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More than a dozen former supporters of presidential front runner George W. Bush have switched to John McCain. State Rep. Crow Dickinson Jr., of Conway, joined a list of other state lawmakers announcing they will be leaving the Bush bandwagon to help McCain in the first-in-the-nation primary in February. "My enthusiam began to erode and I became dissappointed when he didn't come to debate," Dickinson said of Bush. "And while the popular mantra of 'cut taxes and build-up the military' is something that I ordinairily agree with, I remember that it didn't work well for Reagan. McCain seems like a ...

Bush Says Tenure in Texas Shows He Can Govern U.S. McCain Reveals New Hampshire Converts to Candidacy By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 4, 1999; Page A09 BEDFORD, N.H., Dec. 3—Texas Gov. George W. Bush, fresh off his first presidential debate, fended off more questions today about his capacity to be president, saying his political record and popular support in Texas should help persuade voters across the country that he is more than up to the job. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), who has mounted a serious challenge to Bush here in the state with the nation's first ...

Protestors have locked themselves to the doors of the Westin Hotel, and other protestors are sitting at the jail demanding the release of those being held inside. WTO talks have collapsed after marathon negotiations. Watch live cable feed at this URL: http://www.kgw.com/kgwlive.asp

Conservative Themes, but Moderate Words By Terry M. Neal Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, December 4, 1999; Page A08 When George W. Bush argued for elimination of the estate tax in Iowa a few days ago, he cast himself as a politician who would stand up for the farmer and the small-business owner by protecting their ability to pass wealth to descendants. While there's no question that repeal of the estate tax would benefit people of moderate income, the idea has long been considered a major policy objective of the rich--after all, the tax applies to wealth over $650,000. Yet ...

WTO has adjourned without any agreement. The past week of travesties against the Constitution were for nothing.

Chechen Capital Is in Russian Sights Troops Surround Nearby City, but Rebels Step Up Ambushes By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, December 4, 1999; Page A11 MOSCOW, Dec. 3—Russian forces effectively seized yet another major city in Chechnya today and further squeezed the capital, Grozny, but Russian officials said Chechen fighters have stepped up their ambushes and casualties appear to be increasing on both sides. Russian officials declared the near-capture of Argun, Chechnya's third-largest city, a major step in a "third phase" of their two-month-old ground offensive. This phase aims to drive Chechen defenders into the mountains, establish ...

Bribery Charge Roils Russian Politics By David Hoffman Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, December 4, 1999; Page A13 MOSCOW, Dec. 3—A simmering political feud broke into open warfare today when former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov accused a financier close to the Kremlin of trying to bribe candidates to abandon Primakov's bloc in the upcoming parliamentary election. Primakov, who heads the coalition with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, first broached the subject late Thursday, when he said members of his Fatherland-All Russia bloc had been offered bribes to withdraw from the Dec. 19 ballot. A Kremlin spokesman then challenged Primakov to name ...

WTO: Key Negotiating Points By Steven Pearlstein Saturday, December 4, 1999; Page A15 Here are the key issues being negotiated by trade ministers of the World Trade Organization in Seattle and how they are likely to be resolved when officials wind up their work. * Farm goods. General agreement was reached to begin negotiations aimed at substantial and progressive reductions in agricultural export subsidies. But the European Union drew the line at total elimination of subsidies and won agreement that noneconomic factors--such as the preservation of the environment and rural communities--would be considered, although nailing down the details of those ...

Peter Angelos had a problem. The lawyer from Baltimore was making millions with his litigation against asbestos manufacturers on behalf of clients referred to him by the local unions with which he was friendly. The asbestos manufacturers had decided to settle; it was just a matter of finding victims of "asbestos lung disease" and other related maladies. But by 1996 his hyper-litigation on behalf of more than 9,000 such victims was clogging the Baltimore courts and slowing his cash-flow

December 3, 1999 By CARL S. KAPLAN Software Code Has Power of Law on the Internet, Author Says n the 1996 movie "Independence Day," many idealists are eager to welcome aliens from outer space when they first appear on earth. But then the mood changes. Soon after the planet's leaders realize that the aliens have hostile intentions, the earth is captured. Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard University. "Only Jeff Goldblum had gotten it before, but he always gets it first," quipped Lawrence Lessig, the Berkman professor of law at Harvard Law School and the author of a new, ...

