• Armed with the power his committee posts give him over the Pentagon, Stevens helped save a $450-million military housing contract for an Anchorage businessman. The same businessman made Stevens a partner in a series of real estate investments that turned the senator's $50,000 stake into at least $750,000 in six years.

• An Alaska Native company that Stevens helped create got millions of dollars in defense contracts through preferences he wrote into law. Now the company pays $6 million a year to lease an office building owned by the senator and his business partners. Stevens continues to push legislation that benefits the company.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be

"Some dreadful mountebank in a long-tailed coat will open them with a windy speech; then another mountebank will repeat the same rubbish in other words. Then a half dozen windjammers will hymn good Cal (Coolidge) as a combination of Pericles, Frederick the Great, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and John the Baptist; then there will be an hour or two of idiotic whooping, and then the boys will go home."

"If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country, he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayers' expense."

It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

The federal treasury at the moment supplies 45 percent of the nation's income. The politicians dress up the deals in the language of law or policy, but they're in the business of brokering the tax revenue, and what keeps them in office is not their talent for oratory but their skill at redistributing the national income in a way that rewards their clients, patrons, friends and campaign contributors. They trade in every known commodity - school lunches, tax exemptions, water and mineral rights, aluminum siding, dairy subsidies, pension benefits, highway contracts, prison uniforms - and they work the levers of government like gamblers pulling at slot machines. As with the subsidizing of the farms and the defense industry, so also with paying off the bad debt acquired by the savings and loan associations.

In the late twentieth century, as in the early nineteenth, a clear majority of American businessmen has shown a profound aversion for anything that remotely resembles a free market or a genuine risk. At their annual conventions they sometimes make brave speeches about the joys of "risk taking" and the wonders of "entrepeneurship", but what they know and trust is the rigged price, the safe monopoly, the sure percentage. By and large, and certainly in its primary and steadier movements, the national economy depends not only on systematic price-fixing and noncompetitive bidding but also on the guarantee of government intervention. The theory of the free market works at the margins of the economy - among cabdrivers and the owners of pizza parlors who made the mistake of borrowing $20,000 instead of $20 million - but the central pillars of the American enterprise rest...firmly on the foundation stones of federal subsidy..."

"My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," he said at a talk to hundreds of Marine and Navy officers and others at a Crystal City hotel ballroom in September. "I ask you, is it happening again?" The speech, part of a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, received prolonged applause, with many officers standing.

Zinni says that he hasn't received a single negative response from military people about the stance he has taken. "I was surprised by the number of uniformed guys, all ranks, who said, 'You're speaking for us. Keep on keeping on.' "

My British-made bulletproof Tetranike vest served me well in the badlands of ex-Yugoslavia, Somalia and Latin America back in my days as a war correspondent – that is, before darling wife Eilhys changed the drill.

But that doesn’t mean the vest is also retired. No sirree. Since 9-11, my trusty Tetranike has served one tour with the Army in Afghanistan and three in Iraq: with the Army, FBI and presently protecting a retired “snake eater” who’s training the Iraqi police force.

The reason that sucker’s so well-traveled is that the Bush administration just can’t get its priorities right when it comes to giving each and every one of our soldiers the right stuff to kick up the odds of their making it through the hit-and-run hell of insurgent combat.

After six months of light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel propaganda from the Bush administration reinforced by sycophants like Odierno, I’m convinced few generals on the ground in Iraq understand either the nature of insurgency warfare in general or their specific terrorist enemy...Sure, the U.S. military brilliantly won the tactical war in Iraq with “shock and awe,” but no amount of spin can shift the reality that it has been losing the early innings of the occupation phase. The generals so eager to court-martial colonels for doing their jobs should be court-martialed themselves for not doing their duty and confronting SecDef Donald Rumsfeld before we invaded Iraq.

Had they done so, we wouldn’t be dealing with the aftermath of an inept war plan that provided neither enough troops nor sufficient command guidance to prevent the looting and violence that fueled the ever-expanding guerrilla conflict, a conflict that Col. West and other heroes have been stuck in since Commander-in-Chief Bush blithely declared the end of major combat in Iraq last May.

Last April, the only ministry that our forces protected was the Oil Ministry. The rest of the ministries and infrastructure were sacked while our troops looked the other way, and the Iraqi people watched the nuts and bolts of their future Iraqi government being hauled away in hijacked trucks.

Because there was no coherent strategy in the early weeks of the occupation, our top brass responded to events rather than taking charge. Reaction rather than action allowed the insurgents to gain the initiative right from the get-go. And they’re still at it, brazenly displaying the same bold MO as they continue inflicting carefully planned pain on our increasingly weary combat forces.

The generals should also be brought up for not fighting the dumb White House decision to disband the Iraqi army. Instead of integrating that 450,000-man force into the stabilization process – and using it for reconstruction and certain security ops, which would have helped our badly stretched troops gain control over the looters and get the country up and running – we made it our enemy. Thousands of trained and armed Iraqi soldiers couldn’t make tracks fast enough to join the insurgent movement.

