In case you don’t remember, “Boogie to Baghdad” is the phrase that Richard Clarke, when he was the top White House counterterrorism official during the Clinton administration, used to express his fear that if American forces pushed Osama bin Laden too hard at his hideout in Afghanistan, bin Laden might move to Iraq, where he could stay in the protection of Saddam Hussein.

Clarke’s opinion was based on intelligence indicating a number of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq, including word that Saddam had offered bin Laden safe haven.

It’s all laid out in the Sept. 11 commission report. “Boogie to Baghdad” is on Page 134.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

A 2-year-old profanity-laced recording that denigrates women and minorities surfaced on the Web on Tuesday, putting the University of Miami's athletic department on the defensive about its image.

Miami's carefully cultivated image as a school well-past the days that earned it the reputation as a program lacking institutional control may have taken a blow when the rap song, which sources told ESPN.com includes the voices of several football players, surfaced on the Internet.

A group calling itself the 7th Floor Crew -- the name reportedly comes from the seventh floor of the Mahoney Residential College, campus housing at Miami -- made a recording referencing multiple acts of group sex, derogatory terms for women and minorities and dozens of curse words that lasts approximately 9 minutes. School officials say the song was recorded two years ago, but that seems to offer little solace.

Our students are extremely aware and continue, in the finest tradition of the University, to be at the forefront in the quest for social justice and equality for our community. In recent times, for example, they led the march to the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan in Grutter vs. Bollinger.

It was Soul Food Thursday at Howard University last week, and many students were looking forward to their favorite meal: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and cornbread. At lunchtime, however, students discovered that much of the campus had been locked down and that the school's cafeteria was off limits.

Apparently, many of them did not know that President Bush and first lady Laura Bush had arrived for a "youth summit" at the Blackburn Center, where the dining hall is located. Stomachs began to growl, tempers flared, and, eventually, a student protest ensued.

Howard is not some hotbed of political activism. The biggest event of the year is homecoming, which features two fashion shows, a step show and lots of hip-hop celebrities. As the rapper Ludacris put it in his summer hit, "Pimpin' All Over the World":

Jump in the car and ride for hours,

Makin' sure I don't miss the homecoming at Howard.

To set off a student protest at this school, you'd have to be politically tone-deaf in the extreme, out of touch and flying blind. And yet, Bush did it.

I am writing in response to the outrageous and ill-founded comments made by Courtland Milloy in his Washington Post column on Sunday, October 30. One certainly would expect Mr. Milloy to know better than to form his opinions based on a second-hand source, the broadcast that he apparently saw on Fox 5 (WTTG-TV) news. Beyond that, the tone of his column with its appalling stereotyping of the more than 10,000 students at Howard University is quite shocking. And this at a time when the nation is honoring the memory of Rosa Parks, who 50 years ago stood up for the dignity of the African-American community.

It is quite ironic that even in the face of the student protest that ensued, Mr. Milloy would seek to characterize Howard University as a politically indifferent party school. Further, to suggest that the driving motivation behind the student protest was to “break through campus security to get to the cordoned-off cafeteria” was both inaccurate and a misrepresentation. Our students are extremely aware and continue, in the finest tradition of the University, to be at the forefront in the quest for social justice and equality for our community. In recent times, for example, they led the march to the Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan in Grutter vs. Bollinger. They serve in great numbers as volunteers in the Washington, D.C., area; and they continue to rally to the aid of victims of Hurricane Katrina by welcoming and supporting the students from the disaster-area colleges.

You claim to be upset because I wrote that "Howard is not a hotbed of political activism," and you cite the school's legacy of social protest and political activism. But what have you done lately? A walk down to the Mall for the Millions More Movement, an AIDS Walk and participation in get-out-the-vote rallies does not make your heirs to Walter Rodney or Kwame Toure.

What about honoring the legacy of Roland Scott (chairman of pediatrics at Howard from 1949 to 1973 and the driving force behind the Sickle Cell Anemia Control Act of 1971)? Your school has the Center for Sickle Cell Disease, but the organizers of annual walks to find a cure for that dreadful disease can't get you to participate for the life of those hurting black babies.

The home of Carter G. Woodson, a Howard professor and father of Black History Month, almost fell to the ground before the federal government stepped in to save it. Where were you? And why weren't you at the Optimal Health for Black Men conference, held last month at Howard Hospital? A lot of outstanding black doctors, psychologists, scientists and educators gave presentations. You protest about not being invited to Laura Bush's "youth summit," but you are nowhere to be found when your elders hold a lifesaving summit just for you.

State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.

"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy." 

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black. 

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."