Last month, the Council of Grand Justices ruled that some of the powers vested in the 319 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee were unconstitutional. Undeterred, the committee released a 150-page report on Monday on the March 19 assassination attempt. Many legal experts and academics have deplored the fact that this absurd and ridiculous report has cost the legislature a great opportunity to establish a model for its use of judicial investigative powers under the Constitution.

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By Kuo Chang-feng 郭長豐
Misjudging the mood of the country and under pressure from the Democratic Progres-sive Party (DPP), the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) managed to retain its 12 seats in last month's legislative elections. To make matters worse, this poor showing was followed by internal conflict which required the intervention of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝). Now that the new TSU chairman and secretary-general have taken office, we hope the party leaders can learn something from their electoral failure in order not to fail the Taiwanese people as well as Lee, the "spiritual founder" of the TSU.

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By Chang Jung-feng 張榮豐
Late last year, the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) submit-ted a request that the draft anti-secession law be reviewed at the third meeting of the 13th NPC, which is to be held in March. Even though China still hasn't publicized the text of the draft, this article will attempt to analyze China's possible intentions with this law and its possible effects from the perspective of game-theory, strategy and the civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).

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By Bao Tong 鮑彤
The conditions under which Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) lived at the time of his death, in utter isolation from Chinese society due to an illegally imposed 16-year house arrest, shames both Chinese justice and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

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The outstretched hands of desperate refugees gathered outside the airport here just days after the earthquake and tsunami have at least partly been replaced by the hands of entrepreneurs trying to shuffle prospective customers into cars bound for houses-cum-hotels and offices in the city.

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By Richard Dowden
UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown wants a Marshall Plan to save Africa, just as America "saved" Europe at the end of the World War II. His speech on Jan. 6 at the National Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, was full of missionary zeal to end poverty and disease.

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