"Federalization just for the sake of federalization makes no sense," said Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana, a Democrat who had rough relations with the Bush administration after the disaster last year. "You don't need federalization to get federal troops. ... Just making quick decisions can make things happen."

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Republican, said "a whole bunch of governors" were opposed to the idea after the proposed change was brought up in a private lunch meeting.

Some two dozen governors met in Charleston for three days of discussions at the annual summer gathering of the National Governors Association. The association's leaders sent a formal letter of opposition to House leaders last week.

The language in the House measure would let the president take control in case of "a serious natural or manmade disaster, accident, or catastrophe," according to the NGA.

"The idea of federalizing yet another function of government in America is a, the wrong direction, and b, counterproductive," Sanford said. "The system has worked quite well, notwithstanding what went wrong with Katrina."

It seems ironic, even to those who are affected. The nation has never been more populous, soon to reach the 300 million mark. And it has never been more connected - by phone, e-mail, instant message, text message, and on and on.

Yet so many are alone in the crowd.

"People are increasingly busy," said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "We've become a society where we expect things instantly, and don't spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person."

Some Americans are making a new commitment, getting reconnected in groups or one-on-one and combatting a phenomenon that can take a heavy toll on communities and individuals.

In its most pronounced forms, loneliness is considered a serious, even life-threatening condition, heightening the risks of heart disease and depression. A sense of isolation can strike at almost any age, in any demographic sector - parents struggling to adjust to empty-nest status, divorcees unable to rebuild a social life, even seemingly self-confident college students.

John Powell, a psychologist at the University of Illinois counseling center, says it's common for incoming freshmen to stay in their rooms, chatting by computer with high school friends rather than venturing out to get-acquainted activities on campus.

"The frequency of contact and volume of contact does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact," Powell said.

The trend toward isolation surfaced in the last U.S. census figures, which show that one-fourth of the nation's households - 27.2 million of them - consisted of just one person, compared to 10 percent in 1950.

In June, an authoritative study in the American Sociological Review found that the average American had only two close friends in whom they would confide on important matters, down from an average of three in 1985. The number of people who said they had no such confidant soared from 10 percent in 1985 to nearly 25 percent in 2004; an additional 19 percent said they had only one confidant - often their spouse.

"That may be the most worrisome thing," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who co-authored the study. "If you lose that one person, because the relationship declines or the person dies, you have no one to support you. If we're all becoming more dependent on our spouse or partner for that kind of complete knowing of each other, we're all vulnerable to losing that."

The study suggested an array of possible causes - including an increase in working/commuting hours and expanding use of the Internet to stay in touch with other people, lessening the need for face-to-face contacts.

"We e-mail each other rather than calling or meeting, so there can be a sense of connection but also a loss of actual time spent with friends and families," Gibbs said.

Some Americans shrug off the trend, content with their ever-evolving social circles. Others, though, are unsettled at what they see and feel, and search for remedies.

___

MID-LIFE SINGLES:

Karina Penaranda was at Mass in 2002 when it dawned on her that her peers at her Roman Catholic church in Phoenix - single adults 35 to 60 - had no fixed place in the diocese's social orbit.

"There were groups for elderly people, marriage encounters for couples - and youth groups are everywhere," said Penaranda, who is in her 40s. "Once single people reach this age they don't have a community. They don't really have a place to go where they can share their hopes and dreams."

With a few other parishioners, Penaranda founded a group called Catholic Singles Ministry. It now draws scores of people from across the Phoenix area and beyond to twice-yearly retreats and to events ranging from prayer breakfasts to bowling nights to food-bank volunteer work.

"We have people who've been divorced, been widowed, never been married," she said. "At our retreats we talk about loneliness, relationships. ... You know that you're not alone in going through this journey."

Penaranda, a project manager for a bank, has never been married. She savors socializing, but it takes conscious effort.

"The busyness in people's lives is one of things that prevents it," she said. "That happens to me - I get immersed in work, and have to step back and say, 'Time out.'"

One of Penaranda's colleagues in the ministry, Monica Smith, said community service is a key element.

"We're reaching out to others in our singleness, our aloneness," she said. "It gives us, without family, without children, a greater sense of belonging."

