Bush administration hard-liners have a dangerous habit of selectively using intelligence to support the policy conclusions they favor. The latest example of that tendentious approach comes in the leaked Pentagon memo on alleged operational links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that was summarized last week by the Weekly Standard.

My complaint is with Feith, who produced an intelligence memo that to me had a clear political agenda, despite his claims to the contrary.

President Bush secretly traveled to Baghdad and paid a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit to US troops Thursday in a mission to boost the morale of forces in Iraq amid mounting casualties.

From 1970 to 1973, the US government was involved in overt and covert actions against the elected government of Chile led by Marxist Salvador Allende. The initial history of this period told of a US government that abused its power and betrayed its principles. Public reaction was universally negative. This interpretation of events has affected the conduct and perception of American intelligence activities ever since.

A generation has now passed and it is time to reexamine this “accepted” version of events. Recently, the US government released thousands of declassified documents. These newly available resources allow a more candid -- and realistic -- look into the actions and thoughts of the CIA agents and officers involved in those controversial operations. This study focuses on CIA covert action during the six weeks following Allende's victory at the polls in mid-September 1970.

Commentator Frank Deford has a grudge against many things, but not Thanksgiving. He just doesn't care about the holiday -- or the Washington Redskins, or bowl games, period.

... "It's like I'm glad I don't care one way or another about the problems of the music industry, whatever they are."

One researcher, a developmental psychologist at Teachers College at Columbia University, has made a specialty of affluent teenagers, whom she describes sympathetically as "a truly miserable group of kids."

She has spent the last several years surveying students in Westport, Connecticut, where the median family income is $152,894 and the town's one high school, with 1,400 students, is among the top-ranked in the country.

Al Gore, in an acidic speech in New York, accused the Bush administration of "deception."

What "evidence" was it, exactly, that led Gore to this conclusion?

Nobody knows. He didn't say.

When the United States telecommunications industry imploded a few years ago, with upstart carriers disappearing by the dozens and investments vanishing by the billions, it looked as if the regional Bell companies had won the telecom wars.

But it is clear now that the Bells merely survived the first wave of what may be decades of difficulties.

The local communications game itself is changing -- and not in the Bells' favor.

Every few years, one or more of the Bell companies strikes a marketing deal with a big satellite-television provider.

Now, Verizon and SBC are trying satellite ventures again.

Can you count your friends? Better yet, can you organize them in a database? There's a lot of buzz about a new breed of software tools that can help people manage their contacts -- or, to make it sound more serious, leverage their social capital.

"It's easy to identify candidates these days. The challenge now is selection."

At the end of the day we will have private aggregations of data more rich and interconnected and personal than any government ever dreamed of ... and of course this data will be readily available, just as data from credit card companies, merchants and airlines is today.