articles 1/23

Jib Jab's Second Term
Check out "Second Term," from the creators of "Good to be in D.C." and "This Land." This latest cartoon pokes fun at President Bush, conservatives, liberals, and just about anyone else vying for political power.

Time
Justice Scalia: The Charm Offensive
The Supreme Court Justice is vying for the chief's seat on the bench

Choosing a chairman
by George Will
Having had their fill of post-election introspection, the 447 Democratic Party luminaries who on Feb. 12 will elect their new chairman surely now yearn for stronger wine and madder music.

W. Post
Secret Unit Expands Defense Chief's Domain
Pentagon encroaches on CIA's turf with new espionage arm, reinterprets law to broaden Rumsfeld's powers abroad.
Some Question New Unit's Leader

Gender Fender-Bender
Feminist complainers, not Larry Summers, owe women an apology.
by Ruth Wisse

Oil for Influence
A U.S. citizen pleads guilty to being an agent of Saddam Hussein.

W. Post
Crash Course in Leadership
U.S. advisers are working intensely with Iraqi forces in effort to develop a lasting security force.

LA Times
Reinventing Campus Socializing
Thefacebook.com has become an obsessive must-view hub for hundreds of students.

LA Times
Palestinian Police Face the Enemy Within
Security services are riddled with rivalries and disorganization.

NY Times Magazine
The Punk-Christian Son of a Preacher Man
His parents, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, had one of the most spectacular falls in the history of the evangelical church. Now Jay Bakker is building his own kind of ministry, preaching to rockers and tattooed skaters who feel as lost as he has.

W. Times
Kerry seeking role in spotlight
Sen. John Kerry searched for his new place in the political landscape as his rival took the oath of office for a second term as president.

W. Times
Faithful standing more firm, poll says
Churchgoing Americans grew less patient in the past four years with politicians making compromises on such issues as abortion and homosexual rights, according to a survey released yesterday.

W. Post Magazine
See no Bias
Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are. Assuming we accept the results, what can we do about it?

The Feminine Mistake
Looking for a line women fall for? Try the psychic hotline
by Gene Weingarten
Some of America's most accomplished literary figures were present at the recent national book fair in Miami. But the longest line of people I witnessed was there to obtain the autograph of a highly distinguished, world-renowned, fabulously successful quack.

LA Times Magazine
Swagland
by David Weddle
Where the writers are gluttons, the editors practice ethical relativism and the flacks just want to get their clients some ink

Reuters
'Braveheart' Becomes Role Model for Christian Men
Movies like "Braveheart" and "Legends of the Fall" are on the viewing list for men in a growing Christian movement that calls for them to throw off their "nice guy" personas and emulate warriors.

Newsweek
Hi! The Net Is Calling.
The technology to send voices over data lines is revolutionizing the telephone industry—and, for now, the leader is Vonage.

HughHewitt.com
Some Key Links on and for Godbloggers

The Weekly Standard
Terry Eastland on Hugh Hewitt's "Blog"
Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World: Why You Must Know How the Blogosphere Is Smashing the Old Media Monopoly and Giving Individuals Power in the Marketplace of Ideas by Hugh Hewitt (Nelson, 225 pp., $19.99).
Maybe someone will go after me on grounds of conflict of interest for writing about this little volume. So I'll confess to having been a friend of Hugh Hewitt's for more than twenty years, since he clerked on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
Since I knew Hugh years before he became hughhewitt.com, I can testify that back in the old days Hugh read big books, and naps were not unusual. He had a toe or two in the media, but his big media gig was in the slow lane of a public television show in Los Angeles.
Now I can't think of Hugh without thinking of speed, for speed it is--speed at the keyboard--that you need to make an impact as a blogger, which Hugh became three years ago. Hugh still has much else to do: He's got a radio talk show, still practices law, teaches in law school, and writes weekly columns (including for us, at weeklystandard.com). But it's in the blogosphere (explained in Blog) that Hugh has hit his most rapid stride, for there he posts as fast as news breaks.
Blog has the longest subtitle I've seen in a while, at least for a book published in a recent century, but it's all true to the book. For Blog
is about the impact of the blogosphere upon the old news media. More broadly, it is about how "every single information hierarchy is under siege." It becomes a book for business executives, pastors--just about everyone, since all of us require information of one kind or another. Not surprisingly, one way to help yourself in this new era, Hugh says, is to become a blogger, like him.
Hugh Hewitt may be what the Wall Street Journal has called him--"the unofficial historian of the blogging movement." But for sure he's its lead evangelist. "You have to read this book very quickly," he writes. Quickly, so you can go online.
--Terry Eastland
Read the following reviews: Instapundit Evangelical Outpost
Polipundit 1 and 2
TapscottCopyDesk
Read an overview of the blogosphere from World Magazine

articles 1/22

DE weather
Hazardous Weather Outlook
Special Weather Statement
Winter Storm Warning

On Tyranny
George W. Bush's Second Inaugural was a powerful and subtle speech. It will also prove to be historic.
by William Kristol

AP
Bush plans leanest budget
President Bush will propose a virtual freeze on overall non-defense discretionary spending in next year's budget and will abolish or consolidate wasteful, duplicative programs, according to administration budget officials.

LA Times
'Neocons' Are Out of the Shadows
Bush's goal of promoting democracy 'in every nation' brings group's ideals to the forefront.

Why the World Likes Kicking the U.S. Puppy
by Susan Campbell
The character of the American people resembles that of a friendly chocolate Labrador retriever puppy, eagerly approaching acquaintances and strangers alike, giving from the heart with glee. But the rest of the world seems to hate Americans because they perceive us as being not so warm and cuddly.

LA Times
Operation Limited Freedom
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is a hub of 'extreme diplomacy.' All moves are scripted.

NY Times
General Seeking Faster Training of Iraq Soldiers
The four-star Army general who was sent to Iraq to assess operations said the U.S. should assign thousands of additional Army advisers to work directly with Iraqi units.

NY Times
Can Anyone Unseat F.D.R.?
Can the New Deal government be rolled back? Skeptics believe that most Americans are unwilling to change the only kind of government most of them have ever known.

Railing Against Reform
by Edwin J. Feulner
President Bush has grabbed the third rail of American politics, and he isn’t letting go. During last year’s presidential campaign, he repeatedly warned Americans that Social Security is in a crisis and needs to be fixed soon.

The wrong side of history
by Rich Tucker
They were wrong. It was the United States that would eventually lead the victory over fascism and craft the world we enjoy today. Luckily, after Pearl Harbor, the America Firsters quietly melted away.

The U.N. at Work
The world body gives financial support to Hamas.

Ideals and Reality
by David Brooks

Idealism and Its Discontents
by Victor Davis Hanson

No Teacher Left Behind
by Terry Moe

Pataki for UN?
by Robert Novak
Sources close to New York Gov. George Pataki say he has been asked whether he would consider filling the vacancy of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Not Enough Peace & Prosperity
by Larry Kudlow
Bush’s speech was all about spreading freedom and democracy, the essential tools in winning the war.

Israel must learn from America
by Caroline B. Glick
Writing Tuesday in The Daily Telegraph, British military historian John Keegan compared the Palestinian terror war to the Iraqi insurgency.

Reuters
U2 Tour Set to Begin March 28 in San Diego
Irish rock band U2 is set to explode on the road at the end of March, just in time for a beleaguered concert industry desperate for a major buzz-generating tour.

U2 Tour Tickets On Sale @ 10 a.m. ET, Tuesday, 1/28

Theologian offers key to understanding U2's 'Atomic Bomb'
By Steven Harmon

Ford Beats Reagan! How conservatism won in 1980 by losing in 1976.

