"This case is not about lawyers or anyone else becoming celebrities," [Jackson's lawyer, Thomas Mesereau] said. "This defense is going to be conducted with professionalism and dignity at all times. This case is about one thing only. It's about the dignity[1], the integrity[2], the decency[3], the honor[4], the charity[5], the innocence[6], and the complete vindication[7] of a wonderful human being named Michael Jackson."

HANOI (Reuters) - Twenty-nine years after the end of the Vietnam war, communist military mastermind General Vo Nguyen Giap remains grateful to the Americans who opposed it. The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand. "I would like to thank them," the 93-year-old veteran said on Friday of those Americans who opposed the war.

But he sounded a note of warning. "Any forces that wish to impose their will on other nations will surely fail," he said. "Each nation should have the right to independence," he said, wagging a finger at reporters and Foreign Ministry staff in an ornate French colonial style government guest house in the capital, Hanoi.

The Democratic presidential candidate's campaign has been almost invisible not only in pivotal states, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, but also in the South, a region that some party strategists fear he will "write off" to focus his resources elsewhere in the country, according to Democratic officials.

"I spoke at a Lincoln Day dinner in the northwest corner of Michigan Saturday night, where there was a Bush operative who said he was one of nine in Michigan. I was stunned. I'm wondering if the Bush people are too geared up and should save their resources for a better time," said Michigan election analyst Bill Ballenger.

The president told Tenet several times, "Make sure no one stretches to make our case."

Right. No stretching. That sounds like the Bush we know, doesn't it?

Of course, considering that this presentation was made in late December 2002, it was a little late for that warning, wasn't it?

...it's April already and they haven't done it yet. What are they waiting for? Or were they just yanking Bush's chain all along?

Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 2:03 AM Subject: Update from LtCol Kennedy Dear Ladies, the last two days have been the hardest two days this battalion has faced in over 30 years. Within the blink of an eye the situation went form relatively calm to a raging storm. You've known that since arriving there has been violence; attacks have been sporadic and mostly limited to roadside bombs. Your husbands have become experts at recognizing those threats and neutralizing them before we are injured. Up to this point the war has been the purview of corporals and sergeants, and the squad they lead. Yesterday the enemy upped the ante. Early in the morning we exchanged gunfire with a group of insurgents without significant loss. As morning progressed, the enemy fed more men into the fight and we responded with stronger force. Unfortunately, this led to injuries as our Marines and sailors started clearing the city block by block. The enemy did not run; they fought us like soldiers. And we destroyed the enemy like only Marines can. By the end of the evening the local hospital was so full of their dead and wounded that they ran out of space to put them. Your husbands were awesome all night they stayed at the job of securing the streets and nobody challenged them as the hours wore on. They did not surrender an inch nor did flinch from the next potential threat. Previous to yesterday the terrorist thought that we were soft enough to challenge. As of tonight the message is loud and clear that the Marines will not be beaten. Today the enemy started all over again, although with far fewer numbers, only now the rest of the battalion joined the fight. Without elaborating too much, weapons company and Golf crushed their attackers with the vengeance of the righteous. They filled up the hospitals again and we suffered only a few injuries. Echo company dominated the previous day's battlefield. Fox company patrolled with confidence and authority; nobody challenged them. Even Headquarters Company manned their stations and counted far fewer people openly watching us with disdain. If the enemy is foolish enough to try to take your men again they will not survive contact. We are here to win. The news looks grim from back in the States. We did take losses that, in our hearts, we will always live with. The men we lost were taken within the very opening minutes of the violence. They could not have foreseen the treachery of the enemy and they did not suffer. We can never replace these Marines and Sailors but they will fight on with us in spirit. We are not feeling sorry for ourselves nor do we fear what tomorrow will bring. The battalion has lived up to its reputation as Magnificent Bastards. Yesterday made everyone here stronger and wiser; it will be a cold day in Hell before we are taken for granted again. Paul Kennedy and Jim Booker

The lead of the story by reporters Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus said: "President Bush was warned a month before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the FBI had information that terrorists might be preparing for a hijacking in the United States and might be targeting a building in Lower Manhattan." The story said the information was in the written daily briefing presented to Bush on Aug. 6, 2001.

The memo refers to "federal buildings" and not "a building," as the story's first sentence does. The memo does not use the word "targeting." It mentions "New York" but does not specify "Lower Manhattan." ... The words "targeting a building in Lower Manhattan" present a mental picture closer to the World Trade Center than does "federal buildings in New York," which could mean many locations.

