Posted 3:51 PM by Robert

Dogs Days

One expects slanted coverage and partisanship in the mainstream media where matters involve income or wealth redistribution, personal rights or the like.

But dogs?

The Associate Press reports on a nasty case of dog poisoning in Oregon stemming from a dispute over canine "leash laws." The story starts out fine - who could dispute the evil of setting out poisoned sausages in a public park?

But then the coverage gets strange.

Leash laws exist because unleashed dogs can cause trouble. They can attack each other; chase other animals; and jump on, knock over and terrify children (especially very small children), the elderly or just people who don't like dogs jumping on them and ruining their clothes. Unleashed dogs also often damage park landscaping and plantings and it is hard for their owners to control where dogs defecate, and hard for the owners to clean up after their dogs - indeed, that sometimes (but not always) seems to be the point of the owner letting the dog roam "free." Where more than one dog roams, they tend to form packs - as they do in nature - and whip each other up into even more energetic and potentially destructive activity.

Maybe it's all worth it. But that's for the city council to decide - and where leash laws exist, the council has decided the harm from unleashed dogs exceeds the benefits. City councils are not known to harbor a disproportionate number of "dog haters." It is certainly not the case that proponents of leash laws are "dog haters" (indeed, many advocates of leash laws think the laws protect the dogs from irresponsible owners) or people merely indulging their petty annoyance at being "sniffed." Dog owners are not victims of irrational or mean-spirited discrimination.

But that's not how the Associated Press sees things. To the AP, the advocates of leash laws (described only as the leash-your-dog crowd) seem to be one and the same with the psycho dog poisoner (the more tendentious AP vocabulary is in bold):

Poisoned sausages placed in a park have apparently killed eight dogs in this usually pooch-friendly town amid a heated debate over whether dogs should be allowed in parks without a leash. ... Canine owners are on edge, certain that some lifelong dog-hater got sniffed one too many times by an unleashed pet, and decided to take revenge. .... "It's a shame I can't let him off the leash without him getting in some poisoned sausage" ... Those in favor of leash-free parks have reported threats and insults yelled at them from the leash-your-dog crowd while in parks. ... The laws were ignored for years, angering those who leash their dogs and non-dog people, and spurring pro-leash advocates to launch a Web site, leashyourdog.com, for reporting free-roaming dogs. The site includes candid spy photos of free-roaming dogs ... The first sick dogs arrived at Dove Lewis Emergency Animal Hospital July 3 suffering from vomiting, diarrhea and mouth ulcers.

Heck, the article doesn't even make the point that if the leash-law had been honored, at least some of the killed dogs would never have died. Doesn't that mean the owners of the dead dogs have at least some culpability here for the demise of their own animals?

Personally, I don't care if Oregon cities have leash laws - that's for the Oregonians to decide. But I do find it passing strange that the AP has become so politically incontinent that the author and editor of this article cannot even bring themselves to suppress their personal biases and spin when it comes to supposedly objective reporting about a topic of dogs in a park.

Posted 12:24 AM by Robert

The Croooow Flies The Old Coooop ...

... and finds a new Croooow's nest.

Posted 4:47 PM by Robert

But Nobody There Reads, Right?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the greater Los Angeles area is the largest book market in the country now with 21.5% of the books sold by independent bookstores, the highest percentage in the country.

Posted 3:36 PM by Robert

Sign Of The Times In Los Angeles: No Vacancy

The average apartment rent in Los Angeles County surged $22, to $1,326, between March and June, the biggest dollar increase in the West as the region's rents surpassed the Silicon Valley... San Francisco still has the state's highest rents at $1,554 monthly.

"The way it's always gone is San Francisco is No. 1 and San Jose No. 2 in terms of rents. For the first time in 10 years L.A. County moved ahead of Silicon Valley ... and that's a very significant change," said Caroline S. Latham, RealFacts chief executive officer.

The pressure on rents in Los Angeles is likely understated by this report. Ultra-low mortgage rates have allowed many people who would otherwise be renters to purchase their own homes, thereby removing a great many people from the rental market. Further, there is wide-spead complaining among apartment owners that local regulation greatly inhibits the ability of landlords to convert their rental units into condominiums to the extent they would prefer - which is said to have artificially increased the supply of rental units on the market and artificially reduced rents.

