The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening and Merry Christmas. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer's on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the day's news; then, what's behind today's attempt to assassinate Pakistani president Musharraff; the renewed search for life on Mars; the battle in the courts over redistricting in the states; the story and the man behind "The Lord of the Rings"; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay on the power of a single voice.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: The president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, narrowly escaped assassination today for the second time in less than two weeks. Suicide bombers targeted his motorcade in the city of Rawalpindi, not far from the capital, Islamabad. While Musharraf was unhurt, 14 people were killed, and 46 wounded. We have a report narrated by Vera Frankl of Associated Press Television News.

VERA FRANKL: This road is used nearly every day by President Musharraf as he travels from his residence to his presidential offices. Thursday saw the second attempt on his life in as many weeks. This was as close as authorities would allow cameras. Two suicide bombers set off explosives hidden in pickup trucks, as the presidential motorcade passed two gas stations. The scene of the explosions just 300 yards from a similar assassination attempt on December the 14th. This man was among the first at the scene. "We saw the dead bodies of men at the petrol pumps," he says. "Some were civilians. One was a policeman who died on the spot." The attack came just a day after President Musharraf agreed to step down as army chief by the end of next year. It's feared his friendly relations with Washington may have made him a target for hard- line Islamic militants.

MARGARET WARNER: Today's attack comes ten days before a summit of south Asian leaders in Islamabad. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. This was the bloodiest day in the Middle East in more than two months. An Israeli helicopter missile strike in Gaza killed the commander of Islamic Jihad's armed wing, and a top deputy. Three civilians died as well. Israel's defense minister said the Islamic Jihad commander had been planning a mega-terror attack in the Gaza strip area. Minutes later, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed four people and wounded more than a dozen at a bus stop outside Tel Aviv. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility, saying it was retaliating for an Israeli military raid last week that killed four militants in Nablus. In Iraq, militants launched several Christmas morning attacks in Baghdad, but no one was killed. A rocket-propelled grenade crashed through the atrium of the Sheraton Hotel, frequented by western contractors and journalists. Rockets and grenades also hit the Turkish and Iranian embassies, two banks, and a city council building. Later, a mortar round wounded eight U.S. soldiers north of Baghdad. One American died in a bomb attack late last night. An airliner bound for Lebanon from Benin crashed into the ocean today, killing at least 90 people. There were 18 confirmed survivors. The flight, operated by a Lebanese owned airline, went down moments after taking off from the West African country. Airport officials said the plane had trouble retracting its landing gear, struck a building off the runway, exploded, and fell into the sea. Wreckage scattered along the beach. Authorities in France said today they found no links to terror groups among the passengers booked on six cancelled flights yesterday and today. Air France said it would resume flights between Paris and Los Angeles tomorrow. French officials cancelled the flights based on U.S. intelligence warnings about some of the listed passengers. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said today, "we remain concerned about al-Qaida's desire to use an aircraft as a weapon." The U.S. Department of Agriculture got independent confirmation today of the first U.S. case of Mad Cow Disease. It came from a laboratory in England. Also today, China became the latest country to ban U.S. beef imports. And several U.S. grocery chains stopped selling ground beef from a number of Oregon distributors that may have gotten meat from the diseased cow in Washington State. An initial attempt to contact Europe's first Mars Lander failed today. The "Beagle 2" left its mother ship last night. It was supposed to plunge toward Mars and bounce to a landing cushioned by gas bags. Though the first expected signal didn't materialize, European space officials hope to pick up a signal tonight.

DAVID SOUTHWOOD, European Space Agency: We obviously have concerns about Beagle 2, but it won't be the first time that Beagle 2 has been a little late in arriving in this mission. And we need everybody to just be patient. We're confident we're going to seek it, and one should not write it off at this point.

MARGARET WARNER: The "Beagle 2's" mission is to search for evidence of life on Mars. Two U.S. Landers are scheduled to arrive on mars next month. On this Christmas day, pope john Paul II asked God to save mankind from the two great evils of war and terrorism. He delivered his annual Christmas message before thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Security was especially tight, after reports of possible terror attacks against religious targets in Italy. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Pakistan's president escapes assassination, the new missions to Mars, gerrymandering gets taken to court, "The Lord of the Rings," and an essay about the power of one voice.

FOCUS - TERRORIST TARGET

MARGARET WARNER: After narrowly escaping assassination today for the second time in two weeks, President Musharraf gave an interview to Pakistan TV. Here is a brief excerpt.

PRES. PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, Pakistan: Our resolve is, if anything, it is strengthened. Our resolve has increased. We have to rid this country of all extremism, fundamentalism, terrorism, and we have to take the country forward on the part of development and progress. In Chala, with this incident and the last incident, my resolve increases because I have a faith in destiny, a faith in God, and my faith in God and the faith in destiny has got strengthened.

REPORTER: Sir, are you satisfied with your security?

