Washington - When the citywide smoking ban takes effect here next month, at least one workplace in town will be spared: Congress, the beneficiary of a kind of diplomatic immunity for federal lawmakers.

That is excellent news for John A. Boehner of Ohio, the new Republican majority leader, who regularly smokes cigarettes between votes in the House. And for Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, who sits and smokes cigars while reading the newspaper in the speaker's lobby. And for Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican, who is struggling to quit but can be seen inhaling in weaker moments during the workday.

Because while the rest of the country has turned against smoking with great zeal, Congress has stubbornly — some would say proudly — refused to bend.

You want the news behind the news? You want to know just how far from reality the official truth is? Consider the following story from today's UK Guardian:

The race between Tony Blair and George Bush (and their NeoCon backers) to become the first modern Western "Democracy" to transform itself into a de facto dictatorship is heating up. Last night, Tony Blair put in a sterling performance to this end by "promising" (read threatening) that British Police will act on the new "glorifying terrorism" law which, having been rejected by his own Labour MPs and the House of Lords in January, has now been all but passed into law.

A USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll says Americans not only think Iran will develop nuclear weapons but also use them against the United States.

The poll done over the last weekend also says Americans fear the Bush administration will be "too quick" to order military action against Iran, USA Today reported Tuesday.

"No amount of money will successfully sell the Bush Administration's failed policies, from the war in Iraq, to its disastrous energy policy, to its confusing Medicare prescription drug benefits," said House Democratic Leader Pelosi. "The American people know the Bush Administration is on the wrong track and the White House PR machine won't change that fact."

If we are to believe the corporate media, Bush's “secret eavesdropping program” is useless and “out-dated” because a shrewd “al-Qaeda” has “undoubtedly has changed its means of communication to avoid Washington's monitoring,” according to the Associated Press. “Does anyone really believe that, after 50 days of having this program on the front page of our newspapers, across talk shows across America, that al-Qaida has not changed the way that it communicates?” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the House intelligence-committee chairman, thus expecting us to believe al-Qaeda once utilized cell phones and email as it planned terrorist attacks. Since “al-Qaeda” is actually al-CIA-duh, it has no need to communicate via cell phone or email, that is unless it wants to leave a conspicuous trail to be used later to frame patsies.

As we know, the massive NSA violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution at the behest of the Bush neocons is not intended to catch “al-Qaeda” bad guys, but rather monitor and eventually snare Americans who disagree with the Straussian neocons, Machiavellian followers of Leo Strauss and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt who hate the Bill of Rights and the very idea of a constitutional republic and are in the process of destroying its last proud vestiges. NSA snooping has nothing to do with preventing rogue intelligence terrorism and everything to do with subverting the liberties of American citizens. In the 1960s and 70s, the NSA compiled intercepts on U.S. peace activists and it was this unchecked and illegal behavior that resulted in the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Bush (or rather his neocon handlers) circumvented the FISA process precisely because they were (and are) snooping on their domestic enemies—it has absolutely nothing to do with the CIA-created fake terrorist group called “al-Qaeda.”

Congress is in a stew over lobbyists' influence on political decision-making. The Abramoff fallout is likely to strike many who participated in the money-for-favors game, yet all the churning around is unlikely to yield any long-term effect. The reason? There are hundreds of well-heeled businesses and groups with a large and expensive wish list. The predecessor to illegal behavior is the undue influence of financial deals that create tension between the legal and ethical duty of a legislator to his constituents on the one hand and to his own personal interests on the other. When we learned about flagrantly illegal activities by certain lobbyists, many acted with surprise. Why should they have been surprised? Money begets influence, influence corrupts, and corruption can cross the line into crime.

As former CIA intelligence analyst Philip Giraldi told the American Conservative last July, the United States plans to nuke the be-jesus out of Iran. “The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.”

In a story appearing in the Sunday Telegraph, the newspaper once owned by the Canadian criminal finagler and neocon “Lord” Conrad Black, amoral strategists “at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a ‘last resort' to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.” If not so deadly serious, the idea that the Straussian neocons will shock and awe Iran only as a “last resort” would be comical. In fact, they have long planned to bomb Iran—imaginary nukes or not—and kill as many Iranians as possible and decimate the civilian infrastructure, as they have done in Iraq (some estimates put the death toll thus far above 130,000). “Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.”

Gold closed at 554.20 dollars an ounce on Friday, down 3.2% from $571.90 the week before. The dollar closed at 0.8401 euros, up 1.0% from 0.8317 at the end of the previous week. The euro, then, closed at 1.1904 dollars compared to 1.2024 the Friday before. Gold in euros would be 465.56 euros an ounce down 2.2% from 475.63 the week before. Oil closed at 61.84 dollars a barrel, down 5.7% from $65.37 at the close of the previous Friday. Oil in euros would be 51.95 euros a barrel, down 4.7% from 54.37 for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.96, up 2.4% from 8.75 at the end of the previous week. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,919.05, up 1.2% from 10,793.62 the week before. The NASDAQ closed at 2,261.88, virtually unchanged from 2,262.58 at the end of the previous week. The yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.58%, up five basis points from 4.53 the week before.

With gold down substantially, oil down even more and the dollar up a bit against the euro, it looks like a good week for the imperial economy.

Iran dismissed as "tough words" the United States' refusal to rule out using military force against the Islamic republic over its controversial nuclear programme.

"We are not afraid of attacks by the United States or by other countries on Iran's nuclear installations because we have nothing to hide, we have no installations to produce nuclear weapons," Iranian Vice President Esfandyar Rahim Mashaee said here after meeting with his Indonesian counterpart.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week Washington would not rule out using military force against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons.