Albert Levin, the court-appointed attorney for suspect Patrick Abraham, said he believes his client was ensnared by the informant.

There was "a lot of talking going on by the informant and more listening by the defendant and or the defendants," Levin told Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly.

Nathan Clarke, a lawyer for another suspect Rotschild Augustine, agreed.

"With respect to my client, from what I can read in the indictment, there's going to be a question of whether there's even sufficient evidence to sustain the burden of proof on conviction," Clarke said.

"If by any chance there's a scintilla of that then, of course, there's going to be the entrapment issue," he said.

"This thing took place over eight months, according to the indictment and at the end of the indictment, it says that this thing became disorganized and nobody had ever done anything or did anything," Clarke said.

Abraham, Augustine and three other men arrested on Thursday in Miami appeared briefly in a magistrate's court on Friday.

Another suspect arrested in Atlanta made his initial court appearance there on Friday. The seventh suspect, arrested in the Miami area earlier last week on a probation violation, was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.

For instance, the Bush administration took no action in early April 2006, when a Spanish-language Miami television station interviewed Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, who offered a detailed justification for the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight that killed 73 people, including the young members of the Cuban national fencing team.

Bosch refused to admit guilt, but his chilling defense of the bombing - and the strong evidence that has swirled around his role - left little doubt of his complicity, even as he lives in Miami as a free man, protected both in the past and present by the Bush family.

The Bush administration also has acted at a glacial pace in dealing with another Cuban exile implicated in the bombing, Luis Posada Carriles, whose illegal presence in Miami was an open secret for weeks in early 2005 before U.S. authorities took him into custody, only after he had held a press conference.

But even then, the administration has balked at sending Posada back to Venezuela where the government of Hugo Chavez - unlike some of its predecessors - was eager to prosecute Posada for the Cubana Airlines murders.

Summing up George W. Bush's dilemma in 2005, the New York Times wrote, "A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists. But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for President Bush and his brother, Jeb." [NYT, May 9, 2005]

Bush Family Ties

But there's really nothing new about these two terrorists - and other violent right-wing extremists - getting protection from the Bush family.

For three decades, both Bosch and Posada have been under the Bush family's protective wing, starting with former President George H.W. Bush (who was CIA director when the airline bombing occurred in 1976) and extending to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and President George W. Bush.

The evidence points to one obvious conclusion: the Bushes regard terrorism - defined as killing civilians to make a political point - as justified in cases when their interests match those of the terrorists. In other words, their moral outrage is selective, depending on the identity of the victims.

That hypocrisy was dramatized by the TV interview with Bosch on Miami's Channel 41, which was cited in articles on the Internet by Venezuela's lawyer José Pertierra, but was otherwise widely ignored by the U.S. news media. [For Pertierra's story, see Counterpunch, April 11, 2006]

"Did you down that plane in 1976?" asked reporter Juan Manuel Cao.

"If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself," Bosch answered, "and if I tell you that I did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other."

But when Cao asked Bosch to comment on the civilians who died when the plane crashed off the coast of Barbados in 1976, Bosch responded, "In a war such as us Cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant [Fidel Castro], you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach."

"But don't you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?" Cao asked.

"Who was on board that plane?" Bosch responded. "Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese." [Officials tallies actually put the Guyanese dead at 11.]

Bosch added, "Four members of the Communist Party, chico! Who was there? Our enemies..."

"And the fencers?" Cao asked about Cuba's amateur fencing team that had just won gold, silver and bronze medals at a youth fencing competition in Caracas. "The young people on board?"

Bosch replied, "I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant. ... She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant.

"We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that everyone who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny." [The comment about Santo Domingo was an apparent reference to a strategy meeting by a right-wing terrorist organization, CORU, which took place in the Dominican Republic in 1976.]

"If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult?" Cao asked.

"No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba," Bosch answered.

In an article about Bosch's remarks, lawyer Pertierra said the answers "give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami."

The Posada Case

Bosch was arrested for illegally entering the United States during the first Bush administration, but he was paroled in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush at the behest of the President's eldest son Jeb, then an aspiring Florida politician.

