BREVITAS

WORD

We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by the Providences of God - and the phrase is the government's, not mine - we are a World Power. - Mark Twain on our nation-building in the Philippines

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

US NEWS & WORLD REPORT - At the White House, the president has got to be muttering "some friend" when he pores over the new autobio from his old buddy Vicente Fox, Mexico's former leader. That's because Fox raps his border pal as stubborn and "the cockiest guy I have ever met in my life." . . . While he expresses a kinship with W, he breaks with the prez on the war and slams the GOP's immigration platform. He blames Bush's stubbornness on Iraq for bad international relations, calls his Spanish "grade-school level," and admits he didn't think Bush would ever become president.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has long identified himself as an Episcopalian, said this weekend that he is a Baptist and has been for years. Campaigning in this conservative, predominantly Baptist state, McCain called himself a Baptist when speaking to reporters Sunday and noted that he and his family have been members of the North Phoenix Baptist Church in his home state of Arizona for more than 15 years. "It's well known because I'm an active member of the church," the Arizona senator said. While McCain has long talked about his family's and his own attendance at the Arizona church, he appears to have consistently referred to himself as Episcopalian in media reports. In a June interview with McClatchy Newspapers, the senator said his wife and two of their children have been baptized in the Arizona Baptist church, but he had not. "I didn't find it necessary to do so for my spiritual needs," he said. He told McClatchy he found the Baptist church more fulfilling than the Episcopalian church, but still referred to himself as an Episcopalian.

MIDEAST

IRAQ LOSES ITS ANCIENT PAST

FURTHERMORE. . .

JOHN WILDERMUTH, SF CHRONICLE - Lawrence Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, has been replaced as the planned speaker at a UC Board of Regents dinner next week after complaints from faculty members. "(UC Regents) Chairman Richard Blum and Dr. Summers talked last Thursday and agreed that the regents would have a different speaker," Trey Davis, director of special projects for the UC system, said. Davis was unable to say whether a protest letter signed by more than 300 people from the university system had any effect on the decision . . . Summers, who was Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, resigned from Harvard last year after a long-running clash with some faculty members over his questioning whether women might not have the same innate ability as men in disciplines such as science, math and engineering. He also had thorny relations with minority faculty members during his time at the university.

AP - "Where's the bathroom?" That's the question camera-toting tourists in Minneapolis are asking as they visit the men's room where U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was arrested in a sex sting. "It's become a tourist attraction," said Karen Evans, information specialist at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. "People are taking pictures."

IRAQI'S BANS BLACKWATER

TAPE MADE DURING OJ SIMPSON INCIDENT

CLIMATE IS NOT THE ONLY THING CHANGING IN GREENLAND