If enacted, legal experts said the laws would be the first absolute abortion bans since the landmark 1973 ruling.

However, some abortion foes worry that state bans could backfire especially since five pro-Roe justices remain in the Supreme Court.

It's as predictable as the sun rising that lower courts would strike down such state bans, said Americans United for Life Director Clarke Forsythe.

It would be better to pass legislation "that can be enforced," such as parental notification requirements and fetal pain warnings, the constitutional lawyer told the state issues organization.

As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses "inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.

But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

Oak Brook, Illinois is the home of McDonald's and it's hard to escape the influence of Ronald McDonald in this part of North America. The manager of my hotel is wearing an I'm Lovin' it T-shirt, I'm staying just along the road from McDonald's plaza and my breakfast options stretch from a sausage egg McGriddle to a latte from the McCafe.

McDonald's has had a torrid few years, buffeted by books, TV shows and films, especially Morgan Spurlock's highly entertaining Supersize Me, that have portrayed the company as the source of some of the world's worst ills such as obesity, animal cruelty and employee exploitation. Customers deserted the chain and in 2003 the corporation recorded its first ever quarterly loss.

But things are changing. And I'm part of a delegation of journalists from around the world invited to McDonald's global headquarters to be shown the re-found swagger of the company.

First stop is a brand new McDonald's restaurant with McCafe attached on the main interstate between downtown Chicago and Ronald HQ in Oak Brook. While the open fire, newspapers, proper coffee and cinnamon swirls at the McCafe look appealing, I decide that fried meat is what made Ronald McDonald the second most recognised figure behind Santa Claus and it is only fair to order a sausage egg McGriddle.

Adan, my server, is looking flustered. As part of the new transparency at the company his average serving time is flashed up on the cash register. And thanks to the influx of poncy journalists ordering the complicated apple salad his is reading 37 seconds - a full 11 seconds behind company's best practice. "I'm working on getting it down, I'm working on it," he says. Of course every second he can shave off means extra profit margin for McDonald's, which monitors every restaurant task minutely.

The McGriddle is not a success. It is so soaked in over-sweet maple syrup and other unmentionables that I am forced to abandon it after one mouthful. I feel even more queasy after I examine the nutrition chart, now helpfully printed on the back of every paper tray cover. It comes in at 560 calories, with 32 grams of fat (49pc of my daily recommended value).

As my arteries contract we are ushered (by the uber efficient McDonald's corporate PR women wearing stop-watches around their neck) on to the bus to visit the famous McDonald's Hamburger University. Here workers practice serving Big Macs in mock up kitchens using wooden burgers, with cotton wool standing in for the McFlurry and candy for the French fries. It's like a supersized Early Learning Centre kitchen.

We're shown around by the Diana Thomas, the "Dean of Hamburger University", who has skilfully persuaded the US government to grant the glorified training course a quasi-degree status, giving it 46 college credits (the equivalent of a year and half of a University degree). She warns me that she's working on getting the UK Hamburger University in Finchley recognised by the Government.

The University may look like a glorified play school but it is deadly serious. Every single manager of a US McDonald's trains here, becoming a Bachelor in Hamburgerology (yes, really) and he learns "to walk the talk" as McDonald's chief executive Jim Skinner says.

Skinner is bullish form, after overseeing 32 consecutive months of same-store sales growth. He's the architect of the McDonald's turnaround and while Europe, and the UK particularly is struggling, the rest of the world, especially Asia and Latin America, is Lovin' his salads, rice burgers and coconut water.

Privately, the McDonald's executives are seething about "sneaky" Morgan Spurlock, who they claim hoodwinked the public into thinking McDonald's was poisonous. In public they don't even mention his name, instead emphasising "healthy lifestyle balance" options available to ordinary diners.

Skinner says: "I eat McDonald's every day. I'm not suggesting I'm some example of a specimen. But I'm 61 and I do exercise. You can eat three times a day at McDonald's and be responsible. We're not out here to be proscriptive."