Posted 3:26 PM by Robert

Why Children Must Be Searched

Since new airport security measures went into place folling the September 11 disasters, there has been a series of protests over the supposedly irrational searching of children preparing to board aircraft.

The protests have often been loud and drenched in assertions that the protesters speak on behalf of "common sense" - but the protesters have all been wrong. There is, of course, no reason a child's toy cannot contain a gun, and a policy of not searching children would create a huge incentive for terrorists to conceal weapons in exactly that way.

Now the Smoking Gun reports:

Last Friday, screeners at Orlando International Airport found a loaded .22-caliber Derringer concealed inside a teddy bear carried by a 10-year-old Ohio boy.

Posted 5:02 PM by Robert

But How Could They Tell?

Given that 95% of all men admit to masturbating and 5% of all men lie about it, how can this research be supported scientifically?

Posted 3:01 PM by Robert

Life After The Big Sleep II

Don Luskin notes a thrilling account of Paul Krugman's journey to the underworld of partisan hack columnist - from Lying In Ponds.

Priceless.

It's interesting that Herr Doktoprofessor now ranks only behind Ann Coulter and Robert Scheer in partisanship - but Ms. Coulter is a frankly partisan polemicist, while Messrs. Krugman (as LIP points out) and Scheer deny their partisanship - as LIP defines that term.

The Man Without Qualities is actually rather skeptical of LIP's methodology. For example, suppose for the sake of argument (and very much contrary to fact) that Herr Doktorprofessor Krugman's columns were impeccable economic analyses each and every time - but each time he chose a topic on which Republicans in general - and the President in particular - were on the wrong side of the pristine, objectively correct economic analysis, and Democrats were on the right side. This would be tough for Herr Doktorprofessor to pull off, but suppose he did - and further suppose that he did it because he subjectively doesn't like Republicans and Mr. Bush. That would mean that essentially all of his references to "Democrats" would be positive and essentially all of his references to Republicans and the President would be negative - which would seem to make Herr Doktorprofessor overwhelmingly partisan - in the sense that LIP uses that term, notwithstanding the complete absence (by hypothesis) of partisan spin in any Krugman column. Instead, the "spin" is (again, by hypothesis) all in Herr Doktorprofessor's selection of topics.

Now it is unquestionably the case that a general media outlet can render itself highly partisan merely by its selection of stories. For example, assuming that the Presidential trip to Africa is objectively more newsworthy than the simultaneous "he lied" meme, a general media outlet could show partisanship by electing to devote massive coverage to the "he lied" meme - but little to the simultaneous Presidential trip to Africa.

But I have a big problem labeling a columnist "partisan" solely on the basis of topic selection - even where that selection is motivated by subjective partisan motives. One does not read Paul Krugman to find "all the news that fit to print" - or commentary on "all the topics that are fit for an academic economist to write about."

My difficulties with Herr Doktorprofessor stem largely from his reliance on (1) a constant stream of bad economics, including incomplete economics, (2) false, misleading and materially incomplete statements of fact and economic theory, (3) evasive language often intended to allow him to claim credit for predictions where none were made, and (4) a boring parroting of the then-current liberal Democratic line that he attempts to tart up as original commentary.

I still enjoy reading LIP – but I don't see how LIP's criteria pick up much of what bothers me about Herr Doktorprofessor. Perhaps I’m wrong.

Posted 12:19 PM by Robert

Euroblather

Kirsty Hughes, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies scribes an article in the Financial Times exploring the ongoing European debate over whether "multilateralism" or "multipolarity" is Europe's correct future strategy. The article not only describes the complete mess that passes for European security and diplomatic thinking, it is a virtual embodiment of that mess - but in revealing and interesting ways. It opens with the predictable trite denunciation of a supposedly false dichotomy, tendered (as common in such efforts) as proof of the writer's fresh insight:

Proposals by France's President Jacques Chirac to define a new strategy around multipolarity - with Europe as a separate pole to the US - have been strongly criticised as an unrealistic, old-fashioned balance of power approach and, for good measure, anti-American. Multilateralism - collective decision-making in international bodies - not multipolarity must be Europe's guiding principle, it is argued. This is to create a false and misleading dichotomy.