Not only did the first Bush administration free Bosch from jail a decade and a half ago, the second Bush administration has now pushed Venezuela's extradition request for his alleged co-conspirator, Posada, onto the back burner.

The downed Cubana Airlines flight originated in Caracas where Venezuelan authorities allege the terrorist plot was hatched. However, U.S. officials have resisted returning Posada to Venezuela because Hugo Chavez is seen as friendly to Castro's communist government in Cuba.

At a U.S. immigration hearing in 2005, Posada's defense attorney put on a Posada friend as a witness who alleged that Venezuela's government practices torture. Bush administration lawyers didn't challenge the claim, leading the immigration judge to bar Posada's deportation to Venezuela.

In September 2005, Venezuela's Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez called the 77-year-old Posada "the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America" and accused the Bush administration of applying "a cynical double standard" in its War on Terror.

Alvarez also denied that Venezuela practices torture. "There isn't a shred of evidence that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela," Alvarez said, adding that the claim is particularly ironic given widespread press accounts that the Bush administration has abused prisoners at the U.S. military base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba.

Theoretically, the Bush administration could still extradite Posada to Venezuela to face the 73 murder counts, but it is essentially ignoring Venezuela's extradition request while holding Posada on minor immigration charges of entering the United States illegally.

Meanwhile, Posada has begun maneuvering to gain his freedom. Citing his service in the U.S. military from 1963-65 in Vietnam, Posada has applied for U.S. citizenship, and his lawyer Eduardo Soto has threatened to call U.S. government witnesses, including former White House aide Oliver North, to vouch for Posada's past service to Washington.

Posada became a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal because of his work on a clandestine program to aid Nicaraguan contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. The operation was run secretly out of the White House by North with the help of the office of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.

Posada reached Central America in 1985 after escaping from a Venezuelan prison where he had been facing charges from the 1976 Cubana Airlines bombing. Posada, using the name Ramon Medina, teamed up with another Cuban exile, former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who reported regularly to Bush's office.

Posada oversaw logistics and served as paymaster for pilots in the contra-supply operation. When one of the contra-supply planes was shot down inside Nicaragua in October 1986, Posada was responsible for alerting U.S. officials to the crisis and then shutting down the operation's safe houses in El Salvador.

Even after the exposure of Posada's role in the contra-supply operation, the U.S. government made no effort to bring the accused terrorist to justice.

Secret History

As for the Cubana Airlines bombing, declassified U.S. documents show that after the plane was blown out of the sky on Oct. 6, 1976, the CIA, then under the direction of George H.W. Bush, quickly identified Posada and Bosch as the masterminds of the Cubana Airlines bombing.

But in fall 1976, Bush's boss, President Gerald Ford, was in a tight election battle with Democrat Jimmy Carter and the Ford administration wanted to keep intelligence scandals out of the newspapers. So Bush and other officials kept the lid on the investigations. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

Still, inside the U.S. government, the facts were known. According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines bombing that tied in anti-communist Cuban extremists Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela's intelligence agency, DISIP.

The Oct. 14 cable said Bosch arrived in Venezuela in late September 1976 under the protection of Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, a close Washington ally who assigned his intelligence adviser Orlando Garcia "to protect and assist Bosch during his stay in Venezuela."

On his arrival, Bosch was met by Garcia and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch's honor during which Bosch requested cash from the Venezuelan government in exchange for assurances that Cuban exiles wouldn't demonstrate during Andres Perez's planned trip to the United Nations.

"A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, 'we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,' and that 'Orlando has the details,'" the CIA report said.

"Following the 6 October Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory."

The CIA report was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as well as to the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies, according to markings on the cable.

A Round-up

In South America, investigators began rounding up suspects in the bombing.

Two Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, who had left the Cubana plane in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb. They named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack.

A search of Posada's apartment in Venezuela turned up Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were arrested and charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the men denied the accusations. The case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez. The case lingered for almost a decade.

After the Reagan-Bush administration took power in Washington in 1981, the momentum for fully unraveling the mysteries of anti-communist terrorist plots dissipated. The Cold War trumped any concern about right-wing terrorism.