As if to prove the point, we round off the day with perhaps the weirdest meal I've ever eaten - and I've eaten live eel, mind you. It's dubbed McGourmet and it's a 10-course banquet of dishes all prepared using ingredients found in a standard McDonald's. It includes such delicacies as a Big Tasty Meatloaf with cream cheese sauce and a Coca-Cola reduction and a McCrispy Chicken confitted in citrus sauce. It's strangely convincing and yet very, very, odd. A bit like the folk at Oak Brook, Illinois.

“We do not believe there is any additional threat to the community,” said Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Anderson.

Deputies responding to a call of shots fired late yesterday in Goleta, initially found two people dead outside the plant.

Two others were located inside and were taken to a hospital.

One died upon arrival.

The other was critically wounded with a gunshot wound to the head.

Deputies searching the plant about 2am (10am Irish Time) found the bodies of three victims and the female attacker, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Anderson said.

The postal station is located just a few blocks from the University of California, Santa Barbara, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

Authorities said more than 50 people were working at the plant at the time of the shootings.

Young, who also was a civil rights activist and was close to the King family, broke the news during a phone call he made to the Today show.

Asked how he found out about her death, Young said: “I understand she was asleep last night and her daughter tried to wake her up.”

King turned a life shattered by the 1968 assassination of her husband into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality.

"On March 20, 2003, I participated in a peaceful protest against the war. I was arrested, incarcerated, handcuffed, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, arraigned, tried, convicted and sentenced. My conviction is currently under Appeal in the Vermont State Supreme Court. Courtroom procedure allows the condemned the Right of Allocution. This was the first time that I was allowed to speak freely and openly to the court. Below are my words, as I spoke them, to Judge David Suntag, in Vermont District Court, in Bennington, Vt., on October 7, 2004."

A Courtroom Speech

By Rosemarie Jackowski

To get an idea of where Rosemarie is coming from I would suggest you read the above article as well as:

"Silence is the greatest of all crimes"

An interview with Peace Grandma, Rosemarie Jackowski By author Mickey Z

The details of her protest trial can be found at the

Veterans for Peace website.

The idea of a jury steamrolling a grandmother for committing an act of civil disobedience is, unfortunately, not very surprising in America’s current political climate.

BUT…
That is not subject of today’s appeal to you. The current injustice facing this amicable woman has to do with her actions as a plaintiff stemming from a traffic accident in Vermont in the year 2000.

While waiting in a line of traffic she was rear ended by a loaded logging truck. Many eyewitnesses reported the truck driver was “distracted” by some young ladies on the roadside and clearly the negligent party in the accident. It would seem like a straightforward case but for the fact that the truck was owned and operated by the state of Vermont. It gets worse. It has taken FIVE YEARS for the government to even begin her deposition.

I urge you to read the horrific details of this matter in her recent article:

The Deposition By Rosemarie Jackowski


Being deposed by a government lawyer for a case where the State is the defendant is, no doubt, a rough ride. It would seem that the State of Vermont had an intimidation card up its sleeve when the lawyer’s questions began to stray far from the case at hand into the realm of Rosemarie’s political beliefs and very personal life. An excerpt from
The Deposition:

"The big day arrived. I was taken into a small, windowless room in the state’s attorney’s office complex. I looked around. There was a one-way mirror opposite to where I was seated. There were some metal bookshelves with black garbage bags on them. It reminded me of Abu Ghraib.

I was told to raise my right hand and was sworn in. Then the interrogation by an assistant to the state attorney general began. She asked questions about my political activities… questions about my political writings. She had copied all of them from the Internet and waved them about with great emotion. She seemed excited by the fact that some of my articles had appeared on a web site that has a four-letter word in its name. Obviously, she thought that this would embarrass me. It did not. I calmly explained to her that I do not have a web site and I have no control over what name other people give to their web sites. I don’t know if she believed me or not.

