Column/Legend
1 - Prefix  - L-Life,  H-Homosexual Behavior/Perversion, R-Religion/Legal Persecution/ACLU, E-Education, M-Media Bias, O-Other
2-7 - Yr, Mo, Dy
8 - L -Letter to Editor, C-Commentary, O-Op-Ed, M-Metro

Hotlink Index of this weeks's family values related news:  [Life]   [Homosexual Behavior/Perversion]   [Religion/Religious Persecution]   [Education]   [Media]   [Other]

LIFE
L041026    Priests vs. Kerry
L041026L  'Evidence to the contrary'
L041027L  No stem cell miracles yet
L041028E  If John Kerry Wins, Abortions Could Remain Legal for 30 More Years 
L041029E  The abortion debate

HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR/PERVERSION
H041027    Gays hope to sway close elections
H041029    Marriage amendments all expected to pass

RELIGION/RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
R041025     Low profile
R041026    Court voids hate-crimes law
R041026    Rehnquist's illness raises stakes in election
R041026E  The chief justice
R041028    O'Connor touts global law
R041028E  America's religious camps
R041029E  Choices for president
R041029E  Election by litigation
R041030     Rehnquist sent home after treatment
R041030C  The problem with pulpit politics

EDUCATION
E041025M Prosecutions threaten parents' rights
E041029     NEA spends more than $1 million to back Kerry

MEDIA
M041025   Weak turnout
M041025   Newspaper surrenders
M041025   October? Surprise
M041025   Security Council members deny meeting Kerry
M041025E Chuck Floyd for Congress
M041026   Bush campaign accuses Kerry of 'fabricating' U.N. meetings
M041026   Challenges withdrawn
M041026   Florida ballot chief warns on 'observers'
M041026   Violent tactics
M041026C Uninvited to the polls
M041026E Kerry's phantom meeting
M041027   Bush 'battered' by critical press
M041027   CBS eyed '60 Minutes' Bush bombshell
M041027   Time for therapy
M041027   What Kerry said
M041027C The big media votes
M041028   Unfit to print
M041028E Kerry: 'liberal and proud of it'
M041028E Non-explosive issue
M041029   Kerry keeps up missing-explosives attacks
M041029   Photos point to removal of weapons
M041029   Soldier describes removing some explosives
M041029E Before pulling the lever
M041029E October surprise
M041030   Bush vs. media
M041030   GOP loses bid to revive hearings on Ohio voters
M041030   Pentagon accounts for some explosives
M041030   Pitching for Bush
M041030   The black vote
M041030     The illegal alien swing vote
M041030C  Stop and think: Part III

OTHER
O041025     Party leaders fear Election Day schemes
O041025M Cards 'empower' voters to know their rights
O041027     Democrats file 9 suits in Florida
O041027     Electorate more fearful than officials of vote fraud
O041027E   Democracy in peril
O041027M  Most voters won't need ID
O041028     Can we trust the U.N. again?
O041028     Electoral College fiasco looks more likely
O041028     Heavy early-voter turnout overwhelms elections offices
O041028M  Voters furious at sign thefts
O041029      Justice to monitor voting in 25 states
O041029E   Fear factor
O041029E   The Paganization of the American Mind
O041029L   Ballots vs. partisan lawyers
O041030     Blacks, Latinos rocking the vote

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By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.
    The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
    According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."
    The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.
    About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.
    The photographs bolster the claims of Pentagon official John A. Shaw, who told The Washington Times on Wednesday that recent intelligence reports indicate Russian special forces units took part in a sophisticated dispersal operation from January 2003 to March 2003 to move key weapons out of Iraq.
    In Moscow, the Russian government denied that its forces were involved in removing weapons from Iraq, dismissing the claims as "far-fetched and ridiculous."
    "I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structural divisions could not have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because Russian servicemen were not in Iraq long before the beginning of the American-British operation in that country," Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Vyacheslav Sedov told Interfax news agency.
    Bush administration officials reacted cautiously to information provided by Mr. Shaw, who said details of the Russian "spetsnaz" forces' involvement in a program of document-shredding and weapons dispersal came from two European intelligence services.
    White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was unaware of the information in The Times report.
    "I know that there is some new information that has come to light in the last couple of days," Mr. McClellan said, noting that another news report said the amount of high-explosive materials may have been less than 377 tons, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claims.
    Asked about foreign intelligence reports of Russian troops moving Iraq's weapons to Syria, Mr. McClellan said, "I have no information that points in that direction."
    National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a interview on the Laura Ingraham radio show that she also was not aware of the information about Russian troops relocating Saddam's weapons to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.
    Defense officials said the information has been closely held within the Pentagon because Mr. Shaw, a deputy undersecretary of defense of international technology security, has been working with the Pentagon inspector general in investigating the Russian role in the weapons transfers.
    Information in the inspector general office is not widely shared within the policy and intelligence communities.
    The Pentagon is still investigating the fate of the explosives and possible Russian involvement.
    Officials said numerous intelligence reports in the past two years indicate Saddam used trucks and aircraft to withdraw weapons from Iraq before March 2003. However, the new information indicates that Russian troops were directly involved in assisting the Iraqi military and intelligence services to secure and move the arms.
    Documents reviewed by one defense official include specific Russian military unit itineraries for the truck convoys.
    The arms that were taken out of the country included missile parts, nuclear-related equipment, tank and aircraft parts, and chemicals used in making poison gas weapons, the official said.
    Regarding the satellite photographs, defense officials said the photographs bolster the information obtained from the European intelligence services on the Russian arms-removal program.
    The Russian special forces troops were housed at a computer center near the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and left the country shortly before the U.S. invasion was launched March 20, 2003.
    Harold Hough, a satellite photographic specialist, said commercial satellite images taken shortly before U.S. forces reached Baghdad revealed Russian transport aircraft at Baghdad's international airport near a warehouse.
    "My thought was that the Russians were eager to get something out of Iraq quickly," Mr. Hough said. "But it is quite possible that the aircraft was used to transport the Russian forces."
    Also yesterday, the IAEA said it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa after Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.
    "After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told the Associated Press.
    She did not say which officials were notified or exactly when.
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M041029   Kerry keeps up missing-explosives attacks
 

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

TOLEDO, Ohio — For the fourth straight day, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry accused President Bush of failing as commander in chief to secure explosives missing in Iraq, but implied that he doesn't know the facts, saying it's the administration's job to explain them.
    "Here's the bottom line — they're not where they're supposed to be; you were warned to guard them; you didn't guard them; they're not secure," he told a rally yesterday in Toledo.
    Mr. Kerry has shifted his argument since Monday, when he blamed the president for the 380 tons of explosives missing from Al-Qaqaa, as news outlets have reported since that the explosives could not have been moved while the United States had control and that the amount was overstated.
    In addition, according to an article in The Washington Times, the Russians moved the explosives while Saddam Hussein was in control.
    "If that is the administration's explanation, they need to come forward and say so, and then they need to tell us, given the special relationship President Bush has with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, whether he raised this bilaterally with the Russians," campaign adviser Mike McCurry told reporters traveling with Mr. Kerry yesterday.
    "Regardless of what was the status of the munitions at the facility, there was no one who thought this was a facility that didn't need to be secured," he said.
    The president mostly ignored the specifics of the issue yesterday, leaving the matter to surrogates. Vice President Dick Cheney pointedly accused Mr. Kerry of trying to "score political points in the closing day of the campaign."
    "His principal foreign-policy adviser, Holbrooke, is quoted as saying in the last couple of days, he doesn't know what the truth is. But Kerry is out there anyway, making these charges that obviously impugn the integrity of the process, the commanders and so forth saying, 'Well, you didn't do your job,' " Mr. Cheney said, referring to comments by Richard C. Holbrooke.
    White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the entire matter is under review, but he said The Washington Times report shows that Mr. Kerry shouldn't have made his charges based on the initial story, which ran Monday in the New York Times.
    "His own advisers came out and said, 'We don't know the truth, we don't know the facts,' " Mr. McClellan said. "And, yet, Senator Kerry jumped to a conclusion and made these wild accusations without knowing the facts or knowing the truth.
    "I think he has shown that he's not going to let the facts or the truth stand in the way of his campaign," he said.
    Earlier this week, Mr. Kerry had charged, based on the New York Times story, that the weapons disappeared on U.S. watch. On Tuesday in Green Bay, Wis., he said Mr. Bush's "failure to secure those explosives threatens American troops and the American people."
    But aides said Mr. Kerry is being more careful about his accusations and arguing that the failure to investigate the sites soon after the United States took control is just as bad.
    "He understands he has to be very precise in what he's saying and not overstate what we know," Mr. McCurry said. "You know you make as strong a case as you can about the fundamental argument here which was the lack of preparation, the lack of thinking about what the consequences of the invasion what it would be."
    Democrats see this as a compelling issue for voters.
    "We think the way we have left those troops on the ground short of information, of resources they need in order to do the job, the ability to safeguard that facility and presumably others, really does call into question the president's conduct of the war," Mr. McCurry said, although he declined to say whether the campaign's polls showed that the argument was working with voters.
    Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd said the Kerry campaign is making a mistake by jumping on the story and turning it into "a political football."
    "I'm surprised they did it," Mr. Dowd told reporters at a luncheon sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday in Washington. "I thought they told everyone they wanted to finish up on domestic issues."
    The Bush campaign thinks that when the campaign focuses on Iraq, even if it could be bad news, the president benefits, because voters have told pollsters that they prefer to have Mr. Bush handle the situation there.
    "We're happy to have a discussion about this until Tuesday," Mr. Dowd said.
    For his part, Mr. Bush continued his offensive from Wednesday, saying Mr. Kerry's attacks are denigrating the troops in Iraq.
    "This week Senator Kerry is again attacking the actions of our military in Iraq, with complete disregard for the facts," he said.
    Four days into the back and forth, Mr. Kerry continues to sharpen his argument and his campaign continues to make a full press on the issue, sending out statements from surrogates and having both Mr. Kerry and running mate Sen. John Edwards talk about it.
    "The president's shifting explanations and excuses and attacks on me demonstrate once again that this president believes the buck stops everywhere but with the president of the United States," Mr. Kerry said in Toledo.
    Citing Mr. Bush's comment in Wednesday that "a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief," Mr. Kerry said that means Mr. Bush should be disqualified because Iraq wasn't connected to the September 11 attacks and didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
    "According to George Bush's own words, he shouldn't be our commander in chief. I couldn't agree more," Mr. Kerry said.
    Mr. Edwards charged that it was actually former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, whom he called Mr. Bush's "chief surrogate," who denigrated the troops when he told NBC's "Today" program yesterday that "no matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?"
    "This is what Rudy did, he blamed the troops. He said they didn't do their job. He couldn't be more wrong," Mr. Edwards said at a rally at the University of Minnesota.
    •Bill Sammon, traveling with President Bush, and James G. Lakely in Washington contributed to this article.
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M041029   Soldier describes removing some explosives
 