By the late 1980s, Orlando Bosch also was out of Venezuela's jails and back in Miami. But Bosch, who had been implicated in about 30 violent attacks, was facing possible deportation by U.S. officials who warned that Washington couldn't credibly lecture other countries about terrorism while protecting a terrorist like Bosch.

But Bosch got lucky. Jeb Bush, then an aspiring Florida politician, led a lobbying drive to prevent the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from expelling Bosch. In 1990, the lobbying paid dividends when Jeb's dad, President George H.W. Bush, blocked proceedings against Bosch, letting the unapologetic terrorist stay in the United States.

In 1992, also during George H.W. Bush's presidency, the FBI interviewed Posada about the Iran-Contra scandal for 6 ½ hours at the U.S. Embassy in Honduras.

Posada filled in some blanks about the role of Bush's vice presidential office in the secret contra operation. According to a 31-page summary of the FBI interview, Posada said Bush's national security adviser, Donald Gregg, was in frequent contact with Felix Rodriguez.

"Posada ... recalls that Rodriguez was always calling Gregg," the FBI summary said. "Posada knows this because he's the one who paid Rodriguez' phone bill." After the interview, the FBI agents let Posada walk out of the embassy to freedom. [For details, see Parry's Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & Project Truth.]

More Attacks

Posada soon returned to his anti-Castro plotting.

In 1994, Posada set out to kill Castro during a trip to Cartagena, Colombia. Posada and five cohorts reached Cartagena, but the plan flopped when security cordons prevented the would-be assassins from getting a clean shot at Castro, according to a Miami Herald account. [Miami Herald, June 7, 1998]

The Herald also described Posada's role in a lethal 1997 bombing campaign against popular hotels and restaurants inside Cuba that killed an Italian tourist. The story cited documentary evidence that Posada arranged payments to conspirators from accounts in the United States.

Posada landed back in jail in 2000 after Cuban intelligence uncovered a plot to assassinate Castro by planting a bomb at a meeting the Cuban leader planned with university students in Panama.

Panamanian authorities arrested Posada and other alleged co-conspirators in November 2000. In April 2004, they were sentenced to eight or nine years in prison for endangering public safety.

Four months after the sentencing, however, lame-duck Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso - who lives in Key Biscayne, Florida, and has close ties to the Cuban-American community and to George W. Bush's administration - pardoned the convicts.

Despite press reports saying Moscoso had been in contact with U.S. officials about the pardons, the State Department denied that it pressured Moscoso to release the Cuban exiles. After the pardons and just two months before Election 2004, three of Posada's co-conspirators - Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon and Gaspar Jimenez - arrived in Miami to a hero's welcome, flashing victory signs at their supporters.

While the terrorists celebrated, U.S. authorities watched the men - also implicated in bombings in New York, New Jersey and Florida - alight on U.S. soil. As Washington Post writer Marcela Sanchez noted in a September 2004 article about the Panamanian pardons, "there is something terribly wrong when the United States, after Sept. 11 (2001), fails to condemn the pardoning of terrorists and instead allows them to walk free on U.S. streets." [Washington Post, Sept. 3, 2004]

But a whole different set of standards is now being applied to the seven black terrorism suspects in Miami. Even though they had no clear-cut plans or even the tools to carry out terrorist attacks, they have been rounded up amid great media hoopla.

The American people have been reassured that the terrorists in Miami have been located and are being brought to justice.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Their "plan" to destroy the tallest building in the US was little more than wishful thinking, expressed by one of them to an FBI informant posing as a member of Osama bin Laden's group.

Even the FBI admitted as much. Deputy director John Pistole described the plan on Friday as "aspirational rather than operational" and admitted that none of the five US citizens and two Haitian immigrants arrested had ever featured on a terrorist watch list.

In essence, the entire case rests on conversations between Narseal Batiste, the apparent ringleader, with the informant, who posed as a member of al Qaeda but in fact belonged to the South Florida Terrorist Task Force.

At a meeting "on or about December 16", according to the indictment made public as the men made their first court appearance in Miami, Batiste asked his contact to supply equipment including uniforms, machineguns, explosives, cars and US$50,000 in cash for an "Islamic Army" that would carry out a mission "just as good or greater than 9/11".