Sometimes vocabulary is a tip-off - and a word to the wise really should be sufficient. There is a complete insensitivity - both in Europe generally and in the article itself - to the rather obvious fact that a debate whose principal vocabulary focuses on whether "multilateralism" or "multipolarity" is correct, or whether this is a "false dichotomy," is already bloodless and therefore almost certainly well off what should be the real questions. What are the real questions? The article veers towards the unintentionally hilarious when attempting to identify them but without actually coming to terms with the fact that Europe's aggregate military might and will to use it to fight for any important democratic principle are essentially lacking:

The real question is not whether multipolarity is inherently anti-US but whether the EU is an equal partner to the US or a subservient one. The answer is obvious. Europe's leaders do not want to play the American poodle, like Mr Blair. At their Thessaloniki summit last month, with future members from eastern Europe in attendance, they stressed the importance of transatlantic relations developing on a "equal footing" in all domains.

As this article went to press, no European nation outside of Britain and, to a much lesser extent, France, has a military worthy of the name. European defense expenditures are small, have become much smaller in recent years - and there is no indication they will or realistically could become significantly larger. Policies within European militaries undermine their preparedness (again with those two exceptions). Outside of Britain, there is no European desire to use what military they have to protect human rights in any significant degree - with the tiny exception of conflicts which may spill over into Europe itself (or, in the case of the old Yugoslavia, are really already in Europe itself, but the Europeans debate even that). Even the substantial part of Europe that supported the United States' effort in Iraq contributed only token physical support (Poland) - or none (Spain, Italy).

There is simply no way Europe can place itself on an "equal footing" with the United States in the "domain" of security unless Europe buys itself a military comparable to the Uniuted States' military and forges some coherent idea of when to use it - an idea consistent with political and democratic developments since the the 18th Century - which means abandoning the traditional "law of nations" that emerged from the Treaty of Westfalia and to which Europe still clings. And affording all that means reforming the European economies to separate them more from the state and governing political groups. Absent a will to accomplish all that, Europe's "debate" necessarilly degenerates into considering what scheme best positions Europe as a "rent seeker" or "free rider" with respect to American defense expenditures. Such a position is not - and never can be - "equal footing" with the United States because a pilot will never let a free rider drive on an important route, although the rider may be allowed to play at the wheel a bit from time to time just for fun.

With all that in the hopper, one is all but forced to conclude that any European leaders who stressed the importance of transatlantic relations developing on a "equal footing" in all domains - especially the "domain" of security - must have been nibbling on some of the pretty Jimsonweed.

And they seem to have saved a leaf for Ms. Hughes.

Posted 10:37 AM by Robert

Trend Away, Trend Away, We Will Cross The Mighty Ocean To Lagos Bay III

Rich Galen gives some idea of how the real pros view the ongoing demolition of the Democrats' relationship with African Americans. The view from the Right is not that different from the view from the Left as voiced by the brilliant Donna Brazille - and ignored by Democrats apparently determined to take their most important constituency for granted. Mr. Galen writes, in part:

The National Democrats are on their bi-weekly whine, wringing their hands about the lack of coverage they are getting in the popular press. The coverage might not be what they want.

For example, the NAACP is in Miami Beach this week for its annual meeting. There was a time when no Democrat could afford to miss an annual meeting - certainly no Democrat running for the nomination for the Presidency.

Yet, this year, three candidates for President - two of them "top-tier" - decided the trip to South Beach wasn't worth their time: Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman were no-shows as well as Dennis Kucinich.

In an apparent effort to soften the blow of non-attendance, according to Nedra Pickler's Associated Press reporting, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, pointing to the empty chairs, said: "In essence, you now have become persona non grata. Your political capital is the equivalent of Confederate dollars."

....

The problems that the NAACP is having is not limited to the President or even Democratic candidates for President. A few months ago the Democratic National Committee, in the throes of a serious funding crisis brought about by Campaign Finance Reform, laid off ten staffers. They were all Black.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) went into a rage and caused DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to backpedal, rescind the firings, and hire two African American former Clinton Administration staffers to quell the storm.