By John J. Lumpkin
ASSOCIATED PRESS

An Army unit removed 250 tons of ammunition from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in April 2003 and later destroyed it, the company's former commander said. A Pentagon spokesman said some was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign.
    But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency - as the missing high-grade explosives had been - and Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons.
    Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosporous rounds on April 13, 2003 - 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al Qaqaa site.
    "I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that," Pearson said.
    Di Rita sought to point to Pearson's comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive.
    But Di Rita acknowledged: "I can't say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX."
    Further study was needed, Di Rita said.
    Whether Saddam Hussein's forces removed the explosives before U.S. forces arrived on April 3, 2003, or whether they fell into the hands of looters and insurgents afterward - because the site was not guarded by U.S. troops - has become a key issue in the campaign.
    Pearson's comments raise further questions about the chain of events surrounding these explosives, the disappearance of which has been repeatedly cited by Democrat John Kerry as evidence of the Bush administration's poor handling of the war in Iraq.
    Still, 377 tons of explosives amount to a tiny fraction of the weaponry in Iraq. U.S. forces have already destroyed, or have slated to destroyed, more than 400,000 tons of all manner of Iraqi weapons and ammunition. But at least another 250,000 tons from Saddam's regime remain unaccounted for, and some has undoubtedly fallen into the hands of insurgents.
    The window in which the explosives were most likely removed from Al-Qaqaa begins on March 15, 2003 - five days before the war started - and ends in late May, when a U.S. weapons inspection team declared the depot stripped and looted.
    Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."
    The explosives were known to be housed in storage bunkers at the sprawling Al-Qaqaa complex and nearby structures. U.N. nuclear inspectors placed fresh seals over the bunker doors in January 2003. The inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time that March 15 and reported that the seals were not broken; concluding the weapons were still inside at the time.
    A U.S. military reconaissance image, taken of Al Qaqaa on March 17, shows two vehicles, presumably Iraqi, outside a bunker at Al-Qaqaa. But Di Rita said that bunker was not known to contain any of the 377 tons, and that the image only shows that there was activity at the depot after U.N. inspectors left.
    Elements of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived in the area on April 3 en route to Baghdad. They fought a battle with Iraqi forces inside Al Qaqaa and moved on, leaving a battalion behind to clear out enemy fighters in the area. Troops found other weapons, including artillery shells, on the base, he said. They didn't specifically search for the 377 tons of high explosives that are missing. On April 6, the battalion left for Baghdad.
    Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have advanced the theory that the materials were removed before U.S. forces arrived, saying looting that much material would be impossible by small-scale thieves, and that a large-scale theft would have involved lots of trucks and would have been detected.
    About four days later, another large unit, the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, moved into the area. That unit did not search Al-Qaqaa. A unit spokesman said there was heavy looting in the area at the time.
    On April 13, Pearson's ordnance-disposal team arrived and took the 250 tons out in a day. That materiel was later destroyed by U.S. forces. His comments may suggest that some of it was still there when U.S. forces arrived.
    On April 18, a Minnesota television crew traveling with the 101st Airborne shot a videotape of troops as they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa that shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
    U.S. weapons hunters did not give the area a thorough search until May, when they visited on three occasions, starting May 8. They searched every building on the compound over the course of those three visits, but did not find any material or explosives that had been marked by the IAEA.
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O041029   Justice to monitor voting in 25 states
 

By Jerry Seper and Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Justice Department yesterday said it will send out 1,090 federal poll watchers to monitor elections in 25 states, three times as many as in 2000, as Democrats and Republicans squabbled in an escalating war of words over potential voter fraud and intimidation.
    In Florida, election officials in Broward County, a trouble spot in 2000, yesterday began sending out about 10,000 absentee ballots to replace ones that vanished after being mailed earlier this month.
    Florida Republicans, who think that thousands of voter registrations collected in that state are invalid, said they fear that sending out duplicate absentee forms could open the door to more fraud. Democrats expressed concern that some people will receive their absentee ballots too late to cast votes.
    A report yesterday by Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization, said an unprecedented number of highly partisan poll watchers or "challengers" are expected to be deployed disproportionately in predominately black precincts.
    Judith Browne, the project's acting co-director, said it was imperative that supervisors of elections establish guidelines so partisan challengers will not be permitted to lodge indiscriminate challenges, tie up poll workers, clog the election process and disenfranchise black voters.
    Meanwhile, the Federation for American Immigration Reform yesterday warned that little is being done to protect against non-U.S. citizens' casting what could be the deciding votes.
    "We are staring at the possibility of our second consecutive disputed national election, and all across the country, voter registrars are turning a blind eye to a huge potential source of voter fraud," FAIR President Dan Stein said. "If American elections are to be decided by American citizens, we must secure our registration process to ensure that only eligible voters may register."
    In addition to instances of overt fraud, Mr. Stein said an unknown number of illegal aliens across the country might have registered to vote under the so-called motor-voter law. He said with no requirements to verify citizenship, beyond an attestation on the registration form, and no effort by county registrars to verify the validity of the information given by an applicant, it is reasonable to assume that many noncitizens are registered to vote.
    With four days to go before Tuesday's presidential election, the accusations are part of a continuing increase in threats between the supporters of the two parties, with an army of lawyers hired by both Republicans and Democrats ready to take any challenge to court. Dozens of lawsuits already have been filed, and both parties have ramped up their rhetoric, accusing each other of trying to sabotage the election.
    The Republican National Committee (RNC) has been concerned about the potential for fraud resulting from a multimillion-dollar, voter-registration drive financed by a coalition of Democratic tax-exempt organizations, labor unions and wealthy donors that targeted, in part, black, Hispanic and urban working-class neighborhoods.
    RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke said the Republican Party has "a zero-tolerance policy for anything that smacks of impropriety in registering voters," and he challenged Democrats to do the same.
    "Anyone who engages in fraudulent voter-registration activities should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he said.
    Democrats say a Republican plan to send thousands of poll watchers to predominantly Democratic urban areas to challenge the credentials of would-be voters at polling precincts is a bid to disenfranchise minorities.
    The Republican poll watchers are expected to be particularly visible in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, whose 68 total Electoral College votes are seen as key to the election.
    Justice Department personnel from its civil rights division will be on hand in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Nevada. Their job, department officials said, will be to check for violations of federal election law, such as ballot tampering and destruction of voter-registration materials.
    In 2000, it dispatched 317 poll watchers.
    Also, senior prosecutors will be at all 93 U.S. attorneys offices to handle complaints and pursue accusations of voting fraud or other elections abuses. The FBI will have agents on duty at headquarters in Washington and in each of its 56 field offices to handle complaints.
    Election officials in Broward County yesterday lowered their estimate of missing absentee ballots from 60,000 to between 10,000 and 15,000, saying the original ballots were merely delayed.
    "We will send the ballots by Federal Express to those living outside Broward County, who did not receive them," said Gisela Salas, deputy supervisor of elections for Broward, a large county that includes Fort Lauderdale.
    Broward and 14 other Florida counties, some of which had recount difficulties in 2000 with the prescored punch-card ballots, which are counted by a machine, will be using electronic touch-screen machines on Tuesday. But because some people are uncomfortable with this high-tech equipment, which cannot provide a printed record of a vote, the Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns have been advising voters to request absentee ballots.
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E041029   NEA spends more than $1 million to back Kerry
 

