Horrible news from Virginia Tech today -- someone killed more than 20 people at the Campus today.

I was there for a career fair in November 2005 and it's deeply sad to read this news.

Today the State Attorney General of North Carolina finally announced that the sexual offense and kidnapping charges against three former Duke lacrosse players are being dropped.

It's a long, sad case based on what turned out to be about false accusations, with an overly active District Attorney who wanted to get reelected.

It is tremendously important to be careful and diligent when researching rape allegations such as these. However, when it became clear that the accusations were clearly false District Attorney Mike Nifong should have dropped the case.

Today's conclusion by the State Attorney General: "We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations," Cooper said. "In the rush to condemn, a community and the state lost the ability to see clearly. Regardless of the reasons this case was pushed forward, the result was wrong. Today we need to learn from this and keep it from happening again to anybody."

It's strange to see this from so close. The Kroger supermarket on Hillsborough Road where we do our shopping played a small role in the case.

The presidential elections are less than two years away so candidates for both parties are starting to express interest in running.

One of the candidates that has announced last week to set up an exploratory committee is Barack Obama.

He is an interesting candidate because he is African American and relatively young and he has received a lot of positive buzz in the last year or so. I'd read some articles about him but never really heard him speak.

I found a nice TV fragment about him on YouTube: watch Barack Obama on the Daily Show.

Amazingly, Mrs. Verdonk (Immigration Minister of the Netherlands) managed to provoke yet another crisis in Dutch politics. Her questionable behavior in the case Ayaan Hirshi Ali brought down the ruling Cabinet a few months ago, and forced new elections in November. Today she ignored a vote of no confidence by parliament, a first in the constitutional history of the Netherlands.

Her party did -deservedly- rather bad at the recent elections and she is now a 'lame duck' minister, taking care of business while a new government is being formed. This can take a few months, as in the Netherlands governments are created by forming a coalition of two or three political parties.

The newly elected parliament asked Mrs. Verdonk's to postpone the extradition of a group of 26,000 asylum seekers to allow the new cabinet to decide on them. She refused, even after two formal requests by parliament and as a result the parliament issued a vote of no-confidence. In normal situations that would be sufficient to force a minister to resign.

However, her political party the VVD announced that it would retract support for the entire government if she was forced to leave. This would have left a strange void, as the cabinet strictly speaking already had resigned. As NRC, a Dutch newspaper put it: "it's frightening that the situation is more tough than the politicians are who dealing with it".

Mr. Balkenende, who has been leading a series of disastrous cabinets, was apparently in favor of Mrs. Verdonk resigning but at the end she stayed on as member of the Cabinet. She did have to give up her position as Immigration Minister, and the deportations will be temporarily halted.

The unrest in the VVD party, the Dutch free-market conservatives, must be considerable. It's interesting that the support Mrs. Verdonk received today from the party's number 1 came after she tried to unsettle him from his position a few weeks ago when she had received more votes than he did in the general elections.

All in all, this affair leaves a bitter taste for many people, not in the least of course by the asylum seekers, some of which have been in legal procedures for over 10 years. It will not make it any easier to form a new government either.

A regular reader sent me a great photo series in the Volkskrant. The text is in Dutch but the pictures speak for themselves.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Dutch Secretary General, saves the NATO group picture when he realizes that 1 person is missing from the group...

The first elections results of the elections for the Dutch parliament have been coming in from 3 pm EST today.