Ford Beats Reagan!
How conservatism won in 1980 by losing in 1976.
by Robert D. Novak 01/24/2005, Volume 010, Issue 18

Reagan's Revolution
The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All
by Craig Shirley Nelson Current, 417 pp., $25.99

LATE ON THE EVENING OF August 19, 1976, at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, prospects looked bleak for the Republican party and even bleaker for the conservative movement. Gerald R. Ford had just barely survived a fierce challenge for the party's presidential nomination by Ronald Reagan. The Republican establishment at every level was furious, contending that Reagan's challenge had made it much less likely that President Ford could be elected. Not even Reagan's champions imagined that his failed campaign would be the salvation of the party and of the nation.

In Reagan's Revolution, the first book-length account of the only campaign Reagan ever lost, Republican activist Craig Shirley describes the state of the GOP at the moment of Ford's nomination in the opening paragraph of his first chapter: "By the late summer of 1974, the Republican party was in its death throes. Bereft, bedraggled, unloved, and unwanted, it stood for nothing and antagonized everyone. If the GOP had been a stray cat, it would have been hauled away to the animal shelter and immediately euthanized."

That graphic description is no exaggeration. As Shirley relates it, a sixty-five-year-old former governor of California who had spent most of his life as a B-movie actor nearly ousted an incumbent president. If Reagan had not challenged the president and had not come so close to succeeding, the subsequent history of the United States and of the world would have been quite different.

The Republican party indeed seemed to be dying after the 1974 election, in the wake of Richard Nixon's disgrace and resignation. The Democratic margin in Congress was staggering, 147 seats in the House of Representatives and 22 in the Senate. Only 13 governors were Republicans. As gloomy party members assembled in Kansas City, polls showed Ford trailing Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter by more than 30 percentage points.

Reagan's challenge was greeted by the party leadership as a stab in the back of a gravely ill person. That last night of the 1976 convention at Kemper Arena was not a happy occasion. Reagan had to be coaxed by Ford from his skybox to stand next to Ford on the podium after the president delivered his acceptance speech. Reagan said he did it because he didn't want to disappoint the cheering delegates. His impromptu remarks, eliciting a greater response than Ford's did, did not mention the president by name and praised only the conservative platform forced by the Reagan rebels on the party leadership. He had no plans to campaign for Ford, and it would be weeks before he did.

Considering the nation's veneration of Reagan at the time of his death, it is difficult to imagine the low assessment of him that prevailed in elite opinion thirty years ago. The New York Times's James Reston, the model for journalists across the country, wrote that Reagan's challenge was "patently ridiculous," an "amusing but frivolous fantasy," and an event that "makes no sense." When Theodore Roosevelt launched the last previous intraparty challenge against a Republican president by opposing William Howard Taft in 1912, he was the most popular living American. Ronald Reagan was hardly known outside California in 1976.

THE FAILURE of the Ford presidency was the reason Reagan became the first challenger since Roosevelt to threaten seriously the renomination of an incumbent Republican. His pardon of Richard Nixon is usually cited as the reason for Ford's unpopularity, but it went much deeper.

He seemed to have no public purpose, and his presidency revealed no philosophy. A Republican president whose hero was Harry Truman has perception problems from the beginning. A career politician from Grand Rapids, Michigan, he appeared to share Henry Kissinger's belief that the declining West could not successfully compete with the Soviet bloc and an accommodation had to be found.

Reagan's grassroots popularity grew as the public perceived he would take a harder position against the Kremlin than the Republican president who declined to see Russian dissenter Alexander Solzhenitsyn because it might offend Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and undermine détente. But Reagan's clever and manipulative campaign manager John Sears pulled him away from such divisive issues in the interest of seeing him nominated by a united party. In the meantime, the Ford campaign pounded mercilessly against Reagan as unfit for the presidency.

Ford disdained Reagan, and his attitude was spread throughout the president's campaign. The contempt for Reagan was palpable.

Stu Spencer, the feisty Los Angeles political consultant, was at Reagan's side in his first run for governor in 1966 and again when he was elected president in 1980. But in 1976, Spencer was directing the assault against Reagan and asserting he was not fit to be president.

THE SEARS APPROACH very nearly resulted in the early suffocation of Reagan's candidacy, when Ford won the first five primaries against Reagan. It was certainly no centrist but the right-wing senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina and his campaign manager, Tom Ellis, who circumvented Sears and on their own waged an active campaign in their state. Had it not been for this North Carolina upset, Reagan would have dropped out of the 1976 race and never been seen in 1980. It was that close.

Even so, nobody thought of 1976 as preparation for 1980. "Virtually everybody who left Kansas City," Shirley writes, "was convinced that Reagan's political future was over--his senior aides, maybe he himself, and certainly the political elites and the national media." Even Reagan was not aware that American politics in 1976 was in the midst of a realignment that Republicans had been too obtuse to understand, much less to exploit.

Journalists, scholars, and practical politicians all missed the migration of voters who would come to be called "Reagan Democrats" into the Republican party. By any standard, Ford's administration had been a failure. The United States was losing the Cold War, and the economy continued to be sluggish. The consensus in the political community was that a right-wing assault turned what was difficult into something dreadful. Nobody could perceive that the Republican party was about to undergo a profound transformation.

THE CLOSEST I CAME at the time to appreciating what really was going on was when, after Reagan's upset win in North Carolina, I traveled to Texas to report on that state's first Republican presidential primary and attended a Reagan rally in Fort Worth. In eighteen years of covering national politics at that point, I never had seen a Republican audience quite like this one. Shirley has quoted me as writing that the crowd of over three thousand people "lacked the sleek, chic look of Texas Republicans and seemed much more like a typical Wallace rally--women in housedresses, sports-shirted men, lots of small American flags."

I then suggested that the "collapse of [George] Wallace's candidacy is sending right-wing populist Democrats" to vote for Reagan. The phenomenon was widely referred to in political circles as the Wallace "jailbreak." But that implies a temporary quality to the crossover, born of Wallace's failure. In fact, when Reagan won all one hundred delegates in the primary, it manifested the birth of a new kind of Republican in Texas. Within a generation, the party would dominate the state's politics. It was a harbinger for the South and the nation.

THE ONLY STATEWIDE elected Texas Republican official in 1976, Senator John Tower, was Ford's national-convention floor manager. He supported Ford along with nearly everybody in the party establishment nationwide. Among orthodox Republicans, there was emotional conviction that the Reagan campaign was a disreputable distraction that could only worsen the party's grim outlook.

The subplot to the rebellion of conservatives was the struggle between Sears, leading Reagan's campaign team, and the conservative activists headed by Helms and Ellis. Incredibly, Sears was trying in those days to nominate a Ronald Reagan stripped of all ideology, in order to unite, he supposed, the Republican party for the general election and to attract non-conservative voters.
Sears gave away his concept of Reagan in an interview with Shirley for the book. Describing his impression of Reagan after their first meeting, Sears called him "a great piece of horseflesh" that could be "properly trained, properly working." Helms and Ellis, in contrast, saw him as an ideologue who would combat the left. Nobody at that juncture perceived in him the potential for a great leader.

HELMS WAS APPALLED when Sears talked Reagan into selecting as his running mate Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, who voted the straight labor line and was weak on national security (and was not, as Shirley says, "fairly conservative"). Depressing Reaganite spirits, this daring step did not pry away the forty to sixty delegates from Ford that Sears predicted.
Sears's real choice for vice president, however, is revealed by Shirley for the first time. Sears told the author he wanted Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who had been purged by Ford from the 1976 ticket to appease conservatives. Sears is quoted as saying Helms and his friends "would have come off the ceiling in a day or two" but that he did not go through with it because he thought Rockefeller would be talked out of it after first accepting. Sears could not have appreciated how much Rockefeller's big-government Republicanism offended the party faithful.

Shirley, well known in the political community as a campaign consultant and public relations practitioner, is not a professional writer but has produced a very readable first book. It is nicely paced, meticulously researched, and packed with anecdotes. He uses both primary and secondary sources, plus interviews with surviving participants to produce an account of events that occurred when he was a junior in college. He is the dispassionate narrator, avoiding use of the first person and seldom presenting his own views.

