The huge gap between Tehran and Washington has widened in recent months. Top officials of Iran and the United States are not even within shouting distance. The styles of rhetoric differ, but the messages in both directions are filled with hostility.

While visiting Iran’s capital in early summer, during the home stretch of the presidential campaign, I was struck by paradoxes. From all appearances, most Iranians despise the U.S. government but love Americans. Repression, imposed from above, coexists with freedom taken from below. The press is largely dogmatic, but some media outlets show appreciable independence.

I was fascinated to observe a rally of 10,000 people who gathered in a Tehran stadium to vocally support a reform candidate for the presidency, Mostafa Moin. One speaker after another called for political freedom. The Tehran Times reported that Moin was promoting “a Democracy and Human Rights Front in Iran to defend the rights of all Iran’s religious and ethnic groups, the youth, academicians, women, and political opposition groups.”

That seems like a long time ago. The Moin campaign didn’t make it

On November 2, 2005, NEDA released an analysis of the 2004 precinct level Ohio exit poll data entitled “The Gun is Smoking: Ohio Exit Poll Data Provides Virtually Irrefutable Evidence of Vote Miscount”. The analysis used data provided in the Election Sciences Institute (ESI) report of June 6, 2005.

On November 3, 2005 NEDA realized that its interpretation of the definition for the term “nonresponders” to the exit poll, as used by ESI, was incorrect.

What this means is that it is most likely that the Ohio exit poll data is:

1. inconsistent with voter exit poll response explanations as put forth wrongly by Mitofsky in his Jan 19th paper

2. highly suspicious and very consistent with vote fraud explanations

but does "not" contain "virtually irrefutable" evidence of vote fraud.

AUSTIN, Texas -- While it's still an open contest for Worst Legacy of the Bush Years, the destruction of goodwill for America around the world is definitely a contender.

In the days and weeks following Sept. 11, the United States enjoyed global sympathy and goodwill. All our old enemies sent regrets and offers of help. The most important newspaper in France headlined, "We Are All Americans Now." The most touching gestures and offers rolled in, wave and after wave -- nations offered their teams of rescue dogs to search for bodies; special collections were taken up by D-Day survivors in Normandy; all over the world, American embassies were surrounded by long lines of people coming to offer sympathy, write notes, leave flowers.

You could make a pretty good case that one root of the Bush administration's abysmal diplomatic record is simply bad manners. "We don't need any help" was certainly a true response. But, "Thank you" would have been better.

Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader of the upper chamber of the U.S. Government, infuriated the Bush administration and its Republican cronies on Tuesday by forcing the body into closed session. The move is allowed under a little used rule that permits any member to demand that the session be closed, ostensibly to facilitate the discussion of secret or sensitive information. Why now? Why this? Reid's statement may be the strongest of any Democratic Party leader to date: after years of stumbling into oblivion—by supporting the war and offering little but tepid opposition to the Bush cabal's most offensive policies-—is it just possible that the Dems may finally have seen the light?

ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE IT'S THE 11th HOUR ­ OUR LAST CHANCE TO PROTECT THE ARCTIC REFUGE!

Throughout the previous years, the Gwich’in indigenous peoples, conservation and environmental coalitions and American voters have successfully prevented U.S. Congress from opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But the political landscape of America has changed. With record highs in gasoline and fossil fuel prices, the oil and energy industry are using fear to push their corporate agenda to open the Arctic Refuge to drilling.

Oil corporations and their friends in the U.S. Congress continue to try to use the Budget Process to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. They have attached a drilling provision to the massive 2006 Budget Reconciliation package in an effort to limit public debate and circumvent normal congressional procedure. The Senate is expected to vote this Thursday, November 3, and the House is poised to vote the week of Nov. 7.