It doesn't look like Tom Ridge is being forced out, but it doesn't look as if the president made a great effort to persuade him to stay, either.

This is probably a prelude to a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Washington State Governor Gary Locke - a Democrat - believes that there should be a manual recount of all votes cast in the Washington gubernatorial election.

This is unbelievable and absolutely enraging. (Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt)

Hugh comments:

Even the title "the Groningen Protocal" is creepy. It ought to remind you of the Wannsee Conference --both waystations on the same road. Once "an independent board" exists to "review cases for terminally ill people 'with no free will'" the project is launched. Just hope that you get a seat on the board or know somoeone who does who likes you.

More:

Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have administered lethal doses of drugs to newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for people who are critically ill.

Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that's known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.

But the children's deaths, and the possibility that the protocol will become standard practice throughout the Netherlands, have sparked heated discussion about whether the idea of assisting adults who seek to die should ever be applied to children and others who are incapable of making, or understanding, such a request.

"Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate," said Henk Jochemsen, the director of Holland's Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. "Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory."

The Dutch debate is being closely watched throughout Europe. Belgium has laws similar to those in the Netherlands, and a bill permitting child euthanasia is before its parliament. No date has been set for debate.

Britain is considering legalizing assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses, amid reports that doctors already may be helping thousands of patients to die each year.

"Assisted dying is a fact," said Hazel Biggs, the director of medical law at the University of Kent, who is about to publish a report estimating the number of assisted deaths in Britain at 18,000 annually. "We have to regulate it, to ensure that vulnerable people are being protected."

Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life.

The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details.

"It is for very sad cases," said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. "After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number of infants born with such severe disabilities that doctors can see they have extreme pain and no hope for life. Our estimate is that it will not be used but 10 to 15 times a year."

A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must rest with doctors.

The protocol was written by hospital doctors and officials, with help from Dutch prosecutors. It is being studied by lawmakers as potential law.

Under the protocol, assisted infant deaths are investigated, but so far all of them have been determined to have been in the patients' best interests.

Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 1994. Under the law, any critically ill patient over age 12 can request an assisted death, including adults in the early stages of dementia.

Opponents of expanding euthanasia to younger children cite a recent Dutch court ruling against punishment for a doctor who injected fatal drugs into an elderly woman after she told him she didn't want to die. The court determined that he'd made "an error of judgment," but had acted "honorably and according to conscience."

News reports say that since that decision, some elderly hospital patients have been carrying written appeals not to be euthanized. What happens to vulnerable people is a particularly sharp issue in a continent where birthrates have declined and populations have aged. Euthanasia opponents say that as costs increase for long-term care, financial reasons could creep into euthanasia debates.

"The danger, of course, is ensuring a debate on the right to die does not become one on a duty to die," said Urban Wiesing, the chairman for ethics in medicine at Germany's prestigious Eberhard Karls Tuebingen University.

The issue is a particularly delicate one in Germany, where euthanasia was used by the Nazis as cover for wide-scale murders of disabled people, among others. Germany is one of the few countries where there is no serious push to legalize assisted suicide.

European advocates of expanding euthanasia laws say they're acting in the best humanitarian tradition to halt intolerable suffering. Belgian Sens. Jeannine Leduc and Paul Wille noted that motive in their proposed law: "Their suffering is as great, the situation they face is as intolerable and inhumane."

But others worry that after children, who will be next?

"I do accept that there are very difficult cases, very rare cases where a baby is in such pain that death would be the humane option," Dutch ethicist Jochemsen said. "But hard cases make bad laws. As soon as a law is passed, it will expand the number of those who are considered extreme cases."

Did you get that? A parents role in whether their child is killed would be limited.

Unbelievable!

Outrageous!

Michael Gove writes that the old Russian Bear is stirring again in the Ukraine:

TWO YEARS ago who had heard of Fallujah? Twelve years ago what resonance did Srebrenica have? Two weeks ago how many of us had a view on the relative merits of Viktor Yushchenko or Viktor Yanukovych?

Its in the nature of international crises that they tend to occur in parts of the globe that have escaped the world’s close attention. A hundred years ago crises in Fashoda and Port Arthur, flashpoints on the fringes of empire, dominated the thoughts of statesmen. Today, our sleeves are tugged by an insistent media, anxious that we should take an interest in the historic events unfolding between Lviv and Donetsk.

