WE ARE PLEASED to report that President Bush is following former President Bill Clinton’s lead and once again signed an official six-month waiver of the law requiring the US Embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The move would not be in "the national security interests of the United States," Bush said in his second waiver so far, but added: "My administration remains committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem."

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Bush heavy on the male side

"COMPARED WITH CLINTON’S first-year appointees, President Bush’s picks for top-tier administration jobs have been a bit more white and a whole lot more male, according to a year-end study by the Brookings Institution’s Presidential Appointee Initiative (PAI)," writes Al Kamen in his "In the Loop" column in the Washington Post.

"The study of first-year, Senate-confirmed nominees found that only 26 percent of Bush’s nominees are women, compared with 46 percent of Clinton’s. But the hiring patterns are similar in terms of race and ethnic diversity: 14 percent of Clinton’s folks were African American, 6 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian. The Bush team is 9 percent African American, 8 percent Hispanic and 3 percent Asian.

"And despite Bush’s campaign blather condemning people from Washington, 53 percent of his top appointees are from the DC metro area, the analysis found, many coming from jobs in federal or state and local government, law firms, consulting shops or nonprofits. This is nothing new, said Brookings visiting fellow G. Calvin MacKenzie. "The dominant trend is you get people from across the street" to fill the jobs, he said, from congressional staffs, think tanks and "the K Street crowd" of lobbyists and consultants.

"Texas, naturally, came in as the second most popular home state, with Texans taking 8 percent of the top jobs. California had 6 percent, New York had 3 percent, and Florida, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania had 2 percent each.

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Bring them on

FORMER US AMBASSADOR-at-Large for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer, who is preparing a special report for the United States Institute of Peace on options for prosecuting international terrorists, sees "considerable" advantages of prosecuting in US courts those terrorists linked to Sept. 11, notes the Washington Times "Inside the Beltway" columnist John McCaslin.

"There are clear advantages to bringing terrorist suspects to justice (in US courts), including the evidence that might help to further uncover the Al-Qaeda terrorist network,’ says Scheffer, who from 1993 to 2001 was deeply engaged in establishing international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia, among other countries.

"The US should demonstrate its determination to prosecute terrorist suspects without being intimidated by threats of Islamic demonstrations and retributions," says the ambassador, who acknowledges that the location of a federal trial and of the prisons where terrorist suspects are held "could become magnets" for disturbances and security threats. "It could also be argued, however, that no matter where Al-Qaeda leaders are prosecuted, the US role in that prosecution will be so dominant that the political firestorm will ignite anyway."

In addition, the ambassador says federal prosecution enables the use of sensitive information that probably wouldn’t be available for any foreign or international prosecution. "A great deal of evidence in terrorism cases is classified, and the procedures available under US law can make the difference between pursuing a prosecution or dropping it," he points out. Finally, thousands of American families, friends and colleagues of the Sept. 11 victims have legitimate "interests and rights" to expect terrorist trials in US courts, he says