Singles ministries have proliferated nationwide, notably at megachurches. At Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach, Calif., about 150 of the 2,500-member congregation participate in a group for singles aged 35 to 65.

"They're looking to connect with other people in a society that's geared to married people, to people with families," said the Rev. Jim Vlahos, Parkcrest's singles minister.

Many of the group's members are divorced, said Vlahos, himself a never-married 41-year-old.

"Once someone gets divorced, they tend to lose their married friends," he observed. "It's not a stigma thing, it's an awkward thing - 'Oh, you're single now, and we do married things.'"

___

EMPTY NESTERS:

Having a spouse and children doesn't insulate adults from bouts of loneliness; one particularly vulnerable subset are parents confronting the empty-nest syndrome as their children reach young adulthood and leave home.

"Some take it really really hard," said Jeanine Herrin of Inglis, Fla., who launched an Internet chat room called Empty Nest Moms. "That's all they did - they lived and breathed kids, and all of the sudden the kids are gone."

She noted that many such parents had a network of adults they knew through their children's activities - a network that can shrink or vanish when the children leave.

"Some moms are almost basket cases when they come into our group," Herrin said. "But with most of them, you can feel that sense of relief, that they're not really going crazy, that there are so many others feeling the same way."

Some husbands share the emotional rollercoaster, while others "just don't understand at all," Herrin said. "Some are thrilled to death the kids are gone."

Many of the hundreds of women who have posted messages on the Web site candidly acknowledge their bouts of crying and self-pity. One mother described in detail her devastation over the departure of her youngest child, and then the elation of filling the emptiness by becoming a foster parent.

Ellen Ritter, who has a doctorate in psychology, works as a "family transitions coach" in Hudson, Ohio, and often counsels empty-nest mothers. "It's really hard to make new friends," she said, "and that's why so many women are reaching out to the Internet."

___

COLLEGE STUDENTS:

If some empty-nest parents feel a void in their lives, so do some of their absent children

"A lot of students go through periods of loneliness," said Zanny Altschuler, 20, of Menlo Park, Calif., who is completing her freshman year this summer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

"The social life on campus can be crazy," she said. "Rather than sticking with close friendships that can be hard to maintain, people forge a broader circle of acquaintances."

Altschuler cited the phenomenon of Facebook.com, the social-networking Web site on which students can enumerate their "friends."

"You go on some profiles and they say they have 1,000 friends, and they probably don't even know half of them," she said.

John Powell, from his vantage point at the Illinois counseling center, says students increasingly have difficulty "making really satisfying connections" even though the university offers many activities to bring students together.

"All the students I work with have incredibly many pseudo-intimate relationships online - but without the kind of risk and vulnerability that goes with sitting across a cafe booth from another person," Powell said.

Sean Seepersad, who now teaches at California State University, Fresno, earned his doctorate at Illinois last year by designing an intervention program for lonely students.

Seepersad said some of the students were predictably shy and withdrawn, others on the surface seemed extroverted and socially skilled. He encouraged them to share their feelings, analyze why they felt lonely and work on their social skills.

"Lonely people may not be aware of things they're doing that perpetuate the problem," he said. "It's something that can be helped."

___

OLD AND ALONE:

She laughs gently at her blunt self-analysis, but Helen Granath doesn't mince words.

"It's a very lonely existence - most of the time the loneliness can be excruciating and painful," says the 84-year-old widow from San Francisco. "I have very few friends. They're either ill or they've passed away or moved somewhere else."

Her husband died 30 years ago; she says her son "is very busy in the computer business. I don't see him very often."

No data set enumerates how many elderly Americans feel such pangs of loneliness, but undoubtedly there are millions who could empathize with Granath. She ventures out of her apartment for errands and movies, but is slowed by leukemia and arthritis and - after the latest in a series of hip replacements - sought help and companionship from a volunteer group called Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly.

For the past several years, the group has sent volunteers to visit her - bringing flowers on holidays and gifts on her birthday.

Jim Doyle, 48, who does promotional work in San Francisco for a movie theater chain, started volunteering for Little Brothers this year, and has become the sole loyal friend of a 67-year-old developmentally disabled man named Frank.

"He lives by himself, and does custodial work, but other than that he didn't have a whole lot to do," said Doyle. "He'd stay home and watch a lot of TV. Now we got out to the movies, for walks - he calls me all the time. He appreciates it, and it's been great for me."

