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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 3:48:54 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Don't worry! Farm welfare will keep production up! (And also drive the cost of price supports in Europe, the US, and Japan through the roof.)

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 3:52:31 PM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Fishing for a veep in a shallow pool newsandopinion.com \| Everybody thinks he has a running mate for John Kerry, but the Democratic pool is so shallow that some of the Democrats are trying to figure out a way to choose someone who isn't even eligible. A law professor at New York University thinks he has found a winning loophole in the 22nd Amendment, which declares that "no person shall be elected president more than twice." He wants to bring back Bill Clinton for a third term, and then find a way to make Mr. Kerry disappear. "The first objection, the constitutional one," writes Stephen Gillers in the New York Times, "can be disposed of easily. The Constitution does not prevent Mr. Clinton from running for vice president." (This is the way lawyers think, how to dispose of the Constitution easily.) There is, however, the technicality of the 12th Amendment, which anyone but a law professor could find easily. This amendment, ratified in 1804, long before the Supreme Court discovered "penumbras" lurking in print so fine no one else could see them, decrees that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." The intent of the amendments seems clear enough, and even if he wanted the man from Hope as his running mate, Mr. Kerry couldn't risk sending the constitutional questions and the election to the Supreme Court to sort out again. The prospects after Bill Clinton fade quickly. John Edwards, the trial lawyer who ran for president when he took a poll and learned that he couldn't be re-elected to the U.S. Senate, is the favorite of the reporters covering him, mostly because they don't want to be called back to the office to cover a congressional campaign, City Hall or freight-car loadings at the Commerce Department. Mr. Edwards is great at blather, as good defense lawyers who make a living keeping criminals on the street have to be. But he proved that you don't win nominations by winning the Pundit Primary, and it's difficult to see what he could bring to a Kerry ticket. He struck out in the South, failing miserably to win a single state but his own native South Carolina, where the majority no longer votes in Democratic primaries. His carefully enhanced Southern accent did him no good: When a Southerner, if Mr. Edwards doesn't mind being called one, can't beat a Massachusetts Yankee in Georgia it probably means that Southerners gag at the sight and scent of him. No Democrat has ever been elected president without carrying several of the Southern states. No doubt someday a Democrat will do it, but the party is brave indeed if it attempts to break this barrier with the most liberal senator on the Hill, and from Massachusetts to boot. Southerners have a bred in the bone aversion to Massachusetts, even when they don't know exactly why, regarding Yankees as purveyors of the double standard, born with no sense of shame for trying to teach folks one way while showing them another. Many a Southerner puts the original wellspring of bigotry in the precincts of the witchburners, greedy missionaries and preachers of a sour piety who force cultural perversions on the rest of us in the name of virtue, eager to keep everyone else in the missionary position. Harsh, to be sure. But it's the caution that the senator will need stronger medicine than a trial lawyer made of a little grit and a lot of gas can conjure in the land of cotton, catfish, sultry nights and memories as long as Bowie knives. Some Democrats still think Sen. Bob Graham of Florida would add pizzazz and panache to the ticket, which is a mystery to everyone else. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana gets an occasional mention, but two senators might be at least one senator too many. If any governor has come to mind, nobody remembers who. The only senator with star power is Hillary, of course, but it's difficult to see how John Kerry, even with the chestful of medals he only pretended to throw away, would agree to play second fiddle to his second fiddle. A Kerry-Hillary ticket would be the strangest mating this side of the Suwannee River, where "love bugs" render the lowlands all but uninhabitable for part of the year. The dynamic love bugs, locked in a flying embrace with the female in control and the male riding backwards, splatter into automobile windshields by the billions. The male bug always dies first. The French-looking war hero would think he was guiding his administration, but the lady would know better. Oh, but what a fine splatter they would make.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 3:55:57 PM
From: Bald Eagle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Do you spend all day looking for bad news? What a loser .. LOL

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 4:09:57 PM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I believe that to be true. Expert sees plunge in world grain stocks, prices up

