Isn't it kind of unbelieveable how little he has to say to make news? Like if he said 'we don't want to kill all the Jews' it would make front page news with the headline reading 'Arafat a man of peace.'

While no one was looking, something historic has happened in the Middle East. The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost.

For Israel, the victory is bitter. The last four years of terrorism have killed almost 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands of others. But Israel has won strategically. The intent of the intifada was to demoralize Israel, destroy its economy, bring it to its knees and thus force it to withdraw and surrender to Palestinian demands, just as Israel withdrew in defeat from southern Lebanon in May 2000.

That did not happen. Israel's economy was certainly wounded, but it is growing again. Tourism had dwindled to almost nothing at the height of the intifada, but tourists are returning. And the Israelis were never demoralized. They kept living their lives, the young people in particular returning to cafes and discos and buses just hours after a horrific bombing. Israelis turned out to be a lot tougher and braver than the Palestinians had imagined.

As in so many other aspects of his presidency, Bush's faith played different roles before and after 9/11. The original promise to empower faith-based social-service groups, a core piece of Bush's domestic policy, was very much in keeping with the self-help trajectory of his spiritual journey and that of millions of others as well. In a country in which Christian authors write diet books (to help you get Slim for Him) and addiction books (Holy Smokes! Inspirational Help for Kicking the Habit), Bush won broad support when he argued--to the dismay of church/state watchdogs--that drug-treatment and prison-fellowship programs that have good track records should not be denied federal funds simply because their methods are faith-based.

Administration critics see a religious agenda that extends beyond compassionate-conservative outreach in the judges Bush has appointed and in his decisions to limit federal funding of stem-cell research, promote abstinence education over condom distribution and deny funds to international family-planning groups. But many of these were disputes that any Republican President could have had with his Democratic opponents. It was only after Sept. 11, when Bush found himself leading a shaken country through a dark valley, that the old left-right debates gave way to something altogether different. Now the debate was less about personal faith changing lives. It was about America's destiny and Bush's view of God's plan for him and for the U.S.

Yasser Arafat "definitely" understands that Israel must preserve its character as a Jewish state, the Palestinian Authority chairman told Haaretz in an interview this week.

This is the first time Arafat has said he recognizes the state's Jewish character -- he had previously refrained from doing so, to avoid offending Israel's Arab citizens.

My study, published in the journal Gender & Psychoanalysis in 2002, found that the sons of lesbian couples are thriving. Boys raised in two-mother families are vibrant, courageous individuals, effectively constructing their sense of self amid ordinary family love and extraordinary social change. These boys are articulate and thoughtful and deeply aware of their own emotional lives -- including the pain that comes from discrimination against their families. They exhibit all the usual traits of manliness, including athletic interests and skills. Significantly, they also demonstrate the openness and ease with feelings usually attributed to women....

As the sons of lesbians tell us, boys have an innate ability to become men, a capacity that good parenting by males or females can nurture. They do not need a single male role model in-house to teach them how to hit a ball or become men. Nor do girls need a female on the premises to show them how to be women. So-called masculine and feminine qualities are in fact human qualities and can be nurtured by either moms or dads. In fact, research specializing in adolescence and the sex lives of teenagers has found that girls' self-esteem often plummets with the imposition of rigidly defined gender roles, more likely causing some to become teenage mothers and high-school dropouts.

It's certainly understandable that Nancy Reagan, after the terrible ordeal she's been through, might look with favor on any possibility of defeating Alzheimer's. It's even understandable that others, misled by extravagant promises and blind to what's really going on, are grasping at the same straw. But they ought to argue their case on its merits -- what few merits it has -- and not enlist in their cause the name of Ronald Reagan, who stood foursquare against the exploitation and destruction of human life in any stage. That is one legacy he would have never wanted to leave.

