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The author describes how "The New York Review of Books" has become increasingly politicized since the election of President George W. Bush. In the wake of the Vietnam War, the "Review" became a formidable--and, in some sense, unique--journalistic institution. Many of its readers reside in academia, but the paper has a devoted following in the upper reaches of media, politics and philanthropy, which gives it an influence vastly out of proportion to its circulation of 130,000. The publication has always been erudite and authoritative--and because of its analytical rigor and seriousness, frequently essential--but it hasn't always been lively, pungent and readable. But the election of George W. Bush, combined with the furies of 9/11, jolted the editors. Since 2001, the "Review's" temperature has risen and its political outlook has sharpened. In stark contrast to "The New Yorker" or "The New York Times Magazine," the "Review" opposed the Iraq war in a voice that was remarkably consistent and unified. What blew the dust off "The New York Review?" As war drew closer, and the press grew more accommodating and deferential, the "Review's" disgust increased, and the editors fired their heavy weaponry. The fall of Baghdad only deepened the fury of the "Review's" contributors. Judt is not the "Review's" only critical voice on Israel. What accounts for the "Review's" post-9/11 revival? One word that continually tumbles from the lips of seasoned "Review"-watchers is "Vietnam." In the case of Iraq, as with Vietnam, the "Review" saw what many other commentators missed or ignored.

He's not the quickest calf in the pasture, so it took U.S. President George W. Bush, and his White House handlers, a few months to grasp a basic rule of modem American electoral politics: Don't look bad on the environment. After thirty-one years of Earth Days, the environment has become a mom-and-apple-pie issue; 68 percent of Americans say they support the goals of the green movement. Thus it was no surprise to see Bush's poll numbers sliding, even among Republicans, as his Administration abandoned lower limits on arsenic in drinking water, the Kyoto Protocols on climate change and a host of other urgent measures. Bush has a problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release a major study of dioxin's health effects that, if uncensored, will surely increase pressure for dioxin's rapid phase-out. Meanwhile, the chemical, paper and other dioxin-related industries are pressing the U.S. Government to block the study's release. If Bush heeds their call, he shields industry from costly new regulations but reinforces his anti-green reputation.

In this article the author discusses what he calls the undeclared war on the media conducted by the administration of President George W. Bush. The F.B.I. is conducting an investigation into the papers of the late journalist Jack Anderson, files thought to contain leaked classified information, and will prosecute the Anderson family under the 1917 Espionage Act if access is not granted. The author notes that administration officials have leaked classified information.

Conservative House Republican Dan Burton from Indiana is outraged with U.S. President George W. Bush's administration for its obsession with secrecy, with keeping information on a broad range of fronts out of public view. As more and more connections between members of the Bush Administration and Enron Corp. come to light, the press and the public have started believing that a lot is being hidden from them by the administration. Bush is blocking the scheduled release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which mandates that all but the most highly sensitive documents are to be made public twelve years after a President leaves office. On December 14, Bush invoked executive privilege in refusing to comply with a couple of subpoenas from Burton's panel.

While some new security measures are obviously necessary, U.S. President George W. Bush's administration's zeal to shut down the free flow of information goes well beyond any legitimate need. Consider November's Executive Order 13233, which eviscerates the nation's access to its own history, effectively overturning the Presidential Records Act of 1978 by fiat. Current law insists that all presidential papers be declassified within twelve years, with an exception made for those whose publication could demonstrably affect the national security. Bush now wants to allow Presidents to refuse to declassify the decision-making process virtually forever. This is a catastrophe not only for historians but also for history.