PRES. PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Security against suicide bombers really cannot be guaranteed by any force. If you see events around the world, you will notice that there are such events taking place with impunity. So while we need to tighten our security and take to task whoever has shown a lapse, one shouldn't make any generalized impulsive, jittery actions of considering everyone to have lapsed on security.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on who might have tried to kill Musharaff, we turn to: Husain Haqqani a former advisor to three previous Pakistani prime ministers. He's now a syndicated columnist and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And Stephen Cohen dealt with South Asia as a member of the state department's policy planning office during the Reagan administration. He has written extensively about Pakistan, and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to you both. Mr. Haqqani, who do you think might have done this? Who has the greatest incentive to kill Musharraf?

HUSAIN HAQQANI: Well, al-Qaida has the greatest incentive. They look at him as a traitor because after 9/11, he sided with the United States, dumped support for the Taliban, which was Pakistan's previous policy and has subsequently tried to crack down on Islamic militants, although not sufficiently effectively. So they have the greatest interest in trying to get rid of General Musharraf. Furthermore, they think that he is the only thing that stands between a diversion to the oil policy that,, that if they can get rid of him, then his successors would be more appeasing towards the Islamists than General Musharraf is likely to be.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, when you say al-Qaida, are you talking about foreign fighters who are in Pakistan, or are you talking about Pakistani members of al-Qaida?

HUSAIN HAQQANI: Both, because the foreign fighters of course have used Pakistan for a long time, going back to the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. They have used Pakistan as a staging ground for operations inside Afghanistan and many of them have family relationships in Pakistan, they have married Pakistani women and have lived there for almost three decades. Many of them have allies from amongst Pakistan's Islamic groups who benefited from the funding that the foreign fighters provided and who, at the same time, have been able to convince these people of their world view.

MARGARET WARNER: Stephen Cohen, who would you point to it?

STEPHEN COHEN: I'd agree with Haqqani's analysis. I'd also add there are two groups which are particularly troublesome: One are the retired members of the military, especially the retired members of the intelligence certify advise who worked with al-Qaida and worked with Taliban in Afghanistan and have professional and personal ties with them. Another group I think is a group that nobody's talked about, which I've met many times in Pakistan-- I was last there in August-- that is younger Pakistanis who are angry at states looking for a radical solution to Pakistan's problems. And many of them have told me, you know, if they could, they would can kill Musharraf and the whole establishment and I think this is a group that we have to keep our eye on in Pakistan in the future.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, just yesterday, Musharraf reached an agreement with some of the Islamist parties in parliament to give up one his two jobs, his job as commander in chief by the end of next year. In other words, his power is already being clipped. Why would Islamists outside now want to kill him?

STEPHEN COHEN: I think they want to create chaos in Pakistan and in a sense to demonstrate that Pakistan is not viable as long as it's an American ally and they would like to force any successor government to break with the Americans and go off an independent course. They also have a great faith in Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Pakistan is a failing country in many ways and that's not a strategy for success, but this is their belief, and it does conform to the al-Qaida principles.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Haqqani, what connection do you see between the folks that you and Mr. Cohen seem to believe are responsible, that is, sort of al-Qaida and outsiders, and the Islamists who are actually in parliament and have, through confronting President Musharraf, actually been able to force him to agree to this deal? Are they working together or at cross-purposes?

HUSAIN HAQQANI: I don't think they're working together in a strategic or day-to-day manner. But I think that their world view is similar. Both of them hate the United States, both of them think that Israel and India need to be cut down to size, both of them think that Pakistan's nuclear capabilities should be used for the entire Muslim world. And most of them have radical views about how Pakistan should be run. They want Pakistan to become more Islamic than it is. But at the same time, let me just say that the Islamists in parliament probably provide the environment that is conducive for the militants to operate in because, if these Islamists in parliament actually got only 11 percent of the popular vote but ended up becoming the third largest block in parliament -- and General Musharraf, by doing a deal with them instead with the secular opposition, has created legitimacy for them, which then enables them and their supporters outside of parliament to operate with impunity. There is less of an environment of fear for Islamic militants in Pakistan than there would have been if these Islamists did not have the political power they have in parliament.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, Mr. Cohen, now, expand a little on when you talked, also, about particularly retired Pakistani military officers, some who had been in intelligence services. Are these also radical Islamists?

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, Margaret, there are Islamists and there are Islamists. Many of the people we're talking about are not in fact very orthodox mousse limbs. And many orthodox Muslims are not radicals, and I think there's been important difference, as there was, say, in the communist movement where or leftist movements, you had differences between communists, socialists, Leninists, Stalinists. I think you get the same gradation of difference among Pakistan's Islamists. In terms of the retired personnel, many of them were involved in the ISI, the Pakistan's Internal Security Institution. And they worked closely with the Islamists. And the Pakistan government, for at least fifteen or twenty years, used Islamists or used Islamic radicals both in India and Afghanistan as an instrument of state policy.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you think that... I mean there's been some talk that there's penetration of even the current security apparatus. You heard the reporter ask President Musharraf "are you satisfied with your own security?" Not that this route was a particular surprise, but still, I mean do you think that there's some real vulnerability there right within the circles of the people who are suppose to be protecting him?

STEPHEN COHEN: I think there's some leakage in his own security apparatus that provided information to these groups as to when and where they could target him. Although it was known that he traveled these routes. But I think has reason to worry about somebody inside his own establishment who's providing evidence for this.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Haqqani, we also heard Mr. Musharraf say that this made him more determined to crack down an extremist? Extremism. Is there more he could be doing to fight these extremists in his midst, the very ones that have threatened him or is he doing everything he can? You as we know, this is an old argument between the U.S. and Pakistan, but what's your view on this?

HUSAIN HAQQANI: I don't think that he's doing all he can for the simple reason that he hasn't made a strategic shift. The U.S. and Pakistan relationship after 9/11 was more or less a shotgun marriage. I don't think he will have time to reflect. He will have to give up a lot more, for example in terms of the military's privileged position in Pakistani society. He would have to reach out to the secular elements of Pakistani society and make an alliance, forge an alliance with them. And to do so, he will have to weed out both serving and retired elements of Pakistan security services who have adopted the Islamist world view. And I agree with Steve Cohen, that the Islamist world view is a different thing to being personally biased or personally Islamist. There are many people who share the Islamic world view, which basically means that the entire Islamist world has to become unified, it has to defy U.S. power; it has to somehow reduce Israel and India's importance in the world. And that world view essentially has not been given up because General Musharraf himself has not cracked down on Islamist groups -- militant Islamist groups whose primary focus is India and Kashmir. And as long as he doesn't do that and makes a discontinuation between Islamists of one sort and another, militants of one sort or another, there will be militant groups that will be able to organize themselves and threaten both General Musharraf and Pakistan.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you, a, agree that General Musharraf could be doing more and, b, what's the U.S. stake in all this?

STEPHEN COHEN: I agree he could do more. I certainly would say he should have done more when he came to power. I met him and talked to him about this, a lot of other Americans and foreigners did. He was dismissive. He thought he could balance off the Islamists, the Americans, the Afghans, the Indians. He thought he could keep a juggling act in progress. I think he was unaware of how serious these people were, how dangerous they were to him, especially after 9/11. We made token steps towards reining them in. The United States would like to pressure him to do more. He has to do more or him as a leader in Pakistan could be finished as a country.

MARGARET WARNER: What's at stake for the U.S. in that?

STEPHEN COHEN: This Pakistan is quickly emerging our greatest foreign policy problem. Like Iraq shall it's a state that's in deep political trouble, like North Korea, it has nuclear weapons, it's also surrounded by strong and powerful enemies. It's had several wars withIndia it's produced terrorists in a factory. The potential of leaking nuclear weapons is there. I think this is a country that really deserves our close attention.

MARGARET WARNER: Stephen Cohen and Husain Haqqani, thank you both very much.

HUSAIN HAQQANI: A pleasure.

ENCORE - DESTINATION MARS

MARGARET WARNER: Today's European mission to Mars is just one of several. NASA hopes to put two U.S. Landers on the red planet next month. Here's an encore report on the American Mars program by Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles.

JEFFREY KAYE: (Excerpt from May 29, 2003 NewsHour) It's been nearly six years since the pathfinder rover, named "Sojourner" rolled onto the surface of Mars to send back pictures, weather reports and geological data. Now, the next generation of rovers is scheduled for another geological field trip. The teams working on the Mars rovers' expeditions are building on experience gained during that 1997 pathfinder mission. However, this project is much more complex; the rovers more sophisticated. Joy Crisp is the rover project scientist.

JOY CRISP, Mars Rover Project Scientist: We cannot do things the way we did on pathfinder, which was just jump in and go at it. You know, we really need to give it thought ahead of time, because it's complicated. We have a short amount of time each day to come up with what the rover should do the next day. And we want to make really good choices. We don't want to be doing it just on the fly.

JEFFREY KAYE: NASA's planners got a sobering dose of reality in 1998 with two unsuccessful Mars missions. An orbiter was destroyed because of a miscalculation. A lander failed to transmit radio signals back to earth. Firouz Naderi heads NASA's Mars exploration programs at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

FIROUZ NADERI: It seems that we pushed too far in '98 in terms of what we were trying to accomplish with how much resources we're trying to accomplish. So that gave us a chance to sit back and reassess the Mars program, and be somewhat more measured about how we would go about doing this.

JEFFREY KAYE: If things go as planned, in January, three weeks apart after a seven-month trip, twin robots will parachute from their respective spacecraft at two separate sites. They'll bounce to a stop encased in airbags. After they're unwrapped and unfolded, they'll drive off their mother landing crafts to explore the Martian terrain. The $800 million missions are being managed for NASA by JPL, which is near Pasadena, California. Here, engineers and scientists have been running tests on duplicates of the machines that will land on Mars. The rovers are in pursuit of signs of ancient life.

FIROUZ NADERI: So we're looking for life, and it's difficult, you know, to just stumble on it, so you look for water as a proxy for life. The grand strategy for Mars exploration... we call it "Follow the Water."

