The point, of course, is that the terrorists have no particular interest in Kerry. What they care about is Bush. He could be running against a moose, and Osama and Zarqawi would be for the moose.

How to elect the moose? A second direct attack on the United States would backfire. As 9/11 showed, attacking the American homeland would cause a rallying around the president, whoever he is. America is not Spain. Such an attack would probably result in a Bush landslide.

It is still prudent to be on high alert at home, because it is not wise to bank on the political sophistication of the enemy. The enemy is nonetheless far more likely to understand that the way to bring down Bush is not by attack at home but by debilitating guerrilla war abroad, namely in Iraq. Hence the escalation of bloodshed by Zarqawi and Co. It is not just aimed at intimidating Iraqis and preventing the Iraqi election. It is aimed at demoralizing Americans and affecting the American election.

Making the ruling, Mr Justice Hedley said: "As a society we fight shy of pondering on death, yet inherent in each of us is a deep desire, both for oneself and for those we love, for a 'good' death. It would be absurd to try to describe that concept more fully beyond saying that everyone in this case knows what it means ­ not under anaesthetic, not in the course of painful and futile treatment, but peacefully in the arms of those who love her most."

As he finished reading his judgment, and the lawyers stood to begin discussing costs, Mr and Mrs Wyatt remained sitting, in tears, seemingly unaware of life moving on around them. Seventy miles away, in a windowless hospital room, Charlotte clung to life by the thinnest of threads, as her fate was determined in case law, philosophical argument about the quality of life and complex medical evidence.

Yesterday's ruling means that the next time Charlotte succumbs to yet another infection and stops breathing, she will not be resuscitated. Instead, she will be taken from the box which pumps oxygen to her starved brain and allowed, in Mr Justice Hedley's ruling, "to die peacefully in her parents' arms".

Every Bush speech is richly encrypted with covert Biblical allusions and other secret handshakes with his fundamentalist listeners, but one need not be a fundamentalist to warm to this sort of religiose rhetoric, for it is every bit as much of an "American" thing as it is a "Christian" one. Rationalist liberals, tone-deaf to its appeal, make a serious mistake in their assumption that facts-on-the-ground, in Iraq or in the domestic US, can readily explode what the Bush administration has managed to project as a matter not of reason but of faith....

No culture in the world has elevated "faith", in and of itself, with or without specific religious beliefs, to the status it enjoys in the United States. Faith -- in God, or the future, or the seemingly impossible, which is the core of the American Dream -- is a moral good in its own right. In no other culture is the word "dream" so cemented into everyday political language, for in America dreams are not idle, they are items of faith, visions that transcend the depressing available evidence and portend the glorious future as if it were indeed "predicted...predestined", as Isenberg's father saw the war on Iraq....

It was axiomatic to Puritan belief that the city on the hill had been raised in a land previously inhabited by devils whose spirits still walked abroad, conspiring against the holy, wise, and blessed citizens. At the time of the Salem witch trials in 1693, Cotton Mather struck exactly the same note as Bush strikes when he speaks of al-Qaida.

Mr. Bush uses the language of faith, not only to mobilize conservative Catholics and evangelicals, but also to underscore his sense of purpose and to justify an unwavering certitude.

Some people in Mr. Kerry's campaign are pushing him to adopt a similar code, even just adding a few biblical quotations and references to church, to offset what polls show to be a chronic liability, public doubt about what he really believes in.

Despite frequent invocations of the term "values," he has not connected his agenda to a deeper moral conviction, though in the interview Monday he declared, "Faith is central to my life."

"I was an altar boy, you know," he said. "I got through a war. I wore a rosary every day of battle. I know what faith is. I've tested it and struggled with it like anybody who has faith and worked through it. And my relationship with my faith is strong and sure."

One by one, official reports by government investigators, statements by former administration officials and internal CIA analyses have combined to undermine many of the central rationales of the administration's case for war with Iraq -- and its handling of the post-invasion occupation.

The release of yesterday's definitive account on Iraq's weapons -- and its conclusion that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction years before the U.S.-led invasion -- is only the latest in a series of damaging blows to the White House's strategy of portraying the war in Iraq as being on the cusp of success.

When the modern feminist movement really got rolling in the 1970s, its acolytes trusted that, once "liberated," women would make the choices feminists like: Once they tasted the rewards of office life, they’d never want to give them up. In short, feminists had faith that "choice" was all they needed to fulfill their vision of what society ought to be. Now their faith has been shaken, badly. (Older feminists now routinely grouse that younger women "don’t appreciate the gains of the women’s movement.")

But where the feminist faith is floundering in the face of reality, the Christian faith finds affirmation. For the truth is that many of women’s social roles in traditional societies are anything but unwanted impositions invented by tyrannical males; rather, they’re expressions of women’s deep desires, instilled in them by the One who made men and women alike.

Christians recognize this as one of God’s blessings. It’s too bad feminists can only see it as a curse.

How nominal is Kerry's Catholicism? Just look at his 1998 interview with American Windsurfer, the journal of a charming sport that has become a Kerry metaphor. The senator said: "I am a believer in the Supreme Being, in God. I believe without any question in this force that is so much larger and more powerful than anything human beings can conceivably define." Sounds more like "Star Wars" than Christ on the cross.

Is Kerry a CINO, a Catholic in name only? He goes to Mass but windsurfs theologically: He has "always been fascinated by the Transcendentalists and the Pantheists and others who found these great connections just in nature, in trees, the ponds, the ripples of the wind on the pond, the great feast of nature itself."

The professor's logic makes sense--if we accept his premise that citizens have "a recognized constitutional right" to engage in any form of consensual sex with any number of partners, without respect to gender. As he sees it, criminalizing polygamy is nothing more than a form of national hypocrisy. Since no existing laws criminalize the sexual behavior, the criminalization is directed only at those who would solemnize their sexual relationships by claiming the institution of marriage. As Turley and polygamists see it, "it is simply a matter of unequal treatment under the law."...

