FALLUJAH, March 31--Four civilian contractors were killed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah Wednesday in an attack that left their vehicles in flames, and afterwards at least three of the burned bodies were mutilated, dragged through the streets and suspended from a bridge while a group of Iraqis danced in the streets.

Giant and Safeway's only chance is to focus on superior service. Instead, faced with a struggle against non-union upstarts such as Wal-Mart, Wegmans, Fresh Fields and Price Club...the supermarkets fight back by making their workers' lives harsher, turning careers into mere jobs. The employer wins lower costs, and the workers . . . well, they just vanish into a disaffected mass.

They are yellow and white and altogether wrong. At least that's how many Arlington County [VA] firefighters feel about their yellow-and-white firetrucks, which have bucked tradition ever since studies showed that those colors were easier to see -- and therefore safer on the road -- than classic red. Science said one thing, but their hearts said another. Now, 30 years after the switch to yellow and white, the safety studies have been refuted, and Arlington is bringing back the fire-engine red of Norman Rockwell and so many childhood memories.

But fire safety experts now say there are factors that influence visibility more than color does.

[V]olunteer companies have vehicles painted in different colors, including one that is black with gold trim. Prince William and Loudoun counties are dominated by volunteer companies, and the colors also vary a great deal. "We have red, white, lime green and yellow," Battalion Chief Matt Smolsky said of the Prince William fleet. "There's not one dominant color."

Red firetrucks are also more valuable, a reflection of their popularity. [Arlington Fire Chief Edward P.] Plaugher implemented a program in 2002 to buy the county's vehicles and then sell them back to the manufacturer for 50 percent of their value after five years. If they're red and white, Plaugher learned, they are worth 15 percent more. "They cost the same to paint them any color we want, but in the buyback program, they're worth 15 percent more if they are red and white," he said.

"I have a kid to take care of," said [Airman Jessica] Horjus, 23, the mother of a 2-year-old, who lives with her daughter in military housing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C. "The Air Force can always fill my slot with someone else, but who's going to fill the mommy slot?"

When a January order came for Horjus to get the vaccine before deploying to a Kuwait air base about 30 miles from Iraq, the soldier with commendations and Good Conduct Medals declined. Her commander demoted her and cut her pay in half, to less than $800 a month. In February, she declined a second and third order. ... "There is no evidence that stockpiles of anthrax exist in Iraq or with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or elsewhere," Horjus wrote in a memo to the base's appellate authority. "As a single mother, I cannot afford to unnecessarily risk my long-term health on a highly-reactive vaccine that supposedly protects against a threat that cannot be found."

At Fort Campbell, Ky., Army Sgt. Richard Norris, 27, is awaiting punishment for refusing the shots. When his unit of the 101st Airborne Division left for Iraq in February 2003, Norris was sent anyway, with no vaccine -- and no questions asked. He returned in December to find himself still flagged as "punishment pending," a status that has "put my whole career basically on pause. "I've served my country for seven years," said Norris, a Seventh-Day Adventist who tried unsuccessfully to get a religious exemption from the vaccine program. "Refusing this vaccine is the first bad thing I've ever done. It wasn't even necessary to have this vaccine, and still I'm going to be punished.

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder

Text printed on the side of the box ["Break Glass in Case of Adventure"] suggested that a machine as imposing as a new Armada SUV -- which boasts enough room for seven to eight extremely thirsty passengers (14 beverage holders, standard) -- is a good way to steamroll over many of the challenges of a big city.

...the Rodenator Pro™ uses a controlled mixture of propane and oxygen that is injected into the rodent's burrow. A built-in, self contained ignition system then ignites the mixture, creating an underground shockwave or concussion that instantly eliminates the rodent and collapses the tunnel system.

The government's former top counterterrorism adviser testified Wednesday that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than combatting terrorists while the Bush administration made it "an important issue but not an urgent issue."

...the overall point is, there was no plan on Al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. ... ...that process which was initiated in the first week in February (2001), uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda. ... Over the course of the summer (2001)...(the newly-appointed National Security Council deputies) developed implementation details, the principals met at the end of the summer, approved them in their first meeting, changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance. And then changed the strategy from one of rollback with Al Qaeda over the course of five years, which it had been, to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda. That is in fact the timeline. ... JIM ANGLE: You're saying that the Bush administration did not stop anything that the Clinton administration was doing while it was making these decisions, and by the end of the summer had increased money for covert action five-fold. Is that correct? CLARKE: All of that's correct.

Who says France isn't doing its part in the war on terror? After all, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin just struck a mighty blow against al-Qaida. He has deployed the rhetorical and financial heft of the French government to support a hostile takeover bid in the pharmaceutical industry.

Enter [French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre] Raffarin, alarmed at the prospect of a Swiss invasion. Last week, he said a Sanofi-Aventis merger would be crucial to the French "national interest." He suggested that the nation's ability to access vaccines in the case of a bioterror attack would be hindered were Aventis to fall into foreign hands—you know, the dangerous, shifty hands of the Swiss. Meanwhile, a unit of the bank CDC-Ixis, which is majority-owned by the French government, has agreed to help back Sanofi's bid for Aventis.

A detailed analysis of rocks in the shallow crater where the rover has been studying the Red Planet's geology indicates the formations were shaped by gently flowing salt water, indicating the area was probably once the coastline of an ocean, scientists said.

The Pentagon is rushing into service in Iraq a pair of technologies developed under its advanced research arm: a Humvee-mounted sensor for pinpointing hostile gunfire and a "command post of the future" designed to cut down on combat leaders' travel and streamline decision-making.