A writer recording recent history has the problem of what to do about participants' remembering events of thirty years ago in a way that always puts them in the best light. John Sears and Dick Cheney, who was President Ford's chief of staff, were interviewed by Shirley and get generally sympathetic treatment. Shirley did not interview Clarke Reed, the Mississippi Republican leader, or Robert Hartmann, Ford's longtime adviser, and they come off very badly.
SHIRLEY DOES NOT TRY to answer the questions that have been pondered in Republican circles for the past three decades. Could Reagan have defeated Carter had he been nominated?

If he had, could a Reagan presidency have succeeded if he were elected before his views on taxes were fully developed? Was it the best of all possible worlds for Reagan to lose the 1976 nomination but to be ready to run in 1980?

Nobody knows. Reagan was indeed more fully prepared for the presidency in 1980 than he was in 1976. But if he somehow could have won that election, he would have saved the country the four years of the Carter presidency--providing a service to all Americans. Shirley's task is not to speculate on what might have been. He tells the story of a losing campaign that may have saved the country, and he does it well.

Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a CNN commentator.

articles 1/21

Bush's 'Freedom Speech'
by William Safire

Gender Fender-Bender
It is not Harvard president Lawrence Summers who owes women an apology.
by Ruth Wisse

The Nation
Talking Back To Bush
Below is my running commentary on Bush's inaugural speech. Too bad heckling the president is a federal crime.

Well Disguised
by David Kusnet
President Bush's rhetoric yesterday was more liberal than the rhetoric of most Democrats.

A Case of "Mission Inebriation"?
by Peggy Noonan

WSJ Editorial
Liberty Bell Ringer
An idealistic Bush puts dictators on notice.

Visions in Need of a Little Realism
by E. J. Dionne Jr.

Bush Gave a Great Speech. But What Did it Mean?
by Chris Suellentrop

Loud and Clear from the 'Plain-Speaking Fella'
by David Broder

Washington Post
The Rhetoric of Freedom

The Inaugural Speech: NY Times Wash Times USA Today

Military on the Mall: Defeating the Jihadists
by Diana West

Bush Smashes the Wall Between the Idealists and the Realists
by Fred Barnes

Pitch For Global Democracy Forgets Iraq War
by Robert Novak

Bush's Faith in Liberty
A close reading of what the president believes.
by Terry Eastland

The Hersh File
Sy gets it wrong, again.
by Michael Ledeen

NY Sun
A Conservative Answer to Michael Moore
Profile: Evan Coyne Maloney

George Bush, Style & Substance
by John P. Avlon

New Threat to U.S. Power Looms
by Charles Krauthammer

U2 - The GOAL IS SOUL
by Steve Stockman
Stocki shares a few nuggets from their latest album HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB for Faith For Life magazine

Album Meditation
The Prodigal Journey of U2, or Returning Home to Find a ‘Bomb’
by G. Russell McCarty

U2's 'Vertigo Tour' to Be Announced Monday
Kings of Leon are onboard and U2.Com will have the itinerary first.
U2.Com has learned that the band's 2005 'Vertigo Tour' will kick off on the west coast of the US in late March and arrive in Europe for the summer. Tickets for the tour will go on sale on January 29.

articles 1/20

'I see a bright day coming for America'
By President George W. Bush

President George W. Bush's Inaugural Address

Still digging
by David Warren

Planned Parenthood: More Abortions, Fewer Clinics
By Randy Hall
Planned Parenthood annual report (link in PDF)

Reuters
Cheney Says Iran Tops List of Trouble Spots

True Confessions: A Democrat Likes George
By Lanny J. Davis, Lanny J. Davis, President Clinton's special counsel from 1996 to 1998.

NY Times
The Man Who Puts Words in the President's Mouth Defends His Style

W. Post
Bush's References to God Defended by Speechwriter
President Does Not Claim Divinity Is on His Side, Gerson Contends

Newsweek
Bush Gets a New Voice for Second Term
Michael Gerson, the chief speechwriter during the president’s first term, is expected to be replaced by William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal. How will the change impact the White House message?

The Pre-Emption Presidency
Bush promises to solve problems that are optional as politics.

The Republican Moment
Will the GOP have the courage, at last, to change the face of government?
by Paul Gigot

The ballot, not the bullet, will see off Iraq's religious terrorists
By John Keegan

The Thought of Sayyid Qutb: Radical Islam's Philosophical
by Luke Loboda

LA Times
Bush Rewarded by Black Pastors' Faith
His stands, backed by funding of ministries, redefined the GOP's image with some clergy.

NY Sun
Schumer Accuses Bush Of Plot on 'Blue States'

NY Sun
Official: Economy Threatens Israel More Than Terror

An American In Paris
by Thomas Freidman

NY Sun editorial
John Fitzgerald Bush

Boston Globe
Sen. Clinton urges use of faith-based initiatives

No basketball player left behind
by Marvin Olasky
Leftists love to talk about the structural problems that purportedly keep down the poor, and by that they mean a free market system.

The First Amendment fights for its life
by Emmett Tyrrell
The present acrimonious controversy that Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, finds himself in reminds me of something I have suspected for years.

Social Insecurity?
by Thomas Sowell
The latest liberal spin on Social Security is that there is no problem. Of course, there is no problem with any obligation if you are willing to welsh when it comes time to pay it.

You're too stupid to manage your own money
by Larry Elder
Former Democratic vice-presidential contender Geraldine Ferraro inadvertently revealed the real reason behind Democrats' resistance to the president's proposal of Social Security partial privatization.

It's time to reform Social Security
by George Will
What constitutes a crisis is a matter of opinion, and everyone is entitled to his or her own. But not to his or her own facts.

It's our party, you can cry if you want to
by Ann Coulter
Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night.

It's time the free world began seriously fighting the war of ideas
by Clifford D. May
In a sense, Americans and Europeans are paying for the propagation of hate speech – supplying, for example, al Manar spokesmen with a megaphone to urge people to kill us.

Ineffable bawdiness
by Kate Bowman

What they said about God in '04
Lots of folks had lots to say about religion, spirituality, morality and God in 2004. Here (in no particular order) are some of the best -- or at least some of the most intriguing -- spiritual thoughts I've heard this year.

The Grand Rapids Press
Passionate pop
U2 Is Not A Traditional Christian Rock Group, But Their Spirituality is Undeniable.

E! Online
Hutt Wheels for Sale
Apparently, Jabba the Hutt's ride can be quite the chick magnet.

AP
JPMorgan: Predecessors Linked to Slavery

articles 1/19

USA Today
A Vanishing Breed: CEOs Seasoned By Military Combat
Some say they're better at handling pressure, choices
By Del Jones

9 Weeks After Losing, Kerry's '08 Campaign Is Up & Running
by Byron York

Speaking Softly
Marriage-amendment supporters have no cause for disappointment in the president.
by Justin Katz

Too Much Liberal News, Too Few Liberals
The mainstream media may have to reach out to conservatives.
by Jim Geraghty

Torturing the Evidence
The truth about the doctors at Guantanamo.
by Heather Mac Donald

Fishing Expedition
The Thornburgh-Boccardi report left a number of open questions about the fake CBS documents. Can the blogosphere find the answers?
by The Weekly Standard Editors

Expect Bush to Sound Like Woodrow Wilson
by Michael Barone

How Second Terms Fail
by Dick Morris

Espionage By Any Other Name
by Tony Blankley

Self-Demolishing Dems
by Michael Goodwin

Apply 'ownership society' to government schools
by Terence Jeffrey
President Bush has become, quite rightly, an evangelist for the virtues of private property, speaking about an 'ownership society' just about everywhere he goes.