In fact, the conspiracy seems to have extended little further than those words. By last month, it had all but fizzled out amid internal squabbling.

Even their religious leanings are in dispute. Neighbours say they were part of a group, Seas of David, that mixes Christian and Islamic elements.

That did not deter the US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, from summoning a press conference in which he denounced an attempt to "wage war against America". But the threat, even he admitted, was not immediate - and those who posed it were in fact merely a few semi-unemployed men, most of them petty criminals, from Liberty City, a poor, black Miami district.

If the case has any significance in the "war on terror", it is not as a present danger, but as a harbinger of possible future risks.

Despite countless scare stories in the media, colour-coded alerts from the Department of Homeland Security and grim official warnings of al Qaeda sleeper cells waiting to do their worst, the US has not suffered a single terrorist attack since September 11, 2001.

Nor have the authorities unearthed much of a threat. The Justice Department claims 401 people have been charged with "terrorism-related offences" since the 2001 attacks, and 212 have been convicted. In fact only a tiny number were real terrorists.

The tendency - duly followed last week by Gonzales - has been to hype. The precedent was famously set by his predecessor, John Ashcroft, who called a press conference during a visit to Moscow in 2002 to announce the arrest of Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber" said to be preparing to attack Washington with a radioactive device.

Padilla languished incommunicado in a Navy brig without charge for over three years. He has been transferred to a civilian prison, and faces trial in Miami this year on different, much vaguer, terrorist charges.

An alleged sleeper cell was unearthed in Detroit, but those convictions were quashed in 2004 when it emerged that prosecutors had manipulated evidence.

In December 2005, the trial of Sami al-Arian, accused of links with Islamic Jihad terrorists, ended in embarrassment when the Florida university professor was acquitted.

The biggest successes have had little to do with US law enforcement. Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an American Airlines plane with a shoe bomb in December 2001, was stopped by alert flight attendants, while Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the Virginia student serving a 30-year sentence for threatening to kill President Bush, was caught by police in Saudi Arabia.

But US experts say the dismantling of the Miami plot could be a pointer to things to come, when home-grown terrorists, not foreign-born Islamic radicals, pose the threat. The July 2005 attacks in London are frequently cited as a model, and the arrest in Canada this month of 17 people allegedly planning major attacks also came as a shock south of the border.

What the US said

A group of home-grown al Qaeda sympathisers wanted to "wage war against America" and "kill all the devils we can" in an attack "as good or greater than 9/11".

The group targeted Sears Tower and FBI buildings in Miami.

The alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste asked a supposed al Qaeda contact for machine guns, US$50,000, cars and explosives.

The evidence

The indictment against the group is mainly based on one conversation between Narseal Batiste and an informant he thought was from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

The group had no explosives, and had never met anyone from the terrorist organisation.

Neighbours say their group, called the Seas of David, mixes Christian and Islamic elements.

From all accounts, Narseal Batiste is not an over-the-top mental case like Zacarias Moussaoui, but it appears he is vulnerable enough to be exploited by the government, determined to fabricate "homegrown" terrorists.

In fact, the government more or less admits it does not have a case against Batiste and his young adult and teenage charges.

"Even as Justice Department officials trumpeted the arrests of seven Florida men accused of planning to wage a 'full ground war against the United States,' they acknowledged the group did not have the means to carry out the plan," reports Knight Ridder. "The Justice Department unveiled the arrests with an orchestrated series of news conferences in two cities, but the severity of the charges compared with the seemingly amateurish nature of the group raised concerns among civil libertarians," who noted that the group had "no weapons, no explosives" and yet the government considers the arrests and case a "major announcement."

If not for the "confidential government informant" inserted in their midst, who convinced them to pledge allegiance to the cartoonish "al-Qaeda," there would be no case.

After "sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons. Investigators also did not document any direct links to al-Qaeda." But this complete lack of evidence did not stop the FBI. "This group was more aspirational than operational," said John Pistole, the FBI's deputy director. In other words, merely thinking about "al-Qaeda," even if such a thought is planted by an agent provocateur, is illegal, a crime against the state.