JEFFREY KAYE: Water is a condition for life as we know it. Many scientists believe that what is now a dry, dusty planet was once very wet. One of the landing sites, the Meridiani Plateau, has minerals commonly associated with water. The other, the giant Gusev Crater, halfway around Mars, may have once held a lake. Scientists think the lake was fed by water flowing through a massive channel.

JOY CRISP: What it looks like is that water ponded in that crater, and should have deposited lake deposits, water lane deposits. And for us on Mars, that's, for Mars scientists, that's a gold mine. If we can find water-lane sediments, that would be an important find.

JEFFREY KAYE: Why?

JOY CRISP: Because that may be an environment that could have harbored life.

JEFFREY KAYE: The rovers themselves are solar-powered, mobile geologists. Each is a 375-pound, six-wheeled lab, loaded with gear designed to photograph, collect, analyze, and grind Martian rocks. Rick Welch, the flight system chief engineer, helped design the rovers. During the missions, navigators on earth will be guided by panoramic images the rovers transmit.

JEFFREY KAYE: So what's it doing now?

RICK WELCH, Flight Rover Chief Engineer: Right now, it's going to do a sun find.

JEFFREY KAYE: Locating the sun helps orient the rover.

JEFFREY KAYE: This is the panoramic camera...

RICK WELCH: That's correct.

JEFFREY KAYE: ...At the top, and it does a lot more than just look for the sun, right?

RICK WELCH: Right. Those cameras can be used for all of our big science panoramas, and there are four cameras that are up there. They're in stereo pairs. Just like a human eye has two, to be able to determine range to objects, there are two science cameras, which have filter wheels in front of them that provide the color imagery for geology. And then the ones nearer to the center of the mast, the navigation cameras, they have a wider field of view and are better for planning our mobility and traverses on Mars.

JEFFREY KAYE: Cameras mounted on the front and back are also used for driving. Crisp, who is geologist, says the robots are designed to operate much as human field researchers do.

JOY CRISP: And there are things like, on the end of the robotic arms, there's a microscopic imager which is like a hand lens, which is like a hand lens that a geologist uses. So when I'm out in the field, I usually will take a rock hammer with me and crack open a rock to get a fresh look at the interior, because you can see the mineral shapes and textures better that way, and then look at it close up. And you can identify, oftentimes, you can identify minerals that way. On the rover, we have a rock abrasion tool on the end of the robotic arm. And that is like a rock hammer, so it gets us inside the rock, about a half a centimeter, grinds away the outer part of the rock, and gets at that interior, and then we can look at it with a microscopic imager. There are also chemical analyzers and mineralogical analyzers on the end of that robotic arm that tell us what minerals are present and in what amounts.

JEFFREY KAYE: The rovers are programmed to move slowly and cautiously, during what engineers hope will be 90-day life spans.

RICK WELCH: When it's doing autonomous navigation, because it has to take images and actually sense the terrain and actually determine whether there's a hazard out there, it will actually take up to a minute to determine whether it's safe to take its next step, and then it moves in small steps just like the "Sojourner" rover did on Mars. So, actually, in a given day, we probably won't drive more than, say, twenty or thirty meters in a given day. And that makes for the total mission that we may get several hundred meters away from the landing site.

JEFFREY KAYE: (May 29, 2003) Mars is turning out to be a popular destination. NASA currently has two orbiters mapping the planet, and plans at least four more Mars missions over the next eight years.

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the courts and redistricting, "The Lord of the Rings," and an essay.

FOCUS - POWER POLITICS

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the political battle in states over redrawing congressional districts has reached the courts. Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: The House of Representatives iscalled the "People's House." Its make-up is supposed to reflect the distribution of population across the country. And so the constitution requires that states use census data, collected every ten years, to redraw the boundaries of their congressional districts to reflect population shifts. That's not really an issue in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, and Alaska. Those states have populations small enough to warrant only one at-large representative in the House. But in large states such as Texas, with a congressional delegation that numbers 32, redrawing congressional maps is a complex process that often involves statistical math, creative drawing, and of course, politics. It's the responsibility of state legislatures to redraw the maps with final approval given by the governors. In states where one political party dominates, it's an easy process. Legislative leaders simply redraw the boundaries, usually giving their party the best chance of winning the most congressional seats. But if state government is divided, the remapping process can result in a stalemate. That's what happened in Texas after the year 2000 census. The Republican majority in the Senate and the Democratic- controlled House couldn't agree on a new congressional map, and so a panel of federal judges stepped in and drew one. But when Republicans grabbed control of the Texas House after the 2002 election, their counterparts in congress-- most notably House Majority Leader Tom DeLay-- urged the governor and the now majority-republican Texas legislature to throw out the court-approved map and draw one more to their liking. This was Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, a Republican, last summer.

LT. GOV. DAVID DEWHURST: We're going to draw a map that's fair, that's a Texas map that reflects the interest of the people of Texas -- one that'll represent the fact that the majority of people here in Texas like President George W. Bush, want to see a strong national defense, want to see lowered taxes; at the same time will reflect Democratic voters, independent voters here in the state of Texas.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the map Texas Republicans eventually drew, according to most political observers who've studied it, would shift dramatically the ratio of the congressional delegation. Currently 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans, it could shift to 22 Republicans and ten Democrats after the next election, sending seven more Republicans to Congress. Jim Dunnam is leader of the House Democratic caucus.

