Bush -- one's no better than the other. You really ain't got much of a choice. This guy comes up to me and says, 'Oh yeah?' " Streeter was then spat on by the same man.

He attempted to call police to report the incident when he was told not to, "A guy standing next to him said why don't you drop it. I said, 'No, I'm calling the police. I'm exercising my right as a citizen, I've been assaulted.' "

But the horror kept on growing for Streeter as he walked to his car on the phone with police, "This guy turns, and totally by surprise takes his hand and bam! It was a big guy. Shoved me onto the ground, I hit my head." A police report has been filed.

Name:	Smedley
To:	khobar
Re:	http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=8984

In response to:
I believe the phrase he did use was "clear and present danger". I may be wrong. Is "clear and present" synonymous to imminent? No but it's a finer distinction than most. Bush official doctrine is to intervene in any country that may become a threat to the US. It's clear that the admin thinks that waiting for "imminent" is waiting too long.

Message:
If one looks at the actual text of Bush's speeches, in context, rather than take the DU shortcut to facts, Bush made quite the effort to say Iraq was not an imminent threat. In fact, Bush made an extensive effort to say that it was important to take care of Hussein before NOTHING could be done.

From the UN to about 50 other speeches, bush described Iraq as a "a grave and gathering danger" (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/iraq/2388982), not imminent.

With all due respect, khobar, there's no valid argument that Bush stated there was an imminent threat. As you correctly stated: "It's clear that the admin thinks that waiting for "imminent" is waiting too long"

Name:	M.Moore and the Soviets
To:	fodder

Message:
Dreaming About The Senate
Why Democrats think they have a shot at taking it back, with hot candidates from Alaska to Illinois
By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

Barack Obama knows his is about as unconventional as Illinois voters will probably ever see in a Senate candidate. He was born in Hawaii, the son of a Kenyan economist and a white mother from Kansas, and spent four years of his childhood in Indonesia. His last name rhymes with Osama. So he begins every campaign speech with the question on the audience's mind: "How does a skinny guy with a funny name win an election?"

His self-effacing confidence and good looks charm the crowds, and the fans he has won have made the 42-year-old Chicago lawyer and three-term state senator the hottest property in this year's Senate races. Obama may be on his way to replacing retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald.

That's in part why Democrats are dreaming for the first time that they can snatch control of the Senate, narrowly held by Republicans. Obama's first G.O.P. opponent, former Goldman Sachs partner Jack Ryan, had already been trailing by as much as 20 points in some polls when his campaign took a fatal blow last week: a judge unsealed four-year-old divorce records in which Ryan's ex-wife — actress Jeri Ryan of television's Boston Public — claimed that in 1998 he tried to talk her into having public sex with him in various clubs. Four days later, Ryan, who had denied the allegations in legal filings at the time, pulled out of the race. Illinois Republican leaders, who had pressured him to quit, scrambled to find a replacement.

Meanwhile, Obama, a Harvard Law graduate, has energized African-American voters without alienating suburban whites. "I am rooted in the African-American community, but I am not limited to it," he tells audiences. He has also stuck to his liberal positions: he is outspoken in his opposition to the war in Iraq and touts his legislation to reduce the rate of wrongful executions and crack down on racial profiling.

Seven months ago, the Democrats' quest for the Senate appeared hopeless, and Republicans, who cling to a slim 51-to-48 majority (with one independent), were confidently predicting they would widen that lead. Especially in the Republican-friendly South, Democrats were staring at a wipeout, with five of their Senators — Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, John Breaux of Louisiana, John Edwards of North Carolina, Zell Miller of Georgia and Bob Graham of Florida — all deciding to retire.

But Democrats have since recruited credible-enough candidates that the party now has a shot at holding on to three or four of the Southern seats — in South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. And in the West, Democrats are hoping to nab the open seats left by the retirement of Republican Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado and Don Nickles of Oklahoma, and to take on the vulnerable Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. So suddenly the math has changed: Democrats can see their way to a net gain of two seats, which would give them a slim advantage in the Senate. "We're at the cusp of a victory in November," says Senator Jon Corzine, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. G.O.P. leaders insist that the Democrats' hope is a pipe dream. Most of the seats up for grabs are in G.O.P.-heavy states that Bush won handily in 2000. "They simply cannot blow away the reality," says Senator George Allen, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

What makes Democrats sound so giddy? Bush's sinking approval ratings and the poll numbers showing that voters, by 49% to 37% in a TIME poll in early June, say they plan to vote for a Democrat rather than a Republican in congressional elections. Democrats also see two favorable omens in the special-election victories for two House seats, one in South Dakota on June 1 and one four months ago in Kentucky.

If the Democrats pull off a coup, it won't entirely be because of a change in the political climate. Corzine maneuvered early in three states — Colorado, Oklahoma and South Carolina — to winnow the field of Democratic candidates to the strongest in order to avoid costly primary battles. In Colorado, for example, he privately urged Democratic Congressman Mark Udall and multimillionaire software entrepreneur Rutt Bridges not to run so that the party's better vote getter, attorney general Ken Salazar, a white-haired Hispanic whose family has lived in the state for generations, would have an easier time in the primary. Salazar still faces a nagging challenge from high school principal Mike Miles, but it's nothing compared with the looming battle on the Republican side, pitting conservative former Congressman Bob Schaffer against beer magnate Peter Coors. The latest Republican poll in April showed Salazar well ahead of both Schaffer and Coors.

Democrats in Washington had been paying little attention to Alaska, a state some 3,000 miles from the nation's capital that Bush carried by 31 points in 2000 and that hasn't elected a Democratic Senator in 30 years. But after being elected Governor in 2002, G.O.P. Senator Frank Murkowski appointed his daughter Lisa, 45, a state legislator, to serve out the remaining two years of his Senate term. That sparked a political firestorm. Jerry Sousa, a guide in the tiny village of Talkeetna, summed up the view of many Alaskans: the daughter "seems like she's nice, personable and is doing a great job as Senator. But the way she was appointed was fairly despicable." Meanwhile, the Democrats' candidate, former two-term Governor Tony Knowles, a lanky onetime oil roughneck, is the state's most popular Democrat. He pushes jobs and more benefits for the state's high concentration of veterans but distances himself from John Kerry's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which most Alaskans support. A poll in May by an Anchorage television station showed Knowles 5 points ahead of Murkowski.

South Carolina is one of the most Republican states in the Union. But G.O.P. Representative Jim DeMint had to fight his way through a six-candidate primary and then a runoff last Tuesday to win his party's nomination for the Senate, while Democrats united early behind Inez Tenenbaum, the state education superintendent. A moderate who has won two statewide elections, Tenenbaum hopes to form a winning coalition of blacks and white-female swing voters. "We are reaching out across party lines and bringing people in," Tenenbaum tells TIME.

Republicans will fight hard to change the odds everywhere Democrats think they have a chance. In states with bruising primaries, the G.O.P. has been holding successful fund raisers to pile up cash that will be dished out to whoever is the winner. Even Democratic stars like Obama will get roughed up. Before his candidacy imploded, Ryan last month had a young campaign worker with a videocam follow Obama (sometimes no more than a few feet away) in hopes of catching him saying something inconsistent with previous statements. After two weeks and a wave of publicity that made Ryan look bad, the cameraman disappeared. "This scorched-earth politics out there today is not getting things done," says Obama. "So what I do is tell a story about what's been lost in the American Dream and how we can recapture that dream." Democrats will be happy if they can just recapture the Senate.

Name:	Milan
Re:	Ted Sorensen is a turkey

Message:
1)"…abusing prisoners in Iraq, denying detainees their legal rights in Guantanamo, even American citizens..blah blah…our conduct invites and incites new attacks and new recruits to attack us."

RESPONSE: Sorensen should make a pilgrimage to Karbala. Perhaps the physical act of whipping himself into a bloody froth will cure him of his pathological sense of guilt.

2) "We keep losing old friends and making new enemies – not a formula for success."

RESPONSE: These enemies are not "new"; they just came out of the closet. As for the fair weather friends we have "lost," you have to be pretty pathetic to put any real value on them.

3) "True, we have not lost either war we chose or lost too much of our wealth. But we have lost something worse – our good name for truth and justice."

RESPONSE: So "our good name" is more valuable than truth of our cause, in a world that values appeasement over retribution? I think it was Joe Kennedy who told his sons, "It’s not what you are that matters. It’s what people think of you that really counts." The way Ted turned out says it all.

RESPONSE: What about the "1000 Modadishus" wish list? Or Michael Moore’s praise of the necrophiliac butchers in Fallujia?

5) "….and trampling on the rights of those who are different, deprived or disliked. To the extent that our nation voluntarily trods those same paths in the name of security, the terrorists win and we are the losers."

RESPONSE: Give me a break! Such moral equivalency comparisons between the Patriot Act and sharia law only belong on the fringes of Pacifica Radio, not as an address to graduating college students. Leave those kids alone!

6) "We are deemed by many to be dangerously aggressive, a threat to world peace. You may regard that as ridiculously unwarranted, no matter how often international surveys show that attitude to be spreading. But remember the old axiom: 'No matter how good you feel, if four friends tell you you’re drunk, you better lie down.'"

RESPONSE: Taking a poll is not leadership. Especially if much of the world just doesn’t get it. Winston Churchill must be spinning in his grave!

7) "When, in the late 1940’s, we faced a global Cold War against another system of ideological fanatics .... We prevailed because we exercised patience as well as vigilance, self-restraint ...blah blah."

RESPONSE: And they accuse conservatives of having "amnesia" when they recall with nostalgia the make-believe world of "Leave it to Beaver." Many controversial deeds, both necessary and unnecessary, were done in order to win the Cold War. I bet you 10 to 1 that 20 years ago this amnesiac was whining about what the CIA did in much of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

8) "We can do that again. We can reach out to moderates and modernists in Islam, proud of its long traditions of dialogue, learning, charity and peace."

9) "Some among us scoff that the war on Jihadist terror is a war between civilization and chaos. But they forget that there were Islamic universities and observatories long before we had railroads."

It becomes increasingly obvious to me that our biggest threat does not come from the Muslim world, but from the West’s lack of confidence, embodied in flagellants like Sorensen.

Name:	Milan
Re:	Profiles in courage

In response to:
Winston Churchill must be spinning in his grave!

Message:
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities...but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Name:	Wally Wahhabi
To:	Osama

In response to:
Sorensen should make a pilgrimage to Karbala.

Message:
What’s the difference between a Shia Muslim and a bleeding heart liberal?

