Off Limits

As 19 hijackers made their way along the concourses at three East Coast airports on Sept. 11, bent on executing the deadliest terrorist attack in history, they were subjecting the U.S. aviation security system to its most critical test. At almost every step along the way, the system posed no challenge to the terrorists--not to their ability to purchase tickets, to pass security checkpoints while carrying knives and cutting implements nor to board aircraft.

The nation's most famous "country club prison," once the domain of such celebrity felons as inside trader Ivan Boesky and Watergate figure H.R. Haldeman, is shutting down. The Lompoc Federal Prison Camp is being converted into a higher security federal prison. A prison with fences and razor wire instead of small "off-limits" signs around the property. A prison where inmates have to wear khaki uniforms instead of shorts and T-shirts. A prison where inmates can't play tennis in the afternoon.

If you're old enough to have midriff bulge, the fashion stories emanating from television can be a major turnoff. There's no denying the spandex-and-denim set dominates the tube's style waves, from "Melrose Place" to MTV. But a few stylish, mature role models--for whom black leather motorcycle jackets are not the be-all and end-all--do exist.

It sounds like a movie where high jinks ensue: A teetotaling Mexican hotel worker travels to England, befriends a whisky-drinking Irishman and scrubs toilets in a pub while learning to brew killer beer. Such is the odd path Jose Morales has taken since a sweltering day five years ago when he found himself wondering how to make a beverage he doesn't even drink. The daydreaming has led Morales, then a hotel warehouse manager, to an unlikely new calling as a beer maker. Morales, 36, is among a burst of Mexican brewers who are testing recipes and investing in imported equipment in hopes of finding the same formula for success that microbreweries north of the border have found.

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner dismissed as "nonsense" a proposed GOP campaign attack on President Obama's past association with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., as well as a Democratic fundraising effort that followed.   "This kind of nonsense shouldn't happen," said Boehner on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos. " "The election is going to be about the economy and getting Americans back to work. And I think Gov. Romney's prescriptions are much better. "   The role of the harsh attack ads -- this one over the delicate topic of religion -- reared this week after the New York Times disclosed a proposal from conservative strategists to wage an ad blitz against Obama, linking him to the controversial remarks from Wright, his former pastor in Chicago.

Responding to entreaties from the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, Internet bookseller Amazon.com said it will no longer sell Adolf Hitler's autobiographical manifesto "Mein Kampf" in Germany. Amazon's German Web site has never sold the German-language version of the book, which is outlawed in that country. But until now, German consumers could order English copies from Amazon's U.S. Web site.

Since being forced to give up control of the New York Yankees Aug. 20, George Steinbrenner twice has asked Commissioner Fay Vincent for permission to become involved in negotiations with free agents--and was turned down each time, Steinbrenner said Tuesday. Steinbrenner, punished by Vincent for his dealings with gambler Howard Spira, maintains that free-agent talks are not part of the ban. But Vincent ruled otherwise in September.