Bob Moody, a retired Chicago businessman, has been volunteering for Little Brothers since 1981 - he had been visiting his cancer-stricken mother in a nursing home and noticed that many patients didn't have visitors.

Since then, he's devoted each Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to visits with isolated seniors, as well as making visits periodically throughout the year.

"Let's face it," Moody said. "Old people can be grouchy sometimes. With some, there's a little mistrust early on because they don't really know you. But as time goes on, they gradually open up."

One refrain he hears: "My kids don't live that far away, but they don't come to visit me."

His current Little Brothers friend is Rocky Lepore, an 85-year-old blind man who savors the visits. "He always wants to give me something," Moody said, "a box of candy, some little mints."

___

NEIGHBORS:

If anyone was pleased by the June report on shrinking circles of close friends, it was Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who viewed it as vindication of his best-selling book "Bowling Alone."

Some academics had challenged his thesis in 2000 that civic engagement and neighborliness were on the decline, but many Americans took the message to heart.

Close to Putnam's home base at Harvard, for example, David Crowley has founded an organization called Social Capital Inc. that is striving to connect neighbors and build civic spirit in the Boston-area communities of Woburn, Dorchester and Lynn.

"People are less connected to their neighbors today, and they miss that," Crowley said.

His projects seek to use the Internet as a connecting tool.

Last winter, for example, SCI members in Woburn received an e-mail notice that one elderly, low-income resident was worried how he would get his driveway cleared of snow. Within a day, Crowley said, a neighbor volunteered to use his snowblower to the keep the driveway clear all winter.

Putnam, in an interview, said vibrant social networks have benefits for individuals in terms of health and happiness, and for communities as well.

"The crime rates are lower, the schools work better, the economy works better," he said.

The challenges to connectedness are many. Strolls through the neighborhood and visits on front porches have been replaced in many cases by retreats indoors to be entertained by TVs, computers and video games.

Spouses are more likely to be both working and less likely to have one or two other couples with whom they forge close, long-lasting ties. Instead, they may have a broader circle of couples they know only casually through their children's schools or sports leagues.

"We've brought more women into the workplace, but we have not addressed the consequences for families and communities," Putnam said. "We need to invent new ways of connecting."

The organization says publicity over Barrett's case has helped boost membership to about 75 academics. They are a tiny minority of the 1 million part- and full-time faculty nationwide, and some have no university affiliation. Most aren't experts in relevant fields. But some are well educated, with degrees from elite universities such as Princeton and Stanford and jobs at schools including Rice, Indiana and the University of Texas.

"Things are happening," said co-founder James Fetzer, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, who maintains, among other claims, that some of the hijackers are still alive. "We're going to continue to do this. Our role is to establish what really happened on 9/11."

What really happened, the national Sept. 11 Commission concluded after 1,200 interviews, was that hijackers crashed planes into the twin towers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, filed 10,000 pages of reports that found fires caused by the crashing planes were more than sufficient to collapse the buildings.

The scholars' group rejects those conclusions. Their Web site contends the government has been dishonest. It adds: the "World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions" and "the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda."

The standards and technology institute, and many mainstream scientists, won't debate conspiracy theorists, saying they don't want to lend them unwarranted credibility.

But some worry the academic background of the group could do that anyway.

Members of the conspiracy community "practically worship the ground (Jones) walks on because he's seen as a scientist who is preaching to their side," said FR Greening, a Canadian chemist who has written several papers rebutting the science used by Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists. "It's science, but it's politically motivated. It's science with an ax to grind, and therefore it's not really science."

Faculty can express any opinion outside the classroom, said Roger Bowen, general secretary of the American Association of University Professors. However, "with academic freedom comes academic responsibility. And that requires them to teach the truth of their discipline, and the truth does not include conspiracy theories, or flat Earth theories, or Holocaust denial theories."

Members of the group don't consider themselves extremists. They simply believe the government's investigation was inadequate, and maintain that questioning widely held assumptions has been part of the job of scholars for centuries.

"Tenure gives you a secure position where you can engage in controversial issues," Fetzer said. "That's what you should be doing."

But when asked what did happen in 2001, members often step outside the rigorous, data-based culture of the academy and defer to their own instincts.

