I carried those beliefs along with me when I worked for Democrats in both the US House of Representatives and the Massachusetts state legislature. More important, I’ve always carried them with me into the voting booth.

But I expect to break with that tradition. Come November, I’ll be casting my vote for George Bush. *snip*

Dean’s group held one public hearing and after-the-fact volunteered the names of industry executives and liberal advocates it consulted in private, but the Vermont governor refused to open the task force’s closed-door deliberations.

In 1999, Dean offered the same argument the Bush administration uses today for keeping deliberations of a policy task force secret.

“The governor needs to receive advice from time to time in closed session. As every person in government knows, sometimes you get more open discussion when it’s not public,” Dean was quoted as saying.

In 2000, Nader ran as the Green Party nominee, winning about 3 percent of the popular vote, including 97,000 votes in Florida. Democrat Al Gore lost the election when Bush defeated him in Florida by 537 votes and the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount. Nader, who thrives on controversy, bristles at the “spoiler” label, saying it is “offensive and a violation of my civil liberties” to tell him not to run.

And there are increasing signs he will run again, from the creation of an exploratory committee this month to constant meetings with Green Party members and longtime supporters nationwide.

Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state in the Clinton administration, in a conversation with Morton Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call and a Fox News Channel political analyst, suggested that Osama bin Laden has been captured by U.S. forces and will soon be produced to the public. “Do you suppose,” she asked, “that the Bush administration has Osama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?”

Mrs. Albright said last night she was kidding. “She was not smiling when she said this,” Mr. Kondracke said. The disclosure of Mrs. Albright’s remark followed by a day the charge by Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington that the Bush administration could have captured Saddam “long ago if they wanted,” but held off until Mr. Bush could use it as a boost in his approval ratings.

“There’s too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing,” he said.

After requesting to visit the school, Terry McAuliffe was allowed by Principal Forrest Ransdell to come to teach what the principal believed to be social studies classes on democracy and the political process. However, several city officials are livid over what they say turned into a biased Democratic view of Republican President Bush’s term of office.

During the presentation, McAuliffe told students that due to Bush’s mismanagement of the country, 70 percent of college graduates will not be able to find a job upon graduation. He also told students that if the war in Iraq continues as it has, there could be a reinstatement of the draft.

“He comes into the school and just says what he wants,” City Councilor Bill St. Laurent said. “At what point does he stop his politicking to the point of scare tactics? Saying that the draft may come back, and kids cant find jobs, those are scare tactics. He is out trying to get votes. This is taxpayers money, excuse me, but this is my tax dollar and I don’t want to use my tax dollar for his pulpit.”

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ (search) 2-1 decision was a rebuke to the Bush Administration.

The administration maintains that because the 660 men held there were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial.

The Supreme Court last month acide whether the detainees, picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, should have access to the courts. The justices agreed to hear that case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the prisoners had no rights to the American legal system.

The San Francisco appeals court, ruling Thursday on a petition from a relative of a Libyan the U.S. military captured in Afghanistan, said the Bush administration’s indefinite detention of the men runs contrary to American ideals.

Dean, for instance, recently spoke of a “most interesting theory” that Saudi Arabia had “warned” Bush about the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Although Dean said he does not believe Bush was tipped off about the assaults that killed nearly 3,000, he has made no apologies for raising the rumor.

“How is what I did different from what Dick Cheney or George Bush . . . did during the time of the buildup of the invasion of Iraq?” the former Vermont governor said Tuesday night aboard his campaign plane. “There were all these theories that they mentioned. Many of them turned out not to be true. The difference is that I acknowledged that I did not believe the theory I was putting out.”

Bush this week called the theory an “absurd insinuation.”

Dean’s remarks, his critics say, are in keeping with his history of making statements that are mean-spirited or misleading. He has distorted his past support for raising the retirement age for Social Security and slowing Medicare’s growth. He has falsely said he was the only Democratic presidential candidate talking about race before white audiences. And he made allegations — some during his years as governor — that turned out to be untrue.

While some of his Democratic rivals have fired intermittent criticism at Dean for shifting his stands, none of them has yet wrapped all the issues into a comprehensive attack that questions Dean’s credibility.

In an interview last week about his foreign policy ideas, Dean said “it’s all about nuance” and indeed some of Dean’s shifts have been a matter of nuance.