Red Cross Rings Door BellsTo Give Away Money

And now the most engrossing two minutes in television, the latest from the wartime grapevine.

Washington woke up this morning to a picture on the front page of the Washington Post of a captive at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, being transported, flat on his back, back to his cell, after being interrogated. So why was he on a stretcher? The Pentagon told Fox News that the prisoners are wheeled back and forth in this way because it is too slow to walk them in leg irons, which require them to take tiny steps. And besides, an official said, the treatment of them in this way, as helpless as children, is psychologically useful in the interrogation.

The Red Cross, which has collected more than $400 million for World Trade Center disaster relief, got in hot water when it tried to use some of the money for other purposes. It quickly changed course, but now Newsday reports that it is having such a hard time finding victims to give the money to that it has started going door to door. And some of the recipients, who live in the upscale Tribeca neighborhood near the trade center site, are far from needy. One woman, a novelist, told the newspaper, that she accepted $2,000 after Red Cross volunteers spent 20 minutes persuading her to take it.

Kaimuki High School in Honolulu has been forced to remove a provision in its dress code, which prohibited "gang-related clothing, or clothing promoting alcohol, tobacco, profanity, or Satanism." But the group Citizens for Separation of Church and State, acting on behalf of the member of the school staff who is a Satanist, said the provision was unconstitutional. A spokesperson for the group told TV Station KITV, "Satanism is a religion....If you can wear a shirt that says Jesus loves you, you should be able to wear a shirt with a pentagram on it." The school agreed. 

The Los Angeles Times has examined minutes of  meetings of the International Olympic Committee and found what the paper calls, "an undercurrent of anti-U.S. sentiment," going back decades. It was especially strong after the scandals surrounding the Salt Lake City bid scandal. At one point, for example, the Times quotes Belgian Jacques Rogge, who is now the IOC president, as dismissing Congressional investigators with a French proverb, "The spittle of toads never reaches the light of the stars."