The Battle in Seattle: A Challenge to Politics as Usual The WTO protests attempted to separate the business of politics from the politics of business. Sometimes even democracy needs a little wake-up call. Beyond the varied issues that got them out on the streets — and the violent methods favored by a minority among them — the demonstrators who battled police for control of downtown Seattle over the past few days issued a profound challenge to politics as usual in the Clinton era. That much was clear by the reaction of the President, who found himself trying to identify with ...

WTO Talks Go Into Overtime By MARTIN CRUTSINGER The Associated Press SEATTLE (AP) - Besieged by demonstrators outside and deep negotiating divisions inside, the World Trade Organization went into overtime Friday in its effort to launch a new round of trade negotiations. Officials reported a battle between the United States and the 15-nation European Union over agriculture had tied up negotiators for much of the day Friday, forcing cancellation of a scheduled 6:30 p.m. PDT closing news conference by U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and WTO Director General Mike Moore. A draft text put together earlier Friday, a copy of ...

KING: We'll be back with Jack Lemmon and Mitch Albom in a couple of minutes, but right now we're going to do something you don't see very often. We're going to go to North Korea, to Pyongyang in North Korea. Standing by is Roger Clinton. It's 11:00, what, in the morning there, Roger? ROGER CLINTON, ENTERTAINER: Yes, sir, Saturday morning. KING: All right. And you're going to be entertaining in North Korea at what kind of occasion and when? CLINTON: It's a concert for peace. It's the Peace 2000 Concert for Korea. It's sort of an unification concert, and it's ...

The Clinton-Gore Administration A Record of Progress for Gay and Lesbian Americans “Discrimination or violence because of race or religion, ancestry or gender, disability or sexual orientation, is wrong, and it ought to be illegal. Therefore, I ask Congress to make the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act the law of the land.” -- President Clinton, State of the Union Address to Congress, January 19, 1999 “It is time for all Americans to recognize that the issues that face gays and lesbians in this country are not narrow, special interests -- they are matters of basic ...

WTO in Seattle: For one doctor, WTO meeting offered valuable forum By Alex Fryer, Seattle Times staff reporter Dr. Bernard Pecoul arrived for the World Trade Organization meeting this past Saturday from a conference in Amsterdam and never fully recovered from jet lag. Every morning, he awoke at 5 a.m. in his Aurora Avenue hotel. In the pre-dawn gloom he practiced speeches, brushed up on his English and hashed out strategy. So much depended on what he could accomplish in his brief stay. Pecoul, 43, is a member of the Paris-based aid group Doctors Without Borders, this year's winner of ...

Kenney almost endorses GW.

WTO in Seattle: Mayor draws blame - even from merchants who've been big supporters By J. Martin McOmber and Robert T. Nelson, Seattle Times staff reporters As the WTO conference winds down, anger and frustration about the city's handling of protests is just beginning to cascade on Mayor Paul Schell and his administration. Some of the sharpest criticism is coming from a group that, before this week, counted itself among Schell's biggest supporters: downtown merchants. "I'm sensitive about speaking out against the mayor," said Susie Plummer, general manager of Westlake Center. "But I work for a large company. If somebody ...

I applaud E. R. Shipp for piercing the media silence around the death of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising at the hands of two gay men [ombudsman, Nov. 14]. But I did not appreciate being lumped in a clause with David Duke without any context except we're both "hostile to homosexuals." Shipp's blanket description of my shared "hostility" with Duke underlines what's wrong with newsroom thinking about covering homosexuals. Is it considered "hostile" to straight people to cover them when they are perpetrators of crimes as well as when they are victims? David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign proclaimed: "This has ...

U.N. crimes court gets support without U.S. By Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES NEW YORK The United States has resigned itself to the eventual creation -- over Washington's objections -- of a U.N. International Criminal Court to be modeled after war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Even if the United States does not ratify the treaty, American citizens will be subject to arrest and trial as the treaty document is now drafted. International backing for the court became apparent this week as legal experts gathered at the United Nations to discuss fine print in a treaty ...

WTO in Seattle: Negotiations calm protesters; retailers await holiday shoppers By David Postman, Mark Rahner and Eric Sorensen Seattle Times staff reporters Although some shoppers were still being kept out of a restricted zone downtown, retailers eager to return to the normal Christmas-season routine were pulling the plywood off windows and reopening their stores this morning. Restrictions imposed during the World Trade Organization protests are scheduled to end at midnight, and by tomorrow, most of downtown is expected to be operating as usual. The peace that settled on Seattle after three days of street battles came after a veteran cop ...