Then the interrogation got even more interesting. She asked questions about my sex life. She asked questions about my marriage that had ended 35 years prior. Then she started to ask detailed questions about the fact that I had been the victim of a brutal rape. The rape, which is irrelevant to this case, had occurred 40, yes 40, years ago during a time when I was working in Florida. By now, it had become very clear to me what was happening. There was no doubt in my mind that this was an attempt to intimidate me."

Whether or not you agree with Rosemarie’s political beliefs they should not hold any bearing in her case against a State-owned trucking company that had caused her much physical anguish and financial devastation. As for the exceptionally private matters of sexual assault or divorce- the representative of the State of Vermont has gone too far!

This is not the progressive State that I have read about over the years. This is brutal.

We are appealing to you, dear reader, to take a few moments to write to one or all of the people listed below and join us in demanding a fair and equitable conclusion to this rather straightforward case of negligence on the part of an employee of the State of Vermont.

The harassment and obfuscation by the assistant to the state attorney general and the dragging out of this otherwise uncomplicated matter are Justice delayed and Justice denied.

Dick Sears, Chairman of the State Judiciary Committee: rsears@leg.state.vt.us

Speaker of the State House, Gaye Symington: speaker@leg.state.vt.us

Governor of the State of Vermont, Jim Douglas: http://www.vermont.gov/governor/contact.html

A susinct sentence or two is all we ask. If you are a Blogger we would ask that you perhaps utilize your own space to help spread this appeal with your own article or a link back to this one.

Thank you very much.

Amelopsis and Youngfox.

Residents and deputies observed a blue Corvette racing through a Chino neighborhood at more than 100 mph. There was a brief pursuit before the driver crashed into a fence. A resident of the area grabbed his home video camera.

"I don't know exactly what kind of footage he has on his videotape," said Jodi Miller with the San Bernardino County Sheriff Department.

The tape is in the possession of the sheriff's department.

Ilio Carreon, who was a passenger in the car, is recovering Monday from surgery after the confrontation.

Relatives who saw a portion of the tape tell NBC4 that Carreon was calm, in control and cooperating with the deputy.

NBC4 reports that at 10:21 p.m. the sheriff's deputy radio dispatched that he was holding a suspect at gunpoint.

At 10:26 p.m. neighbors say they heard four gunshots.

"He was getting out of the car with his hands up and that's when his friend started running. Since my husband was surrendering, they shot him. They shot him on the shoulder, on the chest and the leg," said the victim's wife Mariela Carreon.

Relatives don't believe Carreon would have carried a weapon, even though he is an MP with the Air Force. Carreon was home on leave from Iraq and had been out with friends Sunday night.

Relatives tell NBC4 that Carreon always carried his military badge and ID with him and he may have been shot reaching for those items in his pocket.

The driver of the car was arrested and charged with felony evading. The deputy who was on patrol was not injured and is on administrative leave.

In a CBS 2 excusive, Joanie Lum talked to the man who was savagely beaten just trying to do his job.

UPS driver Thomas Murphy says he was beaten by a group of school kids on busy St. Charles Road in Bellwood, the route he has driven for 12 years.

He says a teenager walked out in front of his delivery truck Friday at about 3 p.m. When he stopped the truck, 15 to 20 youths surrounded him.

"Somebody clocked me with a pipe. I took kicks from my right. My eyes caked over. I tried to get up and defend myself as best I could," Murphy said.

He was beaten from his head to his ankles.

"I remember being down on one knee, falling to the ground with kids on top of me," Murphy said.

He thinks a passing motorist called for help.

The Bellwood police believe the attackers came from Roosevelt Middle School, located a couple of blocks away. They have stepped up patrols in the area.

“If other delivery drivers are going to face this, we want our patrols in the area," said Bellwood Police Chief Robert Collins.

“Somebody should be held accountable for these kids. They run wild like a pack of wolves, where's the parents?" Murphy said.

In spite of his trauma, Murphy says he wants to get back to work.

"I have every intention of getting back on my route. I'd like to do it with some sense of security," he said.

Police say an anonymous witness has come forward with the names of several people involved in the attack. Murphy identified a couple of people in a photo lineup Monday afternoon, but no one's been arrested yet.

Andrew Jones is a man on a mission. A 2003 UCLA graduate and former head of the campus Republican organization, Jones is waging a war against the twin evils of women's and ethnic studies. He is also taking aim against specific devious leftist professors who poison the minds of freedom-loving students at UCLA with their anti-American foreign policy critiques.

In a most heroic move, Jones has created the Bruin Alumni Association, which targets 30 "dirty" professors and urges UCLA students to spy on their leftist professors by reporting them for deviant behavior -- anything that lies outside "normal thought," in Jones's words. Those who perform this patriotic service are to be rewarded with the bounties Jones has placed on the professors' heads.

This is all well and good and perfectly cheery. But, there is one serious problem with Jones's scheme: the bounty for handing in a suspect professor's class notes and materials is a mere $100. Such a low figure is a serious insult to a righteous cause.

Surely, Jones and his hardworking staff at the Bruin Alumni Association (namely, Jones, who is the staff) must understand the grave threat the leftist academics pose at UCLA. First, there are the cruel female professors who force young college women to think and reflect about their role in society when we all know - thanks to Republican values - that women are only supposed to exercise their upper body in the kitchen and their lower body in the bedroom. Then, there are Black teachers who tell their students fairy-tales about white-imposed slavery, segregation, disenfranchisement, unequal housing, banking, and state services. Last but not least are those anti-American professors whose detailed writings about the government's illegal wars apparently fuel the activities of terrorists abroad - terrorists who, without UCLA academic research papers, would have absolutely no idea that people in their own countries and of their own faith are always being blown to pieces all around them.

Given this stark reality, I propose to Mr. Jones that he significantly raise the bounties placed on deviant UCLA academics. After all, al-Qaeda leaders and similar terrorist figureheads have multi-million dollar bounties placed on their heads. Why shouldn't those who aid and abet them right here in our universities also be subject to similar treatment?

Similarly, while I must credit Mr. Jones for raising the stakes a notch with intimidation tactics like hit-lists and secret spying operations in the enemy's classrooms, I must say that Mr. Jones is dangerously close to erring on the side of girlie-men tactics. After all, why should we stop with mere spying and intimidating? Higher bounty rewards should be commensurate with even more patriotic, pro-American actions taken against these professors. This should include fly-by airstrikes, precision attacks, and home raids. Only through this comprehensive process of ensuring true academic freedom will the beacon of liberty be secured in the homeland.

It goes without saying, of course, that I have painted the scenarios above not as serious suggestions, but only as a means of illustrating that the "logic" pursued by zealots like Jones can easily lead down the path of insanity if pursued to its ineluctable conclusion -- just as we have already seen happen when it comes to untermenschen (literally: under-people) abroad.

Interestingly, the UCLA graduate's crusade against his university has alienated some fellow hard-right activists. David Horowitz, the leading proponent of the disingenuously named "academic freedom" movement, said Jones used to work under his tutelage, but had to be fired for trying to strong-arm students into filing false reports against leftists. Horowitz also derided Jones's tactics as "baiting people," and accused him of stealing his donor list. Since being reprimanded by Horowitz for going too far in attacking academia is a bit like being lectured on boxing etiquette by Mike Tyson, this is no small matter.

Horowitz, though, is not the only one with reservations. Though Jones's little "alumni" spy organization comprises only himself, it boasts a number of "advisers" (read: wealthy right-wing activists). Three of these "advisers" have defected on grounds that Jones's vigilantism is harming the movement: Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, Los Angeles radio talk-show host Al Rantel, and ex-congressman James Rogan. "Now what's happened is that the whole project is discredited. Now it looks like a bunch of crazies who were trying to go after innocent professors…" complained Rantel.

