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WSJ.com - Commentary Peggy Noonan, a contributing editor of the Journal. Her OpinionJournal.com column appears on Fridays.  November 2, 2000 . . . . . . Big Terrible Thing This is important at any time, but is crucial now. The next president may well be forced to shepherd us through the first nuclear event since World War II, the first terrorist attack or missile attack. "Man has never had a weapon he didn't use," Ronald Reagan said in conversation, and we have been most fortunate man has not used these weapons to kill in the past 50 years. But half...

Among the elements threatening to destabilize the region is an expected US attack on Iraq, the build-up of nuclear weapons in Iran, Hizbullah's conventional military arsenal, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors last night in Jerusalem. Once the US focuses on destroying Iraq, Israel will be one of Iraq's first retaliatory targets, Ben-Eliezer said, and they have the weapons to do us harm. Israel is working with the US to overcome any damage from such an attack, Ben-Eliezer said. However, Iran, which borders Iraq, also has missiles. They can...

For the past few years, a California business has been a major donor to Oregon Democratic causes, giving about $60,000 since 2000. What the campaigns didn't know, however, is that the money came from one of the largest gay adult video companies in the nation. It arrived through a well-known political activist, so no one thought to question the source of the money. On Tuesday, however, the campaign manager for gubernatorial candidate Ted Kulongoski vowed to return the cash after being told by The Oregonian that they'd accepted profits from adult videos and a related Web site business. But the...

President George W. Bush delayed for several days yesterday's speech calling on Palestinians to depose Yasser Arafat as one condition for Palestinian statehood. Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Force, trying to protect Jews from terrorist attacks, is reoccupying areas formerly administered by the Palestinian Authority. In short, matters took their own logical course. No one involved has liked that course. Palestinians would prefer to live without Israeli tanks in their backyards or fences walling them in. They are increasingly angry at Yasser Arafat for getting them into this mess. Israelis face the costs and disruptions of calling up army reserves...

Convicted forger Andrea Scott is thumbing her nose at the crowded court system that released her to the streets. She has written taunting letters to the judge and the woman whose identity she is accused of stealing in order to run up more than $20,000 in credit card debt. "You must be required to take a stupidity test to be a cop or judge in Indy!" she wrote in a four-page letter to the court. Scott skipped her pretrial hearing Tuesday and made it clear in her letter that she's not planning to show up for her trial Thursday. "I...

NBC "Today Show" host Katie Couric wasted no time slandering author Ann Coulter during a Wednesday morning interview about her new book, "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right," by introducing the renowned conservative legal scholar as a "right-wing tele-bimbo." "You've been called everything from a pundit extraordinaire to a right-wing tele-bimbo," began Couric, setting the stage for the contentious encounter. Within the first few sentences of their exchange, Couric broached the topic of Coulter's recent comparison of her to Hitler's Nazi paramour. COURIC: I have to bring up a section of the book where you talk specifically about me....

Plane diverted to Detroit because federal officer had gun Romulus, Michigan-AP -- A Detroit Airport spokesman is saying "Oops." A Chicago-bound American Airlines flight made an emergency landing in Detroit -- after crew members learned a federal employee aboard hadn't warned airline officials that he was armed. The U-S postal inspector had identified himself at a security checkpoint before getting on the plane in Newburgh, New York -- but failed to submit the proper paperwork. After learning of the man's presence, the airline verified his identity and notified the flight crew, which landed the plane. The inspector was questioned and...

<p>Men won't commit to marriage because they enjoy a sexually active single life in a social climate that doesn't push them to marry, a new report says. Young men are indeed "commitment phobic," which is bad news for young women who want build a family before they get too old, said researchers Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, who run the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in our nation's history," Mr. Popenoe said. "If this trend of men waiting to marry continues, it is likely to clash with the timing of marriage and childbearing for the many young women who hope to marry and bear children before they begin to face problems associated with declining fertility," he said. There are several specific reasons for why young men are avoiding marriage, Mr. Popenoe and Mrs. Whitehead said yesterday in their 2002 State of Our Unions report, titled, "Why Men Won't Commit: Exploring Young Men's Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage." The report is based on interviews with 60 single men, 25 to 33, who live in four parts of the country. Primarily, young men are enjoying a sexually active single life — often with a live-in girlfriend — and "are in no hurry" to marry, the researchers said. "I'll know when I'm ready," and "Whatever happens, happens," were typical responses by the men. The researchers also found that young men are often wary of marriage because of worries that they will marry the wrong person, be forced to make too many compromises or take on too many burdens as a husband, or suffer huge losses if the marriage ends in divorce. An ex-wife will "take you for all you've got" and "men have more to lose financially than women" were common refrains. What young men aren't worried about is a personal, biological deadline to have children, Mrs. Whitehead said. "Men see marriage as the final step in a prolonged process of growing up," with children coming along in due time, she said. This isn't true for young women, she said, but young men "don't have much sympathy" for women's fertility problems. "As one man put it, 'That's their issue.'" Women, meanwhile, have been reminded that their biological clocks are ticking. In April, Time magazine ran a cover article on how women's fertility declines much earlier — after age 27 — and much faster than most people realize. A woman's ability to get pregnant drops considerably after age 35, and by age 40 half her eggs are chromosomally abnormal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 9 million women used infertility services in 1995, the CDC said. "Advancing age decreases your ability to have children," the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says in a public-service poster, which uses an hourglass-shaped baby bottle with sand to illustrate its point. Already the median age of first marriage for women has risen to 25, after floating between 22 and 23 for the century between 1890 and 1990, Mrs. Whitehead said. Traditional social forces, such as the family, religion and the workplace, used to pressure men toward marriage, but that is no longer the case, she said. With the relaxation of social pressures, coupled with general silence about unmarried couples living together, "men can relax their timetable indefinitely," she said. This means that it falls to an individual woman to press for marriage, which is why women are more likely to ask for a definition of their relationship or propose marriage to a man, Mrs. Whitehead said. Mrs. Whitehead, who often laments the dearth of good statistics on marriage, noted yesterday that the new report was only a pilot study on men and said a nationally representative study was needed. "The federal government," she wrote, "issues thousands of reports on nearly every dimension of American life, from what we eat to how many hours we commute each day, but it provides no annual index or report on the state of marriage."</p>