Although the Supreme Court did not address the question directly, Mr. Newdow got it right: Atheists are "outsiders" in the American community. Americans are one of the most religious people in the world, particularly compared with the peoples of other highly industrialized democracies. But they nonetheless tolerate and respect the rights of atheists and nonbelievers. Unbelievers do not have to recite the pledge, or engage in any religiously tainted practice of which they disapprove. They also, however, do not have the right to impose their atheism on all those Americans whose beliefs now and historically have defined America as a religious nation....

Americans have always been extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian. The 17th-century settlers founded their communities in America in large part for religious reasons. Eighteenth-century Americans saw their Revolution in religious and largely biblical terms. The Revolution reflected their "covenant with God" and was a war between "God's elect" and the British "Antichrist." Jefferson, Paine and other deists and nonbelievers felt it necessary to invoke religion to justify the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence appealed to "Nature's God," the "Creator," "the Supreme Judge of the World," and "divine Providence" for approval, legitimacy and protection.

The Constitution includes no such references. Yet its framers firmly believed that the republican government they were creating could last only if it was rooted in morality and religion. "A Republic can only be supported by pure religion or austere morals," John Adams said. Washington agreed: "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." Fifty years after the Constitution was adopted, Tocqueville reported that all Americans held religion "to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions."

In the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush maintained a studiously moderate stance on social issues. Once he assumed office in January 2001, he betrayed that position and delighted his right-wing base by attaching antiabortion conditions to foreign assistance. These conditions laid down that family planning groups accepting federal money must not perform abortions, or even provide information about them to their patients. As we said at the time, forcing an organization to censor its views as a condition of receiving government money would be unconstitutional on free-speech grounds in this country. Mr. Bush's calculation, we supposed, was that Americans would overlook his contempt for free speech if the consequences were limited to far-off poor countries.

The lawsuits attacking public acknowledgment of the religious heritage of this country in recent years are too numerous to list. Ultimately, there must be a ruling on the merits of the issue, and in that case we urge the court to preserve the traditions developed to honor this country's commitment to religious freedom.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the leading Democratic supporter of the bill, said hate crimes amount to "domestic terrorism plain and simple, and it's unacceptable." He urged the administration to swing behind the proposal.

Current law permits the federal government to assist local and state authorities prosecuting limited types of crimes committed on the basis of the victim's race, religion or ethnic background. The legislation approved in the Senate would broaden it on two counts, allowing federal involvement in many more types of crimes, and adding sexual orientation, gender and disability to the list of covered categories.

The Pledge, Rehnquist argued, "is a patriotic exercise, not a religious one; participants promise fidelity to our flag and our Nation, not to any particular God, faith, or church."

The pre-Christian Cicero believed in one God whose laws were eternal and unchanging. Rehnquist's Pledge declines to subordinate America to "any particular God." Why not Zeus or Apollo?

O'Connor dismissed the words "under God," along with the Supreme Court's own invocation ("God save the United States and this honorable Court"), as examples of what she calls "ceremonial deism." "Such references," she says, "can serve to solemnize an occasion instead of to invoke divine provenance."

It is constitutional, in other words, to take the Lord's name in our public institutions as long as we take it in vain. Students reciting the Pledge who don't want to violate the First Amendment must violate the Second Commandment.

Why has God's name been driven to the brink of expulsion from American public life and law?

For decades, liberal judges have advanced their agenda by arbitrarily declaring "rights" that defy the Western legal tradition, articulated so well by Cicero, Aquinas and Martin Luther King Jr., that just laws comport with God's laws. They have declared that peddling pornography, killing unborn babies and even same-sex marriage are "rights."

These are not rights, they are wrongs. For judges to enshrine them permanently in our law, they must first unthrone God -- and put themselves in His place.

The need for a Christian worldview reset underlines the necessity of knowing God--the one true God who has revealed Himself in the Bible. A recovery of this knowledge is the starting point for both theological reformation and worldview realignment. The fact that so many modern people believe in "just an ordinary God" indicates the true nature of our challenge. This "god" of popular American spirituality is nothing like the God of the Bible--not even close....

There will be no recovery of the Christian worldview until this God--the self-revealing God of the Bible--stands once again at the center of our knowledge and wisdom. Belief in a sub-biblical God will result in a sub-Christian worldview. Just ask Nebuchadnezzar.