"Message conveyed," wrote one reader. "Fully aware of Osama bin Laden's plans to hijack an airliner and crash it into a building in lower Manhattan, Bush has fun on the golf course."

...it seems to me that these complaints, even if some of them reflect political views, are valid criticisms and worth learning from.

Jacques Tiziou, a Frenchman-turned-American who lives in a tree-fringed colonial in Northwest, will gather as many as he can, eating a few right away and saving the rest for later. Silver-bearded and gentle of disposition, he speaks in accented English that makes even bugs sound irresistible. "You're going to grab one and put it in your mouth alive," he says with a twinkle in his eye. "You have to."

...David George Gordon, a science writer in Port Townsend, Wash., and the author of "The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook," ...[believes] the cicadas about to emerge in the eastern United States should be considered a delicacy. "They have a nutty flavor," he says, "almost like a pistachio nut." Gordon's cookbook offers a recipe for cicada-topped pizza. As an accompaniment, he suggests a crisp chardonnay or a semillon blanc. He also recommends you begin drinking as you cook, "to fortify yourself."

Experienced cicada-eaters advise would-be entomophages to be alert for the mass emergence that will begin one May evening, when nymphs -- as many as 1.5 million per acre -- will crawl out of the soil and head for a vertical surface, usually a tree. There they will molt, taking about an hour to squeeze out of their dust-colored skins. Once they have broken free, it is your moment to strike: Pluck the creamy white adults off the trees. Gather as many as you desire for the culinary adventures ahead. Admire their red eyes and furled wings. Do hurry. The exoskeletons of the newly molted adults will turn black within about 12 hours and harden over the next couple days. Once that happens, the cicadas remain eminently edible but they lose their soft-shell cachet. They're also easier to apprehend in their just-molted stage. If you don't want to eat your cicadas right off the tree, cookbook author Gordon recommends placing your bounty in the freezer. "It's a dignified death; they drift off into a deep sleep and never feel any pain," he says.

(Inspector Mark) Johnson took a sample of the white powder from the trunk to test. Was it heroin, speed, cocaine? Negative on each. As he shook the jars of brown liquid, Noris (Ressam's alias), who could see Johnson from the patrol car, ducked down to the floor. Within a couple of days, the inspectors would learn that the brown liquid Johnson had shaken was a powerful, highly unstable relative of nitroglycerin that could have blown them all to bits.

I'm not sure what the context of that statement was, but it seems like a reasonably frank admission of an obvious truth. It's too late now, of course, but I still think Bush and Rice would have been better off saying something along these lines all along.

My central criticism around all this is not that 9/11 happened, but that "terrorism" wasn't a particular priority for Bush before it, that afterwards he wrapped himself in it, and that his policies are long term disasters.

The Lone Star State is grappling with the nation's largest population of feral pigs -- squealing, rooting hordes of hogs that can destroy farmland and wildlife habitats, sully public parks, attack pets and domestic animals, and spread diseases such as tuberculosis and even anthrax to farm animals.

The pigs are running amok, particularly in Texas, where the population has "skyrocketed" in the past decade, said Billy Higginbotham, a fish and wildlife specialist with Texas A&M University. He tracks the pigs the best he can. "We don't really know how many there are," he says, adding that no resident had anything "good to say about feral hogs." Mr. Higginbotham also tracks pig damage, which averages $4,184 per incident among farmers or landowners vexed by errant pigs wallowing in ponds, digging up fences, stealing feed or attacking pets. They are not petite pigs: Feral versions can weigh up to 450 pounds. "I fear allowing my grandchildren to go beyond the yard as they may be attacked by wild hogs," one landowner wrote in a response to Mr. Higginbotham's ongoing survey of residents with serious wild pig issues in 40 Texas counties. ... Some tolerate wild hogs just fine -- mainly local hunters, sportsmen or game guides who prefer to negotiate with the pigs through a shotgun or bow and arrow. Sharpshooters have the blessings of many local authorities who are hard-pressed to control the mostly nocturnal pigs. In Texas, feral-hog hunting requires a license and there is no bag limit.

None of this goes over well with Virginia-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, (PETA) which has protested feral-pig hunting or public "hot dog" hunts -- which pit a pig against a dog -- for years, calling the practices "outrageous" and blaming the problem on "human irresponsibility."

The evidence -- Islamic books, pamphlets, tapes and farewell letters in Arabic -- suggested that some of the men were not Iraqis from the area, but foreign Sunni Muslims who had traveled to this urban Sunni stronghold to fight and die in a holy war, both against the U.S. forces and the country's Shiite Muslim majority.

...so far they have not conclusively established that any of the insurgents were foreign infiltrators.

But the unearthing of the Islamic documents among the bomb-making materials Sunday, while two foreign journalists and an Arabic interpreter were present, suggested that at least some of the suicide squad members were not from Iraq.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Iraqi militants have seized Korean, Japanese and Arab-Israeli civilians in the past two days, introducing an ominous new tactic designed to test the will of U.S. coalition partners who never expected to have to fight.

We know that the building of democracy is tough. It doesn't come easily. We have our own history. When our Founding Fathers said, "We the people," they didn't mean me.

To Loudoun County Board of Supervisors (Vice) Chairman Bruce Tulloch, who leads the developer-friendly faction of the board now in control, the rapid growth "is not a good thing or a bad thing. It's a challenging thing."

The board chairman, Scott York, a holdover from the slow-growth board, sees it differently. He called the new board's policies the "Leave No Developer Left Behind Plan" and said county voters are not getting what they bargained for.

The previous board swept into office four years ago and changed the zoning to take nearly 100,000 housing units out of the county building pipeline. When they did so, according to Tulloch, "they also stuck their head in the sand and would not talk to the development community." The result, Tulloch said, was that developers built anyway, to the maximum extent they were permitted under the zoning regulations. And the developers contributed nothing toward payment for roads or construction of playgrounds, parks and trails. ... While other fast-growing counties in Virginia continue to more often elect leaders hostile to developers, Tulloch said that in Loudoun County "people saw what was happening. Developments were still popping up, but the developers weren't putting up curbs; they weren't putting up tot lots; they weren't building trails," Tulloch said. "What do you get? Nothing."

I'd like to see videotaping required for all police interviews, and in return I'd suggest that the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination be discarded. If police interviews are all recorded and trials are all held in public, it's not at all clear to me what value the 5th Amendment right to silence has anymore.

• The quiz was fairly easy;
• Only people who are reasonably proficient at grammar would take such a quiz; or
• Only people who excel at these quizzes post them on their weblogs.

The Defense Department has approved adding Air Force Capt. Edward Alan Brudno's name to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, ruling that his 1973 suicide was a direct result of wounds suffered as a prisoner of war.

The Air Force's recommendation to add the name to the memorial sparked debate last month after the president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Jan C. Scruggs, contended that the addition could lead to thousands of other suicide victims' names being engraved on the wall.

...the longstanding guidelines for inclusion on the wall, which limit eligibility to military service members who were killed in Vietnam or who suffered injuries there that later proved fatal.

Brudno's wounds were related to severe physical abuse, psychological abuse and torture in several prisoner of war camps in North Vietnam, according to a spokesman for Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Army divisions that fought the past 12 months in Iraq have met virtually every re-enlistment goal, a sign that the all-volunteer force remains strong under the stress of frequent deployments and hazardous duty. ... "This tends to rebut armchair critics who said the sky is falling and the vultures are circling and the Army is gong to lose all its troops," said Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "This is not true. The soldiers get it."

...contrary to the idea that most of these folks are in it for free college and other benefits, most soldiers not only know what they're signing up for but they actually want to do it.

Apr 02, 2004 -- Loudoun taxpayers may see a tax rate of $1.1075 for FY 2005 after the board of supervisors wrapped up straw votes last night that gave the schools an additional $3 million and county employees a 4 percent raise.

The Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday recommended the establishment of a director of national intelligence who would have both budgetary and operational control over the CIA and the much larger collection of Pentagon and other agencies that collect and analyze intelligence. In offering what would be a major reorganization, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said: "One of the major deficiencies in our intelligence community is the fact that there are 15 intelligence agencies -- operating with different rules, cultures and databases -- that do not work as one integrated intelligence community."

A good radio show has strong pacing and a deft mixture of ideology, confrontation and humor. Franken's "Factor" was meandering and discursive, almost NPR-like, sounding more like someone shooting the breeze at a dinner party than trying to persuade listeners. The "bumpers" between segments were soft and Muzak-like. With Franken speaking in a relatively low voice, the self-proclaimed "Zero Spin Zone" sometimes sounded like a zero energy zone.