Daniel Orr, a Princeton Ph.D. and widely published retired economics chair at the University of Illinois, said he knew instantly from watching the towers fall that they had been blown apart by explosives. He was reminded of watching an old housing project being destroyed in St. Louis.

David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor, acknowledges this isn't his field, but says "I'm smart enough to know ... that fire from airplanes can't melt steel."

When they do cite evidence, critics such as Greening contend it's junk science from fellow conspiracy theorists, dressed up in the language and format of real research to give it a sense of credibility.

Jones focuses on the relatively narrow question of whether molten metal present at the World Trade Center site after the attacks is evidence that a high-temperature incendiary called thermite, which can be used to weld or cut metal, was involved in the towers' destruction. He concludes thermite was present, throwing the government's entire explanation into question and suggesting someone might have used explosives to bring down the towers.

"I have not run into many who have read my paper and said it's just all hogwash," Jones said.

Judy Wood, until recently an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University, has been cited by conspiracy theorists for her arguments the buildings could not have collapsed as quickly as they did unless explosives were used.

"If the U.S. government is lying about how the buildings came down, anything else they say cannot be believed," she said. "So why would they want to tell us an incorrect story if they weren't part of it?"

In fact, say Greening and other experts, the molten metal Jones cites was most likely aluminum from the planes, and any number of explanations are more likely than thermite.

And the National Institute of Standards and Technology's report describes how the buildings collapsed from the inside in a chain reaction once the floors began falling.

"We respect the opinions of others, but we just didn't see any evidence of what people are claiming," institute spokesman Michael Newman said.

Wisconsin officials say they do not endorse the views of Barrett, an adjunct, but after investigating concluded he would handle the material responsibly in the classroom.

That didn't mollify many state legislators.

"The general public from Maine to Oregon knows why the trade towers went down," said state Rep. Stephen Nass, a Republican. "It's not a matter of unpopular ideas; it's a matter of quality education and giving students their money's worth in the classroom."

In a July 20 letter obtained by The Associated Press in an open records request, Wisconsin Provost Patrick Farrell warned Barrett to tone down his publicity seeking, and said he would reconsider allowing Barrett to teach if he continued to identify himself with the university in his political messages.

BYU's physics department and engineering school have issued statements distancing themselves from Jones' work, but he says they have not interfered.

At Clemson, Wood did not receive tenure last year, but her former department chair, Imtiaz ul Haque, denies her accusation that it was at least partly because of her Sept. 11 views.

"Are you blackballed for delving into this topic? Oh yes," Wood said. "And that is why there are so few who do. Most contracts have something to do with some government research lab. So what would that do to you? The consequences are too great for a career. But I made the choice that truth was more important."

"If we're in higher education to be trying to encourage critical thinking," Wood says, "why would we say 'believe this because everybody else does?'"

About 50 demonstrators attended an interfaith service Sunday on the 5 acres the group recently bought with insurance money Sheehan received after her oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004. The land, featuring a field and groves of trees, is near downtown and about 7 miles from the Bush ranch.

Sheehan told the group "our hearts are connected," regardless of people's races, countries or religions.

As she spoke, a man disrupted the service with loud questions and shouts of "This is unpatriotic!" before he was asked to leave.

"I believe Bush is doing what he should be doing," said the man, William McGlothlin of Marked Tree, Ark. "Freedom of speech is good until it gets out of whack."

Sheehan said she expected more war opponents to arrive throughout the month. Their protest initially was to start Aug. 16, after the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle, but she moved it up last week after learning that Bush would be in Crawford for only 10 days at the beginning of August.

A year ago, Sheehan and a few dozen anti-war demonstrators arrived in Crawford from the Veterans for Peace convention in Dallas and marched toward Bush's ranch, demanding to talk to the president about the war.

Two of Bush's top aides met with Sheehan, but she said she wouldn't leave until Bush himself talked to her, so she set up camp in ditches off a road a couple of miles from the ranch.

As her 26-day vigil swelled to several thousand people on weekends - and as locals complained of the noise, traffic and odor from portable toilets - a sympathetic landowner allowed the group to use his 1-acre lot about a mile from the ranch.

Last fall, county commissioners banned roadside camping and parking.