SEN. TED STEVENS: REP. JIM DUNNAM: Think of the instability in our country. If every time, every two years we redistrict congress just because we could, or we didn't... or the people in power didn't like who the people were electing, what kind of instability would that create in our federal government?

KWAME HOLMAN: Texas Democrats didn't go down without a fight, and their protests made for great political theater. In May, 51 state house Democrats flew north to Oklahoma, to deprive the Texas legislature of the quorum required to vote on the new map. In July, a dozen state Senate Democrats fled west to New Mexico. Texas' Republican Governor Rick Perry called them home.

GOV. RICK PERRY: My Democrat friends, it's time to come back to work. There is still time to address the priorities of the people if you join your regular legislators in the spirit of bipartisanship.

KWAME HOLMAN: Eventually, the outnumbered Democrats did come home, opting instead to take their chances in court. Three weeks ago, in a similar case in Colorado, the state Supreme Court ruled against that Republican legislature. As in Texas, Colorado Republicans this year redrew a court-ordered map after they gained control of their legislature. But the Colorado Supreme Court declared the map unconstitutional saying, " having failed to redistrict when it should have, the General Assembly has lost its chance to redistrict until after the 2010 federal census." Colorado Republicans hold a five to two seat advantage in the congressional delegation. But if the state Supreme Court ruling stands, Democrats say they could compete for two of those Republican seats next year. However, the most important challenge to a redistricting plan was argued two weeks ago before the United States Supreme Court. In that case, Pennsylvania Democrats charged that the Republican-controlled legislature designed a new congressional district map purely for partisan advantage. The map reflected Pennsylvania's loss of two congressional seats after the 2000 census, but Democrats suffered the consequences. The map Republicans drew pitted Democrats against Democrats, placing the homes of veteran Congressmen Frank Mascara and John Murtha into one district, and those of Robert Borski and Joe Hoeffel into another. Murtha and mascara were forced into a primary fight, which Murtha won. And Borski, rather than fight Hoefell, retired. And so republicans took the one- seat advantage they had held in the state's congressional delegation prior to the 2002 elections, and actually added to it. Democrats, in all, lost three seats. What attorneys for the Democrats want the Supreme Court Justices to do is establish neutral criteria to help determine the shapes of future districts drawn for congressional elections.

MARGARET WARNER: Last Friday, a federal appeals court panel gave preliminary approval to the new congressional map for Texas, drawn by Republicans. Texas Democrats said they would appeal that ruling. Terry Smith has more.

TERENCE SMITH: We take up the debate now with two election law experts. Pam Karlan of the Stanford University Law School and John Yoo of Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California at Berkeley. He served in the bush administration as the deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel. Welcome to you both. Pam Karlan, what's at the heart of this argument that is now before the supreme court?

PAM KARLAN: Well, it's a question about whether the constitution imposes any limits on partisan districting, and if it does, what those limits are and whether a court can enforce them.

TERENCE SMITH: John Yoo, is that the way you see it?

JOHN YOO: Yeah, I agree with Pam. The question is, you know, not whether politics can come into play in drawing districts.

TERENCE SMITH: Because they clearly do.

JOHN YOO: They clearly have, they have since the very first elections in our country. For example, the word "gerrymandering" comes from Elbridge Gerry who was accused of making the very first districts, who's also the drafter of the Judiciary Act of 1789. So it's been with us from the beginnings as a republic. But the other question is, exactly as Pam put it, not that politics can't come in, but do courts really have the ability or have any role in policing how far politics can go?

TERENCE SMITH: Well, should they, Pam? Are they the right venue for this?

PAM KARLAN: Well, there has to be some limit on how far politics can go, and one of the hard questions is whether what you want to look at is the output, you know, how many seats the democrats and how many seats the republicans get. Or whether you what you want to look at instead is the process by which redistricting is done. For example the way Colorado court did, and it said you can redistrict once and once that redistricting a done, you can't keep revisiting the issue and tweaking the lines.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, what about that, John? The notion here in at least two of these cases, in Texas and Colorado, legislatures are attempting to redistrict what we could call mid-cycle, between the two tenure censuses. Is that a problem?

JOHN YOO: No, and the thing I think that is problematic is, you know, courts obviously play a big role in lots of things in society. They decide what's free speech and what's not free speech. But I do think there's a real problem with courts trying to come up with a standard for what goes too far. So for example, there have been situations where majorities of... parties have won 51 percent of an electoral vote in a state and only gotten 40 percent of the congressional seats. Is that politics going too far? What if they had won 60 percent or 70 percent and still ended up with only 40 percent of the seats? You know, it reminds you of the effort that courts once made a long time ago to try to police competition in a different kind of market, the real market, not the political market. And courts, for a while, tried to figure out how much market power is how much too much, how can one company dominate an entire economic market. And courts eventually gave up on that trying to look at what is called the output side of it because there's no real standard that courts can apply to try to figure out when politics has gone too far and something is actually unconstitutional.

