The debate over the military and adultery escalated. 1) The Air Force discharged female pilot Kelly Flinn for adultery, lying about the adultery, and disobeying an order to cease the adultery. Politicians and the media blasted the military for punishing a woman while going easy on male adulterers. 2) The Army demoted and retired a male two-star general after discovering that he had had an affair five years ago while separated from his wife. Politicians and the media blasted the military for "permitting a witch hunt and ruining careers" (Richard Cohen, the Washington Post). 3) Defense Secretary William Cohen reaffirmed his support for four-star Gen. Joseph Ralston, who is in line to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, despite revelations that Ralston had had an adulterous affair 13 years ago. Politicians and the media blasted the military for punishing junior officers' adultery while going easy on the top brass. Last year's applause for the military's sexual-misconduct hot line, designed to help catch predators, has given way to complaints that the hot line has become "a funnel for malicious gossip and anonymous back-stabbing" (the Washington Post). Pundits are uncertain whether President Clinton will dump Ralston (to appease feminists who are upset by Clinton's alleged advances toward Paula Jones) or support Ralston (to avoid looking like a hypocrite, in view of his alleged advances toward Paula Jones). (6/6)

This week's mystery is the murder of Jonathan Levin, the son of Time Warner chief Gerald Levin. Instead of following in his dad's footsteps, Jonathan taught poor kids in a Bronx public high school. He was killed in his apartment, evidently for money. Reporters lauded Levin for getting close to his students and inviting them to visit him at home (thereby illustrating "the power of gifted and dedicated teachers to transform young lives," according to the New York Times). Later, after learning that investigators were scrutinizing Levin's present and former students, reporters suggested that Levin's fatal mistake may have been getting close to his students and inviting them to visit him at home. (6/6)

Miscellany: Organizations involved in President Clinton's 1996 campaign received $200,000 in donations from evidently phony donors, according to the New York Times--"the strongest evidence yet that campaign contributions were deliberately funneled to the Democratic Party by using other people's names."Malcolm X's grandson reportedly confessed to setting a fire that nearly killed his grandmother (Betty Shabazz, Malcolm's widow). Doctors are gradually replacing her charred skin with artificial skin in hopes of saving her life. The latest tobacco-settlement proposal from state attorneys general would cap the industry's annual liability in private lawsuits at $4 billion, in exchange for $16 billion in annual payments to the federal and state governments. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., is disavowing a book--for which he wrote the foreword--that claims the U.S. government secretly extracted military and industrial technology from an alien spaceship. (6/6)

Michael Bowers, the former Georgia attorney general who won the 1986 Supreme Court case upholding laws against sodomy, admitted that he had indulged in an extramarital affair for more than a decade. Bowers, who is now the leading Republican candidate for governor, is also famous for having retracted a job offer to a lawyer on the grounds that she was violating the law by carrying on a lesbian relationship. (Georgia law also prohibits adultery.) While admitting that he has been "hypocritical," Bowers said he would continue his gubernatorial campaign and would gladly defend the sodomy law again. Georgia Democrats, from whom Bowers defected three years ago, reportedly are tingling with Schadenfreude. (6/6)

Straws in the wind: The new record price for an Internet address is $150,000, paid by a Texas company to a British company for the address "business.com." The new record gift to a U.S. college is $200 million, pledged by the F.W. Olin Foundation to found an engineering school near Boston. Several major public-television stations across the United States are examining a plan to begin airing commercials. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C., has filed a bill to improve productivity by outlawing computer games in federal offices. Australian scientists claim to have built and tested a nanomachine--i.e., a tiny device assembled from molecules--that purportedly "could measure the increased sugar content of Sydney Harbor after a single sugar cube was tossed in."(6/6)

Timothy McVeigh was found guilty on all counts in the Oklahoma City bombing. Journalists, having exaggerated the defense's options and prospects for dramatic effect throughout the trial, finally conceded that the contest had never been close. Editorialists congratulated the judge and jury for proving (in contrast to the O.J. Simpson judge and jury) that the criminal-justice system works. While proclaiming that the United States has finally lost its virgin naiveté about domestic terrorism, pundits scratched their heads over why the trial didn't mesmerize the nation the way the Simpson and Rodney King cases did. Next, jurors will consider whether to give McVeigh the death penalty. Having milked the trial for pathos, the media applauded the judge for instructing prosecutors not to manipulate the jury's emotions. The early line on the coming trial of alleged co-conspirator Terry Nichols is that he'll be a lot harder to convict because he was home in Kansas when the bomb went off in Oklahoma. (6/5)