On top of that, an article in The Hill newspaper said that the CBC has now started a feud with Senator Lieberman and Presidential candidate Howard Dean over statements regarding Africa.

Lieberman, who has been a strong supporter of the war in Iraq has been less-than-enthusiastic about US military intervention in Liberia. Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ) a member of the CBC "denounced Lieberman" at a Democratic Caucus meeting according to Hans Nichols' reporting.

Howard Dean, in his appearance on "Meet the Press," complained that Tim Russert's questions were "frivolous" and were "like asking me who the ambassador to Rwanda is." CBC member Jesse Jackson, Jr. was quoted by The Hill as suggesting Dean should "offer an explanation as to why he thinks Rwanda is not important."

So the NAACP is mad at three Presidential candidates, the Congressional Black Caucus is angry with another, everyone appears to be angry with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

African Americans are the staunchest supporters of the Democratic party (Al Sharpton pointed out at the NAACP meeting that they give "92 percent" of their votes to Democratic candidates) so, you might think all this would be of some interest to the mainstream press as they follow the ebbs and flows of the early political season.

If the National Democrats were getting the coverage they have demanded, this Black v. White battle in the Democratic Party would be front page news.

Mr. Galen is right that the story is very big, and is not getting the mainstream media coverage it deserves. But a lot of African Americans are probably following it - and that's what counts substantively.

And Mr. Galen does not note an even more striking manistream media lacuna: There have been no mainstream media "thought pieces" (no Sunday New York Times magazine meditations, for example) on the amazing declne - a fall of eleven percent - in the number of African-Americans identifying themselves as "Democrats" in the past three years.

The roles of Condi and Colin in stimulating that drop might be particularly interesting.

Posted 11:54 PM by Robert

Disconnect At The Top?

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William H. Donaldson is reported to have just said:

"The old concept on Wall Street was that if you didn't like the way a company is run, you would sell the stock. I think that no longer pertains. You now have companies where investors want to be long-term investors."

If Mr. Donaldson is accurately quoted here and means what he says, then the United States and its securities markets are in very big trouble.

Mr. Donaldson's quote is the worst kind of dangerous nonsense on stilts.

UPDATE: All of which does not mean that Mr. Donaldson doesn't have some good ideas - like largely knocking the preposterously grandstanding and destructive Eliot Spitzer out of securities law enforcement.

Posted 9:00 PM by Robert

Fear And Loathing In The Audit Season

The recent past has seen some claim that a principal drag on the United States economy is - and for the immediate future, will be - fear of accounting scandals. Paul Krugman expressed that concern. Recently departed Federal Reserve Bank of New York President William McDonough expressed this opinion, citing the damage done to investor and lender confidence by corporate scandals - and his views and appointment to be the first head of the new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board were fulsomely praised by Brad DeLong. Warren Buffett, John Bogle and Arthur Levitt also seem to have shared this concern.

In each case, the proffered remedy for the damage done to investor and lender confidence by corporate scandals has been stronger laws and penalties applicable to corporate chieftains! The Man Without Qualities has not been impressed.

And, now Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned that "a pervasive sense of caution" following America's rash of corporate scandals had held back investment and employment.

Et, tu, Alan?

Well, no. Brother Alan is not saying that investment funds have been in short supply because of the damage done to investor and lender confidence by corporate scandals - the recent broad and sustained run-up in the stock market is enough to show that such damage has probably not been a drag on the economy. No, what Brother Greenspan is quite correctly concerned about is that all the baloney and excessive regulatory action attendant to the recent accounting scandals have caused corporate chieftains to become too cautious in making the kind of risky corporate investments that the economy needs, as Mr. Greenspan noted: "As yet there is little evidence that the more accommodative financial environment has materially improved the willingness of top executives to increase capital investment ... Corporate executives are seemingly unclear . . . about how an increase in risk-taking on their part would be viewed by shareholders and regulators."

Oddly, the Financial Times also reports: This concern was held by William McDonough, former president of the New York Fed, but until recently appeared a minority view within the Fed as a whole.

But Mr. McDonough's most public worries didn't concern management anxieties - they concerned investor anxiety. He - and the rest of the people named above - proposed measures that would increase management anxieties of exactly the type Mr. Greenspan now says he is concerned about. And the Fed Chief is right, as usual.