It is, however, in the nature of the busy newspaper reader to wonder just which crisis in distant lands really is momentous enough to demand close attention. Who now remembers Nagorno-Karabakh? With each new story, the pundits bark and then the camera crews move on.

The drama in Ukraine does, however, deserve even closer attention than it has enjoyed so far. For the conflict between the two Viktors is more than just a regional power struggle. It is a contest between two visions for the world. And a grim reminder that foreign policy is, underneath everything, still a Darwinian struggle for power.

The battle between the Western- inclined, democratically-conscious Mr Yushchenko and the Eastern-backed, authoritarian Mr Yanukovych matters hugely for the fifty million people of the Ukraine. But it also matters to us because it reflects the broader battle going on across the former Soviet Union. Russia’s leadership has been following an increasingly anti-democratic course over the past few years, a choice which poses a particular challenge for the West. Internally, President Putin has been moving towards the establishment of a secret police state. Externally, he has been conducting a campaign against liberal nationalist movements, designed to consolidate and extend the reach of Moscow’s power. Both threaten Western interests and values.

Within Russia, Putin has rigged elections, using puppet parties, just as the communists did, to mask the extent of his effective dictatorship. He has closed independent media, driven opponents into exile and imprisoned those, such as the businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who might organise effective opposition. Some of these manoeuvres have undoubtedly been popular, and the anti-Semitic flavour of Putin’s campaign against the oligarchs has certainly been calculated to play to street prejudice. But, however much public support some of Putin’s acts may have won, his intention has been decisively anti-democratic. His authoritarian populism is intended to be an alternative to democracy, as it is in a different way in China, not a path to democracy, as it was in, say, Chile.

Putin’s distaste for democracy does not end at Russia’s borders. Indeed, his borders don’t even end at Russia’s borders. Russia’s leadership has consistently tried to forestall, undermine and crush democratic movements in its near-abroad. It has troops on the far western border of Ukraine, “policing” the gangster state of Trans-Dniester, a breakaway territory which has consistently undermined the integrity of the Romanian-speaking republic of Moldova. Russia has also supported secessionist movements in Georgia and Azerbaijan, in an effort to undermine the independence of those former Soviet republics. Additionally, Putin has provided backing for those former communist leaderships, such as Alexander Lukashenko’s in Belarus, which have been happy to reject democratisation and cluster under Moscow’s umbrella.

In Ukraine, Putin is trying all his old tricks. He has signalled his backing for the anti-democratic strongman, Yanukovych, even campaigning for him during the election. Russia’s military strength in the region has been not-so-subtly advertised. And, unsurprisingly for any student of the Putin manual of state subversion, secession of one half of the country has been floated.

These manoeuvres reflect Putin’s background and ideology. Although raised in the Soviet system, and using tactics to destabilise and control neighbours which were familiar to Stalin, it would be wrong to think of Putin as a born-again communist. He is instead heir to an older, continuing, tradition in Russian politics. As a former KGB man, who has surrounded himself with other old comrades from the bureau, he is a believer in the rule of an enlightened elite of grimly efficient patriots who will safeguard Russia from the corruption of Western thought and the consequent risk of disintegration. From the Tsarist Okhrana through Lenin’s Cheka to the KGB and today’s FSB, there has existed among Russia’s secret police elite a determination to maintain Great Power status by ensuring the state is not debilitated by liberalism.

The battle in the Ukraine is therefore crucial for the prestige, power and above all, ideology, of Putin’s leadership. If Western liberalism can be beaten back, or contained, there, then he will be strengthened not just in his influence over a key neighbour but also in his belief that Russia can maintain a viable, non-Western, alternative path of development.

In Europe it has become fashionable to believe that, in the EU, we have developed a new, collaborative, model of international relations that supersedes the old power politics. But the reality of foreign policy is that our security cannot be defended by international law and conventions alone. For Moscow, and for that matter Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran, Western liberalism is certainly a threat to their systems, if it ever takes root in their soil — but it is also a weakness to be exploited. While we place our faith in treaties, they regard them as evidence of our unwillingness to risk confrontation, and therefore a licence to cheat, subvert and undermine.

