The Bush Administration shifts US policy another step from tacit vindication to open support for the further expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories:

The Bush administration, moving to lend political support to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a time of political turmoil, has modified its policy and signaled approval of growth in at least some Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, American and Israeli officials say. In the latest modification of American policy, the administration now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward to undeveloped parts of the West Bank, according to the officials. The new policy has not been enunciated publicly. It came to light this week when Mr. Sharon’s government announced that 1,001 new bids for construction would be issued for subsidized apartments for settlers in the occupied territories.

Times like this, it’d be nice to hear from John Kerry. But don’t hold your breath.

Documents like this one make one wonder whether the other side is even trying to pretend to adhere to campaign finance law:

On the same day that the Bush-Cheney campaign repeatedly denied coordinating attacks with the anti-Kerry group “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida was caught promoting a rally in Gainesville for the group. A flyer being distributed at the Alachua County Republican party headquarters, which doubles as the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters for the county, promotes a weekend rally sponsored by “Swift Boat Vets for Truth, Veterans for Bush, Alachua Bush/Cheney Committee,” and others.

Wonkette on John McCain’s stepped-up role in the Bush-Cheney campaign:

No words as to whether his “black” child is also welcome.

Richard Kim on Jim McGreevey’s missed chances:

New York City in the late 1970s, still in the rush of gay liberation but before the AIDS crisis, was ripe with possibilities both personal and political (if not exactly electoral) for men like him. And yet, of all the memories that gay men could recount of those days, his are surely the most pitiable: “All I did in college, literally, was just work. Columbia was a blur of studying.” During the late 1980s, while AIDS struck thousands of gay men and the FDA dragged its feet, McGreevey was working as a lobbyist for Merck Pharmaceuticals. He might have acted up then, but he did not. As the early 1990s culture wars saw waves of vicious right-wing assaults on gays and lesbians–and Congressmen like Barney Frank and Gerry Studds spoke out as openly gay men–Mr. McGreevey, then a local politician with far less at stake, had another opportunity to wed the personal and political, but he did not. Not during the Texas sodomy case, the Massachusetts gay marriage decision, President Bush’s call for a federal marriage amendment or even New Jersey’s own recent debate over domestic partnership benefits did McGreevey choose to step forward. Instead, the moment chose him.

As Kim argues, it’s deeply unfortunate that McGreevey waited until finding himself on the cusp of being outed to come out, and that in so doing he allowed homosexuality, adultery, and corruption to be conflated once more in the public mind, and offered cover to those who hate him because he’s gay and in power to phrase their concerns in terms of good government. Better late than never though. And better McGreevey political and maritial impropriety than the rank hypocrisy of the self-appointed arbiters of virtue who point to him as a cautionary tale against the “gay agenda” while working to strengthen the very forces which make it so difficult for men and women in McGreevey’s situation to make the choices Kim and so many of us wish they had.

Sam Smith compiles a limited sampling of things you wouldn’t know about incidents of violence at protests with anarchists from reading today’s Times:

…At the peak of the [Philadelphia] demonstrations, organizers reported:

A leader of the Ruckus Society was arrested while walking along a city street and charged with possession of an instrument of crime, obstruction of justice, obstructing a highway, failure to disperse, recklessly endangering another person and conspiracy. A judge set bail at $1 million. Joseph Rogers, a Quaker peace volunteer and President of the Mental Health Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, witnessed correctional officers tightening the handcuffs of protesters until their hands became blue. When Rogers asked the guards to loosen the cuffs, the guards replied, “This will teach them a lesson, this will teach them to come to Philly.”

Look who’s a divider now:

The experiment: A college professor wears a Kerry-Edwards shirt to a rally for President Bush, then a Bush for President shirt to a John Kerry rally. Result: Bush people make the subject remove his shirt, then give him the boot. The Kerry people don’t make a peep. . .He had a ticket to an afternoon Bush rally July 31 in Cambridge, Ohio. At the first ring of security, Prather says he was told to turn his Kerry shirt inside out. He did. At the second ring, he was told to remove the shirt. He did, then donned a soccer T-shirt. “I was in for 10 or 15 minutes,” he recalls, when security escorted him out. It was before the president arrived. “I was so far away I couldn’t have even heckled him,” Prather notes. A few hours later, he entered the Kerry rally, in Wheeling, wearing his Bush shirt. “Nobody said anything to me. “

The only thing worse than a Senator wrongly placed on a “no fly” list would be someone else wrongly placed there, someone who can’t call up Tom Ridge to fix it:

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard this morning from one of its own about some of the problems with airline “no fly” watch lists. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., says he had a close encounter with the lists when trying to take the U.S. Airways shuttle out of Washington to Boston. The ticket agent wouldn’t let him on the plane. His name was on the list in error. After a flurry of phone calls, Kennedy was able to fly home, but then the same thing happened coming back to Washington. Kennedy says it took three calls to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to get his name stricken from the list. The process took several weeks, in all.

Wal-Mart Watch: Wal-Mart prepares to invade West Haven:

Retail giant Wal-Mart is negotiating with the city to build a discount store on Sawmill Road, sources confirmed Wednesday. Wal-Mart is proposing a 142,000-square-foot store on a 20.2-acre site north of Sawmill Road, according to sources close to the negotiations. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mia Masten confirmed the retailer is exploring the market for a store in West Haven but declined to say whether a deal is pending. “We’ve been exploring the market for a couple of months,” she said. “We’ve not zeroed in on a specific spot.” However, sources said Wal-Mart sent a letter to the city indicating its preference to build a store on the Sawmill Road site. Wal-Mart is not planning a superstore, which includes a full grocery, the sources said…There are Wal-Mart stores in New Haven, Hamden, Derby, Shelton, Guilford, Branford, Old Saybrook and Wallingford. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the world’s largest retailer, with $244.5 billion in sales in the year ending Jan. 31, 2003. The company, based in Bentonville, Ark., has more than 1.3 million employees worldwide and 4,300 stores, 3,200 in the United States.

United Airlines announces its plans to balance its budgets by raiding the pensions on which its workers are depending for retirement:

United Airlines said today that it was likely to terminate and replace its four employee pension plans with less-generous benefits, a drastic move that the airline said was necessary to attract the financing that would allow it to emerge from bankruptcy. In a 26-page filing with the United States Bankruptcy Court in Chicago, United stopped short of actually ending the plans and said it had not made a final decision to do so. But the warning from the airline was the sternest threat yet of its intention to shed its pension obligations. United’s unions had no immediate comment. United’s move came on the eve of a court hearing, at which Judge Eugene C. Wedoff planned to hear motions from the federal pension agency, United’s machinists and its flight attendants challenging the airline’s efforts to get out from under its pension liabilities.

The Progressive shares two accounts of dissent at the Democratic Convention – one from Medea Benjamin:

I went onto the floor of the convention on Tuesday night when Teresa Heinz was speaking and opened up a banner that said, ‘End the Occupation of Iraq.’ It was maybe three feet by two feet. Pink, of course. I was immediately surrounded by police, who tried to take it away from me. They said, ‘Only official signs are allowed.’ I stood my ground, and they started pulling me and pushing me and asked me for my pass, and I showed it to them. They said, ‘But she’s not press, she shouldn’t be here, we’ve got to get her out.’ I was in front of the Colorado delegation, and some of them were saying, ‘Free speech. Let her stay.’ And others were being told that they should get up and surround me and stick their Kerry signs over mine, which they dutifully did. And then I heard Teresa Heinz say, ‘The true patriot is one who speaks truth to power,’ so I started speaking truth to power, and I started yelling, ‘Will John Kerry bring the troops home? Will John Kerry take an anti-war stand?’

– and the other from delegate Vincent Lavery:

The next day, I was at an anti-war event that the AFSC was putting on, and I picked up five ‘Say No to War’ signs, which had three-inch sticks on them. I took the stick off one and put the sign in my pocket. As I went through the inspection at the convention, they took the four away from me. So I took out the last one, the one without the stick, from my pocket, and wrote on the back, ‘DNC would not allow this sign!’ I then moved around almost the entire convention, standing in front of each delegation. In many cases, the reaction was complete apathy, a few gave me a frightened thumbs up, and some said sit down and stop being disruptive. When I started walking around, the DNC sent out two employees who surrounded me with Kerry/Edwards signs to block me. I said, ‘The two of you should be ashamed of yourselves.’ I asked one of them, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘We have to keep signs away from the TV cameras.’ I said, ‘Who instructed you to follow me?’ His answer was, ‘I can’t say.’

Bob Herbert on strong-arm intimidation tactics against Black Floridian voters:

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd “investigation” that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November. The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March. Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue right through the presidential election. “We did a preliminary inquiry into those allegations and then we concluded that there was enough evidence to follow through with a full criminal investigation,” said Geo Morales, a spokesman for the Department of Law Enforcement.

The state police officers, armed and in plain clothes, have questioned dozens of voters in their homes. Some of those questioned have been volunteers in get-out-the-vote campaigns. I asked Mr. Morales in a telephone conversation to tell me what criminal activity had taken place. “I can’t talk about that,” he said. I asked if all the people interrogated were black. “Well, mainly it was a black neighborhood we were looking at – yes,” he said. He also said, “Most of them were elderly.” When I asked why, he said, “That’s just the people we selected out of a random sample to interview.”