Articles of Interest 4-22-08
197 Days until Election Day
MORNING UPDATE:
Pennsylvania voters head to the polls. Clinton and Obama going down to the wire.
The Democrats are preparing for the fall election and have prepared the “Atlas Project”, writing campaign that plans on targeted states. Yup, you guessed it…Michigan is one of the states the Democrats are afraid of losing. We agree!
Michigan Clinton supporters (certain unions) defeated Obama supporters for some “uncommitted” slots, setting up a “stealth” Clinton come-back as they head to their national convention. This is FAR from over.
It’s all about the delegates and it’s clear the Clinton folks are playing that game already. They can switch their votes on the floor…so you can’t count her out….yet.
The State Senate Republicans held their annual fundraising event last night at the Automotive Hall of Fame. It was a huge success and tribute to our Senate Republicans who continue to fight the fight in Lansing as our last line of defense.
I received a fundraising request for a monument in honor of Senator Clinton. See the text below.
I’ve become a weekly guest on the Hughes Sullivan Show on WDTK-AM 1400, which is broadcast in metro Detroit every evening. Good, conservative talk radio. You can hear it online at http://wdtkam.townhall.com/
THE REST OF THE STORY:
- Senator Clinton Monument fundraising appeal:
I have the distinguished honor of being on the Committee to raise $5,000,000 for a monument of Hillary R. Clinton. We originally wanted to put her on Mt. Rushmore until we discovered there was not enough room for two more faces.
We then decided to erect a statue of Hillary in the Washington, D.C. Hall Of Fame. We were in a quandary as to where the statue should be placed. It was not proper to place it beside the statue of George Washington, who never told a lie, or beside her husband William J. Clinton, who never told the truth, since Hillary could never tell the difference.
We finally decided to place it beside Christopher Columbus, the greatest Democrat of them all. He left not knowing where he was going, and when he got there he did not know where he was. He returned not knowing where he had been, and did it all with someone else's money.
Thank you, the Hillary R. Clinton Monument Committee
P.S. - The Committee has raised $1.35 so far.
Saul Anuzis
STATE STORIES
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/OPINION01/804220309/1007/OPINION
Give business a break; repeal the tax surcharge
The Detroit News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The new Michigan Business Tax and the surcharge to the tax, both of which were adopted last year, are having a jarring effect on many Michigan businesses. In some cases they are seeing as much as a 400 percent increase in their tax bills. State lawmakers need to cut spending and repeal the surcharge. While the taxes were sold as a remedy for solving the state's deficit last year, they have provided the fuel for an increase in state spending. State spending from state resources in the current budget is up about $400 million over the prior year, and the budget for the next fiscal year, presented by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in February, projected another $400 million increase in spending. Tricia Kinley, director of tax policy for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, said Monday that the chamber is continuing to survey its members, but of the 600 or so responses it has received from its members so far, 80 percent are reporting that they are paying more in taxes this year because of the tax shift.
Michigan Dems pitch sex education, contraception access plan
4/21/2008, 3:58 p.m. EDT
By TIM MARTIN
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Democratic state lawmakers are introducing legislation they say would cut down on unintended pregnancies and protect women's health by expanding sex education and improving access to contraceptives. Health insurance plans that cover prescriptions would have to include coverage for contraception. Women who are sexually assaulted would be offered information about and access to emergency contraception. Some of the ideas aren't new and others have drawn opposition in the past, including from some conservative lawmakers and religious groups. But supporters of the plan say they are hopeful they will reach a broad agreement on the legislation, most of which will be introduced in both the state House and Senate this week. A few bills related to the package already have been introduced.