Debating distributional equity
by Bruce Bartlett
Regardless of what proposal President Bush’s tax reform commission comes up with, the principal debate about it inevitably will be how much more or less will each income class pay relative to current law?

What's sex got to do with science? Don't ask!
by Jonah Goldberg
Doing remarkably little to combat the stereotype that women are emotionally frail and constitutionally incapable of dealing with stress, Professor Nancy Hopkins of MIT told the Boston Globe that she had to leave a lecture delivered by Harvard president Larry Summers because if she didn't she would have 'either blacked out or thrown up.'

Why Hollywood hates suburbia
by Ben Shapiro
Portraying suburbia as a morally hypocritical, empty, sick place is nothing new for Hollywood elites.

Destroying abortion myths
by Chuck Colson
Abortion is the center of the women’s movement, despite mounting evidence of the damage it does to women. A new book details that evidence.

Weaker than we think
by Walter E. Williams
Seitz, formerly of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and a Los Alamos National Laboratory consultant, has written extensively on weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.

Schmear Campaign
How I made peace with an Arab neighbor.
by Alan Bromley

W. Times
Army affirms its ban on women in combat

articles 1/18

Democrats Today Are in a Very Difficult Position
by David Brooks

Dems Are More Likely to Break On Social Security Than GOP
by Brendan Miniter

John Kerry Was Not Forthright About Himself
by Errol Morris

Tea Leaves at Foggy Bottom
by Richard Holbrooke

NY Times
Cheney Exercising Muscle on Domestic Policies
by R Stevenson & E Bumiller

Harry a Nazi? You're Having a Laugh
by Mark Steyn

New Yorker
The Pentagon's Plans for Iran
by Seymour Hersh

Reuters
U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty in Oil-For-Food Scam
An Iraqi-American illegally acted as an agent for Iraq under Saddam Hussein and received millions of dollars worth of oil from the country's U.N. oil-for-food program, U.S. court documents showed on Tuesday.

Bush Is Facing Tough Decision Over Sinn Fein
by Ed Moloney
President Bush will soon have to make a tough decision about terrorism, but this time it has nothing to do with Iraq, the Middle East, or Al Qaeda.

New York Sun Staff Editorial
Good News on Iran

NY Times
Pro-American Iraqi Blog Provokes Intrigue and Vitriol

Chicago Tribune
EPA charges DuPont hid Teflon's risks
than 50 years after DuPont started producing Teflon near this Ohio River town, federal officials are accusing the company of hiding information suggesting that a chemical used to make the popular stick- and stain-resistant coating might cause cancer, birth defects and other ailments

A Risk Worth Taking
by Rich Tucker
There’s no point in having a conservative Congress if it’s not going to work to enact conservative policies. At some point lawmakers have to be willing to take political risks to do what’s right.

Old media naysaying on Iraqi democracy
by David Limbaugh
Far be it from me to accuse the mainstream media of rooting for failure in the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections, but their reporting sometimes makes you wonder.

The credibility of black conservatism
by Star Parker
Liberals, particularly black liberals, will claim this incident simply confirms what they have known all along.

USA Today
Ad for a Bible doesn't fit
Rolling Stone: ‘Thou shalt not push religion in our pages'

USA Today
And the word is ‘update'
‘Today's New International Version' is blessed — and berated

articles 1/17, p.m. edition

The Depressed Press
by William Safire

W. Post
The Roosevelts, Kennedys, & Now The Bushes
Second Term Firmly Establishes A Dynasty & Erases Sting of 1992 Loss
by John Harris

Hardball 101
by Ryan Lizza

The Case for Boredom
A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.
by Arthur Chrenkoff

TiVo la France?
Jacques Chirac wants to enter the news biz. The world won't be watching.
by John Fund

AP
EU May Ban Nazi Symbols Over Harry's Gaffe
The European Union may consider banning Nazi symbols in its 25 member nations after Britain's Prince Harry wore a swastika armband to a costume party, the bloc's top justice official said Monday.

The Incredible Shrinking Dems
The tens [sic] states (including the District of Columbia ) with the highest ratio of psychologists per 100,000 residents, were, with the exception of Colorado, all blue states which supported John Kerry (D.C, Vermont, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, in rank order from one to ten). The ten states with the lowest ratio of psychologists per 100,000 residents, all were red states supporting Bush (Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Indiana). Louisiana with the lowest ratio is listed first.

Reuters
Pentagon Faults Iran Raid Report

Let Bush Be Reagan
by Chris Suellentrop

Kerry a `Drag' on Some Statewide Races, Report Says

U.S. Senator John Kerry's presidential candidacy was a ``drag'' on other Democrats and probably cost his party statewide victories in Alaska, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Dakota, a report on voter turnout said.

The report released today by the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate said exit polls showed more Democrats defected from their party than did Republicans. Kerry ``lacked clarity'' on issues and failed to present a vision for the future, the report said.

``He was a terrible candidate,'' said Curtis Gans, director of the committee. ``He was emotionless and passionless and humorless. He was mostly stiff and boring.''

Kerry got fewer votes than Democratic candidates for either governor or senator in 30 of 37 states, the report said. Republicans gained four seats in the Senate, including the defeat of the Senate's highest-ranking Democrat, Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Republicans have 55 seats and Democrats have 44, with one independent. Before the election, Republicans had 51 seats.

A spokesman for Kerry, the four-term Massachusetts senator, wasn't immediately available for comment.

The Kerry campaign succeeded in raising money and getting out voters, said a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

``It speaks for itself that not only did Democrats give in record amounts in 2004, but they also turned out in record amounts,'' said DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera. ``More Democrats voted in this election than ever before.''

Voter Registration

Turnout in the Nov. 2 election was the highest since 1968, and 60.7 percent of eligible voters cast ballots for president, the report found. Turnout rose by 6.4 percent, or about 17 million votes, from the 2000 election, the report said.

Voter registration rose to 71 percent of people eligible, the highest level since 1964, when about 72 percent were registered.

President George W. Bush won more than 11.5 million votes over his 2000 total, and Kerry, who had 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Bush's 50.8 percent, received about 8 million more votes than Democrat Al Gore won four years before. More than 78 million people eligible to vote didn't do so, the report said.

Alaska, Oklahoma

In Alaska, incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski beat former Governor Tony Knowles to keep the Senate seat she was appointed to by her father. Republicans retained the seat of retiring Senator Don Nickles of Oklahoma. Republican Representative Tom Coburn won the seat.

In Missouri, Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt defeated state auditor Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, in the race for governor.

The state with the highest turnout was Minnesota, where 77.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, followed by Maine, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Oregon. Hawaii had the lowest with 48.9 percent.

A December report by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, found that 60 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot for president. That was a 5.9 percent increase from 2000.

Bush's margin of victory of slightly more than 3 million votes, or 2.4 percentage points, was the closest for an incumbent president in U.S. history, according to McDonald.

articles 1/17

Reuters
Report: U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran
The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday.

GOP Will Deploy Bush's '04 Army to Sway Congress
by Mort Kondracke

Bush Can Still Pull Off a Reagan Triumph
by Andrew Sullivan

The Cheney Effect
by David Shribman

Eyes on the future
by Michael Barone
Typically we criticize our politicians as shortsighted, looking only to the next election, unwilling to take any short-term risk for the long-term national interests.

Unyielding Chertoff
by Robert Novak
At a Saturday night party during Washington's bleak holiday season in December 2001, I was a fascinated bystander listening to Michael Chertoff debate a senior Republican congressional staffer.

Crazy thinking
by John Leo
In my ceaseless efforts to discover how liberals think, I have a great advantage: I live in Manhattan, where everybody is liberal, so opportunities for fieldwork are boundless.

How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path
by C. J. CHIVERS
As protests against a rigged election grew, Kiev seemed headed for a Soviet-style crackdown. Then, inside Ukraine's security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.

