Bear Left!

Fact of the Week

**Fact of the Week**
The pharmaceutical lobby, has more lobbyists (625 are registered) than the combined membership of the House and Senate. It spent $197 million in 1999 and 2000 on lobbying and campaign contributions. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and White House Budget Director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. are former executives of pharmaceutical giants G. D. Searle and Eli Lilly. Source: New York Times, 5 November 2001.

Cases Closed: Immigration lawyers working on cases stemming from the 11 September attacks claim that secrecy measures keep them from doing their jobs (Josh Gerstein, ABCNews.com).
A Muscular Lobby Tries to Shape Nation's Bioterror Plan: The nation's pharmaceutical industry has a huge amount of pull in Washington (Leslie Wayne and Melody Petersen, New York Times).
Afghan Women as Co-Leaders: The women of Afghanistan, who are regaining their voices, must be allowed to effect positive change (Christian Science Monitor).
New Shin Bet Law Heads to Knesset: While the United States gives its intelligence services free rein, Israel tries reform (Gideon Alon, Ha'aretz).
Where Journalists Who Disagree are "Terrorists": In Zimbabwe, the war against terrorism means a war against a free press (Bill Saidi, London Observer).
Robert Kennedy's Transformation: Robert Kennedy stood for many things that the current Justice Department does not (James Carroll, Boston Globe).
Going Ballistic: The Pentagon is trying to muzzle Ted Postel, an MIT professor and critic of missile defense (Brendan Koerner, Village Voice).
Brain Drain: The American zeitgeist is often anti-intellectual, and the Internet does not always help things (Mark Crispin Miller, Center for Book Culture).

"Bear left!"/"Right, Frog!" (Kermit and Fozzie, The Muppet Movie)

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