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Krispy Kreme manager.

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Quality control inspector, quality control supervisor, quality coordinator.

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Unemployed, union officer, utility cleaner.

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Yoga teacher, youth advocate, youth worker.

INSKEEP: When priest sex abuse becomes an international issue, when people are being moved from country to country, whose job is it to police it?

Mr. EGERTON: It's a really great question. International flight is the ultimate challenge for law enforcement. And it often becomes unclear whose job it is. Police, we have found, though, in many cases, haven't availed themselves of all that they could to pursue these folks.

INSKEEP: Yo! u mean haven't taken advantage of extradition treaties and that sort o f thing?

Mr. EGERTON: Right. In some cases, they've failed to pursue extradition. In other cases where extradition treaties aren't present, they haven't made other inquiries to see if something else can be arranged. In some cases, they haven't even gotten to the point of doing anything but filing a warrant in their home country and just filing it away and walking off.

INSKEEP: Were there American priests who were shipped overseas?

Mr. EGERTON: Absolutely. Frequently, what we've seen are priests who worked for a long time in America but remained citizens of another country. They came here and, when trouble arose, there was an easy escape hatch, and that was to go back to their native lands.

INSKEEP: You've already told us of one case where someone outside the United States got in trouble and was shipped to the United States for a while.

Mr. EGERTON: That's right. It...

INSKEEP: Did that happen more than once?

Mr. EGE! RTON: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, we found some folks who are still here, still here.

[T]he documents include a memo from Mr. Rumsfeld to Gen. James T. Hill, the senior officer of the Southern Command, dated April 2003 and titled, "Coercive interrogation techniques that can be used with approval of the Defense Secretary." Another memo dated Jan. 4, 2004, written by the top legal adviser to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior American commander in Iraq, and sent to military intelligence and police personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, is titled, "New plan to restrict Red Cross access to Abu Ghraib."

It is one of President Bush's last surviving justifications for war in Iraq, and today, it took a devastating hit when the 9-11 Commission declared there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. ... Those repeated associations left the majority of Americans believing Saddam was involved in 9/11, but the commission today put the nail in that connection, or for that matter, any other al-Qaida acts of terror against America, declaring, 'There is no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.' The report is yet another blow to the president's credibility as he struggles to find the exit door in Iraq and opens him up to new criticism on the wisdom of taking on Saddam with al-Qaida's leadership still at large.

Patience, of course, is now in short supply. By the exquisite standards of today's media and the critics of the Iraq War, the men who rebuilt Japan and Germany were incompetents. They had to muddle their way to success through policy failures and bureaucratic infighting. Incompetence can achieve the same success in Iraq, if it's given the chance.

"I must say I have trouble understanding the flack over this. The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is what the governor just said, we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me."

BORGER: In hindsight, Mr. Vice President, are you disappointed in the quality of the intelligence that you received before launching an attack against Iraq? Vice Pres. CHENEY: I can't say that, Gloria. I think the decision we made was exactly the right one.

The U.S. failure in Somalia led to a different kind of U.S. failure in Rwanda. There will surely be Rwandas in the future--there is one right now in Darfur, Sudan (where the ethnic cleansers come out of the same mix of radical Islamism and Arab nationalism that has caused so much suffering in many other places, including our own places). Who in his right mind is going to call for U.S. intervention? Doubtless, in the future, when things are not so grim for us, some people will, in fact, call for U.S. interventions, and justly so. And yet, other people are going to say, Oh, right, and let's put Donald Rumsfeld in charge. And this will be a devastating reply.

We could have applied the lessons of Kosovo, which would have meant dispatching a suitable number of soldiers. We could have protected the government buildings and the National Museum, and we could have co-opted Saddam's army--further lessons from Kosovo. We could have believed Saddam when he threatened to wage a guerrilla war in Baghdad. We could have prepared in advance to broadcast TV shows that Iraqis wanted to watch. We could have observed the Geneva Conventions. (What humiliation in having to write such a sentence!) We could have--but I will stop, in order to ask: What if, in mulling these thoughts, you find that angry emotions toward George W. Bush are seeping upward from your own patriotic gut? Here is the challenge: to rage at Saddam and other enemies, and, at the same time, to rage in a somewhat different register at Bush, and to keep those two responses in proper proportion to one another. That can be a difficult thing to do, requiring emotional balance, maturity, and analytic clarity--a huge effort.

You would, I think, be amazed at how many people in Middle America (if the Middle Tennessee area counts as that--I think it does) are politically frustrated in much the same way you are. It's not the ideologues--they've picked their sides--people who are both social and fiscal righties are for Bush; people who are both social and fiscal lefties are for Kerry. It's the ones in the middle, people who might describe themselves as center-left or center-right, maybe they are fiscal conservatives but social moderates, for instance, who are as sorely frustrated as you seem to be.

I have talked to many people--professionals from all walks of life who have never missed an election before who are seriously thinking of just sitting this one out. They are not "undecided" as that terms is usually used (i.e., people who haven't been paying enough attention to care and thus don't know anything). They are undecided in the opposite way--they have been paying A LOT of attention and know pretty much everything...not much of it good.

Here's what they want:

1. A President for whom the War on Terror is by far the top priority and who will execute it with cold efficiency and competence. They don't mind if mistakes are made--they even expect them (omelet-making and all)--but by God they wnat someone to 'fess up to them and make them right.

2. A President who doesn't kowtow to every freaking interest group that beats down his door--unions, religious groups, activist groups, etc.