Supporters say health care proposal on track
4/21/2008, 6:28 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Supporters of a proposal aimed at boosting health care coverage in Michigan say they are on track to qualify for the November ballot. The measure would require the state Legislature to pass laws ensuring that every Michigan citizen has affordable and comprehensive health care coverage. Healthcare for Michigan must collect and turn in about 380,000 valid voter signatures by late June or early July at the latest. Group organizers say their signature collection is on pace to make that goal.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080421/CFP10/80421058
Health workers endorse making care a Mich. constitutional right
By DAWSON BELL
April 21, 2008
LANSING -- A campaign to make "affordable and comprehensive health care coverage" a constitutional right in Michigan announced the endorsement of several health care groups today, midway through a signature collection effort aimed at putting the issue before voters in November. Organizations representing medical students, primary care and family physicians and a statewide nurses union are backing the Healthcare for Michigan campaign because the state's health care system is in crisis, with un-insured patients going without care and overwhelming emergency rooms, the groups said at a series of news conferences across lower Michigan. Michelle Debbink, a medical school student at the University of Michigan, likened the state of health care in Michigan to "warfare," with patients as the casualties.
http://theoaklandpress.com/stories/042108/opi_20080421319.shtml
New tether program keeps inmates active, cells empty
Oakland Press
PUBLISHED: Monday, April 21, 2008
Oakland County is trying out a new, high-tech tether that, if successful, should show many benefits. One of the main benefits is to hopefully reduce the Oakland County Jail overcrowding problem and thus lower the number or eliminate the need for early releases. Such action has forced Oakland County Circuit Judge Wendy Potts to order the early release of 2,500 inmates since 2005. Unlike current tethers that are tracked by radio frequency, the newer tethers use a combination of global positioning and cellular phone triangulation to track their wearers. The technology is said to be more accurate and there are no "blank" spots where the signal is interrupted. Instead of serving time in jail, tethers allow those convicted of misdemeanor crimes to remain free with limited mobility. They are intended for non-violent offenders to track them with a "virtual fence." They allow the offenders to continue working and be with their families while remaining under court supervision.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/METRO/804220368/1409/METRO
Potential powerhouse
Wind farms generating energy may boost state's economy, Granholm says
Mark Hornbeck / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
OLIVER TOWNSHIP -- They stand like giant white pinwheels on the horizon, 32 of them towering 40 stories over the flat farmland in this tiny township in the Thumb, about 10 miles from the Saginaw Bay. The Harvest Wind Farm turbines kick out 52.8 megawatts of power on 1,300 acres where corn and sugar beets grow; it's enough to furnish electricity for 15,000 homes. The $100 million investment was made by John Deere Wind Energy and the power is being purchased by Wolverine Power, a nonprofit electricity cooperative based in Cadillac. Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who took a bus full of reporters Monday to tour the farm, would like to see hundreds more of them around the state. "I see this as adding another sector in the Michigan economy," Granholm said.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/AUTO01/804220375
Feds: 36 mpg for cars by 2015
New fuel rules to be unveiled today will increase cost of vehicles
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Transportation Department today will propose a sweeping increase in fuel economy standards, requiring passenger cars to average 35.7 miles per gallon and light trucks 28.6 mpg by 2015, The Detroit News has learned. The proposal sets a more aggressive timetable than what Congress required when it passed an energy bill in December that calls for an industry fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020 for cars and trucks combined. The proposed regulation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will cost the auto industry an estimated $47 billion to meet the requirements through 2015, a person familiar with the announcement said. The overall fleet of new passenger cars and light trucks will have to average 31.8 mpg by 2015 -- an annual increase of 4.6 percent per year and above the 4 percent figure Congress required. That compares to the fleet's overall average of 26.7 mpg in the 2007 model year.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/POLITICS/804220352/1022/POLITICS
Outside groups jolt fed races
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