Here is a quote from the book Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network by James Der Derian."In a remarkable 1935 essay for Harper's magazine, "The Revival of Feudalism," political theorist and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr interpreted the rise of Hitler as a reaction to a misguided effort by liberalism to suppress "the organic character of society" that is expressed, sometimes excessively, in displays of tradition, community, and ethnic loyalty. "Fascism," says Niebuhr, "is this outraged truth avenging itself." He concludes that Nazism "could not have achieved such monstrous proportions if our culture had not foolishly dreamed and hoped for the development...

----------------------------------------------------The City of Beaverton needs your help!  The Mayor's Office is attempting to gather data for an upcoming hearing before the House Transportation Committee regarding Photo Red Light in Beaverton.  The Mayor would like the opportunity to be able to share your views with the state legislators.  If you could respond to the following survey by Friday, June 28th, it would be very helpful.  Thank you for your time and consideration. Please type an "X" by the answer that best represents your views. 1.  Are you aware of the City's Red Light Enforcement Program? ____ Yes ____ No 2.  Compared...

This is from a cousin, retired Navy (WWII), who lost both his brothers in combat. Folks; The Salute Have you noticed a difference in the salute given by our military men and women as President Bush walks by? Most folks would not notice anything, but military people see it right away. Watch. When President Bush leaves his helicopter or Air Force One, the honor guards salute and face him as he disembarks, then turn their faces towards him as he passes by. They continue to salute his back as he walks away. This kind of salute has not been seen...

A Summary Theology of Prayer June 2002 Below are five statements from John Piper as a summary theology of prayer. An assumption behind these statements is that to know more of God’s purpose will deepen our commitment to pray and help us glorify God for why he does what he does. 1. God created the universe and all that is in it to display the riches of the glory of his grace. Isaiah 43:6-7: Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for...

St. Louis County plans hearing into jail suicide of suspected serial killer St. Louis (AP) -- The St. Louis County Council plans to hold hearings next month into how a suspected serial killer managed to hang himself in the county jail. Maury Troy Travis used bedding in killing himself June tenth in the jail at Clayton, three days after officers arrested him in the deaths of two St. Louis area prostitutes. On Monday, authorities said Travis has been linked to the deaths of 12 women, with as many as six more yet to be found. In the wake of Travis'...

'MAY NOT BE ABLE TO CONTINUE AS A GOING CONCERN': As of March 31, 2002, SALON.COM had an accumulated deficit of $76.6 million...

Teen was a lost child when shot Prison, program don't steer boy from fatal path By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIMof the Journal Sentinel staff Last Updated: June 23, 2002 Mollie Love thought the maximum length of time in prison would have been enough to make the 14-year-old boy who took her car at gunpoint back in 1999 never pull a gun on anyone else."I don't think counseling or probation will help," Love, now 69, wrote in a victim impact statement about the boy, Andre Bates, who took her 1992 Buick Roadmaster and threatened to shoot her outside her garage. "Without strict discipline,"...

The 21st century took a new direction last Monday in the bold chess move of President George W. Bush. In what was superficially reported only as a shift in U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we may have witnessed the turning point in a game whose outcome will decide and define the future shape of global governance. Chess is not dominoes. But by urging the creation not only of a Palestinian state but also of a democratic, free market Palestinian state, Mr. Bush knows he is setting in motion forces that could soon topple many Muslim and other undemocratic governments...

Boy set on fire by brother dies Syracuse, New York-AP -- A toddler whose older brother set him on fire over the weekend has died at a Boston hospital. The four-year-old from Syracuse, New York, suffered second- and third-degree burns over nearly his entire body. He'd been in critical condition since being hospitalized in Boston on Sunday. Police say the boy's seven-year-old brother poured lighter fluid on him and then set him ablaze with a match. The brother is being charged with assault, and a police spokesman says additional charges are possible. They're also looking into whether there was proper...

If you need proof of former-president Clinton's fundamental impact on the Democratic party, look no farther than the emerging list of hopefuls vying to take on President Bush in 2004. Some of the presumed heavyweights are already putting organizational foundations in place. On that list are Sens. Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, and John Edwards. There's also the obvious possibility that Al Gore will run again, and leading congressional Democrats Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt may run. Added to that list are a few intriguing folks who lack national recognition, but are reported to be "interested" or "mulling a run" in...

Gay marriage fight headed for New Jersey Email story to a friend Newark, New Jersey-AP -- The battle over gay marriages is moving to New Jersey. A national gay rights group says it will file a lawsuit in a New Jersey court today on behalf of seven same-sex couples who have been denied marriage licenses. Lawyers say they'll argue that the state is violating the plaintiffs' right to equal protection, since by not being eligible for marriage they lose out on things like spousal inheritance rights and Social Security benefits when a partner dies. The lead attorney for the...

Leo V. Felton, 30, and Erica Chase, 21, were indicted June 20 on federal charges of plotting to blow up property perceived to have a Jewish or African-American association in order to incite a "racial holy war." Felton and Chase were arrested April 19, 2001 when the two fled from police after Chase allegedly attempted to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill at a donut shop in East Boston. A subsequent investigation by law enforcement and a search of the couple’s apartment by federal officers reportedly revealed:Notes on bomb-making;Detailed pictures of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, which was...