At the end of last week, New York's junior U. S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Republican Jim Talent (R-Mo.) made a major bipartisan announcement.

Crossing party lines the senators' co-sponsored legislation that addresses major health care issues for our military. On Friday, the Senate gave its stamp of approval for the legislation.

The Talent/Clinton bill -- the Armed Forces Personnel Medical Readiness and Tracking Act of 2004 -- establishes a new tracking system that would make certain active duty military personnel and Reservists are receiving regular health screenings.

The legislation was an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill, and was approved unanimously.

"With American troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, we need to make sure that our men and women in uniform get the best possible health care," said Sen. Clinton. "The legislation we passed provides a comprehensive approach to tracking the health of our soldiers before and after an overseas deployment so that we have adequate information if medical problems develop."

Mr. Talent added that the legislation "addresses a major health care issue that arose from the first Gulf War, in which some of our servicemen and women returned home with symptoms of an illness commonly referred to as Gulf War illness."

The bill requires pre- and post-deployment blood samples, and a thorough post-deployment health assessment. An added bonus is that it will also provide the first before and after snapshot of the medical fitness of every service member deployed to a theater of war.

Why is that important? Because up until the Talent/Clinton legislation, there was no sound way to determine whether or not an individual, or a soldier's unit, had been exposed to a dangerous substance or pathogen.

With this legislation, procedures would be established to ensure that information about our military members' health is systematically collected so that if a group of soldiers begins to exhibit symptoms consistent with exposure to some hazard, there will be adequate information to help identify the cause, and possibly speed up the treatment of the disease.

To that end, the bill establishes a means by which to collect what is called baseline medical data from recruits and establishes an advisory working group within the military to improve the medical tracking system for members deployed overseas.

It also requires a report on Department of Defense responses to concerns raised by members of the Armed Forces regarding exposure to environmental hazards.

Presently, although the law requires that health information be gathered from soldiers returning from deployment in a conflict zone or an actual war, up until now those guidelines have rarely been followed.

The new legislation establishes audits of the blood serum collection program as well as the pre-deployment and post-deployment health assessment database that the Department of Defense maintains.

The Armed Forces Personnel Medical Readiness and Tracking Act also addresses another problem of particular importance to Guard and Reserve troops called to duty in Iraq.

Many of the Guard and reserve units that have been activated are not at full strength because of a lack of medical or dental readiness. The legislation would require a study of the health of reserve soldiers ordered to active duty for Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. It also requires physical examinations for members of reserve components every 30 months instead of the current requirement of 60 months. For those Guard or Reserve members who are medically unqualified for their current duty, it mandates that they be retrained, reassigned or relieved of their military obligation.

Finally, the legislation would require DOD to prescribe a policy that specifies: The circumstances under which treatment for medical conditions may be deferred to be provided in the theater of operations in order to prevent disruption to a deployment; and the circumstances under which medical conditions are to be treated before deployment to the theater.

This is a sound and much-needed piece of legislation, and we applaud the bipartisan efforts of Sens. Clinton and Talent, and all members of the Senate who cast their vote.

Name:	Osama
To:	Wally
Re:	The weakest link

In response to:
What’s the difference between a Shia Muslim and a bleeding heart liberal?

Name:	Aquatic Eskimo
To:	The Royal Reserves
Re:	Global Warming has struck Alaska.

In response to:
What’s the difference between a Shia Muslim and a bleeding heart liberal?

Name:

HILLARY SUPPORTER

Message:
June 28, 2004 McHugh, Schumer, Clinton: House-Senate Coalition Introduces National Dairy Equity Act Submitted by Congressman John McHugh (R-Pierrepont Manor) 6/17/2004

U.S. Representatives Thomas M. Reynolds (R-Clarence), John M. McHugh (R-Pierrepont Manor), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), and Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington), and U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), and Jim Jeffords (I-VT) marked National Dairy Month today by announcing the National Dairy Equity Act (NDEA), new legislation to aid dairy farmers across the country. In development for more than a year, the NDEA is a comprehensive plan that establishes a minimum price for fluid milk and creates a market-based safety net for dairy farmers during times of low milk prices.

"Agriculture is one of our most important industries, nationwide," Reynolds said. "This plan will make certain that the bottom doesn't fall out of the dairy market, providing a much-needed measure of economic security to our local dairy farmers."

"There is no doubt that dairy farmers deserve stability in milk pricing," McHugh said. "I am proud to have worked with my colleagues in the House and Senate to craft this bipartisan plan that not only offers a solution for producers across the country, but also looks ahead to providing another option for them when the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program expires next year."

"The NDEA will ensure that the dairy processors - who have been taking advantage of both farmers and consumers - pay a fair price so that our family farmers can survive," Sanders said. "Importantly, the NDEA accomplishes this goal in a way that benefits family farmers in every region of the country - from New England to the South to the Midwest to the West Coast."

"When it comes to the milk market, there are various conditions we simply cannot control. We can, however, set up a program that helps farmers weather the risks caused by often stormy prices," Senator Schumer said. "The regional dairy pricing system we're putting together will pay farmers a fair price so they can make a living. It's something we can do and it's something we should do."

"I am pleased to join with my colleagues to introduce this important bipartisan legislation," said Senator Clinton. "The NDEA will provide market stability that our dairy farmers need to remain a vital part of New York's communities and economy."