TERENCE SMITH: Pam Karlan, when you look at Texas case, which provided so much drama, you had something different there. You had federal... active federal involvement in the person of the House Majority leader, Tom DeLay. Does that change the equation?

PAM KARLAN: Well, the reason that the federal court got involved in the first place is because the state of Texas and its political bodies, the legislature and the governor, couldn't agree on a plan. And when the 2000 census came out, they had to redraw the state's districts. They couldn't agree, and a federal court stepped in then. I think everybody understands that federal courts sometimes do have to step in because, otherwise, Texas would have had a bunch of seats with no districts for them and a bunch of districts that had changed dramatically in their populations since 1990, and you would have had a real inequality of representation. So the federal courts had to step in, and the question is just when the legislature defaults, should it get a second bite at the same apple?

TERENCE SMITH: What about that, John Yoo? Should it, a second bite?

JOHN YOO: You know, I think so. I think that, you know, this really should be something that's up to the legislatures, and I can see why in some people's mind it doesn't seem right that you could have one party controlling the statehouse, controlling districts and maybe the party control over those districts ends up being out of whack with the population. But you know, I think the important thing to keep in mind is that's the way the framers drafted the Constitution. Our constitutional system is not a pure democracy. You know, every district is not necessarily drawn so that 51 percent of the people pick all 51 percent of the representatives. And so one of the things the framers built into our system was to allow states to have a certain amount of control over the way federal officials were selected. For example, senators used to be chosen by state legislatures directly. So it shouldn't be unusual that state legislatures, even if they're the party representation there is a little bit out of what can with the representation in the Congress from that state, should be able to draw the districts in a way to favor their preferences.

TERENCE SMITH: But let me ask you both... or Pam Karlan especially, if that happened even more than once in a ten- year cycle, if the political leadership changed in a state legislature, what would you do? Redistrict every two years?

PAM KARLAN: Well, that kind of gets at what the real problem here is, which is the framers didn't really anticipate the kind of districts we have today or the kinds of political gerrymanders we have today. We didn't actually have congressional districts in every state until the 1840s. Now in the 19th century, people redistricted again and again and again, and partisan politics was really fierce. I actually think the bigger problem today is, when the districts are drawn, as they are, they often either don't represent constituents at all. And I'll just say here that one of the ways you can till tell a district is a little bit suspicious is if it has a nickname. Like for example, in Texas, in this latest re-redistricting, they drew a district from Hidalgo County, which is on the Mexican border, up to Austin. Everybody everyone is now calling it the "fajita district," because it's a long thin strip of meat. And when you have a district like that, you know that something's gone wrong. People in Hidalgo County and people in Austin don't share a media market, they don't share political organizations. There's nothing to connect them except essentially empty pieces of land.

TERENCE SMITH: Is that wrong, John Yoo?

JOHN YOO: I don't see why it is. I mean, I don't see why because you have that kind of funny fajita district-- there's something in Pennsylvania called the "Upside-Down Chinese Dragon District"-- why should it matter so much that courts have to come in and say, "this is unconstitutional." Why can't you rely on the political process to fix any kind of problems? Maybe the Republicans in Texas are going too far. Someday the Democrats in Texas will retake power again, and they could employ the same strategy. You'll have tit for tat or mutually shared destruction strategy where both sides will, you know, damp down if they're going too far in order to make sure it doesn't happen to them in the future. The real question is: Why should this all be unconstitutional, not whether not whether it's a just a bad idea or not.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, the courts will decide that. But in the meantime, Pam Karlan, the critics argue that this leads to a polarization in Congress, and reduces competition for seats. In effect, it's an incumbent's insurance policy. Is it?

PAM KARLAN: Well, I think that's absolutely right. Only 10 percent of the congressional districts in the country are competitive; that is, districts in which there's a reasonable chance of either party's candidate winning. In about as many districts, one of the two major political parties doesn't even put up a candidate. And if you look at which state has the most competitive districts in the country, it's Iowa. And one of the reasons they have the most competitive districts is because they don't allow the state legislature to redistrict. In Iowa, an independent commission redistricts. The closest congressional race in the country, the last time around, was in Colorado, and the Republicans were quite candid that one of the reasonsthey want to re-redistrict there is to make sure that that congressman, who faced a real competition from the Democrats, won't have any competition this next time around.

TERENCE SMITH: John Yoo, that point that Pam Karlan is making in Colorado is a very good example. They were, in effect, using it to create a specific political outcome. Does that give you any pause?

JOHN YOO: No, it doesn't. And to respond to your question directly, is there polarization going on? Certainly there's no doubt polarization is going on...

TERENCE SMITH: As a result of redistricting is what I'm asking.