The outward forms of diplomacy will be respected, negotiations entertained, but all the time there will be a drive to acquire new influence over neighbours, new military strength, new opportunities to destabilise and new openings to reclaim “lost” territories. Unless we realise what is at stake in Lviv and Donetsk, then we will continue to live in a world where there will, inevitably, be more Fallujahs and Srebrenicas.

Iran is claiming victory over the United States with the "agreement" to end its uranium production, but George W. Bush says the agreement is not the final chapter in the ongoing situation:

US President George W. Bush said that Iran's agreement to freeze all uranium enrichment activities was "certainly not the final step" in easing US fears that Tehran seeks a nuclear weapon.

"The Iranians agreed to suspend -- but not terminate -- their nuclear weapons program. Our position is that they ought to terminate their nuclear weapons program," said the president.

The UN nuclear watchdog agency Monday spared Iran from being referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions after Tehran agreed in a deal with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

The president would not say whether he still hoped to take the Islamic republic before the council or said directly whether he was unhappy about Iran's agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"I viewed yesterday's decision by the Iranians as a positive step. But it's certainly not the final step," said Bush, who has accused Tehran of using its nuclear program as cover for a secret effort to acquire atomic weapons.

"It's very important for whatever they do to make sure that the world is able to verify the decision they have made. And so we've obviously got more work to do," he concluded.

Bush's comments came during a joint public appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin as the US president made his first official working visit to Canada since taking office in January 2001.

The president also pledged to keep working with Britain, France, and Germany, who brokered the deal with the Iranians.

"What we're interested in is them terminating a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable fashion. And we'll continue to work with our friends," he said.

Canada, the 2004-5 chair of the IAEA Board of Governors, has largely mirrored the US position, and warned Monday it would press the agency to inform the Security Council of any violation of the deal with Iran.

"Whether it's Iran, whether it's North Korea, I think that the world came to a very important decision many, many years ago in terms of nuclear proliferation," Martin told reporters at the press conference.

"Canada, certainly, given the fact our natural resources, we could be a nuclear power, and there were wise heads at that time that prevailed, and I would hope that that view would be held universally today by those countries," he said.

Iran and the European trio are to begin talks in December on a package of rewards to Iran for suspending uranium enrichment, the key process using centrifuges to make fuel for nuclear reactors -- or the explosive core of atomic bombs.

Iran claims its nuclear program is a peaceful, civilian effort and rejects Washington's claims.

Meanwhile, Iran says that the uranium enrichment is provisional:

Iran's chief of Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rohani said Tuesday his country's decision to suspend enrichment of uranium is provisional.

The Iranian News Agency, IRNA, quoted Rohani as saying that Tehran's promise to stop uranium enrichment was not compulsory or a duty "but a voluntary gesture to build confidence."

"The suspension of enrichment will last only through the period of negotiations with Europe. ... Iran did not promise to stop enrichment but only to suspend it for a limited period of time," he said.

Rohani said European-Iranian negotiations are aimed at "getting guarantees from European countries that Iran will be able to have nuclear activities for peaceful purposes and that Europe will cooperate with Tehran in that regard."

"The suspension will be only for a while during the negotiations which will last for months and not several years," he added.

More here.

Talks that might have ended the crisis in the Ukraine were broken off today by the opposition:

Opposition supporters on Tuesday abruptly broke off compromise talks over Ukraine's disputed presidential election after pro-government lawmakers blocked a no-confidence motion seeking to topple the prime minister, who was declared the victor in last week's vote despite allegations of massive fraud.

The opposition's rejection of the talks raises pressure on Ukrainian authorities, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said the crisis in the former Soviet republic must be resolved without foreign meddling.

The Supreme Court was wrapping up a second day of hearings with no sign of a decision on an opposition appeal to annul the results from the Nov. 21 runoff election, which put Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych ahead by 871,402 votes.

The moves came after outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who did not run in the election, spoke out harshly against any steps that would divide this nation of 48 million and said he would support a new vote.

Ukraine's government has been paralyzed since the election results sent hundreds of thousands into the streets of the capital for round-the-clock protests to support opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who claims he was robbed of victory.

Putin told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that "an exit from the crisis should be found in a democratic way, that is, on the basis of observing the law and not under external or internal pressure based on political passions," the Kremlin press service said in a statement.

Schroeder and Putin also discussed the possibility of new elections in Ukraine and agreed that any results should be "strictly respected," according to the German leader's office.

