ADD IT UP When it rains, it pours. In the course of two days in a traditionally slow news cycle, an avalanche of small, but disturbing, stories have made their way into the media circuit. Disturbing if you're President Bush, that is. Each, in its own small way, nibbles away at the veneer the Bush team has so carefully nurtured in its efforts against terror, Iraq and civil liberties.

HERE COME THE JUDGE Former Justice Department rising star John Yoo had it right when he says yesterday's decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reverses the White House's legal strategy. "The 2nd Circuit has struck a body blow to the whole theory of fighting the war on terrorism, which was to move it out of the criminal justice system and treat it as a war," Yoo told the Washington Post. "The 2nd Circuit essentially said, no, this is like crime. And if that sticks, a lot of other pieces that underlie what the government does in the war on terror are going to collapse, too." The decision said the President does not have the authority to declare a U.S. citizen on American soil an enemy combatant, and then hold him without charges or legal representation indefinately. This decision forces the issue to the Supreme Court, if appealed, and may force the passive fence-sitters on Capitol Hill to begin to assert their responsibility to the voting public.

HERE COME THE JUDGE: PART TWO While not as significant as the 2nd Circuit's decision, the 9th Circuit also issued a ruling yesterday. The court said that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are entitled access to civilian courts to challenge their status as enemy combatants. The Supreme Court already has decided to hear a case on the Guantanamo detainees in 2004, so the decision is less significant in terms of legal impact, but it's a serious setback for the administration, nonetheless. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told the NYTimes that "The Ninth Circuit decision said that you can't create a legal black hole in territory controlled by the United States." [NYTimes login: buttermilk.com, password: buttermilk]

AMERICA'S TRAGIC HOME VIDEOS The Justice Department has issued a report showing that federal prison officials physically abused immigrants detained after the September 11 attacks. Reuters News Service reported that officers slammed detainees into walls by their heads and necks, kept them in restraints for long periods of time, misused strip searches, and improperly recorded meetings between detainees and their lawyers. Almost 800 immigrants were detained around the country immediately following the September 11 attacks; none were found to have connections to the event. While emotions ran high after September 11, and there was a great deal of confusion about how to respond against the attacks, there is little excuse for our legal system dropping the ball so blatantly.

DAVID, WE HARDLY KNEW YA David Kay, who has been heading up the administration's efforts to find weapons on mass destruction in Iraq, is turning in his badge at the end of the year. The Guardian says that Kay's departure is a result of his wife's concerns for his safety and his growing frustration. The paper says that he "was frustrated at the haemorrhage of personnel and resources from the ISG to the counter-insurgency effort in Iraq. A significant proportion of the group's Arabic translators have been diverted to interrogating suspected guerrillas, leaving the ISG unable to interview officials and scientists who might have knowledge of Saddam Hussein's programmes. 'This is a big blow to the administration and it will signal the effective end of the search for weapons of mass destruction,' said Joseph Cirincione, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment Institute for Peace in Washington. 'Some will continue looking but very, very few expect there to be any significant finds at this point.' "


THE TRUTH WILL OUT The head of the commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks backpedaled slightly on ABC's "Nightline," but repeated his assertion that, were he in charge, there would be some people without jobs as a result of decisions made (or not made) that could have prevented the attacks. Reuters reports that Thomas Kean said a series of "mistakes in the line" over time led to the lapses that made it possible for the hijackers to carry out the strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "There were people who let people on planes with weapons that shouldn't have been allowed. There were people at our borders who allowed visas to be accepted that were not adequately filled out," Kean said. "There were reports from the FBI which got up to the middle level somewhere and then seemed to get lost before they were acted on." The Commission will hold another round of public hearings in January. Transcipts of the six previous hearings can be found at the Commision's website.

THE FUTURE OF BOOKS Umberto Eco, novelist, scholar and believer, turned up at the new Library of Alexandria in November to discuss the role of memory, libraries and books.

WE HAVE THREE TYPES OF MEMORY. The first one is organic, which is the memory made of flesh and blood and the one administrated by our brain. The second is mineral, and in this sense mankind has known two kinds of mineral memory: millennia ago, this was the memory represented by clay tablets and obelisks, pretty well known in this country, on which people carved their texts. However, this second type is also the electronic memory of today's computers, based upon silicon. We have also known another kind of memory, the vegetal one, the one represented by the first papyruses, again well known in this country, and then on books, made of paper. Let me disregard the fact that at a certain moment the vellum of the first codices were of an organic origin, and the fact that the first paper was made with rugs and not with wood. Let me speak for the sake of simplicity of vegetal memory in order to designate books...