The right to abortion is as legally secure as ever, but its advocates have never been so apparently ashamed of the practice itself. If pro-choice advocates believe in the necessity and goodness of their position, one would expect them to say something like, "We support abortion -- that's A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N -- so women can eliminate unwanted children." Instead, they take refuge in the foggiest corners of obfuscation.

In April, supporters of Roe v. Wade held a rally in Washington in support of the right to abortion. But you would hardly know it. The rally was called the "March for Women's Lives" -- well, for the lives of women who aren't very, very young. The word "abortion" was almost verboten among people who support the right to it.

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision allowing the words 'under God' to remain in the Pledge of Allegiance wasn't just a victory for those who believe that recognizing the divine is an integral part of American culture. The 8-0 ruling also finally drew the line against a decades-long trend of allowing people to bring lawsuits challenging federal laws just because they don't like those laws, without having to prove actual injury from the laws as the Constitution requires. This was a victory for those, like me, who think that litigation has run amok in our country, and that the courts, which by their nature are not democratic, are not the proper place to try to change public policies with which one disagrees.

There is certainly an important argument to be made about the impoverished rights granted by courts to noncustodial parents, many of whom are fathers who pay significant child support in exchange for the fundamental right to be vetoed at will. That's a thorny and important problem, but it's a problem to be solved in state courts, by judges who must try to split children in two without breaking skin. It's not a question to be decided by the Supreme Court and certainly not an issue to be decided in a sidebar on a case about the First Amendment.

The court's decision this morning does not reflect judicial gutlessness. It would have been more gutless to throw millions of custody arrangements into question, turning what were once considered final divorce decrees across the country into open-ended suggestions. Safeguarding the idea that custody decrees are final may not be a sexy constitutional issue. But I'd wager that it'll be better for the health and sanity of more American children than cajoling them into saying good morning to God every day.

Ronald Reagan was flying from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles after leaving the presidency and a reporter asked him if there were any issues he considered unfinished business. Reagan replied that he wished he could have done more to end abortion. There is no doubt that Ronald Reagan would have opposed the savage partial-birth abortions, stem-cell research on human embryos, the coerced euthanasia death attempt on handicapped Teri Schiavo of Florida and the appointment of pro-abortion judges.

The phrase "under God" in the Pledge seems, as a historical matter, to sum up the attitude of the Nation's leaders, and to manifest itself in many of our public observances. Examples of patriotic invocations of God and official acknowledgments of religion's role in our Nation's history abound....All of these events strongly suggest that our national culture allows public recognition of our Nation's religious history and character....

I do not believe that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge converts its recital into a "religious exercise" of the sort described in Lee. Instead, it is a declaration of belief in allegiance and loyalty to the United States flag and the Republic that it represents. The phrase "under God" is in no sense a prayer, nor an endorsement of any religion, but a simple recognition of the fact noted in H. R. Rep. No. 1693, at 2: "From the time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God." Reciting the Pledge, or listening to others recite it, is a patriotic exercise, not a religious one; participants promise fidelity to our flag and our Nation, not to any particular God, faith, or church.

There is another way to reduce the spread of H.I.V. -- one that is increasingly recognized by public-health experts but that has been relegated, thus far, to an afterthought: fidelity -- either in marriage or in a committed relationship. As experts come to understand more about the African AIDS epidemic, it seems clear that regular sexual contact with more than one person is the key human behavior that enables the rapid spread of H.I.V. Since 2002, international organizations have promoted an approach called ''A.B.C.,'' which stands for abstain, be faithful, use condoms. But the ''be faithful'' part has largely fallen through the cracks, and that may well have undermined efforts to fight the epidemic.

The problem is not that condoms and abstinence don't prevent H.I.V. -- they do -- but that they are often less popular choices than sticking to one partner. Obviously if your one partner is H.I.V.-positive, you are in trouble, unless you use condoms all the time. But when large numbers of people reduce their partners, it can stop the virus in its tracks.