The article discusses the media's coverage of the United States presidential election of 2004 between President George W. Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry. One problem with trying to write critically about the 2004 presidential election coverage is that by choosing any single aspect of its manifold failures, one automatically does an injustice to the full scope of its immense, almost stupefying awfulness. When the New York Times ran its May 26 admission that it gullibly swallowed the Bush Administration's deception about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, which helped win support for a ruinous war, the story was, according to the invaluable Media Matters, reported thirty-eight times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports during the following forty-eight hours and seven times on cable news. It was entirely ignored on Fox News Channel. By contrast, in the forty-eight hours following CBS's admission that it "should not have used" memos critical of Bush's military service because of questions regarding their provenance, the story was reported 167 times in U.S. newspaper and wire reports and fifty-seven times on cable news broadcasts. Times columnist William Safire has played a powerful role in misinforming the paper's readers about a meeting he alleges took place between Al Qaeda terrorist Mohamed Atta and the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Prague, in April 2001. The meeting is, according to all available evidence, entirely made up. CBS's slip-up was such big news because it fit the right-wing script designed to shield the Bush Administration from democratic accountability.

The author claims that the administration of President George W. Bush sanctioned the use of torture in interrogating Iraqi detainees. So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them, the United States faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of US torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War II, but the more recent lineage of encouragement. Within a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that detainees in the United States were being tortured. By October of 2001, public opinion here was being softened up for the use of torture. It was not far into the Afghan war that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made plain his views on prisoners, after horrifying accounts began to surface of the treatment of Taliban POWs. He first said the United States was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders." From spring 2003, the Red Cross was complaining to US Army commanders in Iraq, and later to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington, about frightful treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

The author comments on claims by U.S. conservatives that they are being unfairly attacked by liberals. What's the matter with conservatives? They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. What I want to know is, Why can't they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads? Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats? They've taken to lecturing the opposition on manners whenever it shows signs of life. Ted Kennedy says the Iraq war was "a fraud made up in Texas" and Bush complains that he's" uncivil." As "New York Times" columnist David Brooks, at least, acknowledges, the right is in a weak position when it claims to be shocked, shocked, shocked by liberal speech today. Well, they wanted state power, and thanks to the Supreme Court Five, they got it. But unfortunately, running the country turns out to be harder than it looked when Bill Clinton was killing off Hillary's lovers between Cabinet meetings. He made it seem so easy! Now, unemployment is way up, the government's awash in red ink, Iraq is a mess. So, everything has to be someone else's fault -- mean liberals who really, really want to win in 2004, Osama loving pranksters who forward e-mail jokes about the President's IQ, Bill and Hillary, still magically pulling the strings three years after leaving the White House, having thoughtfully arranged for 9/11 before they departed. They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

The article discusses the paper "Bowling Alone," by Robert D. Putnam. He quotes approvingly a passage from an oral history of the war: "you just felt that the stranger sitting next to you in a restaurant, or someplace, felt the same way you did about the basic issues?" Like the importance of keeping black people out of that very restaurant, perhaps, and of putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps. As for war bonds, one has to be a true masochist to buy war bonds today, given that U.S. President George W. Bush has just engineered, under the guise of economic stimulus, another gigantic tax cut for wealthy corporations and the rich, and an airline-bailout package that underwrites the multimillion-dollar salaries of industry executives while offering nothing to the nearly 100,000 who've lost their airline jobs.

The article focuses on issues related to politics in the United States. News that the United States has been voted off the UN Human Rights Commission and the UN International Drug Monitoring Board has elicited vows of revenge from conservatives in the U.S. Congress. They threaten to withhold payment on the long-unpaid dues owed the UN. At the last session of the commission, the United States stood virtually alone as it opposed resolutions supporting lower-cost access to HIV/AIDS drugs, acknowledging a human right to adequate food and calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, while it continued to resist efforts to ban landmines. U.S. President George W. Bush pledges to leave no child behind even as he touts his tax cut as coming from the surplus funds left after one has met one's needs. But a report released by the Institute for America's Future, joined by Senators Edward Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and Jon Corzine, shows how deceptive Bush's bookkeeping is. One could draw up a ledger to illustrate this. On the left side of the ledger are the disgraceful numbers: One in six children in the United States are raised in poverty.