George Orwell called this "thoughtcrime," and wrote: "Thoughtcrime is the only crime that matters."

It does not matter if the hapless victims of FBI entrapment in Miami were actually a threat, the point here is they were thinking about "al-Qaeda," never mind this thought was planted in the mind of Narseal Batiste by the FBI.

"U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held up the case as a good example of the Justice Department's strategy of taking out domestic terrorists before they strike. He said the group is representative of 'homegrown' terrorist cells that operate without ties to a larger group such as al-Qaeda."

Thus we have realized the world envisioned by Philip K. Dick in his 1956 short story, Minority Report, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film by the same name. In the short story and film, it is illegal to think about crime. In the story and film, the government employs "precogs," or "previsions," to detect illegal thoughts. However, in Miami, no such talents were required, as the FBI simply located a man with mental problems and had an agent provocateur insert thoughts in his mind, and then the boom was lowered.

In addition to planting thoughts in the mind of Batiste, the government has characterized the group as Muslim, even though there is no evidence of this, not that evidence matters.

"Despite early reports to the contrary, the men didn't appear to be members of mainstream Muslim communities. A close friend of one of the defendants said Batiste's teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, an early 19th-century religion that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with a heavy influence on self-discipline through martial arts."

Even though Knight Ridder makes mention of the fact Batiste and his pathetic crew of impoverished kids have nothing to do with Islam, and include this fact in the second to last paragraph of a follow-up news article, no doubt many Americans, carefully indoctrinated over the last few years, believe "al-Qaeda" is alive and well in Florida, as initial news stories certainly give this impression.

In fact, convincing Americans that "al-Qaeda" sleeper cells-not necessarily Arabs, but in this instance seemingly innocuous African-American kids-may live next door, or reside in the ghetto across town, is what the Justice Department's absurd case is all about.

"The Justice Department made it clear that it is determined to stop people from following the model of al-Qaida," reports the Sun-Sentinel. "There is cause for concern that this ideology of hatred has the reach and tentacles that it appears to have," Jack Riley, a "terrorism expert" at the Rand Corporation, told the newspaper.

Finally, it should not be surprising the corporate media, fully onboard with the insane neocon plan for generational war and its necessary pretexts, including manufacturing pathetic patsies, would run to the Rand Corporation for meaty quotes.

"Covert foreign policy became the standard mode of operation after World War II, which was also when Ford Foundation became a major player for the first time. The institute most involved in classified research was Rand Corporation, set up by the Air Force in 1948. The interlocks between the trustees at Rand, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations were so numerous that the Reece Committee listed them in its report (two each for Carnegie and Rockefeller, and three for Ford). Ford gave one million dollars to Rand in 1952 alone, at a time when the chairman of Rand was simultaneously the president of Ford Foundation," writes Daniel Brandt (Philanthropists at War).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection examined the 55-year-old radio commentator's luggage after his private plane landed at the airport from the Dominican Republic, said Miller.

The matter was referred to the sheriff's office, whose investigators interviewed Limbaugh. According to Miller, Limbaugh said that the Viagra was for his use, and that he obtained it from his doctors.

Investigators confiscated the drugs, which treats erectile dysfunction, and Limbaugh was released without being charged.

The sheriff's office plans to file a report with the state attorney's office. Miller said it could be a second-degree misdemeanor violation.

Limbaugh reached a deal last month with prosecutors who had accused the conservative talk-show host of illegally deceiving multiple doctors to receive overlapping painkiller prescriptions. Under the deal, the charge, commonly referred to as "doctor shopping," would be dismissed after 18 months if he continues to submit to random drug tests and treatment for his acknowledged addiction to painkillers.

Nitroglycerine is an explosive liquid that can be used to manufacture explosives like dynamite and for construction and demolition purposes.

Authorities initially said that the entire port was shut down as a precaution but later said that only the terminal and surrounding area were closed to civilian traffic while bomb squads searched for explosives.

Bomb-sniffing dogs were used to search the ship, several surrounding vessels, cargo and buildings. Divers inspected the hull of the ship.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said ship had Panamanian registry but had last docked in Guatemala. An investigation was underway.

State officials who assess possible threats discounted a link to terrorism, but said they would monitor the situation.

