Bush recruits religious youth groups as ground troops for the 'drug wars' What do advocating "religious hiring rights," a $4 billion workplace retraining bill, and the war on drugs have in common? The short answer: Bring on the faith-based organizations!

Although more than 30 months have passed since President Bush announced the centerpiece of his domestic agenda -- his faith-based initiative -- and no significant broader efforts to fund his initiative has emerged from Congress, the administration continues to move ahead on a number of fronts.

Bush's latest faith-based proposal involves enlisting religious youth groups in the war on drugs. According to the Washington Times, the administration recently printed 75,000 copies of a guidebook to the drug wars called "Pathways to Prevention: Guiding Youth to Wise Decisions." The 100-page pamphlet "seeks to teach youth leaders how to handle questions and concerns about substance abuse." In addition to the publication, there's a new Web site and an e-mail newsletter.

The new anti-drug project is built around three premises which are spelled out in a fact sheet titled "Marijuana and Kids: Faith":

Even the national press has sounded the alarm about the "Straussians." The Bush administration, particularly its foreign policy team, has been and is still heavily influenced by neoconservative "intellectuals" who are themselves under the influence of the teachings of Leo Strauss. These include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Abram Shulsky of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, Richard Perle of the Pentagon advisory board, and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council.

Strauss, a refugee from Nazi Germany, came to America in the late 1930s and was particularly interested in political philosophy and the study of tyranny. He taught at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s during the Cold War, when capitalism went on a global manic binge and liberalism died a silent death with its conversion to "liberal" capitalism (an oxymoran) and away from socialism (Death of the American Politic, BushWatch, August, 2003).

AUSTIN, Texas -- When in the midst of a Blame Typhoon, with charges and counter-charges being hurled in all directions, I find it most useful to consult those two polar stars of utter wrongheadedness, Tom DeLay and The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.

            Both good for a chuckle, and both perfect weathervanes for the wrong direction. When in doubt, Disagree with DeLay, And you'll be OK.

            The Journal, in addition to meretricious arguments, vast leaps over relevant stretches of fact and history, and an awesome ability to bend any reality to its preconceived ideological ends, also offers that touch of (SET ITAL) je ne sais quoi, (END ITAL) that ludicrous dogmatism that never fails to charm.

            A column about energy politics by George Mellon in Tuesday's Journal contained just the right mix of irrelevant argument (he's very upset that a bunch of nervous nellies want to shut down the Indian Point nuclear plant, as though this had anything to do with the frail, undercapitalized transmission grid that caused the blackout last week), expedient forgetfulness (uh, actually, OPEC had quite a bit to do

1) "The Cuckoo," a humanist, pacifist, feminist, indigenist film about a Soviet soldier, his Finnish enemy, and a Lapp woman who takes them both in, when they have each escaped sentences of execution by their respective armies. None of them speaks a language either of the others can understand. There is no preaching by any of them about anything. But when a Russian writer or director wants to be humanist, no one of any other nationality can hold a candle to him.

    2) "Camp," not a documentary but filmed in an actual summer camp for would-be theater and other performers in their teens and younger. As performers they are so extraordinary that I think the casting directors (plural) deserve Oscars. But the film is about adolescents. There isn't a single false touch.

    3) "Whale Rider," Maori actors depicting their culture. A lead character is as confident that nothing has changed in 2,000 years as the Israeli settlers I'd seen the previous week at the SF Jewish Film Festival, so it takes a miracle to provide a happy ending, which is about as realistic as if Jonah's whale landed on the beach in Tel Aviv

The California energy crisis should have been a warning to the White House. Opening up the electricity sector to competition may eventually provide consumers with cheaper power but it won't ensure a reliable flow of electricity unless the high-voltage transmission lines used by energy companies to send power to customers are upgraded.

  But spending tens of billions of dollars to improve the country's electricity grid doesn't give publicly traded utilities that own the lines a return on the investment and will likely result in a lower rating from Wall Street analysts and even a lower valued stock. At least that's the story that's been told by energy company executives for nearly a decade.