Progress has been dismal, with only 30 per cent of the EPA's programme completed, says the report. Of the four main tasks, only one has been accomplished: the establishment of emission standards for 84,000 major stationary sources of pollution. Even this was four years late, delaying the second task of evaluating the risks still posed by toxics from these sources.

Slow progress has also been made on the third task: to regulate toxic emissions from small stationary sources such as dry-cleaners, which emit the carcinogen percholorethylene (PCE). These sources discharged a third of all airborne toxics in 2002, but the EPA had only set 16 of 70 emission standards when the report went to press. Since then, it has finalised its standards for dry-cleaners to phase out PCE in residential areas, according to an EPA official.

As for the final task, setting standards for mobile sources of toxics such as cars, the EPA has only just begun.

The EPA accepts that there are challenges, but it claims it is achieving more in terms of public health by tackling other categories of airborne pollutants, including smog, ozone, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, lead and particulate matter. "The agency has always had competing priorities," says the official.

John Stephenson, author of the GAO report, isn't impressed. "I sympathise with EPA, but it's the law, and they are meant to do this.They need to get on with it."

Any attempt to prioritise the work, however, may be hindered by EPA's failure at another task: a cost-benefit analysis to determine how the most disease could be prevented for the least cost. "This means no one can fully assess the benefits of reductions in concentrations or risks of current exposure," says Amy Kyle, a toxics researcher at the University of California at Berkeley.

The GAO report also blames the government. "The Bush administration's chronic underfunding of environmental priorities means that progress will continue to be limited," said Democratic congressman John Dingell.
From issue 2563 of New Scientist magazine, 05 August 2006, page 9

Now there are fears it is coming to an end. For the past five years America has been gripped by a housing price bubble. It has funded a huge expansion of suburbia as Americans poured their wealth into their homes. Yet many think that bubble may be about to burst. That would send shock waves through the US economy and into the rest of the world. Nor is that the only threat. The rising price of oil is squeezing suburbanites. It threatens a way of life where pavements are rare and everyone moves by car.

'We have invested all our wealth in a living arrangement with no future,' said James Howard Kunstler, author of the Long Emergency which postulates the end of suburbia. 'In building suburbia we embarked on the greatest misallocation of wealth in the history of the world.'

Not that it looked that way in Levittown last week. Kids were driven to school, fathers and mothers drove off to work, the retired sheltered indoors from the heat. Most had an obvious pride in where they lived. 'It's quiet and its peaceful. It's great here. I know it's the suburbs but it is where you want to live to raise a family,' said resident Sherri Smith.

Yet there are real signs America's long and profitable love affair with the suburbs may be over. The past five years have seen an unprecedented rise in house prices, which in turn has triggered a massive building boom. But the pace of house sales in America has now declined nine months in a row after setting a record last summer. Across the US once booming markets are stagnant or prices slipping. One recent survey showed home builders have started offering free add-ons, like pools or garages, in order to sell their houses. Home builder confidence is at its lowest level in 14 years. Fortune magazine recently headlined a piece on the housing bubble with the words: 'Welcome to the Dead Zone'.

It is a far cry from the mania of the past five years when Americans queued up - sometimes literally - to buy homes in new developments, often doubling their investment in 12 months. Not surprisingly the construction industry responded by a binge of development that saw 75 per cent of new building taking place in the suburbs. That has left the economy deeply reliant on housing. Between 2001 and 2005 housing created 43 per cent of all new jobs in America. If the bubble bursts, the economy could plunge into recession. So tied up is the average American that a 20 per cent drop in prices is seen as equivalent in effect to a 40 per cent drop in the stock market.

Though a price collapse would be devastating, trapping homeowners in negative equity and wiping out savings, the fallout cannot be underestimated. Soaring oil prices have threatened suburbia as petrol has risen above $3 a gallon. At the same time heating costs have risen and the so-called McMansions of the 1990s are expensive to keep warm.

'We have these terrible perfect storm conditions. The real estate market in America has gone south. We will get a death spiral,' said Kunstler.

Those warning of a coming crisis believe suburbia's economic collapse would force a rethink of the fundamentals of the American way of life. The cultural and political force of suburbia is vast. It is where most Americans live. From The Graduate to American Beauty to Desperate Housewives, the suburbs pervade culture. Their bonhomie and good living have been celebrated in iconic TV shows such as Father Knows Best. Their dark side has also been explored in everything from David Lynch's surreal films to The Simpsons. 'The great American story has ultimately been told in the suburbs,' said Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University.

