Only 4 percent of those approving said it was because of Bush's economic policies. Only 13 percent said it was because he had prevented additional attacks. Even though the poll was taken days after the fall of Baghdad, only 23 percent said it was because of his direction of the war. Fully 52 percent said they approved because of "his general personal strength and sense of leadership."

The movement's grand ambition… is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal's centralization…. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth--both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes--are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.
…
The right's unifying idea--get the government out of our lives--has broad popular appeal, at least on a sentimental level, because it represents an authentic core value in the American experience…. The movement has a substantial base that believes in its ideological vision… and the right has created the political mechanics that allow these disparate elements to pull together. Cosmopolitan corporate executives hold their noses and go along with Christian activists trying to stamp out "decadent" liberal culture. Fed-up working-class conservatives support business's assaults on their common enemy, liberal government, even though they may be personally injured when business objectives triumph.
…
George W. Bush does not of course ever speak of the glories of the McKinley era or acknowledge his party's retrograde objectives (Ari Fleischer would bat down any suggestions to the contrary). Conservatives learned, especially from Gingrich's implosion, to avoid flamboyant ideological proclamations. Instead, the broader outlines are only hinted at in various official texts. But there's nothing really secretive about their intentions. Right-wing activists and think tanks have been openly articulating the goals for years. Some of their ideas that once sounded loopy are now law.

On April 22, U.S. District Judge Jimm Larry Hendren ordered the Cedarville School District to make the Potter books available for general circulation in school libraries. The ruling overturned an action of the Cedarville School Board, which voted 3-2 last year to require students to obtain a parent’s permission to check the books out.

• Allow employers to recategorize certain employees as exempt.
  
• Remove overtime protection for entire categories of industry (aerospace, defense, health care, and high tech).
  
• Allow employers to require workers to take comp time in lieu of overtime pay.
  
• Allow employers to delay payment of overtime for up to thirteen months, giving the employers, in effect, a forced loan from their workers.

[T]he Bush administration decided it must flex muscle...

The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target.

Other countries have such weapons, yet the United States did not go to war with them. And though Saddam oppressed and tortured his own people, other tyrants have done the same without incurring U.S. military action. Finally, Saddam had ties to terrorists — but so have several countries that the United States did not fight.

But Saddam was guilty of all these things and he met another requirement as well — a prime location, in the heart of the Middle East, between Syria and Iran, two countries the United States wanted to send a message to.

Thanks to Bush & Co., America is hated the world over as never before. Deficits are exploding, unemployment remains high, the stock market is still in the tank and interest rates are poised to take off. The country is headed to hell in a handbasket from so many directions one can barely keep track. And yet the increasingly Foxified media tell a story only of heroism: of the US military, of the American people and of the President of the United States, who has so far managed to avoid service to either one.

We have taken decades of consensus on the conduct of foreign policy – bipartisan consensus in the United States and consensus among our allies in the world community – and turned it on its head. It could well take decades to repair the damage this President and his cohort of right-wing ideological advisors have done to our standing in the international community.

I'm not sure that we can discard the term "fascism”…, if we want to be accurate about the ongoing phenomenon. Certainly its widespread misuse and abuse has rendered it impotent to a degree; but if we start calling it, accurately, American Fascism, then I think that gets the point across simply and unmistakably.

We must have a word, and for lack of a better one, we must employ the word that Mussolini borrowed from the vocabulary of the Italian Left in 1919, before his movement had assumed its mature form. Obliged to use the term fascism, we ought to use it well.

So far, much of the discussion of WMD has been focused on whether war-advocates or war-opponents will be vindicated retrospectively by how much is found. This way of framing the question, however, may miss the real issue -- what we may never find and why. Think about the ways people might dispose of WMD or WMD precursors if they were in a big, big hurry. It's not a comforting thought.
Josh Marshall

30 March British troops find protective suits, training materials and stocks defensive purposes
31 March US military spokesman announces discovery of chemical protection suits and decontamination equipment near Nasiriyah. Later admits they could be for defensive purposes.
4 April US forces find hoard of white powder in boxes in military plant south of Baghdad. Substance turns out to be explosives.
6 April US forces find 14 barrels of chemicals that could be the nerve agents sarin and tabun. Further tests suggest the chemicals were pesticides.
7 April US military official says 20 medium-range missiles loaded with sarin and mustard gas found outside Baghdad. US Secretary Donald Rumsfeld treats report with caution saying: "Almost all first reports turn out to be wrong."
8 April Tony Blair says Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and that US and British forces will be led to them as Saddam Hussein's regime collapses.

A caffeine and alcohol cocktail similar to an Irish coffee could prevent severe brain damage in stroke victims, new research has revealed. The experimental drug, called caffeinol, has the potency of two cups of strong coffee and a small shot of alcohol. When injected into rats within three hours of an artificially stimulated stroke, brain damage was cut by up to 80 per cent.

Especially at this time, it is imperative to be sensitive to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of all our soldiers regardless of faith. In fact, that is one of the requirements of the job description of an army chaplain. According to the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, a chaplain is required to be "[s]ensitive to religious pluralism and able to provide for the free exercise of religion by all military personnel, their family members and civilians who work for the Army." Chaplain Llano's actions do not exemplify this commitment to religious pluralism and are therefore not in the best interest of our troops.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's public education leader has drawn fire for expressing a preference for schools that appreciate "the values of the Christian community."

"The reason that Christian schools and Christian universities are growing is a result of a strong value system," Education Secretary Rod Paige said....

"In a religious environment the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school, where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values," he said.

"All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith," Paige said in the interview with Union University, a Baptist-affiliated school in Tennessee. "Where a child is taught that, there is a source of strength greater than themselves."

To critics, Paige said, he would offer "my prayers."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Forget Stalin or Hitler

The worst ruler in world history is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon says.

"The Iraqi people will be free of decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told a Pentagon news conference on Monday.

Clarke's comment was in line with a mounting stream of comments from Washington that have demonised the Iraqi leader as U.S. and British troops now look as if they may take longer than expected in removing him from power.

Saddam has been condemned for his exceptional brutality against his own people but historians generally agree that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader Josef Stalin were responsible for killing more people than any other dictators in world history.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Teddy Roosevelt
May 17, 1918