"We don't see any apparent connection to terrorism," said Chris Bertelli, a spokesman for the California Office of Homeland Security.

The port of Hueneme, 60 miles north of Los Angeles, is the only commercial deep water port between Los Angeles and San Francisco and serves as a point of import and export for automobiles, produce and forest products.

It is also the only military deep water port between San Diego and Puget Sound in Washington state.

With about half of all U.S. imports arriving at the country's 361 ports each year, a militant attack on the maritime sector could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, in addition to the human toll.

But despite a series of security improvements since September 11, 2001 -- including physical security, ship tracking and identification procedures -- officials say large gaps remain in the long supply chain between the origin of goods and their final destination.

About 10,000 different ships make roughly 72,000 port calls in the United States each year. Only 5 percent of the roughly 9 million containers that come to the United States are examined upon arrival. Officials check them based largely on risk assessments.

The House embraced the bill last year, 286 to 130. Should the Senate follow suit, three-fourths of the states would have to ratify it to make it the 28th Amendment.

Debate began yesterday, with senators recalling that the Supreme Court in 1989 ruled that flag-burning is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. The ruling did not sit well with Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who told an empty Senate chamber yesterday: "Government exists because of the people. . . . Yet for too long, some unelected judges have mistakenly concluded that it is the courts that have exclusive dominion over the Constitution."

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) differed. "The danger of this amendment is that it would strike at the values the flag represents and the rights that have made this nation a vibrant democratic republic in which we have enjoyed freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of expression and freedom to think as individuals," he said.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said the GOP is pushing the amendment to fire up its base this fall. "The real issue isn't the protection of the American flag," he said. "It's the protection of the Republican majority."

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) cast the debate in loftier terms. "Many Americans have come to see the flag as a sacred symbol of our nation and its values," he said. "Those who dislike American values have the right to express their opinions even when they are offensive. But I do not believe that the right to desecrate a symbol like our flag belongs in the same category."

Frist Tests Waters for Estate Tax Cut

The flag debate will dominate floor action today, but Frist may also take up House-passed legislation deeply cutting -- but not eliminating -- the estate tax. That would set up a vote Thursday on whether to proceed to the bill, and another showdown on what Republicans call "the death tax."

The legislation, which passed the House last Thursday, would exempt estates worth as much as $5 million -- $10 million for couples -- from taxation indefinitely. The tax rate on estates worth more than the exemption level up to $25 million would be set at the same rates that apply to capital gains -- now 15 percent but scheduled to rise to 20 percent in 2011. The tax for estates worth more than $25 million would be twice the capital gains rate. The bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the estate tax cut would cost the government $279 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) added a $940 million tax break for the timber industry to pressure Washington state's two Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, to go along.

Frist aides have made clear they will move forward only if they have 60 votes sewed up to overcome a filibuster. "When we go for it, we want the best chance to succeed, not another takeoff that flies into the side of a mountain," said Eric Ueland, Frist's chief of staff, referring to a vote this month on full repeal that fell three votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate.

At this point, they don't have the votes. Democrats are balking, saying the bill may be better than full repeal but still represents an enormous gift to the super-wealthy. Some Republicans, such as Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and George V. Voinovich (Ohio), continue to fret over the price tag. And Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who championed the search for a permanent estate tax compromise that would fall short of full repeal, is questioning whether he can support legislation that would keep the top tax rate on inheritances as high as 40 percent.

Both sides say Frist and his allies are working extremely hard to get to 60 votes. "We're making a list, checking it twice, trying to figure out who's naughty and nice," Ueland said.

House to Vote on Offshore Drilling Ban

In the House, Republicans will once again focus on energy, this time offshore oil and gas exploration. Legislation scheduled for a vote Thursday would lift a 25-year ban on energy exploration as close as 100 miles from the coastline while permanently banning exploration nearer to shore.

As voters rev their engines for the Fourth of July weekend, Republicans hope to portray Democrats as obstructing legislation to lessen dependence on foreign oil and lower energy prices. But Florida and California lawmakers from both parties have staunchly opposed offshore drilling, which Democrats portray as hardly worth the environmental price.