WHEN DEAD GENIUS MEETS HOLLYWOOD Most people don't know who Philip K. Dick was, much less recognize that he has been one of the most consistently exploited scriptwriters of our time. Not bad for a novelist who died 20 years ago.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR The Federation of American Scientists presents its full rack-up of conflicts around the globe. The bad news is that there's a whole lotta war out there; the good news is that there is less of it than there was four decades ago.

A FEW FAVORITE THINGS Pitchfork has fallen in love... with some of the best music of the year.

TAKE A LISTEN Grandaddy's new release, "Sumday," is a departure from their past, and has recirculated on my iPod for weeks.

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE If you've ever stopped to read one of those horrid Jack Chick mini-pamphlets handed out on street corners, you'll enjoy this parody. Perhaps. We call it: Cthulhu vs. Megalon.

BLOGGING FOR THE THIRD WORLD KICKAAS is a new weblog focused on the Third World and free trade.

DEAN'S DYNAMIC DUO Will Joe Trippi and Tricia Enright be the Carville and Stephanopolous of 2004?

WHEN DEMOCRATS ATTACK The Democratic Party had better wake up and smell the roses. The schism that has erupted between front-runner Howard Dean and the rest of the presidential pack has sent the party scurrying to the wrong side of the debate, according to some. Dean is being painted by his opponents (and the party itself) as a regular Benedict Arnold for his anti-war-in-Iraq views, which are actually favored by some 40% of the electorate. The Dems might want to find some other issues to target in the primary season; this one's just not working as a unifier. And, frankly, Dean's not as extreme in his positions as some would think; he might practice thinking before he speaks, though.

Beyond the knee-jerk punditry, no one knows the impact the war or the economy might have on a general election that is still 11 months away. That's what makes this election so interesting. Rarely has an election hinged so clearly on variables that could cut in such dramatically different directions.

Will the capture of Hussein hobble the insurgency or embolden it?

Will the Bush administration be able to extricate itself effectively from Iraq over the next year or will it continue to be hampered by setbacks?

Will the international community coalesce around the rebuilding effort or continue to distance itself, further escalating the costs to Americans?

Will the seemingly resurgent economy create jobs or continue to hemorrhage them?

Bush will be difficult to beat next year, no matter who the Democrats' nominee is. If it is Dean, he will have vulnerabilities, but maybe not the ones on which the media and his opponents have focused. For instance, Dean's rivals pounced on his pronouncement Monday that America was not made any safer by the capture of Hussein. But a new New York Times/CBS poll found that 60 percent of Americans feel the country is as vulnerable to terrorist attack as before Hussein was captured.

The Times/CBS poll also suggests that while Bush got a definitive bump from the Hussein capture, still only 52 percent of Americans approve of his foreign policy (up from 45 percent a week ago) and only 49 percent believe the country is heading in the right direction (up from 39 percent a week ago).

Dean has made seemingly contradictory statements on a number of issues -- from the war, to Social Security, to the death penalty -- that the Bush campaign would surely exploit if he were to become the nominee. Dean's tendency to shoot from the hip has created a long paper trail of exploitable comments. It is here -- rather than his basic opposition to a controversial war -- where Dean could find himself in the most trouble.

THERE'S NO HOMIE IN HOMELAND Aaron McGruder is at his best when he's taking shots at the Bush administration, like in this week's series of strips spotlighting some of the absurdities of Homeland Security.

THE TRIBULATIONS OF A TRAIL Middle East journalist Helena Cobban explains why the trail of Saddam Hussein may be the political hot potato the Bush administration just doesn't want. The primary reason is the dispirate vested interests at play. The administration would prefer to delay any proceedings until they've had enough time to interrogate the dictator, which translates into months or even a year; the Iraqi Governing Council views a trail as a way to demonstrate ethical puffery, masking their charade of governing with the "Trail of the Century'; many Iraqis just want the man hung; the Iranians would love to play host to a trail for the man who kicked off a war that killed a million of their citizens; and human rights activists and the UN wouldn't mind seeing a trial moved to an international court. Try juggling that ball.