By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The National Education Association (NEA) pumped more than $1 million into 67 mailings for the Kerry-Edwards presidential ticket and against President Bush in the past four months, Federal Election Commission reports show.
    Twenty-one NEA mailings in behalf of the Kerry campaign, produced by an Arlington firm whose clients include the Democratic Party, went out to hundreds of thousands of public school employees across the country this month at a cost of $468,333. The union paid for all the mailings from its general operating budget, not its political action committee, the reports show.
    Also, the nation's largest school union contributed about $1.8 million directly to Democratic congressional candidates so far this year, with multiple donations ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 to 208 Democratic incumbents and challengers from April through July, the reports show.
    NEA is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, said Mark R. Levin, president of Virginia-based Landmark Legal Foundation, who said his group is "actively investigating" political spending by the tax-exempt union.
    "Despite the fact that the NEA is being audited by the IRS for using its tax-exempt funds for political purposes, it seems that this election cycle it's spending more than ever," Mr. Levin said.
    NEA officials did not respond to requests for comment.
    In a July interview, NEA President Reg Weaver said about one-third of the union's 2.7 million dues-paying members are Democrats, one-third are Republicans and one-third are independents.
    FEC reports show that only four Republican congressional candidates received money from the NEA's political action committee from April through July — Sens. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Reps. C.W. Bill Young of Florida and Jim Kolbe of Arizona.
    The union spent $20,000 for radio ads in Pennsylvania and $69,559 for two statewide direct-mail pieces to help Mr. Specter defeat a conservative Republican primary challenger. An additional $45,000 was spent for NEA direct-mail fliers attacking a conservative primary opponent of Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a liberal Republican from upstate New York.
    "We need to look toward spending political action committee funds more equitably between the political parties," said Diane Lenning, an English teacher from California and past chairman of the NEA Republican Educators Caucus.
    "The NEA's teachers speak of fairness, diversity and free speech. Therefore, we need to look toward equal representation of funds spent among candidates across the country from local to national levels," Mrs. Lenning said.
    "Conservative and moderate teachers cannot afford to continue to sit back complacently and not participate in moving the NEA forward with more fair and equitable representation," she said.
    The union's political mailings throughout the country, produced by Winning Directions, a campaign firm started by veteran Democratic Party political strategists, coincided with the Kerry campaign's recent barnstorming in battleground states and a nationwide NEA bus tour to register voters and organize Democratic get-out-the-vote drives.
    Since the beginning of October, the NEA's "Bus Tour for Great Public Schools" has visited Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania at a cost of $50,445 to date, according to the union's FEC reports.
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H041029   Marriage amendments all expected to pass
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

State constitutional amendments defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman are likely to pass in all 11 states where they are on the Nov. 2 ballot, making the amendment a factor in the presidential race in three battleground states — Michigan, Ohio and Oregon.
    The big question is whether President Bush or Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry will benefit from having the amendment on the ballot.
    "It's really a fascinating question. I don't have an answer," said Brad Snavely, executive director of the Michigan Family Forum, a traditional-values group that supports Michigan's marriage amendment.
    "I think it's difficult to tell at this point," said Christopher Barron, political director of the homosexual-rights group Log Cabin Republicans, which opposes the amendments. "There are so many wild cards in this election ... these state amendments are wild cards."
    In addition to defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, all but one of the amendments — Montana's — says other marriage-like unions — such as civil unions of same-sex couples — will not be recognized.
    Recent polls indicate that the 11 amendments are likely to pass, with support ranging from 52 percent in North Dakota to 77 percent in Arkansas.
    Opponents of the amendments have depicted them as crass attempts to attract voters for Mr. Bush, who supports a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
    Mr. Kerry, who represents Massachusetts in the Senate, has said that although he thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman, he doesn't support a federal constitutional amendment defining the institution.
    The amendments in Michigan, Ohio and Oregon were pushed onto November ballots by massive petition drives led by conservative groups. Amendment supporters maintain that they are responding to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision in November that legalized same-sex "marriage" in that state.
    The only way to trump "activist" judges is to define marriage in their state constitution, amendment supporters say.
    Of the 11 states considering marriage amendments, eight — Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Utah — are considered solidly in Mr. Bush's camp, according to yesterday's Washington Dispatch, an online poll-watching group that bills itself as "across the political spectrum."
    In the battleground states of Michigan, Ohio and Oregon, however, it's not clear whether pro-amendment votes will translate into pro-Bush votes: Conservative Democrats, minorities and union members are just a few of the groups considered likely to vote for both the amendments and Mr. Kerry.
    "I don't think it's clear that [the amendment] will help the president in Michigan," said Mr. Snavely, adding that exit polls will capture the amendments' impact by asking about voter motivation.
    In states such as Mississippi, the effect is clearer. The marriage amendment is galvanizing traditional-values voters, who are likely to pull levers both for the amendment and Mr. Bush.
    "I think it can't do anything other than help the Bush campaign," said Don Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss.
    "If you'd asked me a year ago [about voter participation], I'd have answered a different way. A year ago, they were not motivated to vote," Mr. Wildmon said. But with the amendment, "if they don't come out now — what's the saying? Speak now or forever hold your peace?"
    Homosexual-rights activists are urging their allies to turn out in droves to vote against the amendments and for Mr. Kerry.
    In light of Oregon's latest polls, which show growing support for the amendment, homosexual activists also are bracing for the worst — and are planning on postelection victories in the courts.
    "Just because stuff passes on November 2 doesn't mean it's the end of the day," said Andy Thayer, a leader of www.DontAmend.com, a group that is fighting the amendments.
    "The court, as we saw in Louisiana, could throw it out," he said, referring to the Louisiana marriage amendment, which recently was overturned by a judge despite being approved by 78 percent of voters. That ruling is being appealed.
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R041028   O'Connor touts global law

ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Justice Sandra Day O'Connor yesterday extolled the growing role of international law in U.S. courts, saying judges would be negligent if they disregarded its importance in a post-September 11 world of heightened tensions.
    In a 15-minute speech at Georgetown law school, Justice O'Connor made no mention of the health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, who was hospitalized this week for thyroid cancer and is expected to return to work Monday.
    Justice O'Connor said the Supreme Court is increasingly taking cases that demand a better understanding of foreign legal systems. A recent example was last term's terror cases involving the U.S. detention of foreign-born detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she said.
    "International law is no longer a specialty. ... It is vital if judges are to faithfully discharge their duties," Justice O'Connor told attendees at a ceremony dedicating Georgetown's new international law center.
    "Since September 11, 2001, we're reminded some nations don't have the rule of law or [know] that it's the key to liberty," she said.
    Later this term, the Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of executing juvenile killers. The case has attracted wide interest overseas, with many foreign nations filing briefs pointing to international human rights norms as a justification for outlawing the practice.
    Justice O'Connor, who is expected to be a pivotal vote, didn't mention the case, but said recognizing international law could foster more civilized societies in the United States and abroad.
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O041028   Heavy early-voter turnout overwhelms elections offices
 

By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Unexpected heavy early-voter turnout has resulted in long lines here, leaving election officials and citizens calling for more voting places.
    "I do think we need more sites open because this is a huge turnout. I guess they got people really angry about 2000, and I was so pleased they pulled me out of line," said Lisa Luman, 35, who was on crutches because of a hip injury.
    Several pre-Election Day voters, like Rikkia Rellford, 20, a student at Florida A&M University, said she stood in line for more than an hour to cast her ballot at the Leon County Court House.
    "I wish all the election supervisors were like Leon [County] supervisor Ion Sancho, because he has attacked every problem that has come up, but I would like to see more sites open," Miss Rellford said.
    Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda E. Hood, said record numbers of newly registered voters and absentee-ballot requests coupled with the early-voter turnout — more than 30 percent of registered voters are expected to cast their ballots before Tuesday — have overwhelmed elections offices.
    "Our supervisors have been promoting the early voting and we're pleased to see people taking advantage, but I don't think the supervisors expected to see this many people," Miss Nash said.
    Mrs. Hood traveled to West Palm Beach on Monday to witness the lines of people, some who stood in the sun for two hours before entering the voting booth.
    But Miss Nash said this is the first election in Florida in which early voting has been allowed statewide. She said although the process has run "rather smoothly," logistical problems have arisen that need to be improved before the next election.
    In some areas there were not enough machines, Miss Nash said, and in Broward County there was a problem with voters receiving their absentee ballots in a "timely fashion."
    Newspapers here reported that about 58,000 absentee ballots have yet to reach their destinations. The mishap led to thousands of calls to the elections supervisors, overloading the phone lines.
    Leon County's Mr. Sancho said he has fielded numerous calls from Broward County students at Florida State and A&M universities, which are in Leon County, complaining that Broward County supervisors' phones are busy and can't get their ballots.
    Broward County officials blamed the U.S. Postal Service for the problem.
    Miss Nash said those who can't got to their local elections supervisors office to pick up a ballot will be mailed one overnight.
    Statewide registration is up by more than 1.5 million, from 8.75 million in 2000 to 10.3 million on the rolls this year. More than 11 percent of the electorate had voted by Tuesday in Jacksonville and similar numbers could be found in nearly every district, including Leon County, Miss Nash said.
    Meanwhile, in Ohio, Democrats filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus, seeking to block a Republican challenge of 35,000 voter registrations. Democrats asked the court to issue an order halting hearings before county elections boards now being held to determine whether challenged voters live where they are registered and should remain on the rolls.
    Elections boards in at least 62 of 88 Ohio counties have scheduled hearings about challenges by the Republicans, who charged that mail to newly registered voters was returned as undeliverable, suggesting they had fraudulently been submitted.
    The Democrats said in the suit, filed Tuesday, that there is no evidence to show that the unreturned mail represented ineligible voters. Instead, they said, the mail likely represented people who moved but were still eligible to cast ballots under state and federal law.
    In Philadelphia, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Chaka Fattah, Pennsylvania Democrat, and several other prominent black leaders promised yesterday to stand guard against what they called Republican efforts to suppress black voters. Mr. Jackson described the promise as a "pre-emptive strike."
    Their comments came in response to a U.S. News & World Report article that quoted Pennsylvania House Speaker John Perzel, Philadelphia Republican, saying the "Kerry campaign needs to come out with humongous numbers here in Philadelphia" and that it was "important for me to keep that number down."
    •Jerry Seper contributed to this report.
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O041028   Electoral College fiasco looks more likely
 

