But Howard, for a man routinely described as having no charisma, manages to hit just the right tone. The French got all the attention in the days after September 11 with that Le Monde headline — "Nous sommes tous Americains" — but even at the time I preferred Howard's take: "There's no point in a situation like this being an 80 per cent ally."

You can take that one to the bank. The "we are all Americans" stuff turned out to be not quite as straightforward as at first glance, and masked a ton of nuance, evasion, sly Yank-bashing and traditional Gallic duplicitousness as ripe as an old camembert wrapped in Dominique de Villepin's poetry. Even when they were touting that headline, the French were never more than 34 per cent allies. By comparison, that ABC radio interview three years ago where Howard did the 80 per cent riff is brimming with great material. I especially liked this bit: "I'm sure the Americans will behave in a targeted yet lethal fashion."

* Those assisting Pakistan in the development of its nuclear and missile capability. They are helping Pakistan in the already commissioned Chashma I nuclear power station, in the designing and construction of the second nuclear power station called Chashma II, and in the running of the production facilities for the extraction of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel and for the assembly and fabrication of the Pakistani versions of the Chinese-designed M-9 and M-11 missiles. Those in this group constitute the largest number.

* Those assisting Pakistan in the construction of a new port at Gwadar in Balochistan, which is expected to reduce Pakistan's dependence on Karachi, presently Pakistan's only major international port and major naval base and in the exploitation of the rich mineral resources of the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, such as the Saindak copper ore project in Balochistan.

* Those assisting Pakistan in the economic development of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in which South Waziristan is located and other tribal areas and of the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) bordering the Xinjiang Province of China. They constitute the third largest group.

MAN GIVEN CRACK COCAINE TO REGISTER VOTERS ARRESTED IN OHIO

Mon Oct 18 2004 13:26:03 ET

The Defiance County Sheriff's Office arrested Chad Staton, age 22, of Stratton Ave., Defiance, on a charge of False Registration, in Violation of Section 3599.11 of the Ohio Revised Code, a felony of the fifth degree.

The Sheriff's Office alleges that Staton filled out over 100 voter registration forms that were fictitious. Staton was to be paid for each registration form that he could get citizens to fill out. However, Staton himself filled out the registrations and returned them to the woman who hired him from Toledo, Ohio. Deputies allege that Staton was paid crack cocaine for the falsified registrations.

Defiance Deputies along with Toledo Police Department detectives conducted a search warrant of a residence on Woodland in Toledo, believed to be the home of the woman who hired Staton to solicit voter registration. Officers confiscated drug paraphernalia along with voter registration forms from the home. The occupant of the home, Georgianne Pitts, age 41, advised law enforcement, along with Ohio B.C.I.&I., that she had been recruited by Thaddeus J. Jackson, II, of Cleveland, to obtain voter registrations. Pitts admitted to paying Staton crack cocaine for the registrations in lieu of money.

A business card provided by Pitts indicated that Jackson is the Assistant NVF Ohio Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund.

The initial complaint received by the Sheriff's Office came from the Defiance County Board of Elections. The Board had received the 100 plus registration forms from the Cuyahoga Board of Elections that had been submitted to the Cuyahoga Board by the NAACP National Voter Fund.

Developing...

"To sum up, Mr. Kerry is decidedly different than President Bush.

He knows all of the things this administration has done wrong.

Mr. Kerry will not do those things.

He will do other things--things that are right.

That's the plan.

That's why you should vote to elect John Forbes Kerry the 44th president of the United States."

-- "I'm John Forbes Kerry, and I approve of this message."

The Kerry campaign finally released Teresa Heinz Kerry's 2003 tax return, or rather two pages of it, late last Friday, the WALL STREET JOURNAL details.

"But even this minimal disclosure deserves more attention in light of John Kerry's pledge to raise tax rates. In 2003, Mrs. Kerry -- or Teresa Heinz, as she declared herself on her IRS 1040 form -- earned $5.07 million, hardly a surprising income for someone estimated to be worth nearly $1 billion.

"The news is that $2.78 million of that income came in the form of tax- exempt interest from what the Kerry campaign's press release attributed to investments in 'state, municipal and public entity bonds.' What the campaign didn't say is that these are the kind of investments that rich people can afford to hire lawyers and accountants to steer their money into."

On her "remaining 'taxable' income of $2.29 million, Mrs. Kerry paid $627,150 in taxes, for an overall average federal tax rate of only 12.4% on her $5.07 million in total income." This "puts Mrs. Kerry's tax rate at well below that of other filers in her super-rich neighborhood. But it also means she is paying a lower average rate than nearly all middle- class taxpayers paid in 2001, the last year for which the IRS has published the data.

The top 50% of all federal filers contributed 96.1% of all federal income taxes in 2001, and they paid an average income-tax rate of 15.9%. That's 3.5-percentage points more than Mrs. Kerry paid in 2003." At the "very least, Mrs. Kerry's tax returns are a screaming illustration of the need for reform to make the tax code simpler and fairer. But they also show that Senator Kerry's proposed tax increases are much more about a revenue grab than they are about tax justice."

Developing...

What is new is State's resolve to draw the only possible policy conclusion from its own findings of fact. My sources in and out of government all confirm that the Saudi designation is not the result of any particular Saudi action or American epiphany, but rather the product of the cumulative weight of stubborn facts. These include the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis; growing revelations of massive private and public Saudi funding of extremist groups and institutions worldwide (e.g., Pakistani madrassas); and continuing evidence of Saudi interference in American religious life, leading to the expulsion of some 70 Saudi nationals for abuse of diplomatic status since 9/11.

Designating Saudi Arabia as a country of particular concern marks "a sea change," notes Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), ranking member of the House International Relations Committee and co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. "For years there was an unspoken attitude that...friends like the British, the French, and the Germans could be criticized, but Saudi Arabia was beyond criticism," he says. "This is just a straw in the wind that Saudi Arabia will be treated just like any other country."

Just so.

Whatever the formal U.S. response taken under IRFA, business as usual with the Saudis is no longer acceptable.