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 4:17:52 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- A state judge Friday barred New Paltz Mayor Jason West from performing any more same-sex marriages for a month. ``The mayor in substance ignores the oath of office that he took to uphold the law,'' state Supreme Court Justice Vincent Bradley of Ulster County said in granting a temporary restraining order. The restraining order was sought by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel on behalf of a local resident. West performed his first spate of 25 same-sex marriages last Friday, drawing his little village 75 miles north of New York City into a fast-spreading debate over gay marriage that has roosted in communities from Portland, Ore. to Babylon, Long Island. West had said earlier Friday that he was putting off a second round of same-sex marriages planned for Saturday so he could consult with state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. But West had said he only planned to postpone the weddings for a week. A call to West's office seeking comment on Bradley's ruling was not immediately returned. Also Friday, Gov. George Pataki said the state would be ready to crack down on any public official who performed a wedding without a marriage license.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/5/2004 5:30:07 PM
From: Ish	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

<<Expert sees plunge in world grain stocks, prices up>> Great news. I have 18,000 bu of corn stored in my bins.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (548911)	3/6/2004 1:01:52 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

kennyboy: WMD ==Libya Discloses Production of 23 Tons of Mustard Gas By JUDITH MILLER n a formal declaration on Friday, Libya disclosed that it had produced and stored some 23 tons of deadly mustard gas, according to an international disarmament body that monitors the ban on chemical weapons. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, said a Libyan delegation had turned over to the organization more than a dozen folders containing details of the illicit chemical weapons program. In an effort to normalize its relations with the West, the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, announced last December that his country was renouncing chemical, biological and nuclear arms. As officials at the chemical weapons organization and American officials in Washington began analyzing the Libyan declaration, a State Department-chartered ship loaded with more than 500 metric tons of equipment from Libya's nuclear and other weapons programs was preparing to leave Saturday morning. The ship, whose name American officials refused to disclose, is carrying nuclear centrifuges and components, equipment from a uranium conversion facility and Libya's five SCUD-C, longer-range missiles, among other equipment and material, administration officials said. A senior official said that the administration was still discussing the ultimate fate of this material, but that much of it would undoubtedly be destroyed. In late January, two American aircraft flew to the United States carrying nuclear weapons plans, centrifuge designs and components, and containers of chemicals used to enrich uranium. "This is an astounding achievement," the senior official said of the impending departure of the so-called weapons of mass destruction. "Libya's W.M.D. program will soon be sailing away." In its declaration to the chemical weapons organization, officials said Libya had acknowledged that it had made the mustard gas over a decade ago at Rabta, a production facility in the Libyan desert 75 miles southwest of Tripoli. It said it had kept the gas and a variety of chemical precursors intended for the production of sarin and other nerve agents at two storage facilities. Libya also declared that it had tested the gas as a weapon and made thousands of bombs to deliver the lethal agents as part of its chemical weapons program. Libya said the chemical program began in the 1980's and ended in 1990, officials said. In an interview on Friday, Rogelio Pfirter, director general of the chemical weapons organization, described the mustard gas stockpile as quite sizable, though the former Soviet Union and the United States both declared that they had made thousands of tons of the deadly agent. Mr. Pfirter noted that 23 tons of mustard gas could still have caused serious havoc to civilians and armies of the region had it been used. He said Libya had also told his organization that while the mustard gas had been tested, it had never been used in a conflict or even put into bombs or other weapons. Libya had been repeatedly accused of having used mustard gas and perhaps other chemical weapons in 1987 in its conflict with neighboring Chad, accusations Libyan officials had denied. The chemical weapons organization never found the allegations sufficiently persuasive to justify sending a mission to Chad to investigate, an organization official said today. Officials of the organization are now poring over the declarations for information about which countries or companies might have helped Libya make chemical weapons or provide precursor chemicals. Officials said that while Libyan scientists had made the mustard gas, Libya had received precursor chemicals for deadly sarin and other nerve agents from entities in other countries. One official said there was no indication yet that such precursors came from Pakistan. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, has acknowledged having sold nuclear materials and expertise to the nuclear programs of Libya, Iran and North Korea. Officials at the organization said they expected that Libya's dossier on its chemical weapons program would be accurate and complete. Only a handful of states have not signed and ratified the treaty banning chemical weapons. Israel has signed, but not ratified the treaty. Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have not signed it. Nor has North Korea, another state whose nuclear and other weapons programs deeply trouble the United States. Mr. Pfirter said his organization was working closely with American and British inspectors who had visited Libyan weapons sites and advised Libyan officials on how best to carry out the government's renunciation pledges. Last weekend, the organization monitored the destruction in Libya of more than 3,300 bomb casings that had never been filled but were designed to hold chemical agents. Officials from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said the group would now begin plans for building a facility to destroy the mustard gas inside Libya. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company \| Home \| Privacy Policy \| Search \| Corrections \| Help \| Back to Top