Tomorrow will see a major demonstration against the war in Washington, which will be crucial for three reasons.

The report also shows that non-white Canadians are nine times more likely to be stopped than their white countrymen, and that non-white Americans were more than twice as likely to be stopped as they came off flights. It reveals that some officers referred to certain nationalities as "devious", "pushy" and "arrogant", relied on intuition and instinct to make their decisions, and described "rare occasions when, due to staff shortages, they had been instructed by chief immigration officers not to hold up any passengers at all".

I was reminded of that incident last August as I crossed into the US from the Mexican border town of Palomas. I was travelling with a photographer - a white Mexican with dual Spanish citizenship who, unlike me, did not have a visa to work as a journalist in the US. I thought there would be a problem. I didn't realise the problem would be me.

 

This Martin Luther King day it is time to break with tradition. Rather than endlessly replay his most famous speech - I have a dream - it might make more sense to concentrate on his most pertinent for our era - Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.

The Democratic leadership it seems has started as it means to go on. Not by using its democratic mandate to thwart the most egregious elements of the Bush agenda but by using their legislative majority to provide the appearance of opposition without actually doing anything concrete.

Days like these have become all too common in Michigan recently. As the nation marked the 3,000th military death in Iraq, eight families in the state were preparing to bury their young men. Every day bar New Year's Day saw at least one funeral here. Last Saturday there were three.