The author offers an endorsement of Senator Christopher Dodd in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Dodd is seen as the one candidate with the strongest commitment to human rights and civil liberties, the two elements of U.S. government most damaged by President George W. Bush. Dodd's long career in the Senate is said to provide him with the knowledge and experience necessary for the office.

The article discusses what has gone wrong in John Kerry's campaign for the U.S. presidency. If a presidential candidate is truly the Real Deal, does he have to repeatedly pronounce himself the Real Deal? That's the dilemma confronting Senator John Forbes Kerry, who at the start of the pre-primary season was tagged the front-runner among the Democratic contenders. On paper, he looked real. He's a Vietnam War hero who protested that war. He's mostly in sync with Democratic primary voters. But Howard Dean, a nobody governor from Vermont, zoomed past him in the pre-voting indicators: money, poll results, volunteers and buzz. In the aftermath of a late-in-the-game staff shake-up, Kerry began pitching himself as the "Real Deal" candidate who could undo Bush's "raw deal," which favors "powerful interests." So when the Senate passed the Medicare bill, Kerry complained, "By caving in to the special interests, the Senate has given our seniors a raw deal." In New Hampshire, he unveiled a "Real Deal" agenda he would move to enact in the first 100 days of a Kerry presidency. The problem: Kerry is trying too hard to be "real." It's an obvious reaction to the criticism that Kerry, not known for exciting the voters, has yet to present an inspiring message or persona to fire up grassroots Democrats. In some respects, Kerry has been running a campaign more suitable for re-electing an incumbent senator: Look at my résumé, look at my record, look at my advisers.

This article reflects upon a growing trend of complicity between the press and U.S. governmental actions. The author criticizes reputable newspapers for accepting the U.S. President George W. Bush Administration's claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq without question. The author questions why Washington press were not skeptical of the Administration's policies. Media representatives claim that it was due to a competition in ratings.

The author reflects on the current situation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He says that Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna's suggestion to resume the Camp David talks implies that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has provided no solution to the security and economic situation. He adds that the two-state solution that the Palestinian Authority and Yasir Arafat is promoting has only brought differing views in Israel and Palestine.

On Thanksgiving Day 2001, with the United States in the midst of what polls identify as one of the most popular wars in history and with President George W. Bush's approval ratings hovering around 90 percent, more than 20 million American households opened their daily newspapers to see a little African American kid named Huey Freeman leading the pre-turkey prayer. In the whole of American media that day, Huey's was certainly the most pointed and, no doubt, the most effective dissent from the patriotism that dare not speak its mind. And it was not the only day when the self-proclaimed "radical scholar" skewered George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Defense Department, dithering Democrats, frenzied flag-wavers and caremongering television anchors in what since September 11, 2001 has been the most biting and consistent critique of the war and its discontents in the nation's mass media.

We return this week to the conservative crusade to destroy the reputation of financier and philanthropist George Soros. He has turned his attention to the United States, where he is spending as much as $15 million to help various liberal groups improve their efforts to expose the malfeasance of the President George W. Bush Administration and defeat it in the elections of 2004. The Republican National Committee has circulated a briefing paper on Capitol Hill in which Soros is referred to as "Lord of the Democrats" and the "Daddy Warbucks" of the drug legalization movement, and which highlights what it deems to be his controversial positions on abortion, gun control and the right to end one's own life. In Richard Mellon Scaife's NewsMax magazine, a writer named Richard Poe has extended the attack against the "somewhat loony" Soros, who, he says, "hates America" and is seeking to engineer a "coup" against Bush. Using unmistakably anti-Semitic tropes and metaphors, editor Tony Blankley appeared on Fox's Hannity & Colmes to call Soros a "robber baron" and "pirate capitalist." All of the above bespeaks the desperation that Republicans apparently feel at the prospect of being challenged by someone with the resources to make a difference in an election in which polls show that a majority of voters disapprove of Bush and that a plurality plan to vote for his opponent.

The article offers commentary on the statement U.S. President Barack Obama made about eliminating secrecy from U.S. government agencies, and discusses the effect of secrecy on ex-U.S. President George W. Bush's terms in office. The author states how Bush affected the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, and how he made it difficult to obtain documents about past U.S. presidents. Obama repealed Bush's presidential order that heirs had a right to withhold documents concerning past administrations.

Presents an editorial discussing recent events in the leak case involving C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame as of November 7, 2005. Suggestion that indictments in the case do not matter now that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's probe has already revealed that aides of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Karl Rove and Lewis Libby, engaged in wrongdoing that violated White House ethics; View that Bush supporters have tried to distract the public from the facts of the case; Discussion and analysis related to whether or not the leak of Plame's identity to the press was illegal or ethically wrong.

Suggests that the mainstream press in the United States is inadequate in analyzing world political events as a whole. Reference to the response of the "New York Times" to President George W. Bush's Inaugural Address; Lack of geopolitical reporting by newspapers such as the "New York Times"; Claim that the Bush administration is adept at planning and setting up a global system; Reference to an article entitled "The Coming Wars," by Seymour Hersh in the January 24/31 issue of the "New Yorker"; Increase of power held by the U.S. federal government in areas generally controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency, including the War on Terrorism.

The author addresses the concerns surrounding the weapons of mass destruction-related intelligence reports cited by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. He questions the intelligence reports issued by the government to justify its invasion of Iraq. He comments on the essay "Dishonesty in the intelligence business is not personal but institutional" by Thomas Powers. He believes that the intelligence reports regarding the Iraq War were manipulated by the government.

The article discusses U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich's announcement that U.S. President George W. Bush should be impeached. The author points out that U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned well into his second term, and impeachment papers were filed against U.S. President Harry Truman. The U.S. Senate even considered removing U.S. President Andrew Johnson in the final year of his administration. Kucinich's charges include disregard of U.S. Congress's authority to declare war.

This article presents the author's perspective on the possibility of a U.S. military strike on Iran. Iran is believed to be pursuing nuclear weapons and has ties to many terrorist groups in the region. The author weighs the international ramifications of such an action and believes that, while not likely, it remains possible that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush will attack Iran.

This article presents an essay on the lying done by U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration. The author writes that all presidents are given to lying at some point, and usually cover it with a "national security" defense. But Bush recently outed himself as a liar, after announcing the change in Defense Secretaries. Bush stated that he did not report on plans for rearranging his cabinet because he did not want to inject more speculation into the campaign.

This article reports on the lack of an anti-war or anti-Bush movement especially in light of all the recent revelations of administration misconduct and the distinct lack of success in Iraq. The author states that because there is a lack of cohesive outlet for people to express their frustration. This in turn leads to conspiracy theorists espousing off-the-wall ideas about September 11th and Iraq, which the author says does little to help the social discourse.

Focuses on the relationship between the mainstream media and the United States President George W. Bush administration. Claim that the Bush administration is more interested in ideology than in truth; Suggestion that the media coverage is controlled by political partisans who are willing to spout propaganda for the Administration; Claim that network television is unwilling to appear critical of Bush; Reference to the media's response to Bush's Inaugural Address; Criticism of an article written by Todd Purdum in "The New York Times" newspaper regarding the Inaugural Address; Report that the "Boston Globe" provided a presidential "fact check" along with their coverage of the address; Praise for journalist Kevin G. Hall's willingness to criticize Bush's Social Security plan; Claim that Bush's willingness to mislead the public coupled with the media's willingness to report without comment results in dishonesty.

The author discusses the need for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to develop a new social contract that considers low income workers and the use of public assets. The article describes U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the deregulation he supported and the failure of U.S. President George W. Bush's economic plans. The author argues that Obama needs to create a new social contract, raise the minimum wage, enforce labor laws, rebuild infrastructure, and invest in energy alternatives.