"Over the past 20 years North Carolina has lost nearly three-quarters of its dairy farms, and most of the remaining producers are small family farms, not big milking operations. We need farm programs like NDEA to help family farmers deal with the fluctuations of the marketplace so they can plan effectively and earn a sufficient living in order to provide for their families," said Rep. Etheridge. "It will also provide consumers the security of a stable supply of affordable, local, fresh milk. This bill will not save every single dairy farmer in North Carolina, but it will give more of North Carolina's small dairy farmers an honest chance to survive in a business they love."

Senator Jeffords, who has been a champion for farmers since he came to Congress in 1975, said, "We need to assure that our farmers are paid a fair price for their milk, and this bill will help make that happen. To be successful, our farmers must be able to plan and invest based on long-term goals rather than on short-term market swings."

"The milk produced on local farms is the lifeblood of scores of American communities. This is a plan to temper that volatility to ensure fair prices to farmers and steady local milk supplies to consumers," Senator Leahy said.

The NDEA is a national program that establishes Regional Dairy Marketing Areas (RDMA) in the Northeast, Southern, Midwest, Intermountain, and Pacific regions. In each of the five RDMAs, a Regional Dairy Board would be responsible for setting the minimum price for Class I (fluid) milk sold in that region, which farmers in the region would then approve. Should the Class I price fall below the established minimum price, each region would receive market-based differential payments from a newly established national fund based on a set formula. In the event that the fund was to have a shortfall, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture could supplement the payments with federal dollars to ensure that the Regional Boards, and subsequently the dairy farmers themselves, would receive the full payments.

"By replacing the current MILC program, which is solely taxpayer funded, with payments generated directly from the market, we'll be saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually," McHugh explained.

"Furthermore, this program, once enacted, would be entirely optional for the states," Reynolds added. "States can simply continue to participate in the MILC program, which would be extended to 2007, if they do not wish to take part in the NDEA program."

The NDEA overcomes inter-regional objections to previous, similar plans because it creates regional equity and does not require the sharing or pooling of payout money between the regions.

The Regional Dairy Boards would be comprised of three members from each participating state in that region. Nominations to the Boards would be made by the Governor or elected Agriculture Commissioner of the state, in consultation with the state's agricultural industry, and would be appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture. Each state delegation would consist of at least one producer and one consumer. On top of establishing minimum prices and distributing payments to local dairy farms, the boards would have the authority to conduct supply management programs when necessary, including the development of incentive-based programs.

"We have a chance to do something really substantial here - to pass landmark legislation that will ensure the vitality of the dairy industry nationwide," Reynolds concluded. "We are confident that this program will strengthen our local dairies, and provide an important safety net to ensure their future."

The National Dairy Equity Act was introduced in the House today. The Senate plans to introduce companion legislation on Thursday.

Name:

HILLARY SUPPORTER

Message:
Senator Clinton Organizes Bipartisan Drive to Honor Sojourner Truth June 25, 2004

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has launched what has become a bipartisan effort to honor the life and work of Sojourner Truth. Legislation introduced by Senator Clinton would add Truth’s visage to a monument in the Capitol Rotunda that currently includes the likenesses of women’s suffrage leaders Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

"In addition to the wonderful busts of Stanton, Mott, and Anthony, one of the interesting features of the monument is the existence of a large slab of stone that was never sculpted. Looking at the monument, it is clear that it was intended for a fourth person – another pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement – to be sculpted. The legislation I have introduced calls for Sojourner Truth to be that person,” said Senator Clinton.

Born in 1797 into slavery in Ulster County, New York, and given the name Isabella Baumfree, this icon of the struggle for freedom and equal rights grew to become a religious leader and outspoken advocate for the emancipation of blacks and for the right of women to participate in the nation’s democracy. In 1843, after developing what she called a “perfect trust in God and prayer,” and deciding to dedicate her life to preaching the word of God, Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth.

"Sojourner Truth’s story is one of faith, courage, intelligence and steadfastness in the face of extraordinary circumstances and volatile times in our nation’s history,” Senator Clinton said.

In addition to garnering bipartisan support, the legislation is strongly supported by a wide variety of women’s organizations, including the National Council of Women’s Organizations, the National Organization for Women, and the National Congress of Black Women.

Name:	Senator Clinton
To:	Major Bowes
Re:	AFMRATA

In response to:
The Talent/Clinton bill -- the Armed Forces Personnel Medical Readiness and Tracking Act of 2004 -- establishes a new tracking system that would make certain active duty military personnel and Reservists are receiving regular health screenings.

Name:	Senator Clinton
To:	All
Re:	Evacuating the Treasury

In response to:
Moi

Name:	Proof Please
To:	HILLARY SUPPORTER

In response to:
National Dairy Equity Act Armed Forces Personnel Medical Readiness and Tracking Act

Name:	Eager Taxpayer
To:	Vote Buyers Of The Potomac Swamps
Re:	We must evacuate the bowels of the U.S. Treasury!

In response to:
U.S. Representatives Thomas M. Reynolds (R-Clarence), John M. McHugh (R-Pierrepont Manor), Bernard Sanders (Socialist-VT), and Bob Etheridge (D-Lillington), and U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (Socialist-NY), Hillary Rodham Clinton (Hard Socilaist-Leftist-NY), and Jim (UGH!) Jeffords (Socialist-VT) marked National Dairy Month today by announcing the National Dairy Equity Act (NDEA), new legislation to aid dairy farmers across the country. In development for more than a year, the NDEA is a comprehensive plan that establishes a minimum price for fluid milk and creates a new government giveaway for ...