ACCOUNTABILITY From my vantage, one of the more shocking things that happened after the September 11 attacks was nothing. Nothing. By this I mean that the administration, the Congress, the media and the public did not demand a single resignation, did not demand that people be made accountable for mistakes and bad decisions, did not ask the basic questions that would have demonstrated that our government walks the walk, so to speak, when it comes to our values. But now the chair of the 9-11 Commission is publicly saying that people simply screwed up, that there is no reason for the attacks to have happened, and that the commission's report will name names. Look for a brand new level of stonewalling from all sides -- the Bush administration, Clinton holdovers and many in Congress -- as the group's report nears completion, and the nation approaches a presidential election.

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building...

... "How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission...

... "If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe it," Breitweiser said.

Kean admits the commission also has more questions than answers.

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."

Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.

What NOT to do at Return of the King:

1. Stand up halfway through the movie and yell loudly, "Wait... where the hell is Harry Potter?"
2. Block the entrance to the theatre while screaming: "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"
3. After the movie, say "Lucas could have done it better."
4. Play a drinking game where you have to take a sip every time someone says: "The Ring."
5. Point and laugh whenever someone dies.
6. Ask everyone around you if they think Gandalf went to Hogwarts.
7. Finish off every one of Elrond's lines with "Mr. Anderson."
8. When Aragorn is crowned king, stand up and at the top of your lungs sing, "And I did it.... MY way...!"
9. Talk like Gollum all through the movie. At the end, bite off someone's finger and fall down the stairs.
10. Dress up as old ladies and re-enact "The Battle of Helms Deep" Monty Python style.
11. When Denethor lights the fire, shout "Barbecue!"
12. In TTT when the Ents decide to march to war, stand up and shout "RUN, FOREST, RUN!"
13. Every time someone kills an Orc, yell: "That's what I'm Tolkien about!" See how long it takes before you get kicked out of the theatre.
14. During a wide shot of a battle, inquire, "Where's Waldo?
15. Talk loudly about how you heard that there is a single frame of a nude Elf hidden somewhere in the movie.
16. Start an Orc sing-a-long.
17. Come to the premiere dressed as Frankenfurter and wander around looking terribly confused.
18 When they go in the paths of the dead, wait for tense moment and shout, "I see dead people!"
19. Imitate what you think a conversation between Gollum, Dobby and Yoda would be like.
20. Release a jar of daddy-long-legs into the theatre during the Shelob scene.
21. Wonder out loud if Aragorn is going to run for governor of California.
22. When Shelob comes on, exclaim, "Man! Charlotte's really let herself go!"

NOT LETTING THE DAYS GO BY David Byrne sits down with Newsweek to talk more about his new coffee table book than about his Talking Heads retrospective CD box set and other activities. Here's how Newsweek describes the book before they dive into the interview:

The book, "E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information)" (Steidl Publishing & Pace/McGill Gallery), comes equipped with a DVD of five lectures produced with Microsoft’s ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation software. To mark the release of the book, Byrne delivered lectures in New York and Los Angeles on his exploration of using the software as a creative tool. Byrne has developed what must be the most surreal PowerPoint lectures of all time. The DVD contains seemingly unrelated images, dancing, interacting and playing off each other in an apparent stream of consciousness; the book, co-designed with Danielle Spencer, contains many stills from the DVD, complemented by text exploring "the beginning of identity," "the Goddess Nature" and "digital physiognomy" (a pseudo-science that determines a person’s psychological makeup based on a digital scan on his facial features). Think Dilbert on acid.

WHAT AN EPIC TEACHES The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter delivers something less, and something more, than a movie review with yesterday's piece on "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." It's a melancholic, thoughtful piece of prose that reminds (or informs) potential moviegoers that Tolkien's trilogy was as much about the hopes and horrors of his life (from the trenches of turn-of-the-century France to the dawning of Hitler's Germany), as it was about a little fantasy creature known as a hobbit.

J.R.R. Tolkien, famously, was a World War I veteran. He saw men die in the thousands in the mud of the Somme (where he fought); to my knowledge, he never wrote about it directly, and he never became one of the strident, bitter antiwar novelists of the 1920s; he didn't publish his first novel until 1937, and it was called not "Goodbye to All That" or "A Farewell to Arms" but "The Hobbit." Possibly he believed too fervently in metaphysical systems to consign the slaughter he'd witnessed to existential nothingness, and then, later, the slaughter he experienced vicariously as a citizen of Britain during the war it fought 20 years later. It had to mean something, and one way of looking at "Lord of the Rings" is to imagine the old combat-scorched don using words as therapy for the pain of those war memories.