Air Force proposal sought gay sex weapon
The Pentagon once looked into making a weapon that would render enemy troops sexually attracted to one another, according to a document obtained by a watchdog group.

Honoring Democracy
Honor points the path of duty; the path of duty for us is the defense of liberty.
by William Kristol

New Yorker
War by Web Site
Junior officers weren’t prepared for Iraq. So they’re training each other—online.

Time
Is There a Hitch?
Does marriage make you happy? Or do happy people tend to be the marrying kind? The facts about wedded bliss

Time
The Power to Uplift
Religious people are less stressed and happier than nonbelievers. Research is beginning to explain why

Time
Watch Your Wallet!
More employers are checking out the credit histories of job applicants

Make the punishment swift and true
by Matt Hayes

articles 1/16

Eyes on the Future
by Michael Barone

The two-headed club
by David Warren

U.S. News & World Report
Bush 2.0
A confident president launches his second term into stormy seas abroad and anxiety at home.

U.S. News & World Report
Desert desperadoes
How the United Nations' oil-for-food program was transformed into a piggy bank for Saddam Hussein and the biggest financial scandal in the world body's 60-year history

Time
Grow Up? Not So Fast
Meet the twixters. They're not kids anymore, but they're not adults either. why a new breed of young people won't—or can't?—settle down

Newsweek
Window of Opportunity
He's hands-on, detail-oriented and hates 'yes' men. The George Bush you don't know has big dreams—and is racing the clock to realize them.

Pause
by David Warren

Bush's Window of Opportunity
by Richard Wolffe

Bush Can Still Pull Off a Reagan Triumph
by Andrew Sullivan

The Cheney Effect
by David Shribman

Social Insecurity
by George Will
Moral hazard exists when government policy creates incentives that make bad behavior rational.

Welfare Uber Alles
Germany stops subsidizing a welfare layabout's Miami lifestyle. Hey, it's a start.
by Daniel Schwammenthal

Modern Reformation
Pop Goes Kabbalah
According to the Associated Press, Madonna was recently included in a list of “the most powerful and influential Jews in America.” The list was released in a November edition of The Forward, a weekly Jewish publication that annually discloses the names of the top 50 Jews in American life. Creating an extra space for the pop-star, The Forward placed Madonna at number 51 “for making Kabbalah a worldwide trend.”

Creditable Cobranding

PR Week
January 3, 2005

Joint marketing programs can often mean big rewards for both the credit-card companies and their partners. Hamilton Nolan reports.

There was a time when Americans carried wads of mostly green, printed pieces of paper called 'cash' to exchange for goods and services.

Today, of course, it's all about the plastic. Credit cards recently surpassed cash and checks as the primary form of purchasing in our country. And as our wallets have become more jammed with plastic, corporations, banks, and retailers have moved more aggressively toward laying claim to the space inside our pockets. Credit cards are no longer simply financial instruments; now, they are full-fledged marketing tools.

Cobranding is the method of choice for linking consumers' credit spending to specific brands. When a company plasters its logo right over your card number, it has achieved an automatic share of your mental real estate.

Cobranding's beginnings
The practice of cobranding cards began in the early-to-mid 1980s when major airlines hooked up with credit-card providers to offer rewards like free trips to frequent fliers in exchange for their loyalty. Once its success became apparent, other industries were quick to jump on the bandwagon and the business became fiercely competitive, with card-issuing banks vying for corporate partners and vice versa. Now, few premier brands in the US have not already formed cobranding partnerships, and growth is largely based on outward expansion to untapped audiences.

"Cobranding is a lot more than two brands appearing on the same product. It's really about sharing strengths.

"It's about expanding channels. It's about building market share," says David Webster, SVP of business affairs for Chase Card Services. No longer is a fancy logo or shiny hologram enough to entice savvy consumers into choosing a specific card. Marketing is highly targeted and companies must know their customers well enough to understand exactly what rewards they desire."

Webster points to the Starbucks 'Duetto' Visa card issued last year as a successful example. Its name stems from the fact that it can be used as a regular credit card as well as a reloadable 'Starbucks Card' for in-store purchases and redeemable rewards points. To appeal to the customers' sense of social responsibility, the chain is donating money to a youth-literacy program for every new card issued.

In one fell swoop, people can spend conveniently, feed their coffee cravings, and know that they're doing good without exerting much effort.

"Every time that a customer uses that card, they think about Starbucks, even when they are not in a Starbucks," Webster explains. Chase's research indicates that 60% of Starbucks cardholders use it as their primary purchasing vehicle - more than cash, checks, or any other credit card they have.

"That's a value, certainly, to Starbucks. We think it's also a value to the consumer, because they are rewarded for using that product," he says.

One of cobranding's major assets is its flexibility. Virtually the entire program can be customized to fit each individual brand. Card designs, rewards arrangements, and marketing strategies are all tailored to appeal to as specific (or as broad) an audience as is appropriate. Because of this, the horizon of such programs seems limitless.

All the major credit-card companies have stepped into the cobranding arena to one degree or another, but its competitiveness has made the spread somewhat uneven. MasterCard representatives declined comment for this article, but, according to the company, MasterCard has supported more than 12,000 cobrand and affinity (nonprofit cobrand partnership) programs in more than 85 countries over the past 20 years. The number alone speaks to the effectiveness of the idea across cultures and geographies. MasterCard's pitch to potential partners says that 23% of customers with cobranded cards purchase more products from the company, and 31% purchase more frequently. It also notes, "When you create a cobrand card, you create a special class of customers who will require special treatment and special communications."

There is no set formula for handling those "special communications." Marketing arrangements cover the entire spectrum: some cards are totally marketed by the card company, some totally by the corporate partner, and others by a combined effort of both.

"I wish there were a cookie-cutter approach to that," says Melissa Beidler, SVP of cobranding for Visa. "Each deal is truly very, very different and has a unique structure that works quite well, hopefully, for that program. But if you tried to transfer that structure over to another industry, or even to another company within that industry, you'd be surprised how very different they are."

At Visa, the benefits of cobranding are obvious. Twenty-five percent of the cards it issues are cobranded, but those cards account for 40% of all spending.

"People that have the cobranded card are much more loyal to those programs," says Beidler. "They concentrate their spending on those cards and they use the card almost fanatically."

Weighing the costs versus the rewards
Despite the apparent logic of cobranding for all parties, it is still a major business decision, and card issuers weigh the associated costs - development, marketing, etc. - against the potential rewards before entering a partnership.

"First of all, we want to make sure it makes good economic sense for the company," says Channing Barringer, a public affairs manager for American Express. "We want to attract customers.

"We want to keep them happy once they do come into the fold. We also want partners who are committed to delivering quality service and value."

Those criteria illustrate the fact that while linking two brands together in the public mind can be good for market share, it also carries a PR risk. No card issuer today, for example, would be proudly touting an 'energy rewards' program it had devised for Enron.

"Sometimes either the business is not large enough to allow for us to economically operate that program, or perhaps it's a program that we simply don't care to get involved in," Webster says.

Established brands with solid customer bases, however, tend to have little trouble securing a partner. Promotional tactics for new cards can often be directly integrated into existing marketing programs. Web-based promotions lend themselves naturally to internet-based retailers and to bricks-and-mortar stores that also make sales online. Other common tactics are direct mailings to customers, in-store promotions, and e-mail and television advertising.

But some brands find that splashy rewards can gain them attention more effectively. In launching a cobranded card with MBNA last April, Merrill Lynch was seeking to establish itself as a total provider of financial services to wealthy Americans. It decided to use its own financial advisers to market the card to clients, but needed to build some employee enthusiasm in order to do it.

"We said, 'Let's think of the financial advisers and our entire employee base not as a sales channel, but as a consumer base at first,'' says Merrill Lynch director of card payments Peter Barsoom.

