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We are still at war - (Filed: 31/12/2003) Following September 11, 2001, George W Bush warned that the war on terrorists and their sponsors would be long and of global reach. Persistent pursuit of such a goal was always going to be hard to maintain, whether because of the softer options offered the electorate by the political opposition or through bureaucratic inertia. Sensing this, two neo-conservatives, David Frum and Richard Perle, have issued a renewed wake-up call in a book to be published tomorrow . "We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington," they write in An End...

ATHENS -- The world is much safer since the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar alleged in an interview published on Sunday. "Saddam Hussein's insistence on acquiring weapons of mass destruction and the danger of some of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists made his regime an extremely serious danger to international security," Aznar told AFP. "The world is undoubtedly safer," he told Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini. Aznar, who was one of the staunchest backers of the US-led war on oil-rich Iraq in the face of massive opposition to the invasion from...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The contours of the political landscape are becoming increasingly inhospitable to Democrats. This is partly because of what Democrats are, partly because of what they have done to themselves with campaign finance reform, partly because demographic changes are weakening one of their signature issues and partly because of a conflict between their ideology and fiscal facts.</p>

WITH REPUBLICANS controlling the House, the Senate and the presidency, Democrats on Capitol Hill feel isolated. "We might as well get in a bus and go to some motel like the Texas legislators," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont. "We literally have been locked out of the process." Democrats dominate the East Bay's congressional delegation: Stark, George Miller of Martinez, Ellen Tauscher of Alamo and Barbara Lee of Oakland. Miller and Stark have been around long enough to remember much of the four decades that their party controlled the House of Representatives. That ended with the Newt Gingrich revolution in 1994....

CHICAGO - Cynthia Ivie will organize the closet, plan the move, pay the bills and collect all the documents at tax time. You just have to trust her. Believe it or not, some people do. Ivie makes a living by convincing strangers to let her company, Loose Ends, manage their private affairs for a fee. Ah, trust me. < SNIP > The mother of such surveys, at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, reveals the depressing truth in a few simple numbers. Asked whether "most people can be trusted," 53 percent of Americans agreed in 1964. That dropped...

<p>President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday marked a watershed in American politics.</p> <p>The rules of policy-making that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant. A narrow Republican majority will work its partisan will, no matter what. Democrats, at least until 2004, will have the grim satisfaction of being a relatively unified opposition that will suffer just enough defections to fail at the finish line.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — President Bush's signature on his big tax cut bill Wednesday marked a watershed in American politics.</p> <p>The rules of policy-making that have applied since the end of World War II are now irrelevant. A narrow Republican majority will work its partisan will, no matter what. Democrats, at least until 2004, will have the grim satisfaction of being a relatively unified opposition that will suffer just enough defections to fail at the finish line.</p>

The radicalization of middle AmericaPat Buchanan (archive) May 27, 2003 | Print | Send"A well-heeled audience booed the Dixie Chicks plenty during country music's biggest night of the year Wednesday -- proof that patriotism continues to run deep through America." So writes Jennifer Harper, embedded correspondent of the culture wars for The Washington Times, about the reception given the famous girl group every time their name came up at the Country Music Awards in Las Vegas."They're still all riled up," writes Harper. Indeed, America is "all riled up," and something is going on out there. Call it the radicalization of...

EELAND, Mich. — The Republican Party's dream of becoming the dominant party was on full display the other day at the Ottawa County Lincoln Day dinner here. Although George W. Bush lost Michigan in 2000 and the state elected a Democratic governor last November, the national and state party officials heaping roast beef and chicken onto their plates at the local fish and game club were buoyantly predicting they would take the state in 2004.The attorney general of Michigan, Mike Cox, elected in 2002 by 5,200 votes after carrying Ottawa County by 40,712, said President Bush could count on a...

