Even with ample supply, the weakness of the dollar could take the price of crude oil up to 200 dollars a barrel, OPEC President Chakib Khelil said Monday. 

In statements published by El Moudjahid newspaper, Algerian Oil Minister Khelil explained that each time the dollar drops 1 percent, the price of crude oil increases four dollars, and vice versa.

Given that the dollar's value is a key barometer of the nation's economic and financial health, a couple of questions arise: Don't economic fundamentals matter far more than any policy statement? And, what exactly is the 'strong dollar policy,' and are we stuck with it?  

The answer to the former question is fairly easy: "Words don't mean anything," said Edward Leamer, director of the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. "What matters is what Mr. Greenspan does with interest rates and Mr. Bush with the federal deficit. Those are the only things coming out of Washington that materially affect the value of the dollar."

I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly. . . .

The convening authority decides which charges filed by the prosecution go to trial and which are dismissed, chooses who serves on the jury, decides whether to approve requests for experts and reassesses findings of guilt and sentences, among other things.

Earlier this year, Susan Crawford was appointed by the secretary of Defense to replace Maj. Gen. John Altenburg as the convening authority. Altenburg's staff had kept its distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality. Crawford, on the other hand, had her staff assessing evidence before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution's pretrial preparation of cases (which began while I was on medical leave), drafting charges against those who were accused and assigning prosecutors to cases, among other things.

How can you direct someone to do something -- use specific evidence to bring specific charges against a specific person at a specific time, for instance -- and later make an impartial assessment of whether they behaved properly? Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused.

The second reason I resigned is that I believe even the most perfect trial in history will be viewed with skepticism if it is conducted behind closed doors. Telling the world, "Trust me, you would have been impressed if only you could have seen what we did in the courtroom" will not bolster our standing as defenders of justice. Getting evidence through the classification review process to allow its use in open hearings is time-consuming, but it is time well spent.

Finally, I resigned because of two memos signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England that placed the chief prosecutor -- that was me -- in a chain of command under Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. Haynes was a controversial nominee for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination died in January 2007, in part because of his role in authorizing the use of the aggressive interrogation techniques some call torture.

I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes' place in my chain of command.

 The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendant had no way of knowing the identity of his accusers. This was one of the points most criticized by those who opposed the Inquisition . . . . In practice, false denunciations were frequent, resulting from envy or personal resentments. . . .

[After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores (qualifiers), who had to determine if there was heresy involved, followed by detention of the accused. In practice, however, many were detained in preventive custody, and many cases of lengthy incarcerations occurred, lasting up to two years, before the calificadores examined the case. . . .

The entire process was undertaken with the utmost secrecy, as much for the public as for the accused, who were not informed about the accusations that were levied against them. Months, or even years could pass without the accused being informed about why they were locked up. The prisoners remained isolated, and, during this time, the prisoners were not allowed to attend mass nor receive the sacraments. . . . Some prisoners died in prison, as was frequent at the time.

The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings, in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave testimony. A defense counsel was assigned to the defendant, a member of the tribunal itself, whose role was simply to advise the defendant and to encourage him or her to speak the truth. The prosecution was directed by the fiscal. . . . In order to defend himself, the accused had two possibilities: abonos (to find favourable witnesses) or tachas (to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers were not trustworthy).

In order to interrogate the accused, the Inquisition made use of torture, but not in a systematic way. It was applied mainly against those suspected of Judaism and Protestantism, beginning in the 16th century.  . . . Torture was always a means to obtain the confession of the accused, not a punishment itself. It was applied without distinction of sex or age, including children and the aged.

The methods of torture most used by the Inquisition were garrucha, toca and the potro. The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the criminal from the ceiling by a pulley with weights tied to the ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated. The toca, also called tortura del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had impression of drowning (see: waterboarding.)  The potro, the rack, was the instrument of torture used most frequently.

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," McCain told reporters yesterday. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

“It’s a vicious cycle that’s affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least,” he said.

The bill would not authorize the government to loan taxpayers' money directly to homeowners. Instead, it would authorize the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee up to $300 billion in new mortgages offered by government-approved private lenders. The new mortgages could at most equal 90 percent of a home's current value. 

Only homeowners who have a mortgage-debt-to-income ratio of 35 percent or higher and who entered into a mortgage before January would qualify for the program. 

For a homeowner to get a new FHA-backed loan, the holder of the current mortgage would have to accept a loss and take a payment totaling no more than 85 percent of the home's value. 

The government would also get a share of profits if the homeowner sold the house in the future and would have to pay the lenders only if homeowners defaulted on FHA-backed mortgages. The Financial Services committee estimates that 1 to 2 percent of the new loans would default, costing the government between $3 billion and $6 billion.