Indeed, as of last Tuesday, Jones himself declared a partial surrender, dropping the bounties but vowing to continue as a "volunteer organization." But neither the hand wringing of conservative activists who opposed the bounty idea for tactical reasons nor Jones's own limited retreat will bring a halt to "the whole project." Jones's venture cannot be written off as an extreme deviation within the conservative movement, for the rationale he provides for his campaign is a mirror-image of the philosophy behind the broader effort to destroy academics whose research exposes Republicans' most cherished ideals: white male privilege and the blowing up of people abroad necessary to sustain it.

Articulating his position a few days ago, Jones echoed the line long touted by his ex-mentor, Horowitz, "Everyone retreats into me-search. 'I'm black so I'm going to study black issues.' White folks don't feel the need to do that." The remarkable idiocy of this statement is almost too much to fathom. Jones seems to believe that, in a country which spent the better part of the 19th century finding scientific rationalizations for theories of black inferiority, which placed blacks in plantation fields, war zones, and rope nooses long before it opened its doors to them in institutions of learning, which exclusively studied the "greatness" of Europe and America alone in classrooms, the educational curriculum was not already oriented toward "white folks." Black studies, in the minds of Jones, exists as some kind of silly, selfish endeavor, instead of as a corrective antidote to two hundred years of an official educational program that has been as contemptuous of blacks as the society that enslaved, segregated, and marginalized them.

Since Jones, is, after all, a graduate of a school "overrun" by "leftist" faculty, it is impossible he could be ignorant of this historical reality. The only plausible explanation is that he is an irredeemable racist, or that UCLA's mental-health facilities are ill-equipped to handle patients suffering from severe memory loss.

Whatever the case, his self-centeredness and goal of silencing opposition is not 'extreme' within the conservative movement, but rather, completely in line with its anti-intellectual politics aimed against academia. One of the latest and most innovative twists on this victim-mentality play of those in power came in 2004, when rabidly conservative pro-Israel pundits and their front groups made hit lists and began compiling notes on academics who were labeled "anti-Semites" for basing their teachings on Israeli archival evidence (dug up by Israeli Jewish historians, no less), which proved that Israel committed massive war crimes -- including forced expulsion of Palestinians -- to create its 1948 borders. Conservative pro-Israel and other movements (spearheaded by Horowitz, among others) urged implementation of state-led mind-control of academia, resulting in congressional passage of bill HR 3077 last year. HR 3077 is designed to weed out teaching deemed "anti-American" and "anti-Israeli," and to bolster education that "better reflect[s] national needs related to homeland security."

Jones's outlook, like that of his right-wing counterparts, is similarly neurotic when it comes to socialism. Before he removed his hit-list of thirty "dirty" professors who made the mistake of not sharing Jones's penchant for stupidity, the number-one target was Professor Peter McLaren, an academic respected in socialist circles, particularly in Mexico and Latin America, where neo-liberalism is the God that failed. Jones's "alumni" website labeled McLaren "a monster" and contained the following, weirdly obsessive description of a McLaren photograph: "He stands before the camera expressionless, long blond hair tousled just so, beady little sunglasses cloaking his knowledge of the evil which lurks in the hearts of men."

I have no idea what "beady little sunglasses" look like, or what special secrets of evil any pair of sunglasses can cloak (can I score a pair?), but the reference to the professor's hair "tousled just so" appears to be a dig related to another one of Jones's objects of hatred: "McLaren, in keeping with the radical left's identity politics, has been a friend to the gay community." Presumably, McLaren would have been a much better academic in Jones's eyes as an enemy of the gay community, bludgeoning their heads with his briefcase and strangling them with his suit-jacket wherever he found them.

With his too-clever-by-half idea of bribing students to report their own teachers and his openly professed irrational hatreds, the UCLA graduate ended up crippling his own little crusade and earning the disapproval of other right-wingers who are trying to purge America of critical thinking in tactically sounder ways. Thus, Jones's methods have backfired for the moment. But his effort is a stern reminder that the line between American conservatism today and Germany's fascist anti-intellectual movement of the 1930s is thinner than a hair on a bald man's head.