Russia considers the energy-dependent Ukraine part of its sphere of influence and a buffer with NATO's eastern flank and the political crisis has deepened the political tug-of-war between Moscow and the West.

Yushchenko's campaign chief, Oleksandr Zinchenko, announced Tuesday that the opposition candidate was breaking off talks with Yanukovych. The talks began last week under the mediation of European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski.

Solana is set to arrive in Kiev Tuesday night for another round of talks and is to be joined Wednesday by Kwasniewski. The two planned to meet with the rival candidates on Wednesday, the European Commission's Kiev office said. It was not clear if the opposition announcement would affect Wednesday's meeting.

Zinchenko's comments came after pro-government lawmakers blocked an opposition attempt for a no-confidence vote in Yanukovych's Cabinet due to the emergence of separatist threats in the nation. Only 196 of the 410 lawmakers present supported the measure, however, less than the 226 votes needed.

Legislators later tentatively approved a resolution that would cancel Saturday's nonbinding decision to declare the election results invalid, prompting demonstrators massed outside to try to storm the session.

Protesters some crawling on top of each other's shoulders got as far as the lobby of the building before police pushed them back. Yushchenko also addressed the demonstrators in an effort to calm tensions.

Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn adjourned the session until Wednesday and said the nonbinding decision would not be rescinded.

In an apparent bid to compromise, Yanukovych said that if he becomes president, he will offer Yushchenko the post of "first person," or the prime minister's job.

Yushchenko quickly brushed off the offer, saying he wants to focus on the vote fraud.

"The election was rigged," he said. "People are asking whether this country has a political elite capable of upholding a fair vote."

Yanukovych also has said that he would support a revote if allegations of fraud are proven but that he had yet to see such proof. On Tuesday, he even suggested he could withdraw from the race if his rival did.

"We need to overcome the crisis and for the sake of this I propose that neither Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko nor I participate in the (new) election if the result of the vote will be declared falsified," Yanukovych said, according to Interfax.

Threats to Ukraine's unity, meanwhile, seemed to dissipate after the eastern Donetsk region said it would not hold its referendum on self-rule as planned Sunday amid sharp criticism from lawmakers and potential legal action to protect the nation's territorial integrity. The Kharkiv regional legislature also retracted its threat to introduce self-rule.

Donetsk Governor Anatoliy Bliznyuk whose region is Yanukovych's home base said his region was seeking "not autonomy, but to become a republic within Ukraine." He said the referendum would be held within the next two months.

Fear no more, the Saudis say they'll boost crude oil production by 37 percent.

Ken Schramm of KOMO Television in Seattle has a few words on Target's decision to ban the Salvation Army from its storefronts:

Corporate cowardice.

That's the real reason Target department stores bailed on the Salvation Army.

Chalk up another example of rampaging political correctness.

I'm certain some group of pin-striped suits sat around in a corporate boardroom to concoct the rationale of this decision.

They settled on the convoluted logic that bell ringing gave the Salvation Army an unfair advantage over other charities.

Target says it has a long-standing policy of not allowing solicitations at its stores, but made an exception for the Red Kettle Brigade.

Other charities complained, so kicking the bell ringers out is Target's way of being "fair."

Fair my butt.

Never mind the tradition.

Never mind the good will.

Never mind helping countless families and individuals.

They'll lose out because of the $200,000 the Salvation Army WON'T get to raise locally, or the $9 million it would've raised outside Target stores nationally.

Never mind because that money is gone.

Never mind because Target is now corporately cleansed.

It has crossed over to the politically correct dark side, where "fair" means kicking a great charity to the curb.

Corporate cowards.

Thanks much, Target.

You make loads and loads of money off of this Christmas season. Yet, you ban the very organization that embodies the spirit of this season.

There is still time to reverse yourself, Target. It's November 30th.
Don't let your decision to ban the Red Kettles carry into December.

The Northern Star makes its feelings about Target's ban on The Salvation Army known:

As people head out to stores to do their Christmas shopping this season, they’ll be met with the usual holiday lights and decorations, but they won’t see Salvation Army representatives ringing a bell near their red kettles at some major retailers.

Retailers Target and Best Buy have banned the donation solicitors, saying they are doing this so they don’t have to choose between competing charities and so customers aren’t irritated while shopping.