3. Along those same lines, they want a President who has goddamned opinions that are clear, forthright and his own. They don't like Kerry because he really--when you get right down to it--has no principled opinions, and they don't like Bush because listing to him talk wiothout a prepared text (and sometimes even with a prepared text) is pretty excruciating, especially for people in the so-called "creative class" with whom I'm largely dealing.

4. They don't--as hard as it may be for people on both the social right and left to understand--give two sh*ts about abortion and homosexuality one way or other in the context of the presidential election. I talked to one person who said she wanted to go four years without a sitting president ever talking about these two topics one way or the the other. This was a very devout, adamantly pro-life woman. You know that Dennis Miller quote making the rounds, somthing about he doesn't care if two guys get married, he does care about the terrorist who wants to blow up the place they're getting married in? That's EXACTLY how these people feel.

5. The biggest frustration among many of these people is that they feel like President Bush abused their trust. These are people who either voted for Gore or reluctantly pulled the lever for Bush, yet rallied around him after 9/11, often to their detriment, as their more lefty peers heavily criticized them for supporting him. They maintained that support and defended Bush to the hilt through much of last year, especially for the Iraq War, and especially after the capture of Saddam. Now they feel mildly betrayed...since they went out on a political limb for a man whom they feel took them for granted and seems to have no idea that that's the case.

Yeah, there's a lot that can happen between now and November, but right now there are a lot of people ready and willing to stay at home, a concept they wouldn't have even pondered before in their lives.

This must be a gay thing, something they discuss at the local bathhouse.

Yeah, I used to read Sullivan's blog on a daily basis, until, I don't know, maybe mid-winter last year. He was going wobbly on just about everything, so I removed him from my bookmarks, and haven't thought about it since--simply don't miss his commentary. I suspect his webstats show a major falloff in readership.

I don't say good-bye, I say good riddance. Kudos to Kathryn Lopez for outing the traitor early on.

Long ago when Andrew Sullivan was in vogue and a rising star in ''conservative'' circles, I said that we should not be giving him bandwidth nor touting him as a leader in conservative ranks. That opinion seems reasonable now, but it was not a popular opinion back then. Then again, I am one of those who think that homosexuality is not just immoral, but should also be illegal again. Not a popular opinion today either.

Sullivan said plainly at The Advocate but not on his own blog, that Bush’s positions on homosexuality are a deal-breaker for him (Sullivan). I still want to know why Andrew Sullivan thinks the Boy Scouts ought to allow homosexual scoutmasters. Boy Scouts range in age from 11–18. Even accepting that homosexuality & pederasty can sometimes be distinguished, still where, Andrew, is the bright line between them? You know, Andrew, that there is no such bright line.

If you pay attention to Andrew Sullivan, you have too much time to waste. Nobody, even an obstensive conservative like Sullivan, should take pride in being a pervert.

Look. He's a fag, a limey and he lives in P-Town. To me, that's three strikes and you're out.

When Andrew gets on a gay issue, his progesterone starts kicking in and he rants like a vindictive woman. "Hell hath no fury like a She-man scorned"

It is a sad thing to see the enemy win. I mean, I really feel for the guy. He knows right from wrong, thus his desire to be a conservative. But he's had to surrender it and become anti-American, anti-Bush, anti-good, because of his deadly addiction to homosexuality. Over the months you could see him spiraling (many poster call it wobbling), losing to ground to the seductive, pleasurable evil consuming his soul. I grieve for this loss. He is now dead to us, and has thrown in with the enemy, rather than face down the incredibly difficult, painful choice of giving up homosexuality and joining the ranks of normals.

A blog which soared with high-minded rhetoric about how the war on terror is the test for this generation and that Bush was the right man to lead that struggle, now day-after-day tries to whittle away at reasons to support Bush in the fall as if the war on terror were merely another issue which can be trumped by any other issue you happen to feel more passionate about. Maybe "fiscal conservatives" aren't defined by their fiscal conservatism? Or maybe they think this election isn't a choice about a single issue be it the deficit or, say, gay marriage? Maybe the election is about a choice between George W. Bush and the people he would appoint to staff his administration and the judicial branch and John F. Kerry and the people he would appoint and how those respective administrations would govern across a wide array of issues including first and foremost the war on terror? And maybe most conservatives find that a cost-benefit analysis on that question yields a fairly obvious answer.

1) Kerry will probably be only slightly more fiscally conservative, and then only because the (presumably) Republican Congress will become seasonal budget hawks when a Dem. is in the White House.
2) Fiscal Conservatism pales in comparison to Getting The One Big Issue Right. In my opinion, Kerry will not take the fight to the enemy. It goes against the grain of his entire career. He learned at the knee of a Realist, and he is a Realist in his soul. And I think it's a way of looking at the world that is inimical to security in a post 9/11 world.

I think it's particularly true that most men can learn to be sexy, since women are more forgiving about looks, which are less changeable ... Maybe it's easier for women to cultivate appeal, since we're sort of more raised with the idea of adapting ourselves, rather than just "being," but men can do it.
But most men don't really want to be sexy; they want sexy to be them. I don't mean to man-bash, men are one of my favorite genders, but it's such a waste of resources. Like you, I know tons of great women. They're (list of all the good adjectives), and people want to be around them.
And I know a fair number of (good adjectives) single men, but [it's generally] also clear why they're single. They don't listen, and won't; they won't get a real job; they're boring but don't want to acknowlege it or do anything about it. Hey, if that shirt was "in" when they were in high school, no need to see if any ads/mannequins/humans under 60 wear it today.