Name:	Danny American
To:	Got Milk?

Message:
"...the milk cartel—otherwise known as the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact—is a creation of government bureaucrats and farm interests to artificially drive up the price of milk, a commodity that is crucial to the health and well-being of the nation's children, whose champion Hillary purports to be. The real rationale behind the milk cartel is to protect inefficient Northeast milk producers against the more efficient producers of the Midwest who—if market forces were allowed free play—would drive down the price of milk and make it more available to those who can afford it least.

Consumer advocates estimate that the bill behind which the First Lady has thrown her considerable weight will raise the price of a gallon of milk by 50 cents. This represents an almost a twenty percent hike in the already artificially inflated cost. This tax on consumers will fall most heavily on the poor. The bill is expected to put $74,000 in the pocket of every New York farmer, well-heeled and struggling alike."

Name:	Erath County Texas
To:	The Beguiled
Re:	Absurd Expansion of Dairy Boondoggles

In response to:
We have a chance to do something really substantial here - to pass landmark legislation that will ensure the vitality of the dairy industry nationwide," Reynolds concluded. "We are confident that this program will strengthen our local dairies, and provide an important safety net to ensure their future

Name:	Joe Rex Spa
To:	Wieners
Re:	Doin' the DC Bunny Hop

In response to:
"In addition to the wonderful busts of Stanton, Mott, and Anthony, one of the interesting features of the monument is the existence of a large slab of stone that was never sculpted. Looking at the monument, it is clear that it was intended for a fourth person – another pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement – to be sculpted. The legislation I have introduced calls for Sojourner Truth to be that person,” said Senator Clinton.

Message:
Better (the already widely honored and acclaimed) Sojourner Truth than some neurotic weasle like Eleanor "Clump-clump" Roosevelt!

Name:	Danny American
To:	Got Bust?

Message:
Hill's History Lesson Has No Basis In Truth

HILLARY Rodham Clinton, who is fond of lecturing about African-American history, may need a refresher course in the Truth.

A black-oriented monthly newspaper is demanding an apology for a speech Clinton delivered last month in a Brooklyn church, in which she apparently confused the evangelist Truth with Harriet Tubman - the woman who led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad as "the Moses of her people."

The mangled facts are described as an insult on par with telling a veterans group about "our first president, John Quincy Adams," said an editorial in the October issue of Our Time Press.

Clinton delivered a speech at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights. Flanked bypoliticians and fans, she complained about the paucity of black-history education.

"I don't think our children get to hear enough about many of the important people in our history," the black press quoted her as saying.

"I really hope our children learn about Sojourner Truth ... because she did stand for truth and she did sojourn in difficult places time and time again."

Then, as puzzled observers listened politely, Clinton described Truth's "escape" from slavery - and her efforts to guide others to freedom.

"It was a terrible journey. She went through swamps, she was chased by dogs. She was shot at ... And she found her way to freedom, here in New York eventually."

Clinton said she "turned around and she went back. She would send out the word to the plantations that she was coming back. And if people could get there, break free or in the trees or on the side of their swamp, she would be there."

This came as a surprise to those who know that Truth, born a slave, did not escape from bondage.

"It just caught my attention immediately - and it pretty much set me off," said Our Time publisher David Greaves, whose angry editorial is headlined, "Candidate Clinton Trips Over American History."

As Greaves knew, Truth did not come from a Southern plantation, but from upstate Kingston - here in Hillary's adopted state - according to "Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia" (Carlson Publishing, Inc., 1993).

After she was emancipated in accordance with state law in 1827, Truth became an itinerant preacher, feminist and abolitionist famous for challenging 19th-century prejudices about black humanity and femininity with the statement, "Ain't I a woman?"

Truth is revered for helping to lead the call for the end of slavery. But she has never been credited with guiding slaves' escape.

Name:	Dr. Dangitt
To:	Beguiled and Manipulated
Re:	Raping the taxpayers while sucking up to powerful special interests!

In response to:
Go suck a cow, Leahy, you slimey old Socialist.

Message:
Re: "The milk produced on local farms is the lifeblood of scores of American communities. This is a plan to temper that volatility (WHAT VOLATILITY, YOU LYING OLD PISSANT???) to ensure fair prices to farmers and steady local milk supplies to consumers," Senator Leahy said.

Furthermore, if milk is the lifeblood of anything, IT IS CORONARY AND VASCULAR DISEASE!!!!!!!!!! AMERICA'S FAT LITTLE PORKERS DO NOT NEED MORE DAIRY PRODUCTS IN THEIR DIETS! THEY NEED LESS, FAR LESS, OF THESE FAT AND CHOLESTEROL-LADEN SUBSTANCES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Two-thirds of all farm subsidies go to large farms and wealthy agri-businesses, most of which earn more than $250,000 a year. Among the landed gentry on the agriculture dole: 14 members of Congress, 15 Fortune 500 companies, and celebrities such as Sam Donaldson and Ted Turner. These mega-corporations and multi-millionaires will rake in as much as 160 times the median annual farm subsidy of $935.

In fact, recent studies by the government's own auditors have shown that farm subsidies are America's largest and most expensive corporate welfare program.