By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The odds that Tuesday's presidential election will end in an electoral tie have doubled as the number of swing states has been cut in half, election analysts and mathematicians say.
    Two professors at Youngstown State University in Ohio conducted a study during the summer using 17 swing states and found 1,969 tie scenarios out of a possible 131,072 combinations — or 1.5 percent.
    Now, the remaining swing states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico and New Hampshire present four tie scenarios out of a possible 128 combinations — or 3.1 percent.
    "Anything could happen," said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at the university who worked with Nathan Ritchey, chairman of the department of mathematics and statistics, to come up with the scenario. "The odds for a tie are better."
    For example: Americans could wake up Wednesday to find that President Bush has won the same 30 states he won in 2000 except for Colorado. The election will have ended in a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College, throwing the outcome to Congress, which could pick a president from one party and a vice president from another.
    The latest polls raise a real possibility for a tie: If Sen. John Kerry wins Ohio, in which he leads, and Mr. Bush takes Wisconsin, where he leads, the president would need just one vote from Maine, which distributes its electoral votes based on its congressional districts, not the winner-take-all formula used in 48 states. Outcome: Tie.
    Colorado is considering moving to this system, and its voters will decide Tuesday on a proposal to do so. If the initiative passes, the state's nine electoral votes will be split.
    Mr. Bush defeated Al Gore with an electoral count of 271-267, one more than needed. Because of redistricting, Mr. Bush's 30 states are now worth 278 electoral votes and Mr. Gore's 20 states plus the District are worth 260, meaning that any combination of nine electoral votes that move from the Republican to the Democrat will produce a tie.
    The three votes given to the District — added to 435 for each congressional district and 100 for each state's senators — create an even number in the Electoral College: 538. Because the U.S. Constitution mandates that the president win the "majority" of the electoral votes, not a plurality, the winner needs 270 electoral votes.
    In the case of a tie, Congress would turn to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution, which requires the newly elected House of Representatives to "immediately" pick the president from among the top three finishers. Each state's House delegation has one vote, but this time, the District doesn't get a vote.
    A state's single vote is determined by a separate caucus of its House delegation. This means that Georgia, for instance, which has 13 congressional members — eight Republicans and five Democrats — presumably would cast a vote for Mr. Bush.
    Although the makeup of the House could change Tuesday, it is nearly inconceivable that Republicans would lose the edge they now enjoy: 30 states have a majority of Republicans, 16 have a Democratic majority, and four states are evenly divided. Those states might not agree on a vote and lose their vote, and states need not vote the way their residents did in the election.
    Under a tie scenario, Mr. Bush almost certainly would remain president. But who would be named vice president is up in the air.
    The new Senate would pick the vice president in case of a tie, and the narrow margin there now — 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and an independent who usually votes with Democrats — means power could shift easily. If Democrats win the majority in the chamber, they could install Sen. John Edwards, which would be the first time since 1796 that the president and vice president would be from different parties.
    Because the Senate votes individually, not by state as does the House, a vice president is chosen only with 51 votes. That spawns another dicey question: What happens in case of a tie? Would the Senate's presiding officer break the tie — even though that means Vice President Dick Cheney, as president of the Senate, casts a vote for himself to keep the job?
    "This is what law professors and political professors argue about. My position is that Dick Cheney gets to break the tie and name himself vice president," Mr. Sracic said. "But the Constitution isn't entirely clear."
    Some say the vice president can vote to break ties, but the 12th Amendment says only senators can vote when choosing the vice president after a tied election.
    "So this will go to court, and it'll start all over again," the professor said with a laugh.
    He also laid out one scenario that could "make people really angry."
    "What if Senator Kerry wins the popular vote and the House names George W. Bush president? This is probably worst possible scenario. I'm really afraid of what would happen in the streets," Mr. Sracic said.
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M041028   Unfit to print

    "Both the Kerry camp and its big-media arm warned of an October surprise. But they didn't say that they — and not Bush's operatives — would be behind it," Investor's Business Daily said yesterday in an editorial.
    "The 'surprise'? The New York Times reported Monday that U.S. troops allowed 380 tons of explosives to be looted from a military site in Iraq during the first days of the war.
    "John Kerry immediately pounced on the news. He suggested the administration's incompetence may have led to weapons getting into 'the hands of terrorists [who] can use this material to blow up our airplanes, blow up our buildings, kill American troops.'
    "But once again, the big media have pushed a major story late in a campaign that discredits George W. Bush, only for us to discover it was made of whole cloth," the newspaper said.
    "This has become a distressing pattern in recent presidential campaigns. It happened in 1992 with Iran-Contra, it happened in 2000 with drunk-driving allegations and it's happening this year with the ammo dump.
    "Fortunately, as soon as the Times' story broke, NBC noted that its own reporters were embedded with the 101st Airborne troops who came upon the munitions site in question. And NBC's journalists said it was empty when they got there on April 10, 2003. Empty.
    "There's no polite way to put it: This story was a lie, apparently cooked up to serve the Times' partisan ends. It's not the first time."
 
    Dishonest ad
    "It seems that Monday's groundbreaking New York Times story on missing explosives in Iraq was certainly not groundbreaking and may not even be true," William Kristol writes at the Weekly Standard's Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).
    "The allegations that nearly 400 tons of 'high explosives' were missing from the [Al-Qaqaa] arms dump are based on charges leveled by Mohamed [ElBaradei], chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The claims are old and increasingly suspect. But that hasn't kept Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign from using the story in a new television ad and in virtually every stump speech and media appearance over the past two days," Mr. Kristol said.
    "Now, however, the Kerry campaign admits that the information that is the basis of Sen. Kerry's statements and his campaign advertisement may not even be true. Pressed on Tuesday afternoon about the accuracy of the allegations on Fox's 'Big Story with John Gibson,' Richard Holbrooke, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: 'You don't know the truth and I don't know the truth.' He later underscored this point: 'I don't know the truth.'
    "That minor issue hasn't kept the Kerry campaign from creating a television ad based on what may well be untruthful claims."
    Mr. Kristol added: "It also now turns out that CBS '60 Minutes' was planning to echo the New York Times story two days before Election Day. So what we have is an attempt by the New York Times, CBS, and a U.N. agency to work together to promote a very likely false story to damage President Bush's re-election prospects. Perhaps no one should be surprised that the liberal media and the United Nations are willing to go to quite extraordinary lengths to promote Kerry's prospects against Bush, but their behavior is not the issue. The issue is Kerry's willingness to advance allegations that his own campaign acknowledges may not be true."
 