So in his great books and in Peter Jackson's great movie versions, there's a kind of subsumed memory of the Great War underneath it all. You see it on the battlefields, such as the one at Pelennor Fields, the climactic engagement here. It's an endless field of ruin, desolate and despairing, blown with smoke and dust. It's the Somme -- where 20,000 young English boys ran into emplaced German machine gun fire -- as distilled through some sort of fantastic imagination and reconstrued in fairy tale form. But still: It's the Somme. Grim-faced men doing their duty against overwhelming odds, not particularly happy about it, wishing deeply to be somewhere else, but willing to follow the dictates of duty, which means death.

And the battle turns, so it works out, on something that every Great War vet must have thought about at moments of crisis on the battlefield. Suppose, he must have thought, all the men who died here, suppose suddenly now, in the day when Heaven was falling, the hour when Earth's foundations fled, suppose we were helped by our own dead, who would rise and carry the day. Men who've seen a lot of death would necessarily think that; and so it is that Aragorn arrives with the Army of the Dead, and turns the tide against the dark hordes from Mordor.

You don't have to love hobbits (I don't) to love this, but nevertheless it's true that the one thing Jackson does brilliantly is capture the exhilaration, fatigue, heroism and despair of war. He looks at it as something not ennobling but exhausting, more ordeal than crusade but -- completely necessary.

So this film is mostly war. It builds, skillfully, toward that big kill-off at Pelennor Fields, which it re-creates with almost unbearable intensity. You may want to laugh, of course: There are flying lizards and really big elephants, and guys without faces under their armored visors and even a fleet of eagles that comes to the rescue at a key point. Yet you cannot laugh because the battle is so intense and the stakes so high, and Frodo and Sam and Gollum are getting so close to Mount Doom.

LONG LIVE THE KING Peter Jackson's epic adventure, on loan from J.R.R. Tolkien, comes to a close with a poignancy few trilogies manage to achieve. "Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" is a climatic, rueful conclusion to the sort of adventure that is at once desired and feared. The NYTimes' Elvis Mitchell outdoes himself in his review of the movie. [NYTimes login: buttermilk.com, password: buttermilk]

His "King" is a meticulous and prodigious vision made by a director who was not hamstrung by heavy use of computer special-effects imagery. A sequence in which a number of signal fires are lighted on a stretch of mountain ranges simultaneously is a towering moment; it has the majesty that every studio's opening logo shot sprains itself striving to achieve.

Mr. Jackson does take his time, but he's not sloughing off here. Rather he is building toward a more than solid conclusion. The grandiloquence that sustained the second installment, "The Two Towers," with its pounding and operatic martial fury — a movie that actually created a state of siege and left audiences hanging — can be found here.

Yet by its end "King" glides to the gentle bonhomie that opened the "Rings" movies, with an epilogue that is tinged with regret. It's been a long time since a commercially oriented film with the scale of "King" ended with such an enduring and heartbreaking coda: "You can't go back. Some wounds don't heal." It's an epic about the price of triumph, a subversive victory itself in a large-scale pop action film.

FOREST? MEET THE TREES. The CSMonitor's daily update on Terrorism and Security today takes a longer view of the security situation in America. First up, the recently released report of a federal commission chaired by James Gilmore that basically says we run the risk of missing the forest for the trees -- trying to create airtight nets of security, and failing to recognize that no government can make its borders secure or keep its people completely safe. John Ashcroft takes a few pokes today as a candidate for the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for his role in unwittingly making millions of Americans more aware of threats (generally from the government) to their rights of speech, privacy and association.

ARMY OF ONE The media made a big deal (for all of two days) about the first post-war, American-trained Iraqi division, which may be fielded at half-strength due to desertion. How about the effort in Afghanistan, where the new national army is competing with warlords whose militias boast as many as 100,000 men? Not so well. A new report indicates that the current rate of desertions -- about half of those who enlist -- means that Afghanistan will have a fully manned army in 2010. Chalk it up to the same four things that are driving desertions in Iraq: low pay, ethnic tensions within the ranks, threats from militants, and cultural conflicts between tribal and Western military values.

The high attrition rate prompted Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim to order an investigation into the problem, which officers attribute to several factors ranging from pay to cultural conflicts.

"If we can't pay rent, we have to find another job," says Mohammed Tahir, a platoon sergeant from Jalalabad who is helping to support an extended family of nine. Taking a break from infantry drills, Sergeant Tahir says he plans to make a career of the Afghan army, although he wants to increase his pay of $115 a month. (This is twice a teacher's wage, but far short of NGO pay.)