Thompson has charted how popular portrayals of the suburbs have changed. In the 1950s it was a celebration of their Edenic qualities as a place to raise a family. By the 1980s cynicism had set in. But most Americans have still chosen to live there, which leads some to believe predictions of a crisis are overblown.

Professor Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois in Chicago sees the suburban model as the future. In his book, Sprawl, Bruegmann launched a passionate defence of modern urban development that, he argues, has been a great democratic leveller: allowing ordinary working families access to a standard of living previously only available to the wealthy. And the idea of suburbia as a homogeneous, mainly white, cultural desert is a myth. 'They have always been more diverse and interesting than people ever thought,' he said.

Suburbia is home to 38 per cent of black Americans, 58 per cent of Asian Americans and more than half of Hispanics. It is also where most new immigrants choose to live. Bruegmann says the model has been closely copied in Europe and thus: 'High oil prices have no impact on suburbs. We have already had that experiment. It is called Europe.'

He believes antipathy towards the suburbs lies in the snobbishness of elite culture - Victorian styles were ridiculed right up until the 1950s. Now the first suburban houses in Levittown are sought after as historical monuments. Bruegmann thinks tastes will change as suburban living becomes ingrained in the American psyche. 'That Wal-Mart store that everyone now reviles will be seen as quaint. People will say what wonderful construction methods we had back then,' he said. There may be some truth in that. When Levittown was first built, the houses were derided by architectural critics. Now the Smithsonian Institution in Washington wants to buy one.

Thanks to this sort of law, a prostitute in Port Richey, Fla., who killed her 72-year-old client with his own gun rather than flee was not charged last month. Similarly, the police in Clearwater, Fla., did not arrest a man who shot a neighbor in early June after a shouting match over putting out garbage, though the authorities say they are still reviewing the evidence.

The first of the new laws took effect in Florida in October, and cases under it are now reaching prosecutors and juries there. The other laws, mostly in Southern and Midwestern states, were enacted this year, according to the National Rifle Association, which has enthusiastically promoted them.

Florida does not keep comprehensive records on the impact of its new law, but prosecutors and defense lawyers there agree that fewer people who claim self-defense are being charged or convicted.

The Florida law, which served as a model for the others, gives people the right to use deadly force against intruders entering their homes. They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully. The law also extends this principle to vehicles.

In addition, the law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. Now, that same person, in the law's words, "has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force." The law also forbids the arrest, detention or prosecution of the people covered by the law, and it prohibits civil suits against them.

The central innovation in the Florida law, said Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is not its elimination of the duty to retreat, which has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, but in expanding the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant's safety.

"In effect," Professor Sebok said, "the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property."

This month, a jury in West Palm Beach, Fla., will hear the retrial of a murder case that illustrates the dividing line between the old law and the new one. In November 2004, before the new law was enacted, a cabdriver in West Palm Beach killed a drunken passenger in an altercation after dropping him off.

The first jury deadlocked 9-to-3 in favor of convicting the driver, Robert Lee Smiley Jr., said Henry Munnilal, the jury foreman.

"Mr. Smiley had a lot of chances to retreat and to avoid an escalation," said Mr. Munnilal, a 62-year-old accountant. "He could have just gotten in his cab and left. The thing could have been avoided, and a man's life would have been saved."

Mr. Smiley tried to invoke the new law, which does away with the duty to retreat and would almost certainly have meant his acquittal, but an appeals court refused to apply it retroactively. He has appealed that issue to the Florida Supreme Court.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the N.R.A., said the Florida law had sent a needed message to law-abiding citizens.

"If they make a decision to save their lives in the split second they are being attacked, the law is on their side," Mr. LaPierre said. "Good people make good decisions. That's why they're good people. If you're going to empower someone, empower the crime victim."

The N.R.A. said it would lobby for versions of the law in eight more states in 2007.

Sarah Brady, chairwoman of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said her group would fight those efforts. "In a way," Ms. Brady said of the new laws, "it's a license to kill."

Many prosecutors oppose the laws, saying they are unnecessary at best and pernicious at worst. "They're basically giving citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review," said Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association.

