Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, recently went out of his way to make a startling statement. He wrote an article defending capital punishment as just in the journal First Things, the darling of theological conservatives. (Imagine the outcry if a liberal on the Supreme Court had written something for New Left Review.) To take just one of his solecisms, he wrote that "it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral." It seems to us that the Holy See, the country most steeped in the traditions of Western Christianity, and the country ruled by the leader of Scalia's particular brand of Christianity, does in fact view the death penalty as immoral. Sources: First Things, May 2002.

**This week's columns**
The Disease of Suspicion Paul Corrigan The new Justice Department initiative, Operation TIPS, threatens to infect the American polity. Go to article!	Four of a Kind Tim Francis-Wright In all of the turmoil and debate surrounding the latest dismal days in the American stock markets, four salient issues remain firmly in the background. Go to article!

Files: Bush Knew Firm's Fate Before Stock Sale: As more SEC documents come into the open, George Bush more resembles an illegal insider trader (Mike Allen, Washington Post).
NRCC Social Security Study: Even the Republicans' consultants know that privatizing Social Security would be political suicide (Tarrence Group, via Talking Points Memo).
U.S. Software Firm Aids Saudi Censors: Secure Computing Corp. provides Saudi Arabia with the means to keep its citizens from much of the Internet (Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe).
Funny Business: All the nauseating talk in 2000 about the business acumen of Bush and Cheney was obviously poppycock (Michelle Cottle, The New Republic).
Unconventional Deals Boosted Sales for AOL: America Online cooked its books regarding on-line ads in order to make itself look more profitable (Alec Klein, MSNBC.com).
WHO's Responsible?: The World Health Organization has been more than deferent to major global pharmaceutical companies (Jean-Loup Motchane, Le Monde-Diplomatique).
This Strange Silence from the Left: Free enterprise has flaunted its failings, and the Left has been slow to respond (Roy Hattersley, The Guardian).
Operation RATS: Enough bad news! Here's some fun at the expense of John Ashcroft's Operation TIPS (OnePotMeal.com).

"Bear left!"/"Right, Frog!" (Kermit and Fozzie, The Muppet Movie)

Want to reprint a Bear Left! original work? Write us and ask (we don't bite)!