Artillery squad leader Habibullah agrees. The former trader of grapes and nuts earns $70 a month and complains that his family lives in a tent. He asks a reporter for help.

Soldiers often walk long distances home to deliver their pay, delaying training, US military officials say. "It takes a while to reorganize the Army" after each pay day, says Lt. Col. Glenn Bramhall whose National Guard unit is involved with training.

Other recruits leave because they are deceived or pressed into service, says Karimi. "They were told they would get $200 and go to America, but they came and got $30 and were doing hard work." Some were not true volunteers, but were forced to join under quotas imposed by local militia commanders, he says.

THE PEOPLE'S POET ROCKS I came to Bruce Springsteen late. Turned off by his pop radio popularity in high school, it wasn't until the late 90s that I stumbled across the acoustic album that many say gave heart to the emo-core punks whose music I devoured in the 1980s. My first encounter with "Nebraska," followed by interviews in the Utne Reader and DoubleTake, turned me on to Springsteen. Now, Pulitzer Prize winning author (and founder of DoubleTake magazine) Robert Coles emerges with a portrait of Springsteen as the people's poet, something akin to the Walt Whitman of modern America. The secret? Springsteen crept to fame, which allowed him to absorb the stories of his fans, generally folks who worked hard, drank hard and got hit the hardest when the nation stumbled.

But what enables an artist to occupy the rare air of a Springsteen or Percy, to speak to people while speaking of the people and for the people?

To get the answer, Coles looks to the streets - particularly, those of Everytown, USA. He tells the backstories of Springsteen's music by interviewing a schoolteacher, a lawyer, a truck driver, a factory worker, a policeman, a businessman's wife, a student, and a grandmother. Their remarks appear in the natural rhythms of conversation, occasionally peppered with comments from Coles...

... Despite all the glittering images around us - television, movies, rock 'n' roll videos - much of our "art" is rather black and white. Springsteen? In song after song, he's blood red and layoff blue, and all the other colors that run through our lives.

As Coles intimates, Springsteen was lucky to have broken in at a time when he could amass his audience slowly - slowly enough to interact with them and grow with them and hear their stories. His music wasn't concerned with the visual, although he did make a couple of hit videos. No, Springsteen had to put it all in his songs and hope they were true enough to connect with the sort of people who inspired them.

THE B&N CHRONICLES For anyone who has ever worked in the service industry. (Ah, those lazy, venomous days at the coffee shop counter, or sorting the videos...)

SNOW A snow sculpture shout-out to the thrice-cursed Northeastern states.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE Samantha Power's 2002 book, "A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," explores the United States' role in instances of massive, preventable death in the 20th Century. She wrote about the current tragedy in Zimbabwe in the December issue of The Atlantic, and discusses her article in this online interview.

RIDDLE ME THIS The NYTimes put together the 25 most compelling scientific questions of the day, along with the answers. Or some passable stabs at the answers. Are women necessary? What should we eat? Will we ever find Atlantis? [NYTimes login: buttermilk.com, passowrd: buttermilk]

A NEW TWIST ON POLITICAL MAPPING Someone in the 1970s wrote a book about the United States breaking into regions, something akin to Yugoslavia later did. Now, there's a new twist on an old idea. The Massachusett's-based Commonwealth gets past the tired "Red and Blue" map of America with its handy, new snapshot of the 10 political regions of the U.S. Scroll down for trends and voting patterns.

AUDIO SALAM The link takes you to the transcript of the amazed Salam Pax, who was boggled at the arrest of Saddam Hussein yesterday. You can also listen to the audio, which puts a voice to the words of the celebrity weblogger.

FUTURE PRESS Xeni Lardin discusses the power of weblogs, viewing them through the lens of her printing press-obsessed father.

ACCOUNTABILITY IS, LIKE, SO OVERBLOWN The Morning News offers one Congressional reporter's view of the debate that took place authorizing the use of force against Iraq. You may recall hearing portions of that debate on NPR or when you were glued to C-SPAN and strung out on qualudes. Funny thing is that about 80% of the debate took place, in writing, in the pages of the Congressional Quarterly, where our representatives love to go when they are afraid to say what they really think.

BAH. KITTENS. I keep thinking that using kittens to advance political ideology is a thing of the past.

THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN Yes, it's the beginning of the "I can't believe you missed it!" articles, where the informed and the opinionated harp on the "Best Of" for the year we like to call 2003. The Morning News takes a stab at the best albums of 2003.