The sniper detector, named "Boomerang" and developed by BBN Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., is all about diluting the element of surprise in urban ambushes. Sensors atop an aluminum pole on the back of a Humvee pick up supersonic shockwaves to give an approximate location of gunfire, and soundwaves measured from the muzzle blast narrow it some more. A cigarette box-sized display on the dashboard or windshield then shows the findings. "Incoming, 5 o'clock," says a speaker inside the box.

New computer systems designed to streamline the command bureaucracy -- letting senior officers collaborate in real time with visual tools -- will get tested in the field by the 1st Cavalry Division, which will take 50 such computer banks to Iraq in about a month. Half will go in the division's Baghdad headquarters while the rest are sprinkled at eight command posts in the area. All will be connected by one overarching wireless network. Each bank of computers has three screens: one for the user's own work, one for 3-D simulated battlefields and a third to peer into what's happening on other systems throughout the city. Commanders will also be able to talk to each other using voice over Internet technology.

Special Operations forces recently tried a handheld vacuum chamber that sucks heat from the body, much like a radiator does for an automobile. They hit the treadmill in a 95-degree room at a Stanford University lab, saddled with backpacks. During breaks, they stuck their hands in the bubble-shaped vacuum, developed by Avacore Technologies Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. The Special Operations Command was encouraged enough by the results to ask for more devices, which they will test on their own, said Dr. Brett Giroir, deputy director of DARPA's defense sciences office. DARPA's next step is designing a body cooler small enough to fit inside a soldier's boot.

'Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

So why read the blog of some dork in Iowa that likes to play with his Ham radio?

Already, I sense a worrying confusion between the excuses that terrorism offers to justify itself and what people believe to be the causes of terrorism. Even as terrorist violence tore through Baghdad, Fallujah and other Iraqi cities last week, it became clear that some in Europe believe that if you feed the beast and satisfy its apparent demands, you will calm it. But the beast feeds on surrender and appeasement; it only feels sated if it obtains totalitarian power.

USMC Rules For patrols

US Navy Rules For Patrols

Dedicated students of obstetrics will observe that Elizabeth Cheney's birth date falls precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service publicly revoked its policy of not drafting childless men. This would seem to indicate that the Cheneys, though doubtless planning to have children sometime, were seized with an untamable passion the moment Dick Cheney became vulnerable to the Vietnam draft. And acted on it. Carpe diem!

WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit? An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons. On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets. Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

Michael Broder, a Philadelphia psychotherapist and author of The Art of Living Single, decries what he calls the "perfect-person problem," in which women refuse to engage unless they're immediately taken with a man, failing to give a relationship a chance to develop. "Few women can't tell you about someone they turned down, and I'm not talking about some grotesque monster," he says. "But there's the idea that there has to be this great degree of passion to get involved, which isn't always functional."

The affirmation of love and affection of the spouses for one another has only rarely been a cause for marriage in human history. Until recently in the West (including America), the emotional feelings that spouses had for one another was not considered very important; what was important was their social or economic similarity, and their compatibility in a myriad of other ways. Marrying because of love is a latecomer to the scene and is not really the norm in most of the world's people now. There are billions of people living in cultures in which brides and grooms hardly have met before their wedding day.

The very fundamental purpose of marriage has been and remains the propagation of the next generation. Look at it this way: just as "a hen is an egg's way of making another egg," marriage is the means by which parents become grandparents. While it is biologically possible for children to be born outside the marital bond (obviously), it is empirically provable that what biologists call "survival advantages" of those children is so relatively low that non-marital childbearing is literally a dead end.

Hence, marriage is self-perpetuating, self-referent upon itself and self-defining. Marriage throughout human history has never needed to be defined be relying on something else. However, same-sex "marriage" has no existence or meaning apart from male-female marriage. Male-female marriage is self-perpetuating within itself; same-sex marriages cannot self-perpetuate within itself at all. In fact, if not for male-female marriage, same-sex marriage cannot occur at all. Self-perpetuation is the critical element of marriage without which a same-sex relationship, no matter how affectionate, fails to be marriage.

Elements of marriage such as property rights and the like do not centrally define what marriage is. Indeed, the historical and present record shows that such matters have varied widely across human cultures and experience. The wife as an equal partner is a modern development, but its lack in other times and places does not obviate the essential character of marriage, the procreation of the next generation. The various legal and social rights and recognitions that pertain to married couples are the result, not the cause, of marriage, intended to buttress its central purpose. Therefore, they are added or discarded inasmuch as they do so, though not without other influences as well. Thus, the legal rights and social claims of married partners are incidental, not essential, to defining what marriage is.

Marriage is therefore a social institution, not a merely personal one. All society has a vested interest in the propagation of the next generation and the health thereof. As a social institution, marriage is defined in aggregate, not in particular. This fact argues against a Nominalist position that if two same-sex persons obtain a marriage license, that they are in fact married. It also shows why the pro side's snark that many male-female married couples never have children is irrelevant: out of any random 100 heterosexual marriages, the overwhelming majority will conceive children of their own, within the marriage bond, but out of any 100 same-sex unions, exactly zero will do so. Hence, the lack of children in a small minority of male-female marriages is accidental to what marriage does and what it is for, but the inability of same-sex unions to have children within the bond is inescapably central to their relationship.

All of which is to say that the accidental characteristics of marriage - love, affection, property and other rights - spring from what marriage is rather than define what marriage is. Therefore, whatever relationship homosexuals may have with one another, and whatever legal rights civil authority may confer upon them, marriage is inherently - indeed, metaphysically - the province only of men and women united in matrimony.