    Disputed tape
    A questionable videotape warning of a terrorist attack against the United States has been obtained by ABC News but held for days awaiting authentification by federal officials.
    The tape shows a man's face — concealed by a headdress — who says in English that "America will mourn in silence" and "the streets will run with blood."
    ABC News obtained the tape from a source in Waziristan, Pakistan, during the weekend, and it was handed over to the CIA and FBI Monday.
    An intelligence official told The Washington Times they were "unable to verify the tape's authenticity."
    The tape's existence was first reported on the Matt Drudge Web site (www.drudgereport.com), and some details were confirmed by Jeffrey Schneider, ABC News vice president.
    "We did receive a tape, and we've been working 24 hours a day in an attempt to confirm whether it is authentic. We have shared it with the FBI and the CIA, who has, as of yet, not confirmed its authenticity," Mr. Schneider said.
    Yesterday, Mr. Drudge suggested ABC was holding the tape for political reasons. ABC disagreed.
    "Clearly, it would be the most irresponsible thing to broadcast this tape or any news without first authenticating it," Mr. Schneider said. "We are a news organization in the business of reporting news."
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O041027   Democrats file 9 suits in Florida
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Democrats in Florida already are pursuing nine election-related lawsuits, accusing state election officials of conspiring to disenfranchise minority voters.
    Led by the Florida Democratic Party, the People for the American Way, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the AFL-CIO, the lawsuits target, among others, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, President Bush's brother.
    The suits say Republican officials refused to count provisional ballots, improperly disqualified incomplete voter registrations, established overly restrictive rules to disproportionately hurt minority voters and actively sought to disenfranchise blacks.
    Matt Miller, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, said Republicans are "trying to scare people away from the polls."
    But Mrs. Hood's spokesman, Alia Faraj, described the lawsuits as politically motivated, saying they were eroding public confidence in the election process by challenging "every single law we are following."
    One suit challenges a ruling by Mrs. Hood to throw out forms on which new voters had failed to check a box indicating whether they were U.S. citizens, and another argued that although only 17 percent of the voters in Broward County and 20 percent in Miami-Dade County were black, more than a third of the voter-registration forms that were determined to be incomplete and invalid in both counties involved black voters.
    The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has successfully challenged a ruling on how counties with touch-screen voting should conduct manual recounts. The state had banned the recounts, but an administrative-law judge agreed with the ACLU challenge and tossed that rule in August.
    Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, yesterday predicted that Mr. Kerry would employ "fraud, intimidation and lawsuits" in an attempt to overturn a Bush victory on Tuesday. He said if Democrats lose at the ballot box, they would use lawyers "to try to shoehorn a victory."
    "What you're seeing is an attempt, through lawsuits and through intimidation, by Democrats to convert their allies' registration fraud into voter fraud on Election Day," he said. "What you're going to see is an attempt by them, regardless of what the outcome is, to say: 'It's unfair. We're going to sue.' "
    Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Ed Gillespie said the lawsuits are part of a Democratic plan to "use lawyers and baseless allegations to skew the results in their favor." He said the RNC thinks that "no legitimate voter should be disenfranchised, either by being denied a vote or by having an honest vote canceled out by a fraudulent vote."
    Mr. Gillespie said teams of Democratic lawyers will seek to change the rules in ways that would make it easier to engage in systematic voter fraud on Election Day.
    "The American people should be confident that legitimate voters casting legitimate votes determine the outcome of this election," he said.
    Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe has accused Republicans of engaging in "systematic efforts" to disenfranchise voters, imposing unlawful identification requirements on voters, throwing eligible voters off the rolls and depriving voters of their right to cast a provisional ballot.
    "Regardless of party or candidate, it is the civic and moral duty of both parties to encourage complete and full participation in the democratic process," he said in a recent letter to Mr. Gillespie.
    In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a Florida recount be halted after 36 days, giving the state's 25 Electoral College votes to Mr. Bush, which put him in the White House. The high court, according to public statements by several justices, did not think the ruling would prompt a flood of lawsuits in future federal, state and local elections. But both major parties since have hired an army of lawyers to respond to potential legal challenges this year.
    The DNC has 10,000 lawyers on call, including six "SWAT squads" that are ready to deploy on the orders of Mr. Kerry and his campaign staff. The team is headed by Steven Zack, whose law partner, David Boies, argued for former Vice President Al Gore before the Supreme Court in 2000.
    The RNC is coordinating a countervailing force of lawyers to respond to voter challenges in 30,000 key precincts, mostly battleground states. The effort is being directed through Republican state party officials. Former Bush administration Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, who argued for Mr. Bush in the Supreme Court case, is expected to be a key player in any Republican legal challenges.
    "We will have the folks on the ground, we will have the strategy to deal with that and we will protect the integrity of the election process," Mr. Mehlman said.
    In 2001, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said after a three-month investigation that the Florida presidential election was rife with "injustice" and "ineptitude" that resulted in the disenfranchisement of black voters.
    But two members of the eight-member panel, Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican, and Russell G. Redenbaugh, an independent, disputed the findings in a 50-page dissent, saying commission investigators used flawed data to justify a "preconceived, partisan belief" the election was marred by discrimination and disfranchisement of minority voters.
    Mrs. Thernstrom said at the time that a more rigorous statistical analysis showed that race was unrelated to the rate of ballot spoilage and that no evidence supported accusations of disfranchisement or discrimination of minorities. She said the Florida election was "hampered only by problems that were neither motivated by racial discrimination nor served to disfranchise minority voters."
    During hearings in Tallahassee, Fla., the commission called three black voters to substantiate what the panel said was a "conspiracy" to block minority voters from polling places, but none of three could show that they had been denied their right to vote. No other witnesses were called.
    John Nelson, the Rev. Willie D. Whiting and Roberta Tucker, all of Tallahassee, testified under oath that they had concerns and had read about problems concerning voter irregularities, but all of them voted at their polling precincts.
    Mr. Nelson said he saw unmanned police cars near different polling places on Election Day and thought that was "unusual." Mrs. Tucker said she was detained at a routine police driver's license checkpoint that had been functioning for weeks before the election, but was waved on after producing her valid license. Mr. Whiting said his name had been purged by mistake from the voting rolls when he had inaccurately been identified as a felon, but was allowed to vote after a call to an election supervisor.
    Commission Chairman Mary Frances Berry, an independent who has supported Democratic candidates and causes, said at the time that even though none of the witnesses had been denied access to a polling site, "we know some bad things happened."
    •Bill Sammon contributed to this article.
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O041027   Electorate more fearful than officials of vote fraud
 

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Many Americans are worried about the accuracy of the voting process next week, a national poll finds, but election officials in most battleground states believe an influx of new voters and a high turnout will cause logistical problems — not increase the specter of fraud.
    Election officials say they do not anticipate being plagued by voter fraud, overvoting (voting more than once), or the types of ballot problems that beset the presidential election in Florida four years ago.
    "The higher number of voters will bring its own set of problems. Crowd control becomes an issue. There's always an opportunity for fraud, but we've made efforts to minimize it," said Kevin Kennedy, spokesman for the Wisconsin State Board of Elections.
    An Associated Press poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, including registered and likely voters, found that 69 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans fear the election will be unresolved on Nov. 3. Fewer than half of Democrats and about three-fourths of Republicans say they are "very confident" the election results will be accurate.
    About half of those surveyed said they expect the results will be challenged in court, like those in 2000. Lawsuits already have been filed on everything from how provisional ballots are counted to accusations of fraud in voter registration.
    Election officials in Michigan, as in most states, predict a higher-than-normal turnout Tuesday, but they expect to have results shortly after the polls close.
    "[W]e're so decentralized [in terms of elections], and we have 5,300 polling places throughout the state. So even if there is an increase of 200,000 voters on Election Day, that increase will be dispersed pretty well and will be manageable," said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office.
    In Arizona, election officials have established a "fraud line" for people to report suspicious activity and cross-check voter rolls to prevent illegal voting activity.
    "We have a centralized voter-registration list, so we can cross-check county by county, so someone can't be registered in two places," said Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
    One thing likely to help keep elections clean and accurate in Wisconsin and several other contested states will be the use of optical scans, which require running paper ballots through electronic tabulators. No computerized touch-screen voting machines will be in use.
    Many view optical scans as the most fail-safe method for reliable voting.
    "They'll give us a paper trail of votes statewide," said Mrs. Brewer, who noted that every county in Arizona will be using optical scans.
    In contrast, touch-screen voting machines work without any paper or ballot receipt, leaving no tangible trail for a recount or audit after an election. Only in Nevada will there be touch-screen voting with a paper trail on Tuesday.
    To help prepare for potential problems in Wisconsin, the state election board trained and certified all 8,000 inspectors, who are in charge of polling places, Mr. Kennedy said.
    Unlike touch screens and optical scans, punch-card voting machines — Florida's nemesis in 2000 — allow voters to overvote and still are used in many jurisdictions. In Ohio, 67 of the state's 88 counties will be using punch cards.
    But unlike the situation in Florida four years ago, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell spokesman James Lee said: "We have clear standards for how punch-card votes are to be counted, and those standards are codified into law. ... In Ohio, two corners of a chad must be punched out for a vote to count."
    What's more, Mr. Lee said, "We've launched an aggressive voter-education campaign to instruct voters on how to correctly execute all types of ballots. And our election officials are prepared and trained. They know how many voters are registered, and they know the personnel levels required to handle them. Personnel will be ever-vigilant in looking for suspicious activity."
    Because of the debacle in 2000, the Florida Legislature decertified the use of punch-card voting machines in that state.
    Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, said: "Touch screens, which 15 of 67 Florida counties will be using, don't allow a voter to overvote. And If you overvote on an optical scan, it will kick it out," nullifying the vote.
    Patricia di Constanza, superintendent of elections in Bergen County, N.J., said voters will be using the same Sequoia electronic-voting machines used in elections during the past decade and the county is not worried about tampering.
    "We have a stand-alone system. It's not hooked into the Internet, and results are not sent over telephone lines."
    In fact, she said, law-enforcement officials hand deliver both the cartridge and a printout of its contents to municipal and county clerks.
    "Turnout will be massive. But I think we're set up to address potential problems," said Ramon de la Cruz, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections, who expects at least 500,000 new voters there to cast ballots Tuesday.
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M041027   CBS eyed '60 Minutes' Bush bombshell
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