JOHN YOO: That's the question: Is it really a really of redistricting? Look at the Senate, which doesn't have districts. Isn't it the case that you have enormous polarization there. You have the inability of the Senate to confirm certain kinds of judges now, and you have filibusters which were unheard of 20 years ago of judicial nominees. So is that really being caused by redistricting or not? Incumbency rates are certainly high, but again, let's compare it to other kinds of elections that don't districts. Incumbency rates for governors, state's attorneys general, and senators are all extremely high, too, very close to the range of the members of the House of Representatives. It seems that it might just be that the problems that people are worried about really arising from more broader political changes, and redistricting isn't really getting at the problem or it really isn't the problem and it really isn't the solution.

TERENCE SMITH: Pam Karlan, what do you think that have because you sound as though you feel that redistricting is, in its way, shaping the Congress?

PAM KARLAN: Well, I think the rates of reelection of incumbents are substantially higher, actually, in the house than they are in the Senate.

TERENCE SMITH: They are.

PAM KARLAN: And part of that is a result of redistricting. And I think it also has a spillover effect into all of our politics, that you're more likely as a congressman either to die in office or be indicted than you are to lose your seat in an actual general election. And that's worrisome.

TERENCE SMITH: All right, for better for worse, it's now in the hands of the courts. So thank you both, Pam Karlan, John Yoo, very much.

JOHN YOO: Thank you.

PAM KARLAN: Thank you.

FOCUS - WORLD OF THE RINGS

MARGARET WARNER: Now arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown takes a look at one of the biggest entertainment events of this holiday season, "The Lord of the Rings."

JEFFREY BROWN: It's a familiar scene at movie theaters around the country: Long snaking lines of fans waiting to see "The Return of the King", the third in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The movies are based on books written more than five decades ago by British author J.R.R. Tolkien. In just a week, the new film sold more than $300 million worth of tickets worldwide. The first two films in the epic saga, "the fellowship of the ring" and "the two towers," have already grossed more than $1.7 billion combined.

SPOKESPERSON: This day we fight!

JEFFREY BROWN: "The Lord of the Rings" is an epic fantasy set in a world called "Middle-Earth," a world of humans, noble elves, flying dragons, and many other fantastic creatures, all consumed by a great war. Two characters known as Frodo and Sam, called hobbits, must destroy an all-powerful ring that can end the war. But first they must survive overwhelming odds.

ACTOR: It's so quiet.

ACTOR: It's the deep breath before the plunge.

ACTOR: I don't want to be in a battle, but waiting on the edge of one that I can't escape is even worse. Is there any hope for Frodo and Sam?

ACTOR: There never was much hope, just a fool's hope.

JEFFREY BROWN: For all the epic sweep and fantasy, the director of the films says there's a very basic reason the films connect with fans.

PETER JACKSON: I think that the themes within them are themes that are as relevant 50 years ago when Tolkien wrote the book as they are today. They were relevant 500 years ago, you know. It's basic human emotional stuff if you like. It's friendship, it's courage, it's loyalty, it's love, it's fear, it's evil, it's good versus evil.

JEFFREY BROWN: J.R.R. Tolkien was a leading scholar of Old and Middle English, and spent most of his life at Oxford University in England. As a young man he served in the British army in World War I, and saw action on the western front. His books, including the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "the Hobbit," have been read by more than 100 million people. Tolkien died in 1973.

For more on the Lord of the Rings and man behind it I'm joined by Michael Dirda, senior editor of the Washington Post Book World and author of the new memoir "An Open Book." Michael, welcome.

MICHAEL DIRDA: Great to be here.

JEFFREY BROWN: So the man who wrote this epic fantasy spent most of his life as a tweedy academic in oxford?

MICHAEL DIRDA: Very much so. He basically his entire career was spent studying medieval languages, Old English, Finnish, every sort of older literature you can imagine, particularly of the North. He was devoted to grammar, really in some ways "the Lord of the Rings" grows out of that study of languages. He became interested in creating languages of his own and these led to the stories.

JEFFREY BROWN: So he took the languages, he took the mythology of Northern Europe and created worlds, maps, peoples, whole races, a huge back story.

MICHAEL DIRDA: Exactly. That's... it's not as much evident in the movies, but if you read the books, they're their great power comes from that encyclopedic nature that they have, they've got glossaries; they've got maps, they've got pictures, they have this whole sense of history behind everything in the story. In fact, in a lot of ways, everything that happens "the Lord of the Rings" is a kind of a fulfillment of something from the past. You know, either an incomplete destiny is now going to be completed, or, you know, a broken sword will be re-forged and used again. There is nothing that happens in "the Lord of the Rings" that doesn't in some sense look back to this past.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the other formative experience of Tolkien's life, his biography, was his service in World War I. He saw trench warfare up close.

MICHAEL DIRDA: And he clearly reflects some of that in the battle scenes that are, you know, that are really the highlights of the movies. But, you know... and some of the themes of the book have long been suspected to be a commentary on the Second World War, as well. So both of those wars in some fashion, undergerd some of the story at least of "The Lord of the Rings".

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, in an article you wrote in the Washington Post, you called "the Lord of the Rings" the greatest fantasy novel of our time. Why, and how does it achieve that?

