AUSTIN, Texas -- Strange peaches. All of us out here in the boonies should be aware this is a truly weird political year. For one thing, nobody has ever seen this much money involved. What can $200 million do in a political race, answered, we presume, by at least $100 million by the Democrats? No one knows.

            And now brace yourselves for the really bad news. All this money, intensity and advertising is not going to be spread out across 50 states. There are only 14 to 19 states considered "in play" in this election, not either solidly red or blue, Republican or Democrat. What that means is that all this money is going to hit relatively few citizens like a tidal wave.

            Most of us, in most of the states, will barely be aware there is a presidential election going on -- we're out of this loop, team. Nobody will be talking to us. Because we're not "in play," this election is not about us. For reasons established by supposedly skilful polling, none of us even get to be part of this election. We're taken for granted.

Perhaps, after all these years, Edmund Burke may have got it wrong: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is not, as the wise Englishman once opined, for good men to do nothing. Sometimes men blunder into evil by the sheer force of their own cowardice. Evil was done in Massachusetts this week, and it was as unnecessary as it was pointless. >From the first, we need to tease apart the lie that the state legislature "made room" for civil unions; or worse, that they were trying to avoid "promoting gay marriage."

In the early morning hours of 25 January 2004, IDF soldiers entered a-Nabi Saleh, a village in Ramallah District. The head of the village council, Bashir a-Tamimi, told B’Tselem that, around 2:00 A.M., soldiers knocked on people’s doors and ordered the residents to go to the village square. At the square, all the residents, including small children, were instructed to go to one soldier who recorded the person’s name, another soldier who took their photograph, and a third soldier who took their fingerprint on a blank piece of paper. When several young men refused to be fingerprinted on a blank page, the soldiers threatened them with weapons. At the end of the operation, one of the soldiers explained to the residents that the reason for these activities was that people from the village had thrown stones and paint at soldiers. The soldier warned the residents that if those acts continued, the soldiers would take harsher measures. A-Tamimi estimated that the soldiers photographed and fingerprinted about 450 of the 500 residents of the village. He added that, before the operation ended, soldiers took away three youths, who were about 13 or 14 years old.

On the morning of 12 January 2004, IDF soldiers entered the Tulkarm refugee camp and arrested Fatah member Haytham Luwaisi. According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, Luwaisi had attempted to commit attacks in Israel. Three days later, the IDF demolished the home in which Luwaisi’s family lived. In the course of arresting Luwaisi, the soldiers used Ahmad ‘Asaf, age 33, a resident of the refugee camp, as a human shield. The use of human shields is forbidden by international law and by a High Court of Justice order. IDF operating procedures also prohibit the practice.

      ‘Asaf told B’Tselem: “He [a soldier] told me that I had to go inside houses that he would identify and open the door and windows and turn on the lights. He told me to tell anyone who was in the houses to go outside with their hands raised over their heads. He told me that if someone refused, I had to come outside and tell him and that if I didn’t tell him the truth, he would kill me or put me in jail."

AUSTIN, Texas -- O Karl Rove, Karl Rove, birder thou never wert. If George W. Bush loses the election narrowly in November, put it down to the birders. You read it here first. What was Rove thinking when he allowed William Haynes II to be nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit?

            There are all the usual reasons for rejecting a Bush judicial nominee -- he's only tried one case; no understanding of the Constitution; author of the "enemy combatant doctrine" that allows American citizens to be held in prison without trial, without counsel and without knowing the charges against them. But the fatal faux pas is the feather-blowing tale of Haynes' role as the top Defense Department lawyer in the case of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.