But some legal experts doubt the laws will make a practical difference. "It's inconceivable to me that one in a hundred Floridians could tell you how the law has changed," said Gary Kleck, who teaches criminology at Florida State University.

Even before the new laws, Professor Kleck added, claims of self-defense were often accepted. "In the South," he said, "they more or less give the benefit of the doubt to the alleged victim's account."

The case involving the Port Richey prostitute, Jacqueline Galas, turned on the new law, said Michael Halkitis, division director of the state attorney's office in nearby New Port Richey. Ms. Galas, 23, said that a longtime client, Frank Labiento, 72, threatened to kill her and then kill himself last month. A suicide note he had left and other evidence supported her contention.

The law came into play when Ms. Galas grabbed Mr. Labiento's gun and chose not to flee but to kill him. "Before that law," Mr. Halkitis said, "before you could use deadly force, you had to retreat. Under the new law, you don't have to do that."

The decision not to charge Ms. Galas was straightforward, Mr. Halkitis said. "It would have been a more difficult situation with the old law," he said, "much more difficult."

In the case of the West Palm Beach cabdriver, Mr. Smiley, then 56, killed Jimmie Morningstar, 43. A sports bar had paid Mr. Smiley $10 to drive Mr. Morningstar home in the early morning of Nov. 6, 2004.

Mr. Morningstar was apparently reluctant to leave the cab once it reached its destination, and Mr. Smiley used a stun gun to hasten his exit. Once outside the cab, Mr. Morningstar flashed a knife, Mr. Smiley testified at his first trial, though one was never found. Mr. Smiley, who had gotten out of his cab, reacted by shooting at his passenger's feet and then into his body, killing him.

Cliff Morningstar, the dead man's uncle, said he was baffled by the killing. "He had a radio," Mr. Morningstar said of Mr. Smiley. "He could have gotten in his car and left. He could have shot him in his knee."

Carey Haughwout, the public defender who represents Mr. Smiley, conceded that no knife was found. "However," Ms. Haughwout said, "there is evidence to support that the victim came at Smiley after Smiley fired two warning shots, and that he did have something in his hand."

In April, a Florida appeals court indicated that the new law, had it applied to Mr. Smiley's case, would have affected its outcome.

"Prior to the legislative enactment, a person was required to 'retreat to the wall' before using his or her right of self-defense by exercising deadly force," Judge Martha C. Warner wrote. The new law, Judge Warner said, abolished that duty.

Jason M. Rosenbloom, the man shot by his neighbor in Clearwater, said his case illustrated the flaws in the Florida law. "Had it been a year and a half ago, he could have been arrested for attempted murder," Mr. Rosenbloom said of his neighbor, Kenneth Allen.

"I was in T-shirt and shorts," Mr. Rosenbloom said, recalling the day he knocked on Mr. Allen's door. Mr. Allen, a retired Virginia police officer, had lodged a complaint with the local authorities, taking Mr. Rosenbloom to task for putting out eight bags of garbage, though local ordinances allow only six.

"I was no threat," Mr. Rosenbloom said. "I had no weapon."

The men exchanged heated words. "He closed the door and then opened the door," Mr. Rosenbloom said of Mr. Allen. "He had a gun. I turned around to put my hands up. He didn't even say a word, and he fired once into my stomach. I bent over, and he shot me in the chest."

Mr. Allen, whose phone number is out of service and who could not be reached for comment, told The St. Petersburg Times that Mr. Rosenbloom had had his foot in the door and had tried to rush into the house, an assertion Mr. Rosenbloom denied.

"I have a right," Mr. Allen said, "to keep my house safe."

Why does it matter? Because, quite simply, we cannot remain both a world power and a robust democracy without a broad sense of ownership - particularly of the leadership class - in the military. Our military is too consequential, and the implications of our disconnect from it too far-reaching. We are on the wrong path today.

Those who opine, argue, publish, fund and decide courses of action for our country rarely see members of their families doing the deeds our leaders would send the nation's young adults to do, deeds that have such moment in the world.