With that in mind, Merrill undertook a five-week internal communications campaign to hype the new card, giving away new cars and iPods in the process. By the end, more than 50% of company employees had applied for the card. "That's phenomenal," Barsoom says.

Merrill is also working with Burson-Marsteller on a 'Million Dollar Makeover' giveaway to attract the affluent public to the new card. By the end of next year, Barsoom hopes to have a quarter million of them in circulation. They've created, he says, the perfect cobranded product for the rich: "The more you spend, the better the card gets."

Reaching out to everyone
But even average Joes are included in the vast cobranding market, many of them through affinity cards. Charities, colleges and universities, and trade associations have all recognized the benefits of such programs, which substitute donations to various causes for reward points. Jonathan Tee, public affairs supervisor for the National Notary Association (NNA), says that an ad in its trade magazine and website were all that was necessary to generate interest in its 10-year-old cobranded card with Bank One.

"The NNA tries to instill pride in that (notary) role," he says. "This serves that purpose."

And the attraction to a card does not even need to involve humans. The American Kennel Club (AKC) has one of the most popular affinity cards in the US, offering 35 different card designs with popular breeds. The AKC's PR director Lainie Cantrell says that Bank One handles the cards' promotion, primarily through direct mail and handouts at the 16,000 dog-related events the organization holds every year.

When trillion-dollar financial firms use border collies as marketing agents, the brave new world has truly arrived.

Other Cobrandings

MasterCard:
Began with Continental Airlines in 1985. Now boasts more than 10,000 cobranded and affinity cards worldwide. Issues through Citigroup, MBNA, JPMorgan Chase, and others.
Popular cards: Shell, Barnes & Noble, National Geographic.

Visa:
Began in the early 1980s with AAA and several airlines. Issues through Bank One (now merged with JPMorgan Chase) Bank of America, Capital One, MBNA, and others.
Popular cards: US Air, United, Disney.

American Express:
Began in the mid-1980s with Delta Air and Sheraton. Maintains one of the most recognized points-for-spending programs, called 'Membership Rewards.'
Popular Cards: Delta, Costco, Hilton.

Discover:
Doesn't issue cobranded credit cards. Instead, it provides cobranded prepaid gift cards from various shopping centers and retailers.
Popular cards: Mills Malls, General Growth Properties (shopping malls), Utix (ticket-service provider).

articles 1/15

AP
Anti-Bush Bracelets Say, 'Count Me Blue'

Bush's new aide
by Robert Novak
It took personal pleas from his Harvard Business School classmate, George W. Bush, to convince Indiana industrialist Al Hubbard to become head of the White House National Economic Council.

The Terry McAuliffe Syndrome
Democrats will never win elections without better people and better ideas.
by Dan Gerstein

The Deadly Threat of a Nuclear Iran
by Douglas Davis

Cambodia, Where Sex Traffickers Are King
by Nickolas Kristof

Thorns Litter the Path for Abbas in Mideast
by Robert Robb

Gingrich's Ideas Still Shine
by Tom Roeser

On Campus, Conservatives Talk Back
The liberal stranglehold on academe is starting to slip.
by Brian C. Anderson

The Real Engine of Blue America
There are no Blue states—only Blue cities, where tax eaters rule.
by Steven Malanga

Capitalists on Steroids
Though exaggerated, shows like The Apprentice reflect America’s can-do response to globalism’s competitive challenge.
by Kay S. Hymowitz

Why the U.S. Needs More Nuclear Power
It’s cheap, clean, safe—and doesn’t depend on Arabia.
by Peter Huber & Mark P. Mills

Darth Tater
Available at stores nationwide in February

Indianapolis Star
Lost your luggage at the airport? Try checking this place
Items at the Unclaimed Baggage Center store range from the commonplace (clothes, shoes, portable electronics), to the curious (a Barbie doll containing $500, a kayak), to the ultra-peculiar (a fighter jet guidance system that was returned to the government, a replica suit of armor, a 41-carat emerald that recently sold for about $15,000).

San Francisco Chronicle
Career Day speaker touts merits of stripping, large breasts
He told one group of about 16 middle school students that strippers can earn as much as $250,000 a year and that a larger bust -- whether natural or augmented -- has a direct relationship to a dancer's salary.

Modern Reformation
Rock N'Roll Theology?
It's not every issue in which Modern Reformation publishes a world premier rock star's thoughts on a book of the Bible. But they think you just might enjoy this piece.
An Essay on the Psalms by Bono of U2
What Elvis was to rock'n'roll, David was to the blues. Bono argues that the psalms truly rock the soul.

Glass Ceilings at Altar As Well as Boardroom/Men Just Want Mommy

The New York Times

By JOHN SCHWARTZBODY

Dec. 14, 2004
Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame, psychology researchers at the University of Michigan reported last week.

The study, in which college undergraduates were asked to make hypothetical choices, suggests that men in search of long-term relationships prefer to marry women in subordinate jobs rather than women who are supervisors, said Dr. Stephanie Brown, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research and the report's lead author.

Dr. Brown said the findings, reported in the current issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, could have far-reaching implications. ''These findings provide empirical support for the widespread belief that powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less accomplished women,'' she said.

The researchers asked 120 men and 208 women, all undergraduates, to rate their hypothetical attraction to people they might know from work. The men, for example, were shown pictures and asked, ''Imagine that you have just taken a job and that Jennifer is your immediate supervisor,'' or peer, or assistant. The participants were then asked to rate, on one-to-nine scale, how much they would like to go to a party, date or marry the person.

Women in the study, which was financed in part by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them on the corporate ladder. And men did not show a preference when it came to the possibility of a one-night stand.

But when asked about long-term relationships, the men showed a marked preference for the subordinates as opposed to the bosses.

The findings, which seem to confirm an uncomfortable number of male stereotypes and many mothers' admonitions to their daughters, reflect more than male vanity and insecurity, the researchers argue. Dr. Brown and her co-author, Brian Lewis of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that ''pressures associated with the threat of paternal uncertainty'' shaped the men's decisions.

In other words, a subordinate woman might be less likely to fool around, and ''female infidelity is a severe reproductive threat to males'' in long-term relationships, the researchers wrote.

In fact, the evolutionary interpretation of human mating behavior is controversial. In an e-mail interview, Dr. Ellen Berscheid, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, took a slight jab at ''these florid psychoevolutionary interpretations of human behavior that wholly ignore the influence of contemporary, mundane social institutional forces."

Relational dominance, she said, could mean different things in a different study -- like one that created hypothetical mates who were richer or poorer than the research subjects. With a money comparison, she said, ''the results may well have been quite different.''

So, Dr. Berscheid wrote, while ''the results may be interesting in terms of assessing probability of workplace romantic relationships'' under some circumstances, ''I think they probably say little about evolution and human behavior.''

In an interview, Dr. Brown acknowledged that the work was likely to stir dispute.

''It bothers people to think about this in terms of evolution that males could be programmed in any way, or have a predisposition to control another person or member of the opposite sex,'' she said. "I think it's something we wouldn't like to say about males; it's something males wouldn't like to say about themselves.''

In fact, she said, ''I lost a lot of collaborators on this piece.''She conceded that evolutionary causes could not always be teased out of behavior, saying, ''I don't think it's ever possible to really separate out what proportion of a behavior is shaped by evolutionary history and which parts are shaped by our environment or culture.''



Men Just Want Mommy
by Maureen Dowd

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.

Women in staff support are the new sirens because, as a guy I know put it, they look upon the men they work for as "the moon, the sun and the stars." It's all about orbiting, serving and salaaming their Sun Gods.

In all those great Tracy/Hepburn movies more than a half-century ago, it was the snap and crackle of a romance between equals that was so exciting. Moviemakers these days seem far more interested in the soothing aura of romances between unequals.

In James Brooks's "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, as a Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid. The maid, who cleans up after Mr. Sandler without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman. The wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm. Picture Faye Dunaway in "Network" if she'd had to stay home, or Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" without the charm.

