The New York Times began a new week with an editorial that typifies the media mind-set of the warfare state.

The Sept. 19 editorial warns of dire consequences from a growing deficit that has been boosted by tax cuts -- in combination with “the pre-Katrina priorities laid down by Mr. Bush.” Those priorities include a U.S. military budget that has reached half a trillion dollars per year. But the Times editorial does not devote a single word to military spending or the Iraq war.

Why not mention the option of an American pullout from Iraq, where the U.S. war effort has already drained $200 billion from taxpayers? Well, those who determine editorial positions at the New York Times -- and the other major newspapers in the country -- cannot bring themselves to call for a quick end to the U.S. military role in Iraq.

Fierce criticism of White House policies is routinely compatible with support for militarism. When the Times condemned the Bush administration’s handling of hurricane relief in a Sept. 2 editorial, the final paragraph included this unequivocal sentence: “America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army.”

This past spring anti-choice representatives in the Ohio House introduced a bill that would completely outlaw abortion in Ohio without exception: not to save a woman's life, not for victims of rape or incest.  It would even put someone in jail for 15 years for driving a woman to another state to get an abortion.  When he introduced the bill, Rep. Brinkman announced that his plan was to get the bill passed and then take it to the Supreme Court and use it to overturn Roe.  Initially this looked like a far-fetched dream, but now with the dual vacancy on the Court, and John Roberts as the nominee for Chief Justice this dream may quickly turn into a reality and a nightmare for women in Ohio.

A funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies into mass graves.

Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought to expose that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the agency which regulates the funeral industry, were actually employees of the company they were supposed to monitor--an obvious conflict-of-interest.

In the civil matter, which took place at two Jewish cemeteries in Florida, the plaintiff's attorney said that SCI secretly broke into and opened burial vaults and dumped remains in a wooded area where the remains may have been consumed by wild animals.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Here's a good idea: Consumer groups and progressive congressfolks have joined in an effort to stop hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina from being further harmed by the new Bankruptcy Act, scheduled to take effect Oct. 17. This law was notoriously written of, by and for the consumer credit industry, and is particularly onerous for the poor.

The bill was passed with massive support from the Republican leadership in Congress and from a disgusting number of sellout Democrats. While it was being considered in committee earlier this year, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee offered an amendment to protect victims of natural disasters. It was defeated, without debate, on a party-line vote.

Now, Congress has a chance to rethink some of the most punitive parts of the bill. Katrina victims who were planning to file before the new law goes into effect are s.o.l. -- where they gonna find a lawyer, let alone an open courthouse?

President George W. Bush has consistently maintained that there is a link between the events of September 11, 2001 and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, contrary to all available evidence. This has been the consistent White House fallback position since the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. And now that Hurricane Katrina has devastated the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans, Bush is making a political though not causal connection between the destruction caused by four human-hijacked airliners and an act of nature. The usual liberal Democratic response is to strongly deny all such associations. This is a massive mistake, for undeniably there is a strong correlation between all three events. That statistical link is the incompetence of George W. Bush.

Bush was given an intelligence briefing in August of 2001 which clearly outlined the possibility and immanence of terrorists flying airliners into tall buildings in a major American metropolis. He ignored this warning in favor of clearing brush down on the ranch. He was advised that no WMD's were likely to be found in Iraq, and that the program which