Lawyers for President Clinton and Paula Jones commenced settlement talks through the media. The Jones camp's spin: She wants her good name back. The threat: to focus the trial on Clinton's relations "with other women" and make him spend the rest of his presidency being hounded about his privates instead of showing off his public service. Settlement demands: his admission that she told the truth, plus $700,000 in damages, and compensation for her emotional pain. The Clinton camp's spin: She and her lawyers are in it for the bucks. The threat: "to put her reputation at issue," dredging up old boyfriends. Settlement proposal: a $700,000 donation to her chosen charity, plus some part of her legal costs, but "no apology" and "no admission of misconduct." The National Organization for Women and the New York Times denounced Clinton's lawyer for stooping to the old tactic of bringing up the accuser's sexual history. The Times' Maureen Dowd urged that Clinton "quit besmirching Paula Jones and settle the case, before people stop seeing him as a likable rogue and start seeing him as an unlikable rogue." (Slate's "Strange Bedfellow" takes on Clinton superlawyer Bob Bennett.) (6/5)

An ethics-commission report solicited by President Clinton will recommend that scientists be allowed to clone human embryos for experiments, according to the Washington Post. However, the report recommends a ban on implanting these embryos in women and developing them into babies. Pro-lifers attacked the proposal for 1) inviting researchers to toy with human life and 2) then requiring them to abort it. Other critics argued that if human-embryo cloning remains legal in the private sector but illegal in government-funded research, unsupervised quacks will control it. But the commissioners decided not to ask Congress to ban human-embryo cloning outright, reportedly because they trust Congress even less than they trust scientists. Related updates: "Human Chromosomes Transplanted Into Mice" (the Washington Post, May 30); "Rush Is on for Cloning of Animals" (the New York Times, June 3). (6/5)

Canada held a parliamentary election. 1) Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's centrist Liberal Party retained its majority. However, 2) the Liberals lost 19 seats. However, 3) they won a mandate for their fiscal austerity program, sort of. ("Americans can only admire an electorate readier than their own to administer a bitter but necessary medicine," said the Washington Post.) Meanwhile, 4) the anti-Quebec-separatist Reform Party won big in the West and became the official opposition. And 5) Chrétien nearly lost his seat to a Quebec separatist. However, 6) Quebec separatists lost seats overall. American pundits, confused by the results, accused the voters of confusion and warned that regional conflicts within Canada could destabilize its relations with the United States. The Wall Street Journal blamed the weak showing of economic conservatives in recent elections--in France, Britain, and the United States--on those conservatives' insufficient economic conservatism. (6/5)

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., will block the nomination of Gov. Bill Weld, R-Mass., to be President Clinton's ambassador to Mexico. Clinton had hoped Weld's nomination would foster bipartisan harmony. Instead, it has fostered Republican disharmony. Helms cited conservative Republicans' quarrels with Weld (who favors medical marijuana and abortion rights) as evidence that Weld isn't "ambassador quality." Clinton has asked Helms' new pal, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, to meet with Helms and try to remove the thorn from his paw. (6/5)

French voters booted conservatives out of the national Parliament and put leftists in power. The Socialists, Communists, Greens, and other leftist parties won a majority of seats, while President Jacques Chirac's center-right coalition lost nearly half its seats. Commentators agreed that, unlike the British Labor Party, the Socialists won on an unreformed welfare-state platform: creating 350,000 government jobs without raising taxes, and cutting weekly work hours to 35 without cutting salaries. "Voters in France Reject Austerity in Favor of Jobs," asserted the New York Times' headline. But few thought that an available choice. The most common view was that the election was a huge blow to the global spread of U.S.-led fiscal austerity and privatization. Ironists noted that, as in the United States, "liberal" has become a dirty word in France--but in the sense of classical liberalism, i.e., conservativism. (6/2)

The homicide rate fell 11 percent last year, according to the FBI. The media called it an "impressive" decline (the New York Times), and President Clinton and local police raced to take credit for their creative and diligent law-enforcement efforts. Criminologists cited other factors: 1) Baby boomers have passed their crime-committing years. 2) A lot of would-be killers have been killed. 3) Kids are sick of all the murders and don't want to add to the body count. 4) Drug gangs have sorted out many of their territorial disputes. Meanwhile, the New York Times observed that serious dog bites have increased by 37 percent. Pundits did not connect the two phenomena. (6/2)

Titanic won redemption at the Tony awards. The show, which had been faulted and ridiculed by critics, won the award for best musical, plus the four other categories in which it had been nominated. The New York Times called this "sweet vindication."Chicago actually won more awards (six), but observers were less impressed, since it had been expected to do well. The Last Night of Ballyhoo won the award for best play, and A Doll's House won for best revival of a play. (6/2)

The controversy over Palestinian land sales to Jews escalated. A third Palestinian was found murdered, reportedly after having sold an East Jerusalem house to Jewish settlers. Then Israeli police said they had arrested an armed Palestinian squad in the process of abducting an Arab land dealer, evidently for execution. Israel's Jerusalem police chief has fingered a Palestinian security-agency boss in the previous two executions. The Washington Post says human-rights groups are calling attention to "the rise of Palestinian death squads," but the Los Angeles Times says the Palestinian public supports the executions. (6/2)