The same attraction of unequals animated Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," a 2003 holiday hit. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson falls for his sultry secretary. A writer falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

(I wonder if the trend in making maids who don't speak English heroines is related to the trend of guys who like to watch Kelly Ripa in the morning with the sound turned off?)
Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection, rather than affection.

As John Schwartz of The New York Times wrote recently, "Men would rather marry their secretaries than their bosses, and evolution may be to blame."

A new study by psychology researchers at the University of Michigan, using college undergraduates, suggests that men going for long-term relationships would rather marry women in subordinate jobs than women who are supervisors.

As Dr. Stephanie Brown, the lead author of the study, summed it up for reporters: "Powerful women are at a disadvantage in the marriage market because men may prefer to marry less-accomplished women." Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.

"The hypothesis," Dr. Brown said, "is that there are evolutionary pressures on males to take steps to minimize the risk of raising offspring that are not their own." Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.

A second study, which was by researchers at four British universities and reported last week, suggested that smart men with demanding jobs would rather have old-fashioned wives, like their mums, than equals. The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

So was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? The more women achieve, the less desirable they are? Women want to be in a relationship with guys they can seriously talk to - unfortunately, a lot of those guys want to be in relationships with women they don't have to talk to.

I asked the actress and writer Carrie Fisher, on the East Coast to promote her novel "The Best Awful," who confirmed that women who challenge men are in trouble.

"I haven't dated in 12 million years," she said drily. "I gave up on dating powerful men because they wanted to date women in the service professions. So I decided to date guys in the service professions. But then I found out that kings want to be treated like kings, and consorts want to be treated like kings, too."

J.P. Morgan: If It Moves, Try to Cut It

by ROBIN SIDEL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 13, 2005; Page C1

NEW YORK -- Six months after taking over as president of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Jamie Dimon is sharpening his knife again.

From health-care costs to continuing-education to charitable donations, Mr. Dimon is digging deep into the bank in an effort to pare its spending habits. Some bankers are even worried that Mr. Dimon's frugal ways may hit their wallets later this month when the bank doles out bonuses for 2004.

Yesterday, J.P. Morgan, the nation's largest bank after Citigroup Inc., announced plans to shut a large credit-card facility in Tampa, Fla., by the end of the year. The move will result in 1,900 job cuts and is part of the 12,000 jobs that the bank is eliminating in connection with last year's $58 billion acquisition of Bank One Corp.

Intensive cutbacks are expected to continue through 2005, as Mr. Dimon , 48 years old, sits in the bank's No. 2 spot; he holds the titles of president and chief operating officer. Next year, the former chief executive officer of Bank One is scheduled to take the CEO job at J.P. Morgan from William Harrison, who will retain the title of chairman.

That is also when investors will be looking for the bank to grow. Indeed, J.P. Morgan executives say they are already assessing potential takeover targets in the U.S. and overseas, although no big deals are expected soon.

Long known as a relentless cost-cutter, Mr. Dimon is using many of the same techniques he unleashed during his four-year stint at Bank One in Chicago and before that, when he was a top executive at Citigroup in the 1980s and 1990s. He refers to the process as "waste-cutting."
"Cost-cutting implies that you are chopping out something you really need," he said in an interview.

Whatever it is called, it is a massive undertaking at J.P. Morgan, mainly because of the company's sheer size. The bank has approximately $1.1 trillion in assets and operates in more than 50 countries. It has a market value of nearly $140 billion and 175,000 employees. It had $1.4 billion in net income for the quarter ended Sept. 30, which was the first reporting period that included Bank One's results. Next week it will announce earnings for the final three months of 2004.

"We are moving at light-speed to get all this stuff done," Mr. Dimon said of the process. The bank originally said the Bank One deal would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings over three years, but has since raised that estimate to $3 billion. That includes an estimated $400 million in cost savings for 2004.

His quick action has caused plenty of consternation among J.P. Morgan's bankers. Just days after J.P. Morgan completed the Bank One deal in July, a rumor circulated that Mr. Dimon was so fixated on slashing costs that he spent one evening grilling the limousine drivers who were lined up in front of the bank's Manhattan headquarters. According to bankers who heard the story, Mr. Dimon supposedly took down names of any bankers who were violating company policy that banned such perks unless a banker was leaving the office late, headed to the airport or riding with a client.

Eventually, Mr. Dimon was asked about the tale at a meeting with J.P. Morgan's investment bankers. He insisted it never happened, dismissing it as confusion with a similar episode years ago when he was at Citigroup and trying to tame big spenders there.

There are plenty of areas ripe for cutting that aren't related to the Bank One deal, in part because J.P. Morgan never really concentrated on the issue while it was making a string of big and expensive acquisitions in the past decade. Among them: the purchases of Chase Manhattan Corp. in 2000, Chemical Banking Corp., in 1996 and smaller investment banks like Hambrecht & Quist, Beacon Group and Britain's Robert Fleming.

"I was working on doing a better job of [cutting costs] myself, but he does it better than I do," says Mr. Harrison of his second-in-command. Both executives deny widespread speculation that Mr. Dimon will take the CEO job ahead of schedule.

Some of the recent cuts have been relatively easy. Shortly after arriving at the combined bank last summer, Mr. Dimon issued an edict to take back thousands of cellphones and pagers that had been distributed to bank employees. The staffers were told to use their own equipment and then seek reimbursement for any business-related expenses.

Another action targeted secretaries and other staff members working out of the bank's New York offices. For years, the New York workers had operated on a 35-hour workweek, while their counterparts around the country worked a 40-hour week. Shortly after the Bank One deal was completed in July, the New York staff received a one-time cash payment based on salary and was put on a 40-hour-a-week schedule.

J.P. Morgan also recently overhauled its health-care plan; the employees who earn the most at the bank now are required to pay a larger premium. Anyone wanting to take a continuing-education course must go through a more-rigorous process to show it is job-related. And the bank has stopped matching charitable donations made by employees with a base salary of more than $150,000 a year. (The company has waived those rules for donations made to help tsunami relief efforts).

Other decisions have been more complicated. In 2002, J.P. Morgan decided to outsource some technology functions to International Business Machines Corp. in a seven-year deal valued at about $5 billion.

Mr. Dimon has long believed that a company should control its own technology and Bank One had invested more than $1 billion in technology, including new facilities with capacity for future growth.

"This could have been ripe for a battle," Mr. Dimon said of the issue. After considering several options, Mr. Harrison says he agreed that the bank would be better off managing its own technology. In September, the bank announced it would bring the work back in-house; Mr. Dimon has said the move wasn't about saving money.

So far, the moves are sitting well with investors, although shares of J.P. Morgan are valued less richly these days than some other big banks and Wall Street firms. At $37.99 in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday, shares of J.P. Morgan are trading at a multiple of 11.7 times 2005 earnings estimated by Thomson First Call. By comparison, Wells Fargo & Co. is trading at a 13.5 multiple and Morgan Stanley is trading at a 12.2 multiple.

The cost-cutting is "a monumental task and it's the one variable that [Mr. Dimon ] can control the most," says Thomas Finucane, a portfolio manager at John Hancock Funds, a unit of Manulife Financial Corp.

Mr. Dimon received widespread credit for his cost-cutting at Bank One, which stumbled in the late 1990s after a series of acquisitions. Upon his arrival in Chicago in 2000, he recommended employees read one of four business books -- including one called "Double your profits: 78 ways to cut costs, increase sales, and dramatically improve your bottom line in six months or less."

He also implemented a series of intensive cost-saving moves, like selling four of the bank's six corporate jets and shutting down its money-losing auto-leasing business. He overhauled the bank's budget system so that each branch was responsible for its own profits or losses and shuttered its flopped Internet venture. Bank One earned $3.5 billion in 2003 compared with a loss of $511 million in 2000, the year he took over in the top job.