"He reported that he saw three individuals on foot inside the (secure area) and when he approached in his vehicle they ran into the woods," he said.

Lindamood said the guard was between 70 and 165 feet away at the time and the area was brightly lit. The guard won't face any disciplinary measures.

"In fact, he was commended for the promptness of his report, for the detail contained in his report, and for his diligence in following up until his backup arrived," Lindamood said.

The 13,000-acre Army complex, located a half-hour south of Little Rock, began destroying its chemical weapons stockpile in March to comply with international treaties.

There is another option: doing nothing, just continuing on as a rag-tag, undisciplined, weak OINO -- that's "Opposition In Name Only." But I think we all know that simply makes no sense. Being rolled regularly by the Republicans, or refusing to fight them in ways other than symbolic, gets old real fast.

OPTION#1: REFORMING FROM WITHIN

The first option, in a sense, is already happening. Folks like Paul Hackett in Ohio and Bernie Saunders in Vermont, both running for Senate, Diane Lawrence in a Florida Congressional district -- plus Cindy Sheehan thinking about a Senate race in California -- are willing to put themselves out there. Good people, good Democrats, willing to step out and step up in an effort to try to change the face of party, and American, politics.

So it's possible that many young, and not-so-young, activists from the Democratic base can start reforming from within -- starting at the precinct and municipal level, emerging from state legislatures, moving into statewide offices, taking the leap to running for Congress and so on.

That kind of activist movement, whether coordinated or run on the fly by individuals, takes a tremendous amount of energy, courage, money, and clear-headed planning. It may require a decade or so to even begin to see demonstrable results. Can the Democratic Party afford the luxury of the decade or more it might take? Can the country handle the amount of Bush-like corruption, authoritarianism, wars, torture, moral lassitude that will transpire during that period while the foundation is being laid for a new, re-energized Democratic Party?

Perhaps more important, will the big bucks (George Soros? Peter Lewis? show-biz wealth?) see what needs to be done and provide the required financing and political infrastructure building? When the conservatives got over their '64 humiliation, they didn't sulk; they started a decades-long campaign to take power by buying or creating media organs to get their message out, established think-tanks where policy and philosophies and strategies could be developed, created ways to get college-age youths involved in conservative politics.

EDUCATION COMES FROM EVERYWHERE

In short, they were dead-serious about changing the system that had locked them out for so long. Their big-buck magnates and foundations (Coors, Scaife, Olin, et al.) footed the bill. And, eventually, as we know, they wound up taking over the Congress, the White House, much of the media -- and now are in the process of locking up the Judiciary as well.

Am I suggesting that we imitate the rightwing tactics and strategies -- and smash-mouth politics -- that brought them to power? No way. But, while not abandoning our morality and principles, we have much to learn from that level of commitment and tenacity and patience.

Are we in the Democratic "base" ready to sign on, to sign up, for that level of work and the dedicated slog it will take? Or will we remain a base that energizes itself every four years and then wonders why we keep getting blind-sided by an organization (Rove Inc.) that thinks, breathes, acts politics every waking second? Take your pick.

I think it's not necessarily too late to make the attempt to reform the party from within. But it is late, and it will require a humongous amount of toil, sweat, and lots of tears to turn this supertanker around and then bring this party back to speed and coherence and courage. We must first make the Democrats into a true party of opposition, and then convince the American people that it's capable of governing.

(We're talking about elections here, which means that the Democratic Party is going to have to step out and point out forthrightly that our current voting system is a corrupted mess. It outsources ballot-counting to private corporations with secret software easily open to manipulation from the companies that own the e-voting machines and vote-counting computers, or to hacking from without. Those corporations are Republican-supporters at present, and key recent elections probably were fiddled with, according to scholars and other experts who have examined the shoddy system. If we can't overhaul the current manner of voting and ballot-counting, taking corruption and partisanship out of it, it won't matter how clean and transparent and dynamic our refurbished party is. We'll still contine to "lose," even when we win.)

