Much of Karman's early history is hazy, but one horrific incident stands out. In 1955, one of the women who sought Karman's help died of an infection, and he was charged with both murder and abortion. A court rejected his insistence that he was a mere middleman between the woman and a doctor, finding that he himself had tried to induce a miscarriage using a speculum and a nutcracker. Nevertheless, he was convicted only of the lesser charge, and after serving two years in prison, he emerged unfazed to resume the work that had become, for him, a kind of crusade.

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About 100 people gathered for the rally in the vicious heat, many of them, from huge-bellied men to toddlers, wearing Benham's T-shirts. It was three days into Operation Save America's weeklong siege of the Jackson Women's Health Organization, the last abortion clinic in Mississippi. From July 15 to July 22, protesters -- sometimes a few dozen, sometimes more than 100 -- surrounded the clinic, an off-white stucco building ringed by a metal gate, hoisting photos of aborted fetuses blown up to the size of 4-year-olds. The clinic brought in McCoy Faulkner, a security expert who specializes in violence against abortion providers. It changed its hours to deal with the onslaught, scheduling some appointments before 6 a.m. so patients could dodge the horde of demonstrators who converged a few hours later. Still, even at dawn, women had to brave a gantlet of shouting people.

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In 2000, some of those involved in the murders were finally brought to trial. "The stakes could not be higher," writes Ebadi. "It was the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic that the state had acknowledged that it had murdered its critics, and the first time a trial would be convened to hold the perpetrators accountable."

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There, a cluster of dancers impersonating liberal activists waved signs with slogans like "No Moore!" and "Keep God Out!! No God in Court." The boy Moore danced a harangue, first lurching toward his tormentors and then cringing back in outrage before breaking through their line to lunge for his monument. But the dancers in trench coats -- agents of atheism -- got hold of it first and took it away, leaving him abject on the floor. As the song's uplifting chorus played -- "After you've done all you can, you just stand" -- a dancer in a white robe, playing either an angel or God himself, came forward and helped the Moore character to his feet.

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All successful lobbies flaunt their power. But unlike, say, the Cuban lobby or the AARP, there's a taboo against outsiders discussing the influence of AIPAC or the Israel lobby more generally, or criticizing the way it shapes American policy. To do so raises the specter of poisonous old narratives about mysterious cabals and dual loyalties, of hateful tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and "The International Jew." So a strange, dim silence surrounds the Israel lobby, and the hushed atmosphere nurtures conspiracy theories about a power so great and so secret that you can't even talk about it in public. Those conspiracy theories make the issue even more fraught, because respectable people don't want to provide fodder for the likes of former Klan leader David Duke, who writes on his Web site, "Just as Jewish Israel-Firsters dominate the mass media, so Congress and the President are afflicted by the Israeli Lobby. "

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In the summer of 2003, Boykin donned military dress and appeared before an evangelical audience to talk about Christianity and the war on terror. It was one of at least 23 such talks he delivered to religious audiences, almost always in uniform. Islamists, he told his listeners, hate America "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

He meant that literally -- Boykin apparently believes that Satan's supernatural soldiers participate in the military operations of America's enemies, and that said soldiers can be captured on film. At several of his talks, he showed photos from the capital of Somalia, where he had commanded Delta Forces during the 1993 battle there. In the pictures, there were black streaks in the sky, photographic evidence, he said, of a "demonic spirit over the city of Mogadishu."

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"I believe the most damaging thing Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously in the public office, which made him a target of all those who despise the goals of Christ," said Scarborough, a former college football player and longtime DeLay ally. Taking the stage before the 200 or so adoring activists in the banquet hall, DeLay ran with the end-times theme. "We have been chosen to live as Christians at a time when our culture is being poisoned and our world is being threatened, at a time when sides are being chosen and the future of man hangs in the balance," he said. "The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will."

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Though the last case study in "The March of Folly" was about America's war in Vietnam, Tuchman argued that the brilliance of the United States Constitution had thus far protected the country from the traumatic upheavals faced by most other nations. "For two centuries, the American arrangement has always managed to right itself under pressure without discarding the system and trying another after every crisis, as have Italy and Germany, France and Spain," she wrote. Then she suggested such protection could soon give way: "Under accelerating incompetence in America, this may change. Social systems can survive a good deal of folly when circumstances are historically favorable, or when bungling is cushioned by large resources or absorbed by sheer size as in the United States during its period of expansion. Today, when there are no more cushions, folly is less affordable."

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Allen, the first African-American aide to notorious civil rights foe Jesse Helms, was one of the religious right's favorite Bush administration officials -- Focus on the Family called him "one of the staunchest family advocates in government." He served first as the deputy secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, where he was the administration's chief advocate of abstinence-only sex education. In 2003, Bush nominated him to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Democrats filibustered him, citing, among other things, his attacks on former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt, Helms' 1984 Senate challenger, for having links to "the queers" and "radical feminists." Unable to get him on the court, Bush instead made Allen his chief domestic policy advisor in 2005.

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At the end of January, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon's impeachment, penned an appeal for Bush's removal in the Nation, citing his illegal wiretaps, his deliberate deceptions over Iraq, his incompetent prosecution of the war, and his authorizing systemic torture and abuse. "Impeachment is a tortuous process, but now that President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and virtually dared Congress to stop him from violating the law, nothing less is necessary to protect our constitutional system and preserve our democracy," she wrote. In March, former Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham wrote a cover story in that magazine titled "The Case for Impeachment." The Center for Constitutional Rights -- the legal group representing many of the victims of Bush's torture policies -- has just published a book called "Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush," and at least one other book in a similar vein is forthcoming, Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky's "The Case for Impeachment."

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When the levees broke, their home flooded with 7 feet of water, yet they never thought of giving it up and starting over somewhere else. The couple returned the moment they were allowed back into the city and used wheelbarrows to cart out their destroyed possessions: 15,000 records, 1,000 books, and the ruined equipment from Bairnsfather's home music studio. In November, they moved back in, living for over three months without gas -- meaning no cooking or hot showers -- or phone service. They are now the only people living on their block, but Bairnsfather talks about the future of Broadmoor with an infectious confidence that makes it impossible to believe that the neighborhood's destruction will be permanent.

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There are other children in similar situations in New Orleans, though how many is unclear. Members of the local teachers union, civil rights lawyers and neighborhood activists speak of neighborhoods overrun with involuntarily truant students. "At the very least, 200 to 250 parents of school-age kids have been denied access to schools here in New Orleans for no other reason than that the schools are saying there's no room," says Tracie Washington, one of New Orleans' leading civil rights lawyers. As reports of children being turned away from schools pile up, anger is building in the community. Two lawsuits have been filed to force New Orleans to reopen its public schools.

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With nowhere to go, dozens of people have taken up residence in New Orleans City Park, sleeping in tents or under jury-rigged blue tarps. A group of Apache Indians from Arizona has even set up a teepee. Seeking to impose some sort of order, the city contracted with an Alabama firm called Storm Force, which has corralled people into a few manageable fields and started charging $300 a month for muddy plots big enough for four or five tents, huddled close together. Showers are available for $5.

Although famous restaurants are reopening in the French Quarter, and a trickle of tourists has returned, much of New Orleans remains apocalyptic. Streets are lined with empty, rotting houses, ugly yellow-brown stripes on the walls marking the floodwater line. A dead dog decomposes in a cage in the middle of a road in Gentilly, the devastated middle-class neighborhood that served as the setting for Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer." The trees and grass are brown and dead, killed by the flood's chemical stew.

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But what Alveda King and the other participants at Justice Sunday ached to overcome wasn't discrimination or poverty or disenfranchisement. Rather, they spoke of overcoming decades of progressive jurisprudence -- the very jurisprudence that provided legal support to the civil rights movement. They spoke of overcoming opposition to Bush's Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, a man who has demonstrated hostility to past Supreme Court decisions protecting voting rights, and who belonged to Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a group that sought to limit the number of women and minorities at the university. ("A student population of approximately 40 percent women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future," said one of its brochures.)

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1. The guerrilla war is being waged only in four provinces.

2. Iraqi Sunnis voting in the December 15 election is a sign that they are being drawn into the political process and might give up the armed insurgency.

3. The guerrillas are winning the war against US forces.

4. Iraqis are grateful for the US presence and want US forces there to help them build their country.

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During Bush's first term, Santorum tried to attach an amendment to the No Child Left Behind act that would encourage the teaching of intelligent design. It said, "[W]here topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist, why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries can profoundly affect society." The statement was eventually adopted as part of the Conference Report on the law, which meant it has advisory power only.

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