CBS News apparently had an October surprise of its own for President Bush.
    The network, already reeling from accusations of bias over anchorman Dan Rather's use of bogus memos to challenge Mr. Bush's Texas Air National Guard record, acknowledged yesterday in a statement that it had planned to air a story critical of the Bush administration's handling of Iraqi munitions Sunday on "60 Minutes," two days before the presidential election.
    CBS opted to allow its "reporting partner," the New York Times, to run the story Monday, citing concerns over competition, and ran it on its network news Monday night.
    "This was a timely story that was developing quickly, and we wanted to air it as soon as possible on '60 Minutes,' " spokesman Kevin Tedesco said. "Then it became apparent the story was already breaking elsewhere, so we agreed to run it in the Times, and on our own evening news Monday night."
    Both news outlets reported that the Iraqi government has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that 380 tons of plastic explosives, one pound of which can bring down a jet aircraft, went missing during postwar looting.
    The stories now are being challenged by the Pentagon and by an NBC News reporter embedded with the U.S. unit that first took control of the munitions dump.
    NBC News revealed Monday night that when one of its reporters embedded with the 101st Airborne Division arrived at the Al-Qaqaa site April 10, 2003, the Iraqi explosives were missing. The network added a slight nuance yesterday, adding that U.S. forces never undertook a thorough search.
    The Pentagon stands by its statements that U.S. forces found no IAEA-sealed explosives there and that the site already had been looted by April 10.
    Nevertheless, the tale emerged as an instant political weapon for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, who called it a Bush administration "blunder" and promptly based a campaign TV spot on the revelation.
    "Kerry gins up his attack machine based on a flawed New York Times story," the Republican National Committee stated yesterday.
    American Conservative Union Executive Director Richard Lessner called the story "a cheap, baseless and partisan hit-job on President Bush," adding that "neither the Times nor CBS has much interest in reporting the facts."
    Exactly seven weeks have passed since Mr. Rather claimed on "60 Minutes" that he had documents proving that Mr. Bush had shirked his National Guard service three decades ago. The documents later proved to be falsified, CBS issued an apology and the affair was dubbed "Rathergate" in press accounts.
    Historically, news outlets avoid investigative pieces critical of candidates within days of an election to avoid appearing partisan. But last year the Los Angeles Times, which first reported CBS' plan to air the story days before the election, was criticized for publishing sexual-harassment accusations against Arnold Schwarzenegger days before a gubernatorial-recall vote.
    CBS would not address its initial plans to air the anti-Bush story two days before the presidential election, but pundits interpreted it as an "October surprise," a late-breaking news event designed to tilt an election one way or the other.
    Some Democrats have accused Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign of conspiring with the regime in Iran to extend a hostage crisis that damaged President Carter's standing. The charges were investigated by a congressional committee, and Mr. Reagan's team was cleared.
    In 1992, Republicans cried foul when — after six years of Iran-Contra investigations and on the Friday before Election Day — Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh announced a new indictment of Caspar W. Weinberger, secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.
    Four years ago, just five days before Election Day, a Democratic operative in Maine alerted the press to a previously unreported 1976 drunken-driving citation for George W. Bush.
    "Major media outlets have constructed this story to appear that the Bush administration is to blame, a week short of an election. It's become fodder for the campaign, and in a close race like this, the story easily could sway voters," said Clifford May, a syndicated columnist and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a District-based nonprofit group that analyzes global terrorist threats.
    Attempts to manipulate the U.S. election with strategically timed leaks goes beyond journalists, Mr. May said.
    "What has to be investigated here is whether [IAEA Director-General] Mohamed ElBaradei has attempted to manipulate an American election, and whether certain components of the American media helped him by not exercising sufficient journalistic skepticism," he said.
    In an online column of the National Review yesterday, Mr. May wrote, "The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud."
    "The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohamed ElBaradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The U.S. is trying to deny ElBaradei a second term, and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear-weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program."
    Variations of the missing-explosives theme also appeared on CNN, CBS and ABC.
    The " 'October surprise' missing-weapons story flops," noted the Media Research Center's Brent Baker, while the Drudge Report cast CBS as a habitual Republican basher, airing accounts critical of the party "a few days before the vote" in 1992 and 2000.
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M041027   Bush 'battered' by critical press
 

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The press has "battered" President Bush this election season, according to a Project for Excellence in Journalism analysis of 817 print and broadcast stories that ran between Oct. 1 and Oct. 14.
    Mr. Bush "suffered strikingly more negative press coverage than challenger John Kerry," according to the study, which will be released today.
    "Overall, 59 percent of Bush-dominated stories were clearly negative in nature," while "just 25 percent of Kerry stories were decidedly negative," according to the study.
    The District-based group was succinct in defining a negative tone, reasoning that if combined headlines and content contained statements that were at least two-to-one critical of the politician in question, the story was deemed negative.
    Both print and broadcast news organizations were critical of Mr. Bush.
    Newspapers were the hardest on the president: 68 percent of daily stories or editorials about Mr. Bush were classified as negative, compared with only 26 percent of the stories about Mr. Kerry.
    More than half of network TV news reports criticized Mr. Bush, while just 17 percent of the stories about Mr. Kerry were negative.
    "The tendency toward negative tone stands out because it suggests the press is prone to act as an enabler, accomplice or conduit for negative campaigning," the study stated, though it did not offer any explanation for "the marked discrepancy between Kerry and Bush" in the coverage.
    The answer "is beyond the scope of this study and would require a larger examination of tone throughout the campaign," the group said.
    Still, it characterized the press as opinionated.
    "The study reinforces the sense that the press, at least the political press, has become highly interpretive and even judgmental in its approach," the study noted.
    The analysis found that only 14 percent of the stories recounted the day's events in what it considered "a straightforward and factual manner."
    Another 55 percent of the reports offered accounts based on insider politics and candidate tactics, 13 percent dealt with clear policy, 9 percent dealt with such issues as the economy or terrorism, and 7 percent dwelt on "candidate fitness."
    The study also determined that almost three-quarters of the stories emphasized the impact of events and commentary on politicians rather than on voters, noting "the effort to redirect political coverage more toward the concerns of citizens apparently has not significantly influenced the way coverage is constructed."
    The group analyzed stories from the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald and the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, plus morning and evening news shows on three networks — CNN's "NewsNight with Aaron Brown," PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and Fox News' "Special Report with Brit Hume."
    In the 2000 election, a similar study from the group found that 49 percent of stories about Mr. Bush and 56 percent about then-Vice President Al Gore were negative.
    "This is the mirror image of what happened four years ago, when then-Governor Bush benefited from coverage in the closing weeks," the study stated.
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H041027   Gays hope to sway close elections
 

By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Homosexual voters are expected to flock to the polls on Tuesday in a bid to tip as many close elections as they can to the Democrats, with presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry likely to get 90 percent of their vote.
    What's missing in some quarters, however, is an emotional outpouring for Mr. Kerry.
    "The real question in my mind is what happens after the election," said Andy Thayer, an activist with DontAmend.com, a group that is fighting bans on homosexual "marriage."
    "One of our mantras is that whoever is elected — whether it's Bush or Kerry — the key to winning civil rights for our community is to put their feet to the fire," he said.
    According to a decade of exit polls by the defunct Voter News Service, between 4 percent and 5 percent of voters identify themselves as homosexuals — more than enough to sway a close election, especially when homosexuals are likely to register and vote as Democrats.
    For example, a survey of 8,000 homosexuals released this month by GLCensus Partners at Syracuse University in New York found that, of registered voters, more than 90 percent of lesbians and nearly 89 percent of homosexual men said they would vote for Mr. Kerry.
    Support for Mr. Kerry was particularly strong among homosexuals aged 55 or older, those in partnered relationships and those who were wealthier. More than 90 percent of homosexuals with household incomes of more than $100,000 were Kerry supporters, the survey said.
    Mr. Kerry has been a disappointment to homosexual activists because he, like President Bush, opposes full "marriage" rights for same-sex couples, even though he represents the only state in the nation that is performing same-sex "marriages."
    Most activist groups, however, have set aside their dismay and gone all out for the Democratic ticket.
    The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest homosexual activist group, says it is spending more than $6.5 million in this election cycle.
    "In the next week, start every day with a single goal: Talk to at least five people about why you think President Bush is guiding this country away from its founding values of fairness and equality, and why you're going to vote for John Kerry next week," HRC President Cheryl Jacques said in a statement to supporters released this week.
    Many Republican homosexuals also are likely to vote for Mr. Kerry: The GLCensus survey found that half of homosexual male Republicans and 49 percent of lesbian Republicans intend to vote for Mr. Kerry.
    Homosexual support for Mr. Bush "is likely to be in the single digits," unlike the 2000 election, when he got 25 percent, or more than 1 million homosexual votes, said Chris Barron, political director of Log Cabin Republicans, a group that represents homosexual Republicans.
    The "deal breaker" is Mr. Bush's support for a federal marriage amendment and the Republicans' use of it as a campaign issue, Mr. Barron said yesterday, noting that the marriage issue overrode other concerns such as the war in Iraq or tax policies.
    Mr. Bush's latest statements on same-sex "marriage" only add to the confusion, said Mr. Barron, referring to yesterday's ABC's "Good Morning America" interview with Mr. Bush, in which he said he supports states' rights to create a civil union or other legal arrangement for homosexual couples.
    The president said essentially the same thing a few months ago on CNN's "Larry King Live," Mr. Barron said.
    The problem is that "he's supporting a constitutional amendment that wouldn't allow for civil unions. I'm not sure whether this is a shift away from his support for the marriage amendment or what."
    Mr. Thayer and his allies don't support Mr. Bush, but they don't have high hopes for Mr. Kerry either.
    "If John Kerry is elected, we may get kinder rhetoric, but we had kinder rhetoric under Bill Clinton and yet we got 'Don't ask, don't tell' [military policy] and the Defense of Marriage Act."
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M041027   Time for therapy