<p>The White House yesterday announced that global opposition to President Bush's missile-defense plan largely has collapsed in the wake of the war against terrorism, causing a "sea change" of views even in nations such as Russia, which once opposed the plan.</p>

<p>Minnesota has produced many liberal politicians, from Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy to Walter Mondale and Paul Wellstone. But the state is changing and is now also producing conservative leaders such as Tim Pawlenty, the new governor, and Sen. Norm Coleman, who defeated Mr. Mondale last year in a classic left-right confrontation. Al Gore won Minnesota by only 2.4% of the vote, as George W. Bush carried 10 counties that voted for George McGovern in 1972. Compassionate conservatism may be about to get the upper hand over old-fashioned progressive politics in one of the nation's original welfare states.</p>

ST. PAUL - Minnesota's Republicans have translated their sweeping wins in last year's election into swift victories in this year's legislative session. A 24-hour waiting period on abortions was signed into law. Permits to carry handguns in public will soon be available to more people. And the Department of Children, Families and Learning is dismantling the Profile of Learning and building a set of academic standards from scratch. All those issues had some DFL backing, but they've topped the Republican agenda for years. While support has grown incrementally since Republicans took control of the House in 1999, the stronger conservative...

How the Left Shoved Me to the Right How much do I know To talk out of turn You might say that I'm young You might say I'm unlearned But there's one thing I know Though I'm younger than you Even Jesus would never Forgive what you do. --Bob Dylan, Masters of War Although the preceding excerpt is from a song that has been heard at countless war protests since 1963, when I listen to this particular verse I am prompted to think of those Americans who protested the war in Iraq. Those whose self-righteousness and yearning to see President...

The events of Sept. 11 loom so large in our public and private consciousness that they now form the context in which everything else takes place. They altered the course of history; they altered how we see the world around us. And they will alter the future just as surely as they have altered the past.

As some others see us: Reading America Stefan Straub 2 - 5 - 2003 So you think you know America? A critical look at the latest columns of some of the most syndicated columnists in the United States leaves this European writer alarmed by a volley of words that can cause nothing but trouble. As America sets out to craft the world in its own image and according to its self-interests, we non-Americans often scramble to find out what’s really going on. What are Americans thinking? Who said what? What is happening over there? We try to find out...

Last week, I watched ''Wag the Dog,'' the 1997 Barry Levinson film about a Hollywood producer who is hired to create a television war to cover up a domestic crisis. The first call he makes is to a character played by Willie Nelson. Every war needs a theme song after all, even a fake war, and so Willie flies out to California and walks around the swimming pool, strumming his guitar and riffing on words like ''America'' and ''proud'' and ''free.'' Country music is not providing the soundtrack to American life on an average day, unless you count the crossovers,...

Wall Street Journal May 9, 2003 Norway's Small Military Plays Big For Global Role By Philip Shishkin, Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal RENA, Norway -- On a moonlit winter night in 1943, a small team of Norwegian commandos parachuted from a British plane into the freezing void over Nazi-occupied Norway. Trekking on skis through harsh mountain terrain, the soldiers sneaked up to a factory producing "heavy water," a hydrogen-rich compound vital for Adolf Hitler's plans to develop an atomic bomb. The commandos slipped through the German patrols, blew up the factory and disappeared without losing a single soldier....

Congressional Democrats must truly be aiming for permanent minority status, so tone deaf are they in their criticism of President Bush.<!ENDSUMM!> This time the Democrats are working themselves into a frenzy over the president's address last week from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Anyone who watched the president's jet ``catch the wire'' live on TV or later in reruns couldn't help but feel the excitement and the delight for those 5,000 American men and women thrilled to get a visit from their commander in chief. Now Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has asked the General Accounting...

With the Democratic presidential candidates battling it out for a chance to be creamed by George W. Bush, reading the newspapers these days feels very much like 1972. The Democrats are moving left, the incumbent president is popular, and it looks like the Democrats may be out of power for decades. After 1972, the Democrats were bailed out by Watergate. This time, they'll need an act of God. The parallels between 1972 and 2003 for the Democrats are striking. Even their candidates look the same. Immediately following the 1968 election, the strongest Democrat was Teddy Kennedy. Then, Kennedy drove his...

A tale of two nations Michael Barone Who has not been impressed by the American military personnel we have been seeing over these past two months? Calm, terse, determined, brave, confident--above all, competent, able to vanquish the enemy and spare the innocent with astonishingly low casualties. And yet a few years ago most of these young men and women were typical American 18-year-olds, most of whom don't seem competent at much of anything. One of the peculiar features of our country is that we produce incompetent 18-year-olds and remarkably competent 30-year-olds. Americans at 18 typically score lower on standardized tests...