The conventional generals like Odierno should be replaced by mainly Special Forces leaders, both from the active and retired ranks, who comprehend the war at hand. Leaders who’d drop the silly charges against Col. West in a heartbeat so he could get on with winning his piece of this ugly war.

As for the “Perfumed Princes,” send them home from both Iraq and Afghanistan, another guerrilla war we're losing, and let them play Political Correctness – or perhaps the emerging Blame Game – with the chicken hawks who got us in this mess in the first place.

That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States...shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

"shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the U.S."

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

It seems to me that the security of the American people, indeed of the world, cannot be trusted to the governments of the world, including our own. In crisis situations, the right of citizens to freely criticize foreign policy is absolutely essential, indeed a matter of life and death. National security is far safer in the hands of a debating, challenging citizenry than with a secretive, untrustworthy government."

Strong reciprocity promotes kindness and discourages cheats, but is it a product of our genes or in our culture? It can't be entirely genetic, since different human societies (with very similar genes) vary greatly in their tolerance of cheating. Fehr and Fischbacher argue for gene-culture co-evolution: cultural and institutional environments promote social norms that favor the selection of genes that promote cooperation.

I want to see him sit in an Iraqi court and explain himself to Iraqis. I want to hear him apologize to Iraqis. It won't help the dead, but I want to hear it anyway. He must be handed over to Iraqis. I don't care about legitimacy. He must be tried publicly in an Iraqi civil court by Iraqi judges. The rest of the Arab dictators should see it and learn from it.

As we know from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, prosecutions of genocide or crimes against humanity can be enormously complex, demanding jurists of exceptional skill and sophistication. They require amassing volumes of official documents, collecting sensitive forensic evidence from mass graves, presenting hundreds of witnesses from among victims and accomplices, and paying scrupulous attention to the requirements of due process. To avoid being perceived as show trials or "victor's justice," they call for highly experienced jurists of unquestioned integrity.

Saddam's brutal and arbitrary justice system can hardly be expected to have produced such jurists. Prosecutions were typically based on confessions, often induced by torture. Serious criminal investigations, let alone complex trials, were virtually unheard of. The Iraqi Governing Council hopes to solve this problem by looking to Iraqi exiles as well as Iraqis from communities historically repressed by the Baath Party who remained in the country. But even among these it will be difficult to find jurists with the right combination of skills and emotional distance from the former dictatorship to produce trials that are fair - and seen as fair.

An internationally led tribunal would be a far better option, whether a fully international tribunalor, more likely, an internationally run tribunal with significant domestic participation, such as the special court set up for Sierra Leone. Because its personnel would be selected by the United Nations rather than by Washington's surrogates, an internationally led tribunal is more likely to be seen as legitimate. And because it can draw from a global pool of talent, it would be better able to secure the experienced and fair-minded jurists than a court that must look only to Iraqis. An internationally led tribunal could still conduct trials in Baghdad and involve Iraqis as much as possible, but it would be run by international jurists with proven records of overseeing complex prosecutions and scrupulously respecting international fair-trial standards.

Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid.

Groups of students, teachers and administrators from five Oakland County school districts are taking part in the Religious Diversity Initiative - a program funded by the Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan and sponsored by the Oakland County Superintendents Association, the Michigan Region of the National Conference for Community and Justice, and the Jewish Community Council.

As part of the voluntary, nontaxpayer funded program, participants from the Berkley, Bloomfield Hills, Clarkston, Walled Lake and West Bloomfield school districts are visiting local religious institutions to learn from clergy about the beliefs they espouse.

The goal, said program coordinator and Jewish Community Council public relations associate Eric Adelman, is to promote understanding and respect among students of various belief systems.

"To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference of all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other."

"The pure and simple unity of the Creator of the universe, is now all bascendantatn in the Eastern States; it is dawning in the West, and advancing towards the South; and I confidently expect that the present generation will see Unitarianism become the general religion of the United States."

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

" Ye States of America, which retain in your Constitution or Codes, any aberration from the sacred principle of religious liberty, by giving to Caesar what belongs to God, or joining together what God has put asunder, hasten to revise & purify your systems, and make the example of your Country as pure & compleat, in what relates to the freedom of the mind and its allegiance to its maker, as in what belongs to the legitimate objects of political & civil institutions. Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt. in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history."

The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation."

"It is true, of course, that the phrase 'separation of church and state' does not appear in the Constitution. But it was inevitable that some convenient term should come into existence to verbalize a principle so clearly and widely held by the American people....[T]he right to a fair trial is generally accepted to be a constitutional principle; yet the term 'fair trial' is not found in the Constitution. To bring the point even closer home, who would deny that 'religious liberty' is a constitutional principle? Yet that phrase too is not in the Constitution. The universal acceptance which all these terms, including 'separation of church and state,' have received in America would seem to confirm rather than disparage their reality as basic American democratic principles."

"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief, nor shall any national religion be established"

"Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination in preference to another"