OPTION#2: REFORMING FROM WITHOUT

I can't tell you how many liberal friends have expressed the same thought to me in recent months, in variations of these words: The Democratic Party is, and probably will continue to be, an embarrassing disaster, and it's time to at least start thinking tentatively about political life without it. That is, a viable third party.

Obviously, we're talking longer-range here, not about what is likely to happen for the 2006 midterm election, although events and scandals are unfolding at such warp speed these days that in some areas of the country, progressive insurgent candidates might have a real chance.

In 2008, if the choice is between a Bush-type clone (maybe even Jeb) and a middle-of-the-road Democrat, with no electable third-party candidate also in the race, we on the Left -- and even many in the middle -- may once again be put in the position, for the sake of the Republic, of holding our noses and voting and working for the Democratic candidate.

PASSION AND PRIDE IN OUR PARTY

But many of us would rather not have to go the nose-holding route again, preferring to have a party and candidates of which we can be passionately proud.

If it can't accomplished within be a refurbished, restructured Democratic Party, the thinking goes, then perhaps it's time for building a new, citizen-based party from the bottom up -- one that is less beholden to corporate and traditional power- and -financing sources, and therefore more free to speak out and act boldly in support of systematic reform and an adherence to policies and programs that make moral and political sense.

What might some of those principles be? Here are a few, which could apply as well to a renovated Democratic Party, if some of the old baggage can be jettisoned: war only out of of necessity, never a choice; more devotion to most peoples' actual needs (affordable health-care, improving public schools, infrastructure repair, clean air and water, enforcing safety regulations in mines and other workplaces, etc.) and less to giving even more tax breaks to the already wealthy and rapacious corporations; more fiscal responsibility in budgeting; paying down the humongous deficit; paying serious attention to reality (including science) and less to mere belief and political fantasy; going after terrorists without fatally compromising our morality or civil-liberties, etc.

If there were to be a new, viable third party in 2008, it's possible that this potential alliance could field candidates for President and Vice President -- assuming somebody of great character and political savvy emerges to help lead the way. But if the 2008 scenario unfolds something like what is described above, and if we've been busily building a grassroots alternative party from the ground up -- getting candidates elected on the local, district, state and congressional levels -- this new movement will be able to flex its growing political muscle by forcing the Democrats more toward a progressive agenda, all the while it prepares a future national slate of electable candidates for President and Vice-President.

A PROGRESSIVE'S ODYSSEY

Before I go deeper into this possible scenario, and where the starting base for a viable third party might originate, it may be important for readers to know where I'm coming from politically and that I'm not speaking totally off the top of my head. So here's a brief chronological history.

Raised in the South, I was a Democrat up until 1968; along with many other young people, I become more radicalized by events in "The Sixties." Appalled by the Democratic Party's sell-out on the Vietnam War, I joined with Marcus Raskin, Dr. Benjamin Spock and others to help found The New Party, and was active mostly in Washington State, where I was teaching college, in promoting that new, more radical alternative party. When the Vietnam War ended in the mid-'70s, and The New Party demonstrated that it had no legs for the long haul, I returned to the Democratic fold as the electable alternative to the Republicans. I worked as an activist journalist for, among others, Northwest Passage in the Pacific Northwest, and then later as a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and as a free-lancer for The Nation, The Progressive, the War Resisters League's WIN magazine and others.

In 1996, I supported Ralph Nader's insurgent candidacy for President. In 2000, even while more closely aligned with Nader's point of view, I supported Al Gore, as the one candidate who had a chance of stopping the Bush juggernaut. After 9/11, I began writing on a free-lance basis for a wide variety of progressive and liberal websites (TruthOut, CounterPunch, BuzzFlash, SmirkingChimp, et al.), and in November of 2002, Ernest Partridge and I founded The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org) as an independent progressive voice. In 2004, despite my deep revulsion at his position on the Iraq War, I worked for the election of John Kerry, as the only viable alternative to a second Bush term, which promised to be one dedicated to even more White House horrors.