Posted 3:00 PM by Robert

How Feminism Got Its Groove Back (Or, What's In A Name?)

Negril, like some resorts in the Dominican Republic and Cuba, is known as a place where white middle-aged women come in search of what they call the "big bamboo". British researchers Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor and Julia O'Connell Davidson found that the usual analysis of sex tourism did not allow for the possibility of women as buyers of sex, because "prostitute-users are, by definition, male, and this assumption is shared by many researchers and theorists".

The two researchers interviewed 240 women holidaying in Negril and two similar resorts in the Dominican Republic. Almost a third of the interviewees had engaged in sexual relationships with local men during their holiday. Though 60 per cent admitted to certain "economic elements" to their liaisons, they did not perceive the encounters as prostitute-client transactions, nor did they view their sexual partners as prostitutes.

Those who admit to coming to Negril for sex believe they are helping the men and the local economy by giving them money and gifts.

Ms Sanchez Taylor and Ms O'Connell Davidson suggest that the reason many female tourists are able to delude themselves into believing they are not prostitute users lies in their racialised power over the men: "Racist ideas about black men being hypersexual and unable to control their sexuality enable them to explain to themselves why such young and desirable men would be eager for sex with older and/or overweight women, without having to think that their partners are interested in them only for economic reasons."

This is a Maureen Dowd column waiting to happen!

Her intense hostility towards men - especially men of African descent who challenge her view of the world - is well represented by the racist, anti-male stereotyped thinking that allows these women to do what they are doing and think they are just helping the men and the local economy by giving them money and gifts. Big Mo should adore these women. And no doubt those bonobos would be pleased with what's going on here, too.

Posted 2:56 PM by Robert

More Developments

The former supervisor of an American youth program was sentenced Friday to life in prison on 25 counts of lewd conduct and assault for sucking the toes of 20 boys.

Posted 2:11 PM by Robert

Merry Ole Bloggerland

Slugger O'Toole has been to the big British blogger fest at the Palaces of Westminster.

Posted 10:49 AM by Robert

Davis Descending XIV: Demonizing Issa

Inevitably.

View of the future of California political gatherings - once Governor Davis really gets going.

Posted 7:50 AM by Robert

Life After The Big Sleep

Paul Krugman is back after his big sleep! Similarly, Lenin vanished from his tomb for an extended hiatus following some serious corruption, coming "back" to raise the question: Who's buried in Lenin's Tomb? It wasn't a joke. The resulting Lenin corpsesicle looks so waxen that there are constant rumors that it isn't Lenin's body.

And so too with the column inserted under Herr Doktorprofessor's name in today's New York Times. Since the brain is the first thing the embalmer removes in the mummification process, there is of course no economics whatsoever in today's effort - in accordance with tradition, none appears even to have been preserved in canopic jars or their journalistic equivalents. The column's corpus has also been purified of all signs of fresh intellectual activity or analysis. The language is ritualistic, a kind of funerary text praying for the punishment of the President, in some ways rather similar to texts inscribed in certain tombs at Saqqara, for example, which were written on the inner passages and the walls of the burial chamber. They were intended to help the deceased travel through the afterworld, and sometimes included a prayer for the punishment of those the deceased saw as enemies. Today's modern simulacrum appears to be a professional job.

The column is nothing more than a desiccated rehearsal of the inadequately supported anti-Bush, "he lied," "Blair lied," "the intelligence services lied because Bush and Blair made them lie" memes that have been cluttering the media for the last week or so. Those charges have already been answered by various people in the Administration, the Blair administration and the media.

Herr Doktorprofessor adds nothing new. His arguments are but Ka hoovering among funerary models of real world objects. We are moved to leave him to his eternal peace.

Herr Doktorprofessor does emit one tentative sign of life at the very beginning of the column, where he notes ambiguously:

More than half of the U.S. Army's combat strength is now bogged down in Iraq ... We have lost all credibility with allies who might have provided meaningful support ... All this puts us in a very weak position for dealing with real threats. Did I mention that North Korea has been extracting fissionable material from its fuel rods?