ROCHESTER -- Outside groups are gearing up to spend thousands of dollars in Michigan's two high-profile congressional races, pushing everything from environmental protection to tax cuts to animal welfare. One of the biggest outside players weighed in Monday, when the League of Conservation Voters endorsed Democrat Gary Peters in his bid to unseat Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Hills. "There's a clear contrast here in the 9th District," Peters said at a news conference announcing the endorsement, criticizing Knollenberg for what he called a failure to help position Michigan for a new economy based on alternative energy sources. The Knollenberg campaign criticized the group's endorsement as based on partisanship rather than environmental protection. Another activist group, Americans United for Change, has aired radio ads opposing Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, who like Knollenberg has been targeted for defeat by national Democratic strategists.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/METRO/804220372
Legal defense fund for Beatty in works
Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
DETROIT -- Supporters of Christine Beatty, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's former chief of staff, are establishing a legal fund to raise money for her defense and plan to hold a fundraiser this evening. "She has to face formidable odds and she shouldn't have to do that alone," said the Rev. Horace Sheffield III. "We want to make sure we support her." Sheffield predicted that even those who don't support Kilpatrick will come to Beatty's aid -- in part because their circumstances are different. Beatty is unemployed after resigning from her $140,000 a year job in late January. "There has been a double standard," Sheffield said. "She should be helped as well." Sheffield, a vocal supporter of Kilpatrick, said Beatty's fundraiser is being hosted by the Unify Detroit Coalition, of which Sheffield is a member. The group organized a support rally for Kilpatrick last month at the Shrine of the Black Madonna on Linwood Street in the wake of publicized text messages between him and Beatty that appear to contradict sworn testimony in court.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/OPINION01/804220310/1007/OPINION
Wayne court tries to expand its jury pool
State lawmakers should expand authorized lists for potential jurors
The Detroit News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The composition of Wayne County juries is once again an issue with the charges leveled against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Both the circuit court and Legislature should continue to take steps to make sure that all county residents have a chance to serve on juries. But the Legislature should not -- as state Rep. Shannelle Jackson, D-Detroit, is seeking -- restore the old Detroit Recorder's Court. Recorder's Court was created before Michigan was a state and was unique to Detroit. It was solely a criminal court, and its juries were drawn only from Detroit. Civil cases were heard in the circuit court, whose jurisdiction encompassed all of Wayne County. Other counties in Michigan had both major criminal trials and civil cases heard in circuit court. Recorder's Court was abolished a decade ago and its judges consolidated into the circuit court for a savings of $30 million. It would be too disruptive and expensive to re-establish a Detroit-only Recorder's Court.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/METRO/804220377
Detroit's firefighters confront a tableau of fire and failure
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
DETROIT -- He is a fireman on the city's east side, near the hulking wreck of the Packard automobile plant. He stands on the street corner outside his firehouse, hands in his pockets, waiting for the call box to call his number. The box bleats incessantly like a colicky sheep across a city perpetually in flames. "Ladder 16, please respond." The response comes. "Ladder 16, out of service." Firefighter Jimmy Montgomery laughs every time he hears something like this. Everything seems broken here: from the holes in his boots, to the toilet seat in his firehouse, to the city government that pays his check. He looks at the house across the street on East Grand Boulevard off Moran, the one with the tarpaulin for a roof. He looks at the weeds. The abandoned car. The empty little factories and working-man bars and the bakery where he used to get his bread when he started on the job 17 years ago.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/METRO/804220367
Rail proposal a 'first step'
$371M commuter train, which could carry 11,000 daily, would travel to downtown along Woodward.
Mike Wilkinson / The Detroit News
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
DETROIT -- City leaders have pinned their mass transit hopes on an eight-mile stretch down Woodward Avenue that connects the State Fairgrounds with downtown, calling the $371 million project a "first step" toward the return of light rail to Metro Detroit. Construction could begin in three years, with an estimated 11,000 riders a day by 2013. "It's not an end, it's a start," said Norman White, the chief financial officer for the city and project manager of the Detroit Transit Options for Growth Study. White, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, announced that DTOGS had selected the Woodward corridor as its preferred route and will soon ask for federal funding for preliminary engineering. Federal funds are expected to cover more than half of the project's cost.
