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FUN READS AND MUST READS . . .

FUN READ:

ONE RULE FOR PELOTON ONE: DON'T PASS THE PRESIDENT
[The article includes a great photo that I hope someone will post!]
By Sal Ruibal, USA TODAY

CRAWFORD, Texas — The leader of the free world is now leading a Boomer Generation fitness trend. At age 59, President Bush is ripping around on a mountain bike, beating stress — and his fellow riders — with aplomb.

Bush invited me and a few other reporters for a mountain bike ride on his 1,600-acre Texas ranch Saturday.

His escapades on the bike have been well documented: an over-the-handlebars crash here at the ranch and a wet-pavement wipeout in Scotland that injured a pedestrian policeman.

But the truth about the Biker-in-Chief is that the man can really ride. Over the course of a two-hour Tour de Crawford, Bush humbled every rider in Peloton One with a strong and steady pace over scorching hot paved roads, muddy creek crossings, energy-sapping tall grass and steep climbs on loose and crumbling rock.

You can read the rest of the story at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-08-13-bush-bike_x.htm?csp=34

MUST READ:

CINDY SHEEHAN'S SINISTER PIFFLE
What's wrong with her Crawford protest.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 15, 2005, at 11:50 AM PT

Finally, I think one must deny to anyone the right to ventriloquize the dead. Casey Sheehan joined up as a responsible adult volunteer. Are we so sure that he would have wanted to see his mother acquiring "a knack for P.R." and announcing that he was killed in a war for a Jewish cabal? This is just as objectionable, on logical as well as moral grounds, as the old pro-war argument that the dead "must not have died in vain." I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them.

You can read the rest of the article at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2124500/

THE WORLD WATCHES AS IRAQ BECOMES A LITMUS TEST OF DEMOCRATIC SUCCESS
Amir Taheri

A MAN SPORTING a ferocious moustache, and wearing a military uniform covered with medals, appears on television to address the nation as martial music plays in the background. “Brothers,” he shouts, “I have just written a new constitution for you to raise the flag of Arabism, destroy our enemies and march on to Jerusalem.”
This caricature depicts the way people in many Arab states, from Algeria to Yemen and passing by Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Syria and Iraq, have learnt about their new constitutions over the past six decades of military rule. So it was a novelty to witness Iraqis struggling in public to write a democratic constitution based on wideranging consultation and compromise.

This was the first time that Iraq, created as a state 84 years ago, was allowing its people to write a constitution. The first one, establishing monarchy in 1921, was written by the British. The second, in 1958, was the work of colonels who copied the Soviet model. Subsequent constitutions were written by the so-called Revolutionary Command Council of the Baath party with no popular input.

This time it was different.

You can read the rest of the article at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1736382,00.html

BEST OF THE WEB
BY JAMES TARANTO
Monday, August 15, 2005 12:11 p.m. EDT

Taranto details all you need to know about Cindy Sheehan
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007110