    Lawrence O'Donnell, senior political analyst for MSNBC, "suffered a complete crackup on the air Friday night," James Taranto writes in his Best of the Web Today column at www.OpinionJournal.com.
    Mr. O'Donnell appeared on "Scarborough Country" along with John E. O'Neill, co-author of "Unfit for Command." Pat Buchanan was the guest host.
    Here's a portion of Mr. O'Donnell's comments:
    "It's one of the many lies that the book advances. To me the most interesting lie, John O'Neill, that I would submit to you that you should answer is you make a lying claim that John Kerry's anti-war activity prolonged the amount of time that prisoners of war were held in Vietnam. ... That's a lie, John O'Neill! Keep lying, it's all you do! ... Lies! ... Which is not in John O'Neill's book, 'cause it's a lie! ... That's a lie! It's another lie! That's a lie! Absolute lie! You lie in that book endlessly! ... You lie about documents endlessly! ... You're just lying about it! ... Disgusting, lying book! ... You have no standards, John O'Neill, as an author, and you know it! It's a pack of lies! You are unfit to publish! ... He just lied to you! He spews out this filth! Point to his name on the report, you liar! Point to his name, you liar! ... You just spew lies!"
    Mr. Taranto comments: "Wow, we can sure see how Larry O'Donnell got his job as a senior political analyst with MSNBC. The guy is nothing if not sagelike. But does he sound as though he thinks his man is going to win the election?"
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M041027   What Kerry said

    "Ever since John Kerry decided his best tack in this campaign was to turn against the Iraq war, despite his past support for it, his core argument has been that it was a diversion from the war on terror," Weekly Standard editor William Kristol writes at the magazine's Web site (www.weeklystandard.com).
    "Iraq, he has been insisting, had nothing to do with that war, which is about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, pure and simple. The administration erred, he now claims, by turning its attention to Iraq.
    "But it turns out that Kerry felt entirely differently at the time. In an interview with John McLaughlin on Nov. 16, 2001 — just two months after September 11 and before victory in Afghanistan was assured — Kerry was asked, 'What do we have to worry about [in Afghanistan]?' Kerry answered:
    " 'I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt — and I've said this publicly — about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are, and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis?' ...
    "So on Nov. 16, 2001, with the war in Afghanistan but a few weeks old and Osama bin Laden not yet captured, John Kerry was raising the bar for the Bush administration, wondering when it would go after Saddam Hussein," Mr. Kristol said.
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M041026   Florida ballot chief warns on 'observers'
 

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Florida elections chief Dawn Roberts has warned the state's 67 election supervisors to be on the alert for observers at polling places who might use strong-arm tactics or otherwise harass or improperly assist potential voters in the Nov. 2 presidential election.
    "You have the right and obligation to set reasonable time, place and manner restrictions with respect to 'observers' in and around the voting site," Mrs. Roberts, the state's elections division director, wrote in a memo circulated Friday.
    Both Republicans and Democrats have accused each other of voter harassment and have issued strong warnings nationwide — particularly in the hotly contested race in Florida — against voter intimidation. Each side is training poll watchers on how to spot improper behavior by poll clerks, malfunctioning voting machines, and whether the polls are opening and closing on time.
    An unprecedented number of Republican and Democratic poll watchers are expected at voting precincts throughout Florida, whose 25 Electoral College votes ultimately decided the 2000 presidential election after a Supreme Court ruling. Florida law allows each party and candidate to post an observer at each polling place. All observers must be registered voters.
    On Sunday, former Vice President Al Gore told black voters in Jacksonville, Fla., who still might be angry over his narrow 2000 defeat not to let their concern "turn into angry acts or angry words," and instead to channel their anger "into energy at the polls."
    Mr. Gore lost Florida by 537 votes, when the Supreme Court ordered that a recount of votes be halted. The state has 27 Electoral College votes up for grabs this year.
    "Turn all of that energy and all of these feelings into a nonstop effort between now and the time the polls close at 7 p.m. on November 2," he said. "If anybody ever tells you that one vote doesn't count, you tell them to come talk to me."
    Mr. Gore's comments came on the same day that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards, said the election would not result in riots if it ended in a victory for Sen. John Kerry. Mrs. Edwards' assertion was in response to a supporter at an event in Pennsylvania who expressed fears that the election result will produce riots.
    "Uh ... well ... not if we win," Mrs. Edwards said in an exchange aired on C-SPAN.
    Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, an effort by state Republicans to send letters to 130,000 newly registered voters asking them to support Republican candidates resulted in 10,000 being returned because there was "no such number" or "no such persons" at the address.
    Christian Marrone, legal counsel to Pennsylvania Republicans, said some of the new registrations listed vacant lots as addresses, and others went to boarded-up buildings. He said there was "some serious fraud taking place."
    In a related matter, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to refrain from issuing directives and communications that could deter voters, saying Justice Department policy clearly shows that voter fraud investigations or the threat of them can lead to voter suppression.
    LCCR officials urged Mr. Ashcroft to tell U.S. attorneys nationwide that press releases about efforts to preserve voting integrity should simply provide contact information, rather than outline penalties and types of activities vulnerable to fraud. They said the releases could "scare some voters off or cause them not to seek legitimate help."
    "We are concerned that the Justice Department is more focused on potential voter fraud than voter intimidation or vote suppression," said Wade Henderson, LCCR executive director.
    "We are particularly uneasy about reports of the issuance of a memorandum sent to all 93 U.S. attorneys requiring that they send out a press release 'immediately prior to the November elections' that will 'advise citizens of the department's interest in deterring voting rights abuses and fraud during these elections.' "
    LCCR also reiterated its concerns about the need to protect the voting rights of blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, Asians and other minorities, urging Mr. Ashcroft to "reach out to election officials across the country to ensure they are doing all they can to combat efforts to intimidate minority voters."
    "More than anything, America needs a clean and fair election," Mr. Henderson said, adding that it was the "responsibility of the Justice Department and the attorney general to make sure citizens are not deprived of their voting rights."
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R041026   Court voids hate-crimes law

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously threw out the state's hate-crimes law yesterday, calling it overbroad and "unconstitutionally vague."
    The court ruled 7-0 against a four-year-old law that called for stiffer penalties for crimes in which a victim is targeted because of "bias or prejudice." But, unlike similar laws in other states, it did not specify which groups might be victims.
    The decision came in the case of a white man and woman convicted of an assault on two black men in Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood.
    Angela Pisciotta and Christopher Botts were accused of beating two brothers, Che and Idris Golden, in 2002 while screaming racial epithets. The two later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. The trial judge sentenced them to six years in prison, plus an additional two years under the hate-crimes law, which allowed up to five years to be added to a sentence because of crimes involving bias or prejudice.
    Pisciotta and Botts appealed to the state's highest court in April. Their attorneys argued that the hate-crimes statute should be struck down because almost any crime involving prejudice falls under its scope.
    The court wrote yesterday that it "by no means" condones the "savage attack ... or any conduct motivated by a bigoted or hate-filled point of view," but that the broad language of the law didn't pass constitutional muster.
    Originally, the proposed legislation defined a hate crime as one motivated specifically by the victim's race, religion, gender, national origin or sexual orientation.
    But after fights over the inclusion of sexual orientation, the language was removed by the Legislature and replaced with a section defining a hate crime as one in which the victim or his property is targeted because of bias or prejudice. The bill was passed in 2000.
    Forty-eight states have hate-crimes laws, but Georgia's was the only one that did not specify which groups qualified for protection.
    In yesterday's ruling, the judges wrote that the standard could be applied to every possible prejudice, "no matter how obscure, whimsical or unrelated to the victim." It cited a rabid sports fan picking on a person wearing a competing team's cap or a campaign worker convicted of trespassing for defacing a political opponent's yard signs.
    An attorney for Pisciotta, Brandon Lewis, said he didn't oppose all hate-crimes laws, just Georgia's.
    "It was just terribly overbroad," Mr. Lewis said. "It's an absolutely needed law, it just needs to be done in a constitutional way."
    The law's author, Sen. Vincent Fort, an Atlanta Democrat, said he would start working on a new version of the law for the upcoming legislative session, which convenes in January.
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M041026   Challenges withdrawn