At first this might be read as arguing that Herr Doktorprofessor thinks the U.S. Army's combat strength may be needed soon to strike at North Korea. Herr Doktorprofessor seems as though he wants to say (the way frustrated spirits want to send messages to us from the afterlife) that the new Korean War he thinks that we need is just not possible because the strength of the U.S. Army has been bogged down and our former allies will just not help now that we have lost "all credibility."

But, since Herr Doktorprofessor doesn't complete the thought that almost emerges from his pretty damn peculiar semi-suggestion, we are left to conclude that this was no sign of life after all. Just some burp resulting from inadequately purged decomposition gases, perhaps.

Heck, there's not even a juvenile pun of the sort we might expect from Maureen Dowd.

Posted 9:41 AM by Robert

New Developments

Can it be true?

Also, the New York Times has a new editor.

Posted 11:35 AM by Robert

MIA

Four Democrats share the lead in a new national poll measuring support for the party's nine candidates ... Dick Gephardt had the backing of 14 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic in the Newsweek poll released Saturday. Joe Lieberman was at 13 percent, Howard Dean 12 percent and John Kerry 10 percent.

Missing in action to the point of not even warranting a mention in the linked article is the man with that wondeful lack of political seasoning which nevertheless has its virtues, the dazzling, refreshing, fresh-faced political greenhorn freshman senator John Edwards - this despite his having served up to the national public his trademark charming and boyishly attractive badinage in heaping doses over the past months.

But how can this be? The mainstream media and much of the blogosphere told us he has what it takes!

UPDATE: [A] poll released mid-week showed that 66% of Democrats STILL can't name a single candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. ... [I]t was a CBS poll.

Posted 11:21 AM by Robert

Trend Away, Trend Away, We Will Cross The Mighty Ocean To Lagos Bay II

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice does her customarily brilliant and thorough job again on Fox News Sunday, this time defending the President from the liberal media's rolling suicide-bomb claims that Mr. Bush "lied" about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium.

Ms. Rice pointed out that the statement should not have been in the Jan. 20 speech, in which Bush laid out reasons for military action against Iraq. "We have a higher standard for presidential speeches" than raw intelligence. But the statement was nevertheless still supported and probably accurate.

But Condi didn't stop there; she went right to the heart of the ongoing historical revisionism of the liberal media and some Democrats (especially Senator Kerry):

"It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa ... This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places. But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate."

All very true - and very important and very Condi. She offers no bull. No circumlocutions. No alternate meanings of “is.” This is not a mere “spokesperson” we are hearing - this is a real advisor and real defender. This is a key team member at work. And that's what makes the most important things here from a political perspective that she said it and that the President is, in fact, relying on her brilliance and thoroughness and savvy. She is publicly deflecting charges emanating from white, liberal, Democrats - and those people will have to get at and through her to get at the President. For example, the President's political defense is not being crafted by any behind-the-scenes Jewish neo-conservatives of the type the same crowd of critics tried so hard to present (in one of the worst examples of national-level political sliming ever) as the Presidential “puppet-masters” a few months ago that some of the presenters fell into naked anti-semitism. No. With this Presidential defense you see what you get. This time, the President is essentially all but forcing his critics into presenting Condi (and Colin) as his puppet-masters.

And African-Americans are watching it all happen. Every day. And the more the same white, liberal, Democratic crowd mounts their assaults on Presidential "credibility," the more they can watch the most important Democratic constituency trend away ... trend away.

UPDATE: This particular Presidential rope-a-dope of his white, liberal, Democratic critics is all the more entertaining because the critics grasp neither of the main points at issue: the "he lied" meme has a very small downside risk for the President because few people outside the critic crowd itself see things the way the crowd does. But the critics' efforts are nevertheless giving the President an unexpected and invaluable way of getting through to a portion of the African-American community. In any national election in which a substantial portion of the African American vote can be put in play, there will be few trophies for Democrats to bring home.

UPDATE: The Miami Herald reports:

The NAACP's top leadership lashed out Saturday at several of the major Democratic candidates for president, calling their intention to skip Monday's candidate forum an ''affront'' to the nation's oldest civil rights organization. As many as four of the nine candidates have refused to participate in the forum, expressing reluctance to appear on stage with their rivals in a debate format, NAACP officials said. As of late Saturday, Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Reps. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio were not expected to attend.

Via DRUDGE