But the holidays won’t be the same without the bell ringers to remind us that the season of giving means more than running in to Best Buy or Target for the perfect last-minute gift. It’s not only about giving gifts to our loved ones, but also about giving to those less fortunate than us.

Eliminating the bell-ringers also eliminates substantial funds to the Salvation Army. Last year, the Salvation Army raised an estimated $94 million nationwide, with bell ringers at Target stores bringing in more than $9 million.

Some shoppers have expressed annoyance at the constant ringing of the bells or of the solicitors asking for donations in the first place. But there are many more annoyances for shoppers to worry about aside from those collecting money for charities. Outrageous lines, ridiculous parking situations and nasty shoppers are much more of an irritation.

While some stores have banned the kettles, others, like Wal-Mart, have kept them in place. We applaud them for doing so.

The Salvation Army has existed in this country since 1879 and has been a landmark of sorts at retailers during the holiday season.

According to its Web site, the Salvation Army is “dedicated to caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, loving the unlovable and befriending the friendless. This dedication has produced an international network of helpful ministries.”

How could anybody - even corporate giants - turn an organization with those goals away? Especially during the holidays?

Indeed.

How could it?

I didn't post on it when I saw that Iran had finalized the "deal" that it had negotiated with France-Britain-Germany earlier today because I knew it would be less than 24 hours before Iran would either back out of the "deal" or begin manufacturing a pretext to back out of it.

True to form, Iran is already balking.

More here.

So now the Democrats are launching a smear campaign against Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman, as Hindrocket over at Powerline alerts us:

Reader John Jensen alerted us to the fact that the Democrats have launched a whispering campaign against Bush-Cheney campaign manager and incoming Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman, alleging that he is a homosexual. Apparently this has been going on for a while, but far off our radar screen. The "evidence" that Mehlman is gay apparently consists of the fact that he is 38 years old and unmarried.

One Bill Berkowitz of "Working for Change" indulges in the usual sleaze:

The chair of Bush's reelection team and newly appointed head of the RNC isn't talking about his sexual orientation, but lots of other folks are.

While the GOP's latest wunderkind, Ken Mehlman, is having the time of his life addressing the Republican Governor's conference, sitting down with reporters and editors of several daily newspapers and basking in the afterglow of President Bush's November 2nd victory, the Internet is abuzz with rumors, innuendo, chitchat, and plain old Page-Six-type gossip about his sexual orientation.

While Mehlman has been more than willing -- both before and after the election -- to talk specifically about campaign-related issues, he has made his personal life off limits. By refusing to answer direct questions from reporters about his sexual orientation, he has left open the possibility that he is gay.

Likewise, the New York Blade speculates venomously about Mehlman's personal life:

The sexual orientation of Mehlman, who is 38 and unmarried, has long been the subject of speculation, and he refused to answer earlier this year when asked directly by this publication whether he or other top Bush campaign staffers are gay.

The announcement raises mixed emotions for me. I have known Ken since we were both law students and he worked for me at the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, a libertarian/conservative law review. As young Washington attorneys in the early ‘90s, we even joined with others to create an organization called Square One that advocated limited government.

There are plenty of reasons for Ken’s success. He is über-bright, extremely personable, and as dedicated as he is ambitious. Tapped to head the majority political party before he even turns 40, Ken has obviously mastered the art of politics, learning at the feet of the master, his mentor Karl Rove.

But the real disappointment for me comes at the path Ken has taken to find such success. I have not spoken to Ken in a decade, and I have no personal knowledge about his sexual orientation, but whether or not he is gay, he has ridden to success on the coattails of a candidate who betrayed the core principles that we both stood for as young political activists.

Got that? Mehlman has committed the ultimate sin--he isn't a liberal. So it's fair game to smear him in any way possible. Just when you thought the Democrats couldn't get any lower, they surprise you once again.

This doesn't surprise me at all. Swamp Fever Lefties in the Democratic party are notorious for doing this kind of smearing.

Berkowitz and The Blade have underscored for us that the Democrats are so devoid of any credible position on almost any serious issue facing the country, that their fringe elements have nothing else to latch on to than garbage such as this.

I am just not going to be worried or impressed with Democrats until they cease this type of pointless character assasination and come up with credible and respectable positions that the American people can once again embrace.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is surprised at the revelation that his son is linked to one of the companies in the Oil-for-Food scandal:

Mr Annan said last night he was "very disappointed and surprised" that his son Kojo had not told him the full story of his links to Cotecna in Geneva.