Write to Robin Sidel at robin.sidel@wsj.com

articles 1/14

A bigger, more Democratic Congress
by Jeff Jacoby
Iraqis go to the polls on Jan. 30 to choose the first truly democratic government in their nation's history.

Shocking Look At Ailing Renquist
by Vincent Morris

PR Executive Indicted in 'Pay to Play' Probe
by Ralph Frammolino & Ted Rohrlich
A partner in the Fleishman-Hillard firm falsely billed DWP and private clients, a grand jury says. He is the first charged in the inquiry.

Two Elections
Why Iraq's vote is not like Palestine's.
by Christopher Hitchens

MSM Requiem
After the Dan Rather scandal, American journalism will never be the same.
by Peggy Noonan

The Post-Saddam Boom
The region is prospering in the wake of Iraq's liberation.
by Glenn Yago & Don McCarthy

The Washington Times
WMD panel fires FBI agent for sharing CIA document
A presidential commission examining U.S. intelligence failures related to weapons of mass destruction has fired an FBI agent for improperly supplying a classified CIA report to FBI headquarters..

Senator Kennedy speaking 'clearly'
by David Limbaugh
Senator Kennedy shared his vision for America this week in a speech at the National Press Club. The only common thread I could find in his shotgun critique was a stubborn fidelity to failed liberal policies of the past.

Democracy has to be good -- not perfect
by Jonah Goldberg
Amid the media din about the tsunami, Dan Rather's implosion, and the usual grim news from Iraq, an amazing story has been unfolding - but has received scant appreciation from the chattering classes. Democracy is on the march.

The race card -- 2005
by Larry Elder
The Democratic Party continues to play the race card for political gain

I beg to disagree
by Thomas Sowell
Disagreements are inevitable whenever there are human beings but we seem to be in an era when the art of disagreeing is vanishing.

Social Security rubiconby Robert Novak
When Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina proposed the broad outlines of a Social Security compromise last month, he was accused by conservatives of negotiating with himself.

Two tidal waves: tsunami and abortion
by Marvin Olasky
Two tidal waves of death: the tsunami late in December and 32 years of massive abortion since the Roe vs. Wade decision on Jan. 22, 1973.

Psst, the deficit's shrinking
by Larry Kudlow
Here’s one story you won’t find on tomorrow’s front pages: 'The U.S. Budget Deficit Is Shrinking Rapidly.'

Zell was right
by Rich Lowry
Last year, then-Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, wrote a scathing critique of the Democratic Party called 'A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat.'

The New War on Terror
by Joel Mowbray
In a bid to both bankrupt those who finance terror and bring some sense of justice to its victims, the legal team that is suing the Saudis for $1 trillion has launched yet another massive lawsuit against prime supporters of radical Islamic jihad.

Duelfer, the U.N., and the New York Times
The job of the inspections regime was to verify, based on the active cooperation of Iraqi officials. Saddam Hussein's regime did no such thing.
by Daniel McKivergan

It's Worse Than You Thought
Curious how the Thornburgh-Boccardi panel decided the CBS documents weren't necessarily fakes? Read Appendix 4.
by Jonathan V. Last

Triangulating the War
Yesterday’s genius, today’s fool, tomorrow’s what?
by Victor Davis Hanson

Reuters
'Ali G' Comedian Risks Riot at U.S. Rodeo
British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen escaped a near-riot at an American rodeo while filming his satirical "Da Ali G Show."

The Western Front
by Brendan Miniter
Democrats beyond the Beltway embrace politically promising new ideas.

Another Trail to Follow
Did Saddam Hussein loot a fund to compensate victims of the 1990 invasion?
by Claudia Rosett

The Small Matter of Proof
The CBS report is the liveliest investigative document to come along in a long time.
by Dorothy Rabinowitz

Wall Street Journal
Stolen Election?
It looks like it. Still, a revote may not be the best remedy.

Right on Campus
Conservatives begin to infiltrate the left's last redoubt.
by Brian Anderson

Hacker Breaks Into T-Mobile Network

A hacker broke into a wireless carrier's network over at least seven months and read e-mails and personal computer files of hundreds of customers, including the Secret Service agent investigating the hacker, the government said Wednesday.

The 'Media Party' is over

CBS' downfall is just the tip of the iceberg

"A political party is dying before our eyes -- and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media"... It was not accident that the [media party's] birth coincided with an identity crisis in the Democratic Party. The ideological energy of the New Deal had faded; Vietnam and various social revolutions of the '60s were tearing it apart. Into the vacuum came the ['American Mainstream Media Party'], which became the new forum for choosing Democratic candidates. A 'reform' movement opened up the nominating process, taking it out of the smoke-filled backrooms and onto television and into the newsrooms. The key to winning the nomination and, occasionally, the presidency, became expertise at riding the media wave. McGovern did it, Gary Hart almost did (until he fell off his surfboard); Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton rode it all the way" -- Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman (check out Mr. Fineman's full confession: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6813945).

Mobile phones tumour risk to young children

CHILDREN under the age of eight should not use mobile phones, parents were advised last night after an authoritative report linked heavy use to ear and brain tumours and concluded that the risks had been underestimated by most scientists.

Professor Sir William Stewart, chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), said that evidence of potentially harmful effects had become more persuasive over the past five years.

The news prompted calls for phones to carry health warnings and panic in parts of the industry. One British manufacturer immediately suspended a model aimed at four to eight-year-olds. The number of mobiles in Britain has doubled to 50 million since the first government-sponsored report in 2000. The number of children aged between five and nine using mobiles has increased fivefold in the same period.

In his report, Mobile Phones and Health, Sir William said that four studies have caused concern. One ten-year study in Sweden suggests that heavy mobile users are more prone to non-malignant tumours in the ear and brain while a Dutch study had suggested changes in cognitive function. A German study has hinted at an increase in cancer around base stations, while a project supported by the EU had shown evidence of cell damage from fields typical of those of mobile phones.

“All of these studies have yet to be replicated and are of varying quality but we can’t dismiss them out of hand,” Sir William said. If there was a health risk — which remained unproven — it would have a greater effect on the young than on older people, he added.

For children aged between 8 and 14, parents had to make their own judgments about the risks and benefits. “I can’t believe that for three to eight year-olds they can be readily justified,” he said.

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers, called last night for a ban on mobiles in schools.

Mobile phone companies reacted furiously, saying that the report fanned public concern without presenting new research. The youth market is highly lucrative because teenagers are more likely to use video downloads and other services.

The World Health Organisation is preparing to publish an international report, drawing on hundreds of studies conducted over a decade, which many hope will give a definitive judgment on mobile phone safety.

The board’s report says that while there is a lack of hard information of damage to health, the approach should be precautionary. Sir William said: “Just because there are 50 million of them out there doesn’t mean they are absolutely safe.”

One school in the North East has begun using mobile scanners to prevent pupils using mobiles in class. “Outside college hours it is up to parents, but in our care if mobiles are found on children, they are confiscated and returned to the parents,” David Riden, vice principal of Tollbar Business and Enterprise College in New Waltham, said.

One group that appears to target young users is Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile, which derives much of its revenue from the 16s-35s market. It denies targeting under 16s but has cornered a large slice of the youth market with cheap voice and text messages.

HEALTH RISK
Acoustic neuromas are benign tumours of the acoustic nerve

A study in Sweden has shown that they are twice as common in mobile phone users

They were also four times as common on the side of the head where the phone was held

Acoustic neuromas occur in 100,000 people a year and can cause deafness

They can be treated by surgery. In most cases the patient’s hearing is saved

Brain tumours affect about 4,700 new patients a year in Britain

They are becoming more common — the UK Brain Tumour Society says that incidence has increased by 45 per cent in 30 years

The causes of primary brain tumours are unknown, so it is hard to identify specific risk factors