1. A sad day for the PvdA: they were unable to leverage the failure of the VVD/CDA government to gain more seats and lost some 9 seats. Should Wouter Bos resign?
2. The biggest surprise is the very strong result for the Socialist Party. I disagree with their ideology but they are a true grass-roots party and have worked hard for their success.
3. The SP now probably has more seats that Lijst Pim Fortuyn ever had.
4. Balkenende will get a 4th chance to come up with a stable government. He will likely continue to represent the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
5. There is now a party in Dutch parliament that has animal rights as its main priority.
6. It is now a good time for Mr. Marijnissen to start thinking about his successor, to prevent the SP from becoming a one-man party and prove that they are a strong organization
7. Mark Rutte has failed as the first man for the VVD. His party lost significantly, and only 36% of the VVD voters voted for Mr. Rutte. He should resign his partijleider position or will otherwise be moved aside by his party anyway.
8. It's sad that Mr. Wilders did quite well with a projected 6 to 9 seats. Unfortunately it shows that there is a consistent base of anti-immigrant voters.
9. The LPF likely no longer has any seats in parliament, nor does Mr. Nawijn get a seat.
10. "EenNL", a LPF follow-up party, did get a seat. Comment of its first man: "I would feel horrible sitting in parliament alone".
11. D'66 virtually disappeared (finally) from national politics after withdrawing support for Balkenende III.
12. The election results of Dutch citizens abroad will be published on Friday.

Wednesday are the elections for the Lower Chamber in the Netherlands.

Mieke sent me my voter's card a few weeks ago which I signed and returned. This way she can vote for me tomorrow.

Let's see if Mr. Balkenende (CDA) will get a 4th chance to come up with a strong and stable government. He has had plenty of time to practice.

The VVD left Minister Verdonk on the candidate list and even placed her on number 2. This is the minister who tried to strip Hirsi Ali of her Dutch passport and thereby made a fool of Dutch politics worldwide.

I've never really trusted the VVD too well and I guess this reinforces my thoughts. Given Ms. Verdonk's bad judgment calls in the past and her incompentent behavior in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali she should never have been placed on the candidate list.

It will be no surprise to regular readers that my vote won't go to VVD or CDA.

Today is Marthen Luther King day, a federal holiday in the United States. Many companies in the Rosslyn area work for or are related to the government, so most offices were closed and it was very quiet on my way to work.

In Puerto Rico it's a national holiday as well, so I had only a handful of e-mails today.

Today I noticed an ad of the American Civil Liberties Union in the Washington Post, relating Marten Luther King Day to the warrantless wiretapping by the federal government and the debate around it.

We had sirene po shopski for dinner, my favorite Bulgarian dish, and watched the Golden Globes Awards.

Due to the traffic I arrived in New York at 7.00 pm -- an hour late. The meeting I went to New York for was scheduled to start at 7.00 so I wanted to get there quickly.

Friday night is not a good night to be in a hurry on Times Square: it is crowded with people and virtually impossible to get a cab. I had to go 51st Street and to make sure I wouldn't start running in the wrong direction I called the only person I know who in two seconds can accurately tell you what direction to go to in Manhattan. Jonathan told me to go to 6th Avenue, and I made it right on time for the annual meeting of the PvdA that was held in the Netherlands Club.

Last week I found the site of the PvdA New York, a Chapter of the PvdA, a national political party in the Netherlands.

There were three guest speakers. The first one was Ruud Koole, chairman of the national organization, followed by Ad Melkert and Bernard Mucci. It was very nice to see these familar faces in the U.S. I especially liked the speech by Ad Melkert. He is an executive director of the World Bank now, and was the parliamentary leader of the PvdA a few years ago.

The chair of the local PvdA chapter started the evening with a good speech, followed by Ad Melkert. Mr. Melkert referred to a proposed immigration bill by McCain-Kennedy.

All speakers mentioned Van der Louw and Adelmund, two prominent members of the PvdA who passed away last last week.

The third guest speaker was Bernard Mucci, an ex-Tyco executive who described the work of the charity he is now working for, the United Negro College Fund. It was an interesting evening, and certainly worth the bus-ride (English summary). At the end of the evening I bought the book that was presented.

I was starving -- it was almost 22:00 o'clock and I hadn't had dinner yet, nor a very good lunch. It was a Friday night so I allowed myself a burger-with-fries meal in T.G.I. Friday's.