The oil-for-food scheme allowed Iraq, which was under UN sanctions, to export limited quantities of oil in return for food and medicine. It later emerged that Saddam Hussein diverted billions of dollars from the scheme to bribe officials.

Cotecna was hired by the UN between December 1998 and 2003 to check civilian supplies reaching Iraq under the programme.

The UN had previously stated that Mr Annan's son stopped working for Cotecna in February 1999. But a UN spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Kojo Annan's laywers had informed a UN inquiry that he continued to receive monthly payments until February 2003.

Bill Safire thinks that Kofi Annan will need to resign because of this:

Thanks to Claudia Rosett, an enterprising reporter writing in The New York Sun, the world now knows that some information put out by Secretary General Kofi Annan about his son's involvement with a Swiss inspection company at the heart of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal is untrue.

At a luncheon at "21" in New York this summer, Annan came over to me to complain politely that my series suggesting U.N. maladministration was unfair. When I asked about the consultant fee paid to his son Kojo that may have influenced the award of a U.N. contract to Cotecna Inspection, the secretary general said that the allegation (originally reported in The Sunday Telegraph in London) had been "thoroughly investigated" by the U.N. and there was "nothing to it."

He later insisted that ours was a "private conversation" (though no off-the-record restriction was requested or given), but this denial was consistent with Kofi's public statement in April about the contract award: "Neither he nor I had anything to do with the contracts for Cotecna." Note the plural "contracts" - after a low-ball bid, a later contract was much more lucrative - and his clear indication that his son joined him in denial.

The story put out by the U.N. Secretariat at the time was that the son, Kojo, had resigned from Cotecna just weeks before the U.N. switched its fast-growing inspection business to the Swiss firm. Though such a timely termination looked fishy on its face, the absence of post-contract payments to Kofi's son was the basis for the U.N.'s claim that there had been no conflict of interest or nepotism.

Last week the truth was outed. The U.S. attorney's office in New York is in competition with the U.N.'s "independent" investigation, whose Paul Volcker - while stonewalling angry Congressional investigators - has grand jury help from the Manhattan district attorney's office. I suspect a subpoena forced Kojo to hire a lawyer, whom reporter Rosett tracked down and The Sun had its first world beat.

The lawyer confirmed that Kojo received payments of $2,500 per month for four years after he supposedly severed his relationship with Cotecna - up to February of this year, when Iraqis blew the lid off the U.N.-Saddam-French-Russian conspiracy.

When confronted with the falsity of previous U.N. denials, the secretary general's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, pleaded: "There is nothing illegal in this." You see, um, the payments to Annan's son were part of an "open-ended no-compete contract." After all, what could be illegal about getting paid for not joining a competing inspection company, which Cotecna probably took as assurance that nobody else would get the inside track?

"We previously thought they had ceased," Annan's embarrassed aide said of the payments. He stuck grimly to the line that U.N. officials "who gave Cotecna the contract had no idea that Kojo Annan worked for Cotecna," but carefully left himself an out: "and that continues to be our belief."

In the same way, there are still officials of the oil-stained U.N. Secretariat who profess to believe the repeated denials of Benon Sevan, the longtime right-hand man of Kofi Annan put in charge of what became history's largest swindle.

Of course, in a $20 billion ripoff, $125,000 to the boss's son for doing nothing is chump change. But it should lead to questions for the son: what are his associations with families in the oil industry? (Yamani or ya life!) Did he lie to his father about four years of fees from Cotecna, or did Kofi fail to ask him? Did Kojo inform Sevan about the fees, or know about any lucrative oil vouchers given by Saddam to Sevan?

For the father: Will he now share with Congress, which supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, his "thorough investigation" of his son's Cotecna connection? Did he learn of the "nothing illegal" fees only last Tuesday, as his aides say? Has he since asked his Absalomic son if the secretary general can stand by his April "nothing to do with" statement about Cotecna?

This marks the end of the beginning of the scandal. Its end will not begin until Kofi Annan, even if personally innocent, resigns - having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations.

Sen. John Edwards is hinting at another presidential run.

Campuses will no longer have to risk losing federal money if they bar military recuiters:

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from the military.