The article presents political satire on United States President George W. Bush that first appeared in "Billionaires for Bush: How to Rule the World for Fun and Profit." A public offering of shares in The George W. Bush Presidential Library, Inc, a Liberian Corporation, will take place in November 2004. Shares may be purchased from exclusive brokers in million-dollar lots. This investment presents not only superb amenities but also an opportunity to discharge your debt to George W. Bush for the handsome returns provided by his administration. The Bush Archives will be housed in an architecturally distinguished building specially designed by Root, Hogg, & Lay, by appointment to the Saudi Royal Family. Operatives from This Gun for Hire (a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company) will patrol the grounds. As with the statements of the President it honors, The George W. Bush Presidential Library, Inc. cannot guarantee the truth of any statement in this offering circular.

The article discusses how the liberal personnel of the U.S. Department of Justice came under siege from conservative members during U.S. President George W. Bush's administration. The author outlines the proposals within John Miller's 2002 "National Review" report which have come to pass, such as that U.S. Republicans should attempt to control the civil rights division of the department, and that Republicans should control the hiring process.

The article offers commentary on the 2008 U.S. financial crisis, the U.S. government, U.S. President George W. Bush, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The author compares conditions of the 2008 financial crisis with those of the 1929 stock market crash that produced the Great Depression, and observes how we have pushed aside the lessons learned from the New Deal program.

The article discusses U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama's advances in foreign policy, and how great expectations are for the departure of U.S. President George W. Bush. Obama is expected to draw down Iraq war troops, pick up diplomatic relations with Syria, Iraq, and Cuba, strengthen relations with allies, and to reconsider proposals such as the Kyoto climate change initiative. The outlook for Obama's foreign policy is bright with a multilateral plan that includes widening diplomatic relations.

The article discusses the ways that reason and empirical thought have been downgraded in the United States, and how a religious movement in the Middle East and a fundamentalist reading of an ancient text has led to tribal war, jihad, and the denial of the Holocaust by the president of Iran. The author discusses the ways that U.S. President George W. Bush has set our national education back by creating reasons for entering the Iraq war, and by fostering secret surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The author focuses on the Iraqi-American writer and Brandeis professor Kanan Makiya's views on the Iraq War. He says that Makiya is considered to be the most excellent Iraqi dissident in the U.S. He claims that Makiya always assure his U.S. readers that Iraqis will welcome U.S. troops and that they will have no opposition about their presence in Iraq. He argues that although Makiya opposes Saddam Hussein's regime, he has become a Bush regime intellectual. He suggests that the dissident label on Makiya should be removed.

This article reports on the policy of U.S. President George W. Bush to hire government workers based on ideology, rather than merit. Many people in the federal government system have been fired, demoted, transferred or have retired out of frustration with the lack of oversight of political appointees. This has left many governmental agencies in danger of being rendered incapable of protecting the people and interests they are supposed to support.

This article reviews the election campaign in Virginia for the United States Senate and the candidates, George Allen and Jim Webb. Allen's campaign has been marred by many misstatements regarding race and religion that have turned voter's off from the politician's stance. Allen has also been a staunch supporter of President George W. Bush's positions on Iraq. Webb suffers from his own past statements about affirmative action being reverse racism and a speech that he made at the National Confederate Memorial in 1990, where he talked about the Southern states fighting for their rights rather than for the right of slavery.

The article focuses on a lawsuit which has been filed against the private North Carolina based security firm Blackwater USA by the families of four men killed in Fallujah, Iraq. The story of one of the men killed, Scott Helvenston, is reported in detail. Actions taken by Blackwater USA which endangered their employees for the sake of their profit margins are discussed. U.S. President George W. Bush has said that he delegates decisions on private security companies to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The article presents the author's views on the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. According to the author, there are no significant legal differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by Bush. The author suggests that U.S. citizens must demand that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence complete Phase II of its investigation into prewar intelligence. It is inferred that the government and general public should consider impeachment proceedings for Bush. The author analyzes how intelligence was presented in the lead up to the war in Iraq.

