In case any FmH readers were wondering how I’ve come by my opinionated gall, it may have something to do with the fact that I turn 50 years old today. (Others may be thinking I probably shouldn’t be doing this at my age…)

And my son turns eight today…

Judge Blocks U.S. Bid to Ban Suicide Law: ‘A federal judge in Oregon yesterday rejected an effort by the Justice Department to block the state’s assisted suicide law. In a decision sharply critical of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the judge said Mr. Ashcroft lacked the authority to decide “what constitutes the legitimate practice of medicine.” ‘ NY Times

Here’s a Number That Will Reduce You to Tears : “Okay, ready for the number? 2,587.” Washington Post

Rumsfeld Dismisses Report of Bin Laden Escape:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday dismissed a report that a U.S. decision not to put ground troops at Tora Bora last year let Osama bin Laden escape.

Rumsfeld bridled when asked whether U.S. Afghanistan war commander Army Gen. Tommy Franks had made a major mistake in his approach to the Tora Bora campaign, as alleged by unnamed U.S. government sources in a Washington Post story.

“My view of the whole thing is that until the lessons learned are known and have been developed — they’re still being worked on — I wouldn’t be able to answer a question like that, and it impresses me that others can from their pinnacles of relatively modest knowledge,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing.

(This amounts to saying “I won’t know until I know (if ever)”, of course.)

Rumsfeld said he never has had any conclusive evidence of the whereabouts of bin Laden, whom the United States holds responsible for fatal Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. “We have seen repeated speculation about his possible location,” Rumsfeld said. “But it has obviously not been verifiable. Had it been verifiable, one would have thought that someone might have done something about it.”

(It’s either ineptitude or ineptitude, it appears. We either had no idea where he was or, if we did, bungled it. Choose your poison…) Yahoo! News

Here’s the April 17th Washington Post story to which Rumsfeld is reacting: U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight

Ex-Afghan King Makes Historic Return: “The historic return of the 87-year-old Zahir Shah, as an ordinary citizen who will not take back the throne, placed the ailing former monarch into a possibly significant political role. Yahoo! News

“Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign is calling on governments, institutions, and multinational companies to change the rules so that trade can become part of the solution to poverty, not part of the problem.

We are targeting them with a report which analyses international trade rules, and presents a powerful case for change. We know that real change will only come when large numbers of people demand it – in rich countries as well as poor.

We want to work with the many organisations and individuals around the world who are already campaigning to ensure that trade makes a real difference in the fight against poverty. Together, we aim to build the kind of movement that has brought an end to apartheid, banned the use of landmines, and made real progress in reducing Third World debt.”

Farewell, Furrowed Brow — “In an age of image manipulation, what will be the political impact of the erasure of expression from the American face?” — William Safire, NY Times

“Men were pronounced economically and evolutionarily finished in the late 1990s.

But Charlotte Allen says that manhood is back in fashion“, especially since Sept. 11th:

Remember Brenda Berkman? You probably don’t, unless you’re a hard-line feminist or you live in New York City. In 1978 or thereabouts, Berkman filed a class-action sex discrimination lawsuit against the New York Fire Department, complaining that she and several other women couldn’t pass the physical fitness section of the city’s employment examination for aspiring firefighters. In 1982, in response to Berkman’s suit, a federal judge ordered the city to lower the physical standards, and Berkman and about forty other women who were now able to pass the new and easier test went ahead with their firefighting training. The overwhelming majority of them dropped out, deciding that they didn’t really want to be New York City firefighters after all. Since 1982, the city’s graduating classes for firefighters have contained only one or two wo-men each and, out of a force of about eleven thousand, there are currently fewer than thirty women.

After her hire, Berkman and some of her cohorts engaged in nearly two decades of guerrilla warfare against their male coworkers. The women charged that the men were committing a catalogue of horrors and hate crimes against them, including rape, tire-slashing, death threats, tear-gas assaults, urinating into women’s boots, and leaving a female firefighter alone in a burning house. None of these charges quite made it to the courts, or even to the serious union administrative stage. But they were reported in rich and credulous detail by feminist journalists and historians (one of them called physical fitness a “social construct”), and Berkman became a heroine on the websites of the National Organization for Women and groups of that ilk. She also became something of a political activist, snagging an appointment as a White House fellow during the Clinton years, and last summer she publicly backed Democrat Mark Green’s unsuccessful candidacy for mayor of New York.

Then this thing called September 11 happened. Independent Women’s Forum