Divers discover shipwreck in Lake Michigan
4/21/2008, 4:54 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
HOLLAND, Mich. (AP) — A nonprofit shipwreck group based in Holland says it has located the Hamilton, a two-masted schooner that sank in Lake Michigan in 1873. Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates says it worked for a year to identify the wreckage, which was found under 275 feet of water off Saugatuck. The Hamilton was 113 feet long. It sank during a November gale while hauling 117,000 board feet of lumber from Muskegon toward Chicago, where rebuilding efforts were under way after the devastating fire of 1871.
NATIONAL STORIES
The Elephant in the Room: Why conservatives should support McCain
By Rick Santorum
Posted on Mon, Apr. 21, 2008
Anyone who knows me knows that I don't shy away from offering my two-cents on the issues of the day, particularly in presidential races. And anyone who has heard me talk about the presidential race over the last few months knows that I've had, shall we say, some serious reservations about John McCain's candidacy. I've disagreed with him on immigration, global warming and federal protection of marriage. I've taken strong exception to his view that the federal government should fund embryonic stem-cell research. But disagreement on such issues is one of the reasons we have presidential primaries - so each party's voters can sort out the issues and personalities and choose the candidate who best reflects their collective view. Republicans have done that. Now the question for conservatives is whether McCain fits the Reagan Axiom that someone you agree with on 80 percent of the issues is your friend, not your enemy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-21-mccain_N.htm
McCain to launch tour at Pettus Bridge
David Jackson
April 20, 2008
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — John McCain begins today's tour of the Alabama "Black Belt" at a mecca of the 1960s voting rights movement that realigned Southern politics. The 1965 assault on marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., helped produce the federal Voting Rights Act. Four decades later, the South is predominantly Republican, and African-Americans are the Democratic Party's most loyal constituency. McCain's remarks at the Pettus Bridge will begin what he calls the "It's Time for Action Tour," spotlighting "forgotten Americans," who include steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, the rural poor in the Appalachia region of Kentucky, and Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans. "We will travel to areas of this country that in many ways have been forgotten and left behind," McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt said. McCain's efforts to attract black voters face historic hurdles, in addition to the prospect that Barack Obama could become the first African-American nominee of a major party.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080422/POLITICS01/804220371/1022/POLITICS
In Selma, McCain praises civil rights marchers
Libby Quaid / Associated Press
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
SELMA, Ala. -- Republican John McCain on Monday recalled the bloody beatings of civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as he began a weeklong tour of communities he said suffer from poverty and inattention from presidential candidates. McCain described in vivid detail the clubbing that fractured the skull of John Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia. McCain, who speaks often of courage shown by military veterans, said he never saw greater courage than Lewis and the marchers showed that day, March 7, 1965. "There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent," McCain said outside the St. James Hotel, several hundred yards away from the historic bridge. "In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That's what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge," McCain said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882237427633083.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Tax on Talking
Wall Street Journal
April 22, 2008; Page A24
Among the better ideas John McCain announced last week is a ban on new cellphone taxes. For America's 257 million wireless subscribers, the GOP Presidential candidate is advancing a sensible policy with political punch. A recent analysis by economist Scott Mackey in the journal State Tax Notes shows that the average monthly tax burden on wireless customers is more than 15% – double the average sales tax burden. In some states, such as New York (big surprise), the total tax bite is more than 20%. If the pols were exercising even modest restraint, wireless consumers would now be enjoying a reduced tax bill. That's because in 2006 the IRS stopped applying the Federal Excise Tax on Telecommunications to wireless services. The feds weren't being generous. After the IRS suffered a series of defeats in federal court, then-Treasury Secretary John Snow ordered the bureaucrats to stop gouging consumers.