Examines the impact of President George W. Bush's administration on freedom of the press in the U.S. Claim that Bush does not read the work of journalists, and prefers to rely on his staff for current information; View that the Bush administration interferes with the functions of the press by deliberately withholding information or producing false and biased reports; Discussion of a perceived increase in secrecy in the Bush administration following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; Accusation that Bush and members of his administration lie to the press to support their policies; Scandal surrounding the release of biased news reports by the Bush administration; Impact of the Bush administration's treatment of journalists on U.S. political culture.

The article focuses on the civil justice system and "tort reform". The US Chamber of Commerce is urging voters to support lawsuit restrictions endorsed by George W. Bush and opposed by John Kerry. Chamber president Thomas Donohue charged that "lawsuit abuse destroys jobs, drives doctors out of business and forces companies into bankruptcy." Piggybacking on the campaign of an incumbent President--who made lawsuit restrictions a central part of his governorship in Texas--the tort reformers have seized on this election as their defining moment. The Bush campaign has hit hard at the Kerry/Edwards ticket for allegedly being pawns of plaintiff's attorneys. But regardless of whether or not the issue helps Bush get re-elected, its heightened prominence demonstrates the escalation of the stakes in what is now a thirty-year-long war by the ultra-right to disembowel the civil justice system and make America safer for companies to work their unfettered will. In Texas, however, the future is already here, thanks to several generous helpings of "reform." Anyone who wants a glimpse of what's in store for the rest of us would do well to look at Bush's legacy in his home state. In his first months as governor of Texas, a job he won with the help of $1.3 million from the extremist Texans for Lawsuit Reform, Bush declared an "emergency" on "frivolous lawsuits" and rammed through the legislature a series of bills restricting suits. Now Bush has become the first President to make downsizing the civil courts a signature concern of both his Administration and his re-election effort.

The article offers a firsthand look at the attitudes of blue collar workers in the United States as of September 2004. I was there for the steel-mill shutdowns in the late 1970s and later collaborated on "Journey to Nowhere," about ruined steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, and the new homeless who were the victims of deindustrialization. A dozen years later, my collaborator, photographer Michael Williamson, and I returned to Youngstown, and traveled again across America. What was different, and startling, was the level of anger that we discovered. Defeat had morphed into wrath. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I found was that anger had now combined with fear, and together they had become a dangerous brew. Fear alone, of another terror attack, is a strong force in American politics. But fear connected with anger is an especially volatile combination. Prick the anger whose surface may be pro-Iraq war and anti-Arab, dismissive of Abu Ghraib, and one hears of ruined 401(k)s, poor or no healthcare, lost work. There are 1 million fewer jobs today than when President George W. Bush took office, and the loss of higher-paid manufacturing jobs has been stunning. This group of Americans harbors deep-seated anger over corporate fraud, their lack of healthcare and good jobs, yet in interview after interview I found they are often the most fervent in their support of Bush and his tough rhetoric.

The author discusses the attitudes of American conservatives towards the policies of President George W. Bush. Most Americans long ago stopped believing that George W. Bush is what he claimed to be during the 2000 presidential campaign: a compassionate conservative. But is George W. Bush a conservative at all? [W]hile few people would confuse George W. Bush for a liberal, whether the policies he's championed qualify as traditionally conservative is by no means clear. "Historically, conservatism in the United States has meant support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and great skepticism about overseas adventures," notes Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration official. "What I see now is an Administration that's not for any of these things." While there are plenty of Republicans who would take issue with Prestowitz's definition of the term, a growing number of conservative thinkers and policy-makers have begun to echo this view, as thumbing through the pages of the conservative press makes clear. At the root of their discomfort is a feeling not that the Bush Administration is too conservative but that it has forsaken the guiding principles of conservatism--prudence, caution, restraint--to pursue an agenda that is messianic and radical. Conservatives alienated from this expansive vision do not fall into a single ideological camp.