MICHAEL DIRDA: Well, it does that partly because it was really the first fantasy novel to create an entire secondary world that was autonomous, that was different from our own, that you could live in, that you had this sense of history, you had this sense of variety. No other fantasy before had ever done that. You don't... you do find that it's been debased in some fashion, there have been a lot of, you know, tales of swords and sorceries and elves and magic rings since then. But Tolkien really did something for the first time that no one else had done, and he did it so well. There was a survey in England where people were asked to vote on what they thought was the greatest novel of the 20th century. And "The Lord of the Rings" was the one that was chosen by the reader at large. I mean most literary people would pick Ulysses or "Remembrance of Things Passed" or something like that. But the book has such power for anyone who gives it a chance.

JEFFREY BROWN: For a while in the '60s and '70s, it achieved a kind of cult status.

MICHAEL DIRDA: Yeah, I used to see, you know things "Frodo lives" and there was a parody that the Harvard Lampoon put out called "Board of The Rings" and there were lots of references to Gan Dolf. It's a story that's been around for now 50 years, came out in the novel since 1954, '55, and there are online chat rooms devoted to it, there are commentaries, it is has endured for a long while and doesn't seem to be fading at all.

JEFFREY BROWN: For all the grand sweep, for all the big fantasy, the evil orcs and the noble elves, it is like all epics, ultimately about coming home, correct? It ends with the hobbits back at the shire?

MICHAEL DIRDA: Yeah, it really is about coming home. It's also... the first form is called the "Fellowship of the Ring" and I think Tolkien works all kinds of variations on that word fellowship from sort of the grousing and drinking of the hobbits early on at parties and weddings and taverns all the way to the sense of fellowship as loyalty to your group, to your comrades. Indeed when you think about it, the entire story comes down to the attempt by these vast groups of people to essentially distract Soron so that this little guy Frodo can carry the ring back to the fires of Mount Doom to destroy it. And people are willing to put their lives on the line for their friend.

JEFFREY BROWN: And eventually make their way home?

MICHAEL DIRDA: And eventually, you know, it is... some make their way home. It's one of the great, you know, aspects of the book's power that it doesn't end happily, there is a great sense of loss throughout that there is... the world... a world is coming to an end. The heroes may be successful, but it's the end of a kind of magic time, and after this will be the age of men, rather than the age of gods and heroes and elves and dwarves.

JEFFREY BROWN: Okay, Michael Dirda, thank you very much.

MICHAEL DIRDA: Great to have been here. Thank you.

ESSAY - COMMUNAL VOICES

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers the appeal of a single voice.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: "The individual voice is the communal voice." Joyce Carol Oates, who recently received the Kenyon Review lifetime achievement award, says that in a new book, called "The Faith of a Writer." The individual voices is a communal voice, meaning that a writer creates something out of personal experience, and then trusts that the personal is universal, and will be received gladly because of that. The statement requires some faith itself. In "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison says something similar when his mad and sane hero asks, "who knows but that on the lower frequencies I speak for you?" Speak for me? I'm not African American; not confined to a basement illuminated by 1,300 light bulbs. Not alone, not invisible. Oh, but the invisible man isn't invisible either. He's just a man. And on this assumption of common feeling is all writing is based, and all art, and much of life. One of Joyce Carol Oates' novels is called "Because it is Bitter, and Because it is my Heart." "Write your heart out, because your heart, once out, belongs to everyone." Clergymen deliver sermons believing the same thing. Politicians make speeches and have the same faith. Advertisers create ads with the same hope. What I say, you say, too-- or think, or feel. The individual voice is a communal voice. If this is so, the imagination really has to stretch. By what stretch of the imagination is a crazed, peg-legged, whaling captain's voice the communal voice -- or the dimwitted rich girl at the end of the dock with the green light? Or her great tormented idolater, for that matter? Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to discover that he has been turned into a giant insect. Is everybody snug as a bug? What's required for these understandings to get through is something in common that lies hidden, hidden in "King Lear," in "Emma," "Blue Boy," "The Mona Lisa," jazz, rap, Beethoven, and "Roll Over, Beethoven"-- the idea that we are all part of the same story, a story that we all tell and listen to and create. Why be especially charitable in the Christmas/Hanukkah season, unless you really believe of the down and nearly out, "there but for the grace of God go I?" The season darkens and grows cold, and so does the story we're part of. Can that be me, that bundle of rags asleep in the doorway, that kid strung out on drugs, that manic, desperate voice crying out in the night? Who knows but that on the lower frequencies that voice is yours and mine? Every social transaction, every word one writes or speaks, every gesture made toward someone else, everything invented or dreamed of, good and bad, takes into account that the individual voice is the communal voice. "Write your heart out," says Joyce Carol Oates. The writer writes our heart out because it is bitter and corrupt and helpless and occasionally heroic and lovely and kind, and because it is our heart. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major developments of this Christmas day: The president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, narrowly escaped assassination, for the second time in two weeks. And French authorities said today they found no terror links among the passengers booked on six cancelled flights. Air France will resume flights between Paris and Los Angeles tomorrow. But U.S. Officials said they remain concerned about possible terror attacks using airplanes. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.