An amusing lead:

The number of overweight Americans is holding steady as U.S. consumers are becoming more aware of what they eat, an annual report by market research firm The NPD Group said.
The percent of overweight Americans reached 62 percent for the second year in a row, the report said. The rate had increased every year between 1995 and 2002.

So in prior years Americans didn’t know what they were eating?
At any rate, it aways puzzles me how little issues like this–which affect most Americans–are addressed by the national news media. Meanwhile, celebrity justice and the shadowy “war on terror” continue to dominate the headlines.

Tennessee early voting begins today. According to election officials, the Volunteer State has 300,000 more registered voters than it did in 2000.
Vote early, and vote for competence.

This is kind of odd:

A Democratic senator said Tuesday he is closing his Washington office because of a top-secret intelligence report that made him fear for his staff’s safety.
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., said his office in the Russell Senate Office Building across the street from the Capitol will be closed while Congress is in recess through Election Day, with his staff working out of his Minnesota office and in Senate space off Capitol Hill.
“I take this step out of extreme, but necessary, precaution to protect the lives and safety of my Senate staff and my Minnesota constituents, who might otherwise be visiting my Senate office in the next three weeks,” he said.

Other officials are saying there is no known threat to Capitol Hill. But you wouldn’t expect them to offer anything which might hurt tourism, would you?

Juan Cole, on the “war on terror“:

Bush and Cheney are cynically using the trauma of September 11 as a pretext to fight a series of elective wars against weak governments that are inconvenient for hawkish goals and some US corporate interests. Iraq was a poster child of this policy. It had no weapons of mass destruction, was ramshackle, and had no significant ties to terrorism. It was invented as a dire threat to Peoria by Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch, the latter-day Wizards of Oz.
. . .
The “war on terror” of Bush-Cheney is a smokescreen for naked American imperial aggression. The sad story of how Iraq posed no threat either to the US or to any of its neighbors, despite high-decibel claims to the contrary for two years by Bush, Cheney and their acolytes, will be repeated in the case of Syria and Iran if Bush and Cheney are reelected. They hope that their project of overthrowing governments in the region will go smoothly, but they do not really care, since even an Iran and a Syria in chaos is a net gain from their point of view. Chaos creates “terror” and justifies further US involvement, aggression and control. It is inconvenient for the rest of us, but then they insist, unlike John Kerry, that we live with the nuisances they are creating.
In actual fact, al-Qaeda is just a somewhat more successful version of Baader Meinhoff. It is a small terrorist group that has been created by a particular juncture in history. It is not a reason to abolish the US Bill of Rights, as Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft are doing. It is not a reason to invade three or four countries (precisely the few countries where it does not operate!) It is a nuisance to a free society, and should be curbed.
Bush and Cheney keep shouting that Kerry doesn’t understand the war on terror. They mean he doesn’t want to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. As for themselves, if the war on terror is so important to them, why are Bin Laden and Zawahiri at large? Why can al-Qaeda still strike at will? We now have the worst of both worlds, with a quagmire in Iraq and Palestine, and more quagmires planned, while al-Qaeda morphs and grows and continues to form a threat.

I don’t think this is quite as clear-cut as Dr. Cole is framing it; I think the administration’s motives are somewhat mixed. But I believe there is a lot of truth in his post. I agree American security was only a secondary motive for our invasion of Iraq. And there’s no question the administration is milking this ongoing terror threat for maximum political gain, both domestically and abroad. And although I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the administration want to invade Iran and Syria, I’m not sure its a given since our military is already stretched rather thin.

The Russian fallout from terrorism:

Moscow schoolchildren will soon have to wear military-style dog tags and carry special “passports” as part of a security drive in the wake of Beslan.
. . .
Mr Popov, head of the Moscow city assembly’s security and legislation committee, said children would wear the dog tags round their necks and carry the passports in their pockets, which would bear their fingerprints and other personal data.
The passport will give the child’s name, address, telephone number, blood group and details of any allergies to medicines, he said.

Actually, these measures don’t seem to have much to do with security; I think they are intended to help officials clean up the mess if security fails. I wouldn’t exactly view this as reassuring move if I was a Moscow parent.
But they’re used to weird government stuff in Russia. We would adopt any faux security measures here, right?

The Senate version of the intelligence bill includes an amendment, passed by unanimous consent on Oct. 1, that would let the secretary of homeland security decide what documents a state would have to require before issuing a driver’s license, and would also specify the data that the license would have to include for it to meet federal standards. The secretary could require the license to include fingerprints or eye prints. The provision would allow the Homeland Security Department to require use of the license, or an equivalent card issued by motor vehicle bureaus to nondrivers for identification purposes, for access to planes, trains and other modes of transportation.

There you have it. The government wants to take care of this terrorism problem. Be prepared to take carry your papers with you as you travel about.