The author comments on the privatization of state agencies in Texas, and asks whether the reforms Texas will serve as model for the United States as a whole. The state legislature passed a bill this past May that will result in the privatization of eligibility determination for TANF (the program that replaced welfare), food stamps and Medicaid--fundamentally transforming the way social services are delivered in Texas. In some ways, the conservative attack on the union and the public sector in Texas today is a microcosm of the assault in the country as a whole. While business organizations and the corporations that stand to benefit lobby successfully for privatization and budget cuts, tens of thousands of state workers lose health insurance, and the social programs that make life bearable for the desperately poor are downsized. But more is at stake than particular programs and specific benefits. The very existence of the public sector--controlled by people who are democratically accountable, run by workers 'who aren't in thrall to the Dow Jones--hangs in the balance. The choice is between charity, with its baseline assumption of unequal power and resources, and the expansive vision of social democracy. The privatization bill that passed the legislature early this past summer will dramatically change the way that social services are delivered in Texas. Since the way that a private company makes money with a state contract is by running the operation for less than the state pays, companies face tremendous incentives to cut wages and benefits. Are today's developments in Texas a forecast for the nation tomorrow?

The author claims that Republicans plan to play upon widespread opposition to gay marriage among Americans to win votes in the 2004 election. As George Bush's poll numbers began seriously dwindling, Karl Rove and the White House political strategists decided to reach into their bag of tricks and come up with a good old staple of reactionary politics: homophobia. The decision to scapegoat gay and lesbian Americans was poll-driven by an antigay backlash that gathered steam in the wake of the Supreme Court's June 26 decision, in Lawrence v. Texas, striking down laws making gay sex between consenting adults illegal -- the so-called sodomy laws. Just two days after Gallup released its poll showing the backlash, Bush unexpectedly used a Rose Garden press conference to announce that he'd assigned lawyers to come up with a plan to stop gay marriage. Since then, the Republicans have ratcheted up their anti-gay marriage crusade. At the state level, too, Republican antigay initiatives are snowballing. With 2004 shaping up as another close election, Rove & Co. want to energize the Christian-right base to which Bush is already so heavily indebted (it motored his 2000 primary victories against John McCain) and insure a maximum turnout among the AWOL evangelicals and other Christian traditionalists.The antigay bias that permeates the Republican Party can be clearly seen in Bush's judicial appointments. Among the unalloyed homophobes Bush has nominated for the federal bench: Jay Bybee, Michael McConnell, Charles Pickering, others. INSET: Judgment Day.

The author reports from Seneca, South Carolina, the hometown of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, on the decline of the Democratic Party in the South. These days, Republicans don't just carry the national elections in places like South Carolina; over the past two decades, they've started to take over everything from the state legislature to the coroner's office, and it just keeps getting tougher to find loyal Democrats who are willing to campaign as sure losers. But the main order of this morning's business is next February's presidential primary, a high-profile event that is supposed to lift the sagging spirits of South Carolina Democrats. So far, the plan looks like a bust. Six months before voting day, none of the candidates have caught the fancy of Democrats here, or anywhere else in the South. Even in a rural county with just 67,000 souls, the candidates and their flacks have become a regular fixture. And more often than not, they tend to say things that show they don't understand the South a whole lot better than the national Democratic Party. Not even Edwards, who seems to carry the South deep in his bones, has figured out a message that might carry a state in Dixie -- this year, or any year in the foreseeable future."He's much too moderate for 2004," says Don Aiesi, who teaches and studies politics at Greenville's Furman University. Edwards is in a mess of trouble, and his campaign's quandary goes straight to the heart of what's killing off the Democratic Party throughout the South--and just might kill off any hope the party has of unseating Bush next year. Can they galvanize their own Southern base--or, perhaps more accurately, rebuild it? The formula is far from complicated: Invigorate black voters sick of the same old rhetoric and same old promises.