    Ohio Republicans withdrew thousands of more than 35,000 challenges to new-voter registrations because of errors in their filings apparently caused by a computer glitch.
    Republicans filed the challenges Friday in 65 of Ohio's 88 counties, saying mail sent to the newly registered voters was returned as undeliverable, the Associated Press reports.
    Over the weekend, the party withdrew about 4,700 challenges in Hamilton County because the names and addresses on the GOP's list didn't match voter rolls, and about two-thirds, or 2,800, of the 4,200 challenges in Franklin County, officials said.
    It's too late to file a new challenge under the statute the party used, John Williams, election director in Hamilton County, said yesterday. There appeared to be an error in the database program used to print the challenges, so that addresses weren't matched with the correct names, he said.
    But the largest single batch of challenges, about 17,000 in Cuyahoga County, is still being processed because there were no errors, said Jane Platten, elections board spokeswoman.
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L041026   Priests vs. Kerry

    "The Christian faith has been misrepresented again today by John Kerry," the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said in response to a speech that Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry gave Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
    "Kerry said, on the one hand, that he disagrees with the Church on abortion, and yet that society must protect its most vulnerable members.
    "That's exactly why the Church is against abortion and requires Kerry — and every public official — to extend protection to the most vulnerable, the children in the womb. Mr. Kerry obviously does not understand the Church he claims to belong to. The Church's position on abortion is not based on religious doctrine. It is based on the very duty to society that Mr. Kerry claims to fulfill," Father Pavone said.
    "Mr. Kerry says he will not impose matters of belief by law. We do not want him to. We simply want him to protect human life, including the unborn, despite the beliefs of those who devalue them — just as the law protects any one of us despite the beliefs of those who might devalue us."
    Priests for Life has had more than a thousand priests sign a pledge to preach on abortion as the central issue in this year's election.
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M041026   Violent tactics

    "The next time you hear Kerry whining about Republican 'scare tactics,' remember Spokane, Wash.," National Review says in an editorial.
    "There, on Oct. 11, Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters were broken into; a hole was kicked through the wall of an adjacent office, and cash was stolen. On Oct. 1, three laptops with confidential campaign information were purloined from a Bellevue, Wash., Bush-Cheney office. Gunshots pierced campaign headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn.; bullets from another drive-by, in Huntington, W.Va., narrowly missed staffers gathered to watch the president's Sept. 2 convention speech," the magazine said.
    "The AFL-CIO has orchestrated invasion-and-intimidation missions against several Bush-Cheney offices in Florida — where three elderly volunteers were overwhelmed by some three dozen 'protesters' in Tampa, and where an Orlando campaign worker had his wrist fractured by labor-union goon squads, who slammed another staffer's head into a glass door.
    "Anti-Republican vandalism is ubiquitous: In Madison, Wis., a Bush supporter had a swastika burned into his lawn with weed killer. Lawn signs have been stolen or defaced almost everywhere, and cars sporting Bush-Cheney stickers are prime targets for attack. Unsurprisingly, there has been little outrage from the mainstream media, and almost no contrition from the perpetrators. There is, however, perspicacity from Internet T-shirt vendors: For $19.95, you can boast that 'A person of tolerance and diversity keyed my car.' "
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R041026   Rehnquist's illness raises stakes in election
 

By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The surprise announcement of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's treatment for cancer underscores the likelihood that whoever wins next week's presidential election is likely to reshape the Supreme Court.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist, 80, spent the weekend at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, where he underwent a tracheotomy for thyroid cancer, the Supreme Court announced yesterday. The court said he is expected to return to work Monday, one day before the election.
    While both liberals and conservatives rushed to extend their best wishes for Chief Justice Rehnquist's speedy recovery yesterday, both sides also busily speculated how the news might help or hurt President Bush or challenger Sen. John Kerry in the election.
    "Justice Rehnquist's illness highlights the concern among conservatives — as well as moderates — who must consider the prospect of a President Kerry nominating Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court," said Sean Rushton, spokesman for the conservative Committee for Justice. "That really focuses the minds of voters."
    Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way was also concerned.
    "The future of the Supreme Court is certainly the most important domestic issue facing the country today," Mr. Neas said. "While the issue does energize both bases, it also energizes independents and moderates who care deeply about privacy and reproductive rights."
    At the very least, the news intensifies the political standoff going into the final week of the campaigns. It also reminds voters of the acrimonious presidential contest four years ago that wound up in the Supreme Court, where many Democrats say partisanship influenced the decision that ended the Florida recount dispute.
    Court watchers of every stripe agree that the winner of next week's presidential election likely will nominate at least two justices to the high court.
    Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor both are expected to retire in the next year or so. Many observers have speculated that the only reason they haven't retired is that the two Republican appointees wanted to wait until Mr. Bush was re-elected without the court's involvement — or perhaps even to retire during a Democratic administration.
    Many observers say as many as four seats on the Supreme Court could have vacancies during the next presidential term.
    It has been 10 years since the high court's last retirement, when Justice Harry A. Blackmun stepped down, Mr. Neas pointed out, the longest such retirement drought since 1823.
    Mr. Rushton called Chief Justice Rehnquist "the godfather" among three reliable conservative votes on the court — along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia — and said replacing him with anyone less conservative would shift the court's balance drastically toward the left.
    "Just to hold our position would suddenly become much more complicated," he said.
    Many conservatives have expressed concern over the prospect of a Kerry administration because the Democratic challenger has said he would rule out appointing judges who do not support abortion rights.
    Both liberals and conservatives lament — at least privately — that neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Kerry has made judicial nominations a central issue of the presidential campaign. Strategists on both sides figured the debate would spill across the country during the presidential campaign.
    Some of the most bitter battles in Mr. Bush's term have revolved around the president's nominees to federal courts, many of whom have been blocked by Senate Democrats, including several whose nomination votes have been filibustered in the Senate.
    Activists yesterday seized on the news of Chief Justice Rehnquist's illness to call voters' attention to the role the president plays in choosing the federal judiciary.
    If Reagan appointee Robert Bork — whose Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Democrat-controlled Senate in 1987 — had been confirmed, "Roe v. Wade would already have been overturned," said Mr. Neas, referring to the decision that guarantees the right to abortion.
    Mr. Rushton said the prospect of Chief Justice Rehnquist's retirement frightens conservatives even more.
    "People don't want a court that is going to set a whole lot of social policy or completely scrub religion from the public square," he said. "Average folks don't want the court mandating gay marriage."
    Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the news "a sobering reminder of just how high the stakes are in this election" and said Mr. Bush "cannot be trusted" to nominate people to the Supreme Court.
    "If President Bush were to nominate Supreme Court justices in the mode of judges he has named so far, the right to privacy and right to choose [abortion] would be doomed," she said. "Americans who believe in choice will show up in record numbers next Tuesday to make sure that does not happen."
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M041026   Bush campaign accuses Kerry of 'fabricating' U.N. meetings
 

By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

President Bush's campaign team yesterday called Sen. John Kerry's claims to have met the entire U.N. Security Council before voting to authorize the Iraq war the latest example of making false statements to embellish his foreign-policy record.
    Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman likened Mr. Kerry's claim to have met with the Security Council to a similarly unsubstantiated assertion that he met with "foreign leaders" who endorsed him for president.
    "First, John Kerry told us about secret meetings with unnamed foreign leaders to bolster his campaign," Mr. Mehlman said, responding to an article yesterday in The Washington Times. "Now, we learn he touted made-up meetings with the United Nations Security Council in the second debate to justify his vote for the war."
    On the campaign trail in the Midwest yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney, recounting the article, said Mr. Kerry "apparently talked to a few individuals up on the Security Council, but there was never a meeting with all of them."
    "What I see is somebody who ... now is trying to put a new gloss on his record," Mr. Cheney told a rally in Wilmington, Ohio.
    "It is troubling that John Kerry would fabricate meetings with United Nations Security Council members to score political points on an issue as important as sending our troops to war," Mr. Mehlman added.
    Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart yesterday insisted that his boss met with representatives of the Security Council, although he stopped short of repeating Mr. Kerry's claim to have met with "all" members of the 15-nation council.
    While avoiding comment on the substance of the story, Mr. Lockhart said its impact on the election was limited to conservative Web sites.
    "I read all the right-wing blogs over the weekend about the blockbuster story," he said. "I don't imagine this story's going anyplace."
    But conservatives on the campaign trail were taking the story to heart.
    When describing the article to a crowd in Moorhead, Minn., Mr. Cheney said "So the problem here I think is ..."
    "He's a liar," yelled out an audience member, interrupting the vice president.
    Mr. Cheney chuckled and said, "Now the press is going to attribute that to me."
    At issue is Mr. Kerry's claim in the second presidential debate earlier this month that he met with the entire Security Council before voting for a congressional resolution authorizing war against Iraq in October 2002.
    "This president hasn't listened," Mr. Kerry said. "I went to meet with the members of the Security Council in the week before we voted. I