We get the point. If marriage is not culturally understood and legally defined as a relationship between a man and a woman, it can and will mean anything. Those who claim that marriage can be redefined to allow same-sex relationships without destroying the institution itself are lying to themselves and to the public.

Jonathan Turley's article serves as a signal of where the debate over marriage is going. Once again, the courts stand at the center of this cultural conflict. All this goes to show once again that we will either define marriage for the courts, or the courts will define marriage for us. Can there be any doubt where this is headed?

Terrorism, it has been widely argued, is a tactic rather than an actual enemy.

Such sophistry obscures this essential point: Terrorism is a graphic expression of the intolerance that the Islamist fanatics preach, practice and -- most important -- demand that their co-religionists adopt to become observant Muslims. Terrorism is not just a tactic. It is also a statement of the inhuman values that motivate those who organize suicide bombings, hostage-taking and televised beheadings.

To the extent that any label can help, this must become a war for something. It must become a campaign for tolerance -- for the simple human decency involved in respecting and, when necessary, protecting the differing beliefs and identities of others....

Launching a war against al Qaeda and other terrorism groups and their supporters was necessary. Pursuing it in its present form will not be sufficient, for President Bush or for President Kerry. The leadership in a broader struggle must inexorably pass to Muslims who honor tolerance and human dignity -- and who are willing to place themselves at risk to defend those values for all faiths and races.

Dov Weisglass's remarks on the move to give up the Gaza Strip next year while keeping large chunks of the West Bank surprised U.S. diplomats, who said Washington remained dedicated to a "road map" peace plan for a Palestinian state.

Sharon, wary of alienating Israel's key ally, said later he still backed the "road map" effectively dismissed by Weisglass.

Palestinians, whose calls for road map talks have been spurned by Israel's ruling right, condemned Weisglass's message.

"I believe he has revealed the true intentions of Sharon. We told the quartet (of U.S.-led peace mediators) eight months ago that the Gaza plan was designed to undermine their road map," said Negotiations Minister Saeb Erekat said.

"I am ready to be Nelson Mandela," Arafat said in an apparent reference to Mandela's withdrawal from political office. "I agree, but (only) after the Palestinian state is established and I am its president. Then I leave it to others."

No date has been set for the legislative and presidential elections Arafat announced last month, but he said he would respect the decisions of Palestinian leaders.

"What the Palestinian leadership decides, I commit to," he said. "In the end, I won't impose myself."

Judge William Morvant said the amendment was flawed because it had more than one purpose -- banning not only same-sex marriage but also civil unions.

State courts had rejected a similar argument before the election, saying it was premature.

Some 78 percent of those voting favored the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, and its related prohibition against state recognition of same- and opposite-sex civil unions. The vote was part of a national groundswell against gay marriage, which followed last year's Massachusetts Supreme Court recognition of gay marriage.

Now Ms. Schiavo's life depends on the outcome of separate but parallel legal battles. In the case of Terri's Law, Mr. Connor is reviewing whether to petition the Florida high court for a rehearing or to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Connor said the Bush team might base a federal appeal on an argument that the Florida judiciary denied Gov. Bush his right to due process, for example, by refusing to allow his lawyers to depose Michael Schiavo and others during the battle over Terri's Law.

Meanwhile, Schindler attorney David Gibbs planned to argue in a lower court on Sept. 30 that removing Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube would violate her religious beliefs. Before sustaining brain damage, Ms. Schiavo was a practicing Catholic, according to affidavits filed by friends, priests, and family members. In March 2004, Pope John Paul II, addressing an international conference on life-sustaining treatments and bioethics, said, "The administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act...and as such [is] morally obligatory." He added that the withdrawal of a feeding tube as the only means of preserving a patient's life "is a serious violation of the law of God."

The British hostage Ken Bigley has been transferred to a more moderate terrorist group which last week released two Italian prisoners, according to reports in Kuwait.

There were suggestions that the new captors, a Sunni Muslim group who were reportedly paid a ransom of about £650,000 to release aid workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, would now demand a large sum to free the 62-year-old engineer.

Newspaper reports in Kuwait claimed the fundamentalist Tawhid and Jihad group, which snatched Mr Bigley in Baghdad nearly three weeks ago, was considering selling him to another militant group. And the hostage's brother, Paul Bigley, said he had contacted "high-level" people in Kuwait who had told him that it appeared the transfer had already been made.

"I will stop at nothing to get stem cell research moving forward in this country," Kerry said. He said Bush had dismissed the judgment of scientists who say embryonic stem cell research could eventually lead to disease cures.

"This underscores, in my judgment, the perils of having a president who turns his back on science in favor of ideology, and as a result, abandons millions of Americans' hopes," Kerry said.

Individuals have a recognized constitutional right to engage in any form of consensual sexual relationship with any number of partners. Thus, a person can live with multiple partners and even sire children from different partners so long as they do not marry. However, when that same person accepts a legal commitment for those partners "as a spouse," we jail them....The difference between a polygamist and the follower of an "alternative lifestyle" is often religion. In addition to protecting privacy, the Constitution is supposed to protect the free exercise of religion unless the religious practice injures a third party or causes some public danger....Contrary to the court's statements [in 1878], the practice of polygamy is actually one of the common threads between Christians, Jews and Muslims....

I personally detest polygamy. Yet if we yield to our impulse and single out one hated minority, the First Amendment becomes little more than hype and we become little more than hypocrites. For my part, I would rather have a neighbor with different spouses than a country with different standards for its citizens.

I know I can educate my three sons about the importance of monogamy, but hypocrisy can leave a more lasting impression.