Why have farm subsides grown so much -- from $6 billion in 1996 to $30 billion in 2000? Because of how they were designed. Farm subsidies are supposed to compensate farmers for low prices caused by overproduction, but to receive more subsidies, farmers must plant more crops. This leads to more overproduction, which drives prices down further and induces calls for even larger subsidies.

Then, while paying these farmers to grow more crops, the federal government turns around and pays other farmers not to farm 40 million acres -- the equivalent of idling every farm in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

American consumers get stuck with the bill, of course. They're forced to shell out as much as three times the market price for some foods and foot the bill for export subsidies so that consumers in other countries can buy our food for less than Americans themselves pay.

Perhaps the most nonsensical of all farm programs is the federal dairy program. In the 1930s, when most of the nation's milk was produced in the Midwest, policymakers worried that milk would spoil during the long train ride to the coasts. So to encourage milk production on the coasts, Congress mandated that the price dairy farmers receive (and consumers pay) would be fixed at levels that increased the further away you got from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Today, however, the dairy capital of America is California, not Wisconsin. Milk no longer travels cross-country by train, and 70 years of technological innovation have decreased travel times by leaps and bounds. Yet this Depression-era policy still adds as much as 20 cents to the price of a gallon of milk.

Advocates of the current farm bill say they're just trying to help struggling family farmers. But they could do that far more cheaply. Congress could guarantee every full-time farmer a minimum income of 185 percent of the federal poverty line ($32,652 for a family of four) for "only" $4 billion per year -- one-fifth the cost of direct subsidies in the new bill.

So why would lawmakers, who are already having a tough time funding the war on terrorism, homeland defense and the exploding costs of Social Security and Medicare, throw so much money at counterproductive farm subsidies for people who don't need them? Because most House members have at least one major crop in their district grown by farmers who vote, and control of the Senate (which over-represents rural populations) will depend on several close races in farm-heavy states.

In that context, farm subsidies represent little more than political payoffs, with both parties bidding for the "farmer's friend" label heading into the November elections. No one -- including President Bush, who has promised to sign the bill-- is putting sound policy before irresponsible politics. If the president fails to veto it, we'll know that his talk of restoring fiscal sanity to Washington is nothing more than talk.

Name:	Individual
Re:	Turnover

Message:
Why, in God's name, would the U.S. turnover power to Iraq when the conditions over there are as bad as they have been for months? Why? What's wrong with Bush and his h*e*nch-men?

It's so bad in Iraq that the major power in the world, us, has to skulk around corners to transfer power. The U.S. is so afraid of the consequences of the turnover that they moved the day up 2 days and had the turnover meeting in secret. WOW. The U.S. has really lost its macho.

Name:	Mahmoud
To:	Osama

In response to:
Shia Muslims whip themselves into a frenzy only once a year!

Name:	Grand Ballou
To:	Individual
Re:	Mbuvburbuggrubba? OOboogamahoogah!

In response to:
It's so bad in Iraq that the major power in the world, us, has to skulk around corners to transfer power. The U.S. is so afraid of the consequences of the turnover that they moved the day up 2 days and had the turnover meeting in secret. WOW. The U.S. has really lost its macho

Message:
I'm shocked, Individual. Shocked, I tell you! I fully expected LORD OF FLIES to beat you here. Bush has ruined everything. Even Kerry can't help us now. We must get Michael Moore in there!

Name:	Osama
To:	Mahmoud
Re:	The new liberalism

In response to:
The U.S. is so afraid of the consequences of the turnover that they moved the day up 2 days and had the turnover meeting in secret. WOW. The U.S. has really lost its macho.

Message:
Everytime a fighter like Bush comes along, people like "individual" who come along to mock the fighters and praises the appeasers get alot of press.

Name:	Aghast!
To:	Individual
Re:	Who will I turn to now? Who will tell me what to feel?

In response to:
What's wrong with Bush and his h*e*nch-men?

Name:	Cletus Taite
To:	Individual
Re:	Duh...

Message:
I guess maybe for starters the Iraqi leaders ain't got no bulletproof limos like the U.S. yet, Individual. Gee, but you sure are stupid!

Name:	Smedley
To:	spIndy

In response to:
Why, in God's name, would the U.S. turnover power to Iraq when the conditions over there are as bad as they have been for months? ...

It's so bad in Iraq that the major power in the world, us, has to skulk around corners to transfer power.

Sounds like the Bush administration keeping another PROMISE in the face of ADVERSITY.

The U.S. is so afraid of the consequences of the turnover that they moved the day up 2 days and had the turnover meeting in secret.

Sounds like the Bush administration keeping another PROMISE in the face of ADVERSITY while using some COMMON SENSE.

Name:	Da Nuze
Re:	Bad ACTors

Message:
If Dems want honest elections, why did a Soros-backed group hire criminals to get out the vote?

When the Associated Press last week turned up evidence that America Coming Together, an anti-Bush group funded by $5 million from financier George Soros, had hired dozens of felons to go door-to-door and register voters in Florida, Missouri and Ohio, the defensive fire from ACT was swift and predictable.

First, ACT claimed it hadn't employed violent felons. Then when the AP reported that ACT employees included people convicted of assault and sex offenses, the group admitted it might also have hired felons in 14 other battleground states. It also promised to fire anyone guilty of "violent or other serious offenses." In some cases it won't have to; four felons it hired in Missouri have already gone back to prison, including one for endangering the welfare of a minor.

That's one reason the Missouri Department of Corrections banned ACT from its list of potential employers for parolees in halfway houses. Noting that the felons would have to handle driver's license information and telephone numbers as part of the voter-registration process, the department concluded that "from a public safety standpoint, we didn't want offenders to be in a situation where they would be handling that information."

ACT also denied that it is violating federal election laws that prohibit it from engaging in partisan activity on behalf of the Kerry campaign, even though its Web site says it is "laying the groundwork to defeat George W. Bush and elect Democrats." Its roster of staffers is chock full of Democratic operatives with close ties to Mr. Kerry. Just this month, ACT staffer Rodney Shelton left to join the Kerry campaign as its Arkansas state director. At the same time, former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan has joined ACT. Federal law forbids any coordination between ACT and the Kerry campaign, but is impossible to enforce.

Ellen Malcolm, ACT's president, says the attacks on her group represent an attempt "to distort and play politics with this situation, to attempt to disrupt ACT and our grassroots activities." But in light of the felon scandal, ACT's activities now merit closer scrutiny, because they may be making the problem of our sloppy voter rolls worse. The Federal Election Commission found in 2002 that 12% of all registered voters nationally were "inactive voters," and thus subject to possible misuse by having someone else vote in their name. In Missouri, a swing state George W. Bush narrowly won in 2000, ACT bought at least $40,000 worth of voter lists from the state's Democratic Party and then paid 75 canvassers between $8 and $12 an hour to go door-to-door and sign up new voters. Since January, they have signed up 12,000 new voter registrations in St. Louis alone.

The St. Louis Election Board reports that about three quarters of ACT's registrations were valid, but trusting any numbers they put is a perilous exercise. St. Louis is one of several American cities in which registered voters outnumber residents of voting age. State Auditor Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, issued a scathing report on the Election Board's procedures last month. It found that nearly 10%, or 24,000, of the city's voters were "questionable." The report tabulated 4,405 dead people, 2,242 felons, 1,453 people voting from vacant lots and 15,963 also registered somewhere else in Missouri or Illinois. At least 935 of the felons, or some 40%, had apparently cast a ballot in a recent election.

"You have felons registering felons who then commit another felony by casting an illegal vote," says Missouri's Sen. Kit Bond, who co-authored the 2002 Help America Vote Act to start the process of cleaning up the nation's voter rolls. He was motivated by the chaotic Election Day of 2000 in which the Gore campaign sued to keep the polls open in St. Louis on the grounds people had been denied the right to vote. Their "plaintiff," Robert D. Odom, turned out to be dead. An aide to a Democratic congressman with the same last name was then substituted as the plaintiff, but then it was discovered that he had successfully voted earlier that day. A St. Louis judge nonetheless ordered the polls kept open, and they were for 45 minutes until a higher court overruled her.

Ms. McCaskill, the state auditor, has concluded the St. Louis Election Board is beyond fixing. She says it needs "local control and direct accountability" and suggests control of it be transferred directly to the mayor. Gov. Bob Holden, a fellow Democrat, agrees.

Reform may finally be in the cards in St. Louis, but at least a dozen other major U.S. cities, ranging from Philadelphia to Miami, also need a complete housecleaning. In 2001, the Palm Beach Post concluded that more than 5,600 people voted in Florida even though they appeared to perfectly match names on a list of suspected felons who were barred from voting. A smaller number of people were also mistakenly listed on voter rolls as being felons when they were not.

But anyone who combats vote fraud or questions the accuracy of voter rolls is likely to come in for abuse. When the Miami Herald won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the rampant absentee ballot fraud in that city's 1998 mayoral election, the Pulitzer jury noted it had been subject to "a public campaign accusing the paper of ethnic bias and attempted intimidation." Local officials in several states who've tried to purge voter rolls of felons and noncitizens have been hit with nuisance lawsuits alleging civil-rights abuse. It's no surprise that many rolls remain clogged with voter deadwood.

A generation ago, the existence of insidious poll taxes and other forms of voter intimidation represented a real threat to free and fair elections. But those problems have receded, only to be replaced by old-fashioned ballot rigging.

We now send teams of election observers to countries such as Venezuela, Cambodia and Albania, where fraud has been rampant. The mess in St. Louis and other cities should prompt us to consider having some election observers in our own backyard. Surely the right to vote includes an equal right not to have that ballot diluted by nonexistent or ineligible voters.

Name:	Scotty
To:	Smedley

In response to:
If one looks at the actual text of Bush's speeches, in context, rather than take the DU shortcut to facts, Bush made quite the effort to say Iraq was not an imminent threat. In fact, Bush made an extensive effort to say that it was important to take care of Hussein before NOTHING could be done.

Name:	Danny American
To:	Another blow for Al Qaeda and lefties.

Message:
Saudis: Al Qaeda member surrenders

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- One of Saudi Arabia's most wanted militants has turned himself into the authorities, the first senior suspect to surrender under a one-month government amnesty announced last week

Name:	Milan
Re:	NY Times

In response to:
what Dr. Allawi described as the "historic" handover.

Name:	Non-CPSC Approved Lawn Mower
To:	Milan
Re:	The New Yorkie Poo

In response to:
Is Mr. GETTLEMAN so upset that this might just work? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scans uncover secrets of the womb

The scans, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell at London's Create Health Clinic, are much more detailed than conventional sound.

Professor Campbell has previously released images of unborn babies appearing to smile.

Conventional sound, usually offered to mothers at 12 and 20 weeks, produces 2D images of the developing foetus.

These are very useful for helping doctors to measure and assess the growth of the foetus, but convey very little information about behaviour.

More pictures of developing foetuses

Professor Campbell has perfected a technique which not only produces detailed 3D images, but records foetal movement in real time.

He says his work has been able to show for the first time that the unborn baby engages in complex behaviour from an early stage of its development.

Professor Campbell told the BBC: "This is a new science for understanding and mapping out the behaviour of the baby.

"Maybe in the future it will help us understand and diagnose genetic disease, maybe even conditions like cerebral palsy which puzzles the medical profession as to why it occurs."

Name:	Pepe'
To:	Anybody,
Re:	The White House

In response to:
I guess "I. have a chip on my shoulder;

Hi, my name is David H. Levesque "I. live at : 2350 McBride Ln. Apt. A20 , CA , U.S.A.

Name:	Elbon Wry
To:	Pepe In Hell
Re:	Why the closet smells that way...

In response to:
WHO IS GOING TO LIVE WITHIN 2000 MILES TO A JEW.

Name:	TFHC
Re:	The Mother of All Conspiracies

Message:
In F911 Michael Moore asserts that the Bush family is inexorably tied to both the bin Laden family and the Saudi monarchy through their mutual association through the Carlyle Group. Well, my friends, guess who else is linked to the Carlyle Group? None other than Michael Moore himself!

Not content with lambasting the Bush administration, Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is now poised to bite the very hand that feeds it - albeit inadvertently. One of Moore’s prime targets is the Carlyle Group, a Washington DC-based investment firm that allegedly links the Bush and Bin Laden families. The trouble is that the company recently became co-owner of the very cinema chain due to screen Fahrenheit 9/11 across America.

On its US release this Friday, Moore’s film will play on 59 screens of the Loews cinema chain. But Variety reports that the chain is now part-owned by the Carlyle Group, a defence contractor that Moore derides as a war profiteer with extensive ties with the Bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family. The first president Bush worked as a highly paid adviser to the company, while James Baker - chief of staff under Ronald Reagan - is currently employed as a senior counsellor.

So, in other words, every time someone pays to see F911 in a Lowes theater you are putting money into the pockets of the Carlyle Group, and if Moore is to be believed, that money will eventually make its way into the pockets of the Bush family, the bin Laden family, and the Saudi monarchy.

Moore goes to great pains in f911 to draw all sorts of conspiratorial conclusions from business associations between the various parties mentioned in the film. Odd that he hasn’t disclosed his own connection to the very people he’s accusing, isn’t it?

Name:	Pepe'
To:	Thee' Isrealis
Re:	anti-semetism,

In response to:
Someone in Chelmsford, MA, U.S.A. SAID that "i, was Anti-Jewish....(They'll >>Win, ?) -- ahh, got your prob., Jew-Sh*t; YOU'S STUPIDER THAN A Ju' (and, they'll >>win;) How are they going to do it. YOU'S ah, YOU'S Stupid F*ckin' Jew-Sh*t YOU'S gots' some dead bodies ?? !!

Message:
Abel, in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, the second son of Adam and Eve and the brother of Cain. Abel was a shepherd, and his older brother, Cain, cultivated the land. Both brothers made an offering to God: Abel offered the firstborn of his flock, and Cain gave the first fruits of his harvest. When Cain's offering was rejected, he became jealous and killed his brother, Abel (see Genesis 4:2-16). This famous story about fratricide is thought by many theologians to illustrate early nomadic tribal beliefs that filtered down through time into religious thought. Animal herding, the principal occupation of many nomads, was considered more pleasing to their gods than agriculture; hence, Abel's sacrifice was accepted, but Cain's was not (see Hebrews 11:4, 12:24). © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (THINK I'S GOTS YOUR STORY;)

Name:

magpie

Message:
moore is plain and simply a friggen commie. no bout adought it. what are the mainstream dems thinking by NOT distancing themselves from that nutball? the pelosi/kerry wing along with other third wayers like hillary are going to pay if they don't.

Name:	Old Baba
To:	All
Re:	Wheat. Beer, & Goats, The Three Pillars of Civilization.

In response to:
Animal herding, the principal occupation of many nomads, was considered more pleasing to their gods than agriculture; hence, Abel's sacrifice was accepted, but Cain's was not (see Hebrews 11:4, 12:24). © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. (THINK I'S GOTS YOUR

Message:
Look, animal herding is OK as far as it goes, but most people like a beer and a sandwich once in a while, not to mention CHEESE, and a good, wide-open, wild-eyed baccanal at least a couple of times a year. You ain't going to get that with just animal herding. You got to have grain, and for grain, you got to have agriculture. With grain, the door is wide open to real civilized living, with beer, rich cheeses in endless variety, and tastey goat sandwiches for all!

Hillary_Clinton_Forum_1185

"I warn the forces of terror once again,We will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis." 'There Is No Way to Turn Back,' New Iraqi President Declares

Scans uncover secrets of the womb

"I warn the forces of terror once again,We will not forget who stood with us and against us in this crisis."

'There Is No Way to Turn Back,' New Iraqi President Declares