http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/dnc-uses-limited-resources-to-attack-mccain-2008-04-20.html
DNC uses limited resources to attack McCain
By Aaron Blake
Posted: 04/20/08 04:49 PM [ET]
The cash-strapped Democratic National Committee (DNC) is taking to the airwaves to go after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), launching an ad while its two remaining presidential candidates continue to battle each other. The DNC on Tuesday will begin airing an ad that continues a line of attack the committee and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have used repeatedly, pulling comments from a GOP debate in which McCain said Americans economically “are better off overall” than they were eight years ago, before President Bush took office. “While John McCain is out trying to reintroduce himself to the American people, we want to make sure voters have all the facts, so that they have the chance to know the real John McCain," said DNC Chairman Howard Dean.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/04/21/do2101.xml
Can Barack Obama survive his remarks?
By Janet Daley
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/04/2008
When I left America last week, it was looking very much like the end of the road for the Great Female Breakthrough: time had run out for the first woman whom people expected to reach the highest rung of US public life. But then, of course, there was Hillary Clinton, who was still slugging away unbowed. The woman whose career aspirations seemed to be definitively crashing was Katie Couric, the first female anchor of a network television evening news programme. Her appointment as the face of ABC's main nightly news had pushed the show's ratings into freefall and the media, being as self-obsessed over there as over here, were almost as interested in the fact that Miss Couric had tanked as in Mrs Clinton's chances of survival. The two phenomena may have been unrelated, but somehow you felt that the one did not bode well for the other. In about 48 hours, we will know whether that other formidable female pioneer has gone down in flames.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120871712799529363.html?mod=opinion_journal_political_diary
The Media's Man
Journalists flay ABC for failing to coddle Obama.
John Fund
April 21, 2008
George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson of ABC News weren't just criticized for their tough questioning of Barack Obama during last week's Democratic debate. They were flayed. Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker called their approach "something akin to a federal crime." Tom Shales, the Washington Post's TV critic, said the ABC duo turned in "shoddy and despicable performances." Walter Shapiro of Salon magazine said the debate had "all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-head marathon." Most of the media mauling consisted of anger that the ABC moderators brought up a series of issues that had surrounded Mr. Obama since the last Democratic debate, a long seven weeks ago.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzBkNzNhNmE1NjA5MjE5OWU2OWE4NDYxMDc3MzM0MjE
Hillary in Bitterland
Clinton finds her people in Pennsylvania.
By Byron York
April 21, 2008 10:00 AM
California, Pennsylvania – “People from the Mon Valley are fighters! You’re fighters because— you know what? You didn’t go to Harvard! You weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth! You live right here in this valley!” As warmup acts for Hillary Clinton go, Pennsylvania State Rep. Peter Daley is just the ticket. Here in this valley — the Mon Valley, short for Monongahela, in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania — Daley is speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered to see Clinton in the gym at California University of Pennsylvania. Daley, born and raised in the Mon Valley, is still a bit angry about Barack Obama’s “bitter” comments — “absolutely appalling,” he tells me after he leaves the stage. But Daley doesn't deny that there are people in the economically-challenged Mon Valley who are bitter. He just doesn’t think Obama gets what it’s all about.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/tim_hames/article3784678.ece
Hillary as Lincoln? Barack as Lee?