As you can see, though I have an long-term affinity for the Democratic Party, that relationship is not set in cement and I have no animus toward the establishment of third parties, though starting one up requires much more difficult work than taking over an existing institutional party. My aim always is to work toward enactment of forward-thinking, progressive legislation and policies, which can be most effectively accomplished by getting honest, dynamic, progressive candidates elected. I believe, along with many others, that a party, Democratic or otherwise, has to be serious and (eventually) electable to justify putting lots of my time, energy and money into it.

A TRUE PARTY, NOT AN EGO-RUN

And that alternative party would have to be organized as a genuine grassroots political organization, around for the long haul, not an election-specific movement dependent merely on the candidate. That was Nader's weakest link; it seemed to be solely about electing him, not in building a true, small-d democratic party. Indeed, virtually all "third-party" movements in recent elections have seemed to have been designed more to garner "protest" votes -- John Anderson, Ross Perot, Nader, et al. -- rather than aimed at building a full-fledged party that could assume power at some point.

So, looking around the liberal-to-progressive political landscape these days, where might a new alternative party come from? Things are much in flux, of course, and what seems reasonable and logical now might not hold true six months or a year from now. (Who knows? Given Bush's Iraq deceits, lies and incompetence, plus the fallout from the Abramoff scandal, plus the likely indictment of Karl Rove, plus the aversion folks have to being spied on by government agents without a court-sanctioned warrant, we may by then be seeing Bush and Cheney in the impeachment well in the Senate.)

THE ALLIANCE'S CHARTER MEMBERS

So who would make up the core of this party? I would guess that the base of a party -- for want of a better name, let's call this entity the New Democratic Party (NDP) -- could be constructed from elements within the Progressive Democrats of America, Green Party, the Change to Win union coalition, angry Guard and military troops and veterans, peace groups, and other similar disenchanted organizations and individuals.

This new alliance might also attract a wide variety of distressed Libertarians and traditional Republicans horrified at how their party was hijacked from them by rightwing extremists. These disenchanted conservatives, unable to bring themselves to vote for Democrats, might be willing to join together with liberals on civil-liberties and sound money-management grounds -- or as a vehicle to defeat the dangerous forces that have captured their party, which would provide an opening for their more moderate conservatism to fight for power in a reconstituted Republican Party.

As you can see, this proposal is the merest outline of the possible. My main objective here is to get some discussion started about the advisability of both staying with and reforming the Democratic Party, and testing the political waters for a third-party movement. If there is genuine and widespread acceptance to either idea, then it will be time to brainstorm about how best and most effectively such a movement can be actualized.

All we know for certain at this stage -- looking at the current badly-warped, deficient Democratic Party -- is: Never Again! We have to move, and quickly, one way or the other.

If you have ideas about either possibility, I'd love to hear your comments, suggestions, alternative scenarios, etc., which will be distilled into a future article to help continue the dialogue and build political momentum. Onward!

www.crisispapers.org

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).

The plane appeared headed for an arrival when it went down about 6:30 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.

The aircraft went down in an industrial park near a residential area roughly a mile from the airport.

The plane, a 1974 Cessna 421B, had departed from Olathe, Kansas, the FAA said.

The Cook County medical examiner's office confirmed four people were killed in the crash but could not immediately provide any details.

The plane smashed into a stack of steel and plywood construction material used to build foundations for homes, said Michael Pirron, owner of DeGraf Concrete Construction Inc., the property where the plane crashed.

There were no visible skid marks indicating the plane touched down before it hit, he said.

"It's pretty unrecognizable that it's a plane," Pirron said.

Pirron said his security cameras captured three images of the plane as it crashed. Those images were turned over to investigators, who were still pouring over the wreckage late Monday.

Wheeling is about 24 miles northwest of Chicago.