These deeds hardly begin and end with the Iraq War - 200,000 U.S. troops are deployed in 130 other countries around the world, keeping it "flat," to borrow Thomas Friedman's phrase. They train other nations' security forces, help keep the peace, provide humanitarian assistance, rescue Americans from Lebanon, stand ready to go to Darfur if sent, to go wherever the country calls on them for assistance. In short, they do the complex work of the world's sole superpower. Yet these doers are strangers to most of us, and the very missions they do are mysterious.

When the deciders are disconnected from the doers, self-government can't work as it should. Most of these decisions about whether and how to use the U.S. military are hard, and we need to be as best equipped as possible to make them. We need to be intellectually capable and have as much real knowledge as possible about what the military actually does, but we also need to be morally capable, which means we need a moral connection to those Americans we send into harm's way. Moreover, we need the largest pool of talent from which to draw those troops. Military work must not simply become fee for service.

A Duke University study demonstrates that it matters whether civilian decision makers have military experience: A review of U.S. foreign policy over nearly two centuries shows that when we have the fewest number of veterans in leadership and staff positions in Congress and the executive branch, we are most likely to engage in aggressive (as opposed to defensive) war fighting. And we are most likely to pull out of conflicts early.

A study by the eminent military sociologist Charles Moskos shows that people living in a democracy are not willing to sustain military engagements over time if those in the leadership class do not serve in the armed forces. When they don't serve, they send a signal that the conflict is not vital or worthwhile. Since we don't know what conflicts lie ahead - or what party will be in power when they hit - these findings should matter to all of us.

The Triangle Institute of Security Studies has tracked the growing disconnect between the military and the leadership class, and it finds evidence of a growing distrust of both groups toward one another. The group in America that reports having the lowest opinion of the military is the elites: The elites are almost six times more likely than those in the military to say they would be "disappointed if a child of mine decided to serve."

In past wars, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Sulzbergers of The New York Times - in other words, the elites - served. Sure, there were always shirkers, but many did join their middle-class and working-class compatriots. Today narrow self-interest, a sense of other priorities or a misguided sense of moral preference means most of the upper class never considers military service.

In my own travels to talk about this issue, the most problematic comment I've come across is an idea expressed by many, including many in the upper classes, that it is somehow more moral to refrain from military service than to serve, because that way one can avoid an "immoral" war.

There are so many problems with this statement. It certainly shows a misunderstanding of military service. Military service is not about our political opinions, which can after all be wrong. The oath given at the "pinning on" ceremony for a second lieutenant or a general involves not a promise to fight a particular war or support a given president but to protect and defend the Constitution. Young men and women who join the military do not know what future conflicts or engagements will bring. They even know that some of the decisions that flow from the deciders will be flawed, because people are flawed.

But service members also know that Americans will be sent to do the nation's bidding. And we want those who are sent to act with skill, judgment and integrity. Many of those who serve see that Americans are being sent to act in the interests of our country and say, as the famous sage Rabbi Hillel said, "If not me, who?"

Military service is not a political statement. Democrats did not rush to sign up when Clinton became president, and wealthy Republicans didn't suddenly join when Bush was elected. Military service is service to the country, and even more perhaps, service to your fellows.

But how can we expect privileged young people to do military work? Military work is dangerous. You could be asked to kill or be killed. It is fraught with the risk of being sent into an unpopular conflict, as many now understand Iraq to be. Why should the children of our leadership classes or those ambitious for leadership chose such a path, when there are so many better options available to them?

In World War I, one of Congress's stated reasons for proposing a draft was that without it, too many of the upper-class children would rush to service, and we'd lose the leadership class of the country. In 1956, a majority of the graduating classes of Stanford, Harvard and Princeton joined the military, and most were not drafted. Leadership was then understood to have a moral dimension. The cry "follow me" was more convincing than "charge!" Those who aspired to future leadership saw military service as necessary to their credibility.

As a country, we have stopped viewing military service as a way to make a principled statement. We sell it instead as a job opportunity, one from which those with better options are excused. We need to revisit our stance on who should serve, and why. All members of our elite class need not serve, just a representative number, enough to bring the country's leadership in line with the rest of the country. With such leaders, with such a military, we will be a stronger, fairer, better country. With such leaders, the enlistment plans of young Jimmy McCain need not seem so surprising.

Kathy Roth-Doquet co-wrote "AWOL, The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service and How It Hurts Our Country" (Harper Collins, 2006).