The article focuses on the efforts made by Democrat politician Howard Dean to win the party's 2004 U.S. presidential nomination. Dean has recognized that what Democrats want in the elections is a populist who will challenge U.S. President George W. Bush's policies. Dean is working on his platform to attract African American and Latino voters to his campaign. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich did not merely vote against the use-of-force resolution, he played a central role in organizing Congressional opposition to the Iraq war.

The author reflects on U.S. President George W. Bush's anti-environment actions. He says that such actions by the administration have been blatant and relentless that even U.S. television reports it as a simple fact. He adds that no U.S. administration has done more environmental degradation than Bush for 40 years. He argues that the Bush administration has done the damage without having an environmental policy towards it. He claims that these environmental damages have resulted from economic, military and energy policies.

The article discusses some questions about failure of intelligence of the U.S. on September 11, terrorist attacks 2001, in several places of the U.S. The U.S. President George W. Bush is now in the political cross-hairs for the failures of intelligence agencies in identifying and understanding terrorist threats. The trouble is, this failure is too serious to amuse. The ineptitude preceding of September 11, 2004 arguably heightens the gravest, most immediate threat to national security because, while the dangers may lurk in the twilight zone, they can, turn real. Yet this the U.S. is relying on two intelligence agencies that don't even wish to talk to each other and that not only failed to anticipate September 11 attacks but that have also failed to locate Al Qaeda Osama Bin Laden.

The article presents information on the U.S. President George W. Bush's regulations governing the trails of alleged terrorists in military tribunals. The regulations answer some of the criticisms raised against the preliminary order issued by the Bush Administration in November. The government will, for example, permit defendants to have court-appointed military lawyers, defendants will be presumed innocent until proven guilty and death-penalty sentences must now be unanimous. Bush is determined to use military tribunals rather than federal courts to try noncitizen terrorists either in this country or abroad.

This article presents information on various political developments in the U.S. Since the fall of power company Enron Corp., Republicans have been polishing their populist patter. U.S. President George W. Bush cast aside his patron, Enron CEO Ken Lay, and proclaimed himself the champion of executive rectitude. When the Corporate and Auditing Accountability Act passed in the House, Republican Richard Baker crowed, "we have taken action. We have stood up to Wall Street." One year after the story broke that U.S. Navy SEAL team under his command was involved in an atrocity during the Vietnam War, former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey stood before a packed hall in lower Manhattan as the keynote speaker at a three-day conference on human rights. The conference, "International Justice, War Crimes and Terrorism: The U.S. Record," took place at New School University, where Kerrey is president, and grew out of Kerrey's own suggestion that his experience in Vietnam be turned into an "educational moment."

This editorial highlights some political issues in the U.S. and other countries. The ineffable good luck of George W. Bush seems to be faltering at last. The man became President by an electoral accident that resembled theft. His stock was sinking, his agenda stalled, when the tragedy of September 11, 2001 suddenly gave higher purpose to his Administration. A cheerful way to describe this shift in the political zeitgeist is to suggest that Americans are finally getting over the intimidating aftermath of September 11--recognizing that this country doesn't work very well when people expressing diverse views are browbeaten into silence by "patriots." Earthquake. Cataclysm. Electroshock. The 9/11 of French politics. These were the recurring terms that established political leaders of both left and right used to characterize the April 21 presidential elections in France--in which nearly one in five registered voters cast their lot with the two neofascist parties of the extreme right, and racist National Front leader Jean-Marie LePen edged past Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to become the sole candidate against conservative President Jacques Chirac in the May 5 runoff.

This article presents information on various socio-political and administrative developments in the U.S. and from around the world. One of them is the report on the U.S. President George W. Bush's speech on marking the six-month anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In a clear effort to massage the sensibilities of nations worried about escalating U.S. unilateralism, he spoke of the power and vitality of coalition partners against Al Qaeda and singled out for praise nations from Denmark to Uzbekistan. Another being the scandal that rocked companies like Enron Energy Services Inc. in the U.S.