Lessons in history: how surviving to fight another day may be the key to the Democrat race
Tim Hames
April 21, 2008
The bloodiest and most significant battle of the American Civil War took place in Pennsylvania. At the outset of that conflict, the forces of the North - greater in number and better armed - were regarded as the overwhelming favourites to win the struggle. Yet they were outsmarted by the charismatic General Robert E. Lee, who proved to be more imaginative in the field, inspiring passionate loyalty in his Confederate soldiers. A bemused Abraham Lincoln was reduced to hiring and firing his generals and constantly reshaping his strategy. By July 1863, it seemed as if the Confederates might storm Washington itself and pull off an extraordinary victory. Their momentum was, however, halted by three days of combat on the fields of Gettysburg. Lee was forced to retreat and his reputation for invincibility was ended. From there, the machine that was the Union slowly but surely crushed its opponents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/us/politics/22campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin
On Eve of Primary, Clinton Ad Invokes bin Laden
By JEFF ZELENY and JOHN M. BRODER
April 22, 2008
BLUE BELL, Pa. — The six-week Pennsylvania primary drew to a contentious finish Monday as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked images of Pearl Harbor and Osama bin Laden in a television advertisement that questioned Senator Barack Obama’s ability to lead in a crisis. As she sought to spark a comeback in the Democratic nominating contest, Mrs. Clinton warned voters not to “take a leap of faith or have any guesswork” when they cast ballots Tuesday. The Obama campaign accused her of employing “the politics of fear.” With 158 pledged delegates at stake in Pennsylvania, the largest state remaining on the party’s primary calendar, the candidates raced from Scranton to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia — and a smattering of suburbs along the way — to rally their supporters and win over a dwindling lot of undecided voters. While Mr. Obama spent nearly twice as much on television advertising in the state as Mrs. Clinton in the final days of the race, she broadcast a new commercial that used historic images from critical moments in the country’s past to ask voters whom they could trust in the White House.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08112/875229-457.stm
Clinton takes campaign into heart of foe's strength
Monday, April 21, 2008
By Jerome Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
STATE COLLEGE -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday unleashed a steady barrage of attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, playing up her experience before a group that usually lines up behind her opponent -- students. "When the cameras disappear and the lights are turned off you are electing a president to solve problems, not to give speeches," she told a rowdy gathering of about 2,500 at Penn State University's Rec Hall. It was a day of contrasts for Mrs. Clinton. She started off in Bethlehem and then traveled to Johnstown, both homes to the kinds of white, working class voters who have supported her in primary elections across the country. She ended the day here, in Obama territory, promising younger people that a second Clinton administration would make college more affordable and create millions of jobs in "green collar" energy industries.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-21-pennsylvania_N.htm
Pa. primary spotlights Democratic divide
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
April 20, 2008
LANCASTER, Pa. — At Champ's Barbershop School here, Maria Hall, the owner's wife, said she registered to vote for the first time so she could cast a ballot for Democrat Barack Obama. "I think he's going to be a great president," said Hall, 35. Julianne Dickson, a former City Council president and die-hard Democrat, isn't sure what she'll do in November if Obama is the party's nominee instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Dickson, 66, coached women's field hockey and recalls begging for funds before the passage of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that gave women equal access to school athletics. Today, "I owe my job to a sex discrimination suit," says Dickson, an insurance agent hired after her company settled a case with female employees who said they were losing promotions to less experienced men. The idea that Obama might stop Clinton from becoming the nation's first female major-party presidential nominee has Dickson thinking that "it's happening again. I know that's why it has become so personal to me."
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/04/21/justice_dept_to_monitor_pa_primary/3002/
Justice Dept. to monitor Pa. primary
Published: April 21, 2008 at 4:46 PM
The U.S. Justice Department says it will monitor voting in Philadelphia during Pennsylvania's presidential primary election Tuesday. The federal monitors will be deployed to try to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws, the Justice Department said in a news release Monday. The monitoring arises from an April 2007 agreement with the city that settled allegations Philadelphia had violated the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act, the statement said. A Civil Rights Division attorney will coordinate the monitoring and maintain contact with local election officials, the Justice Department said. Among other requirements, the city is obligated to provide all election information, ballots and voting assistance information in Spanish. Such monitoring is fairly common, the department noted, with more than 1,500 observers and other personnel watching 119 elections in 24 states in 2006.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0421/p01s01-uspo.html
In Pennsylvania, white male vote is key
White men are a critical group of voters for Democratic candidates in Tuesday's primary – and the most ambivalent.
By Linda Feldmann
from the April 21, 2008 edition
MONROEVILLE, PA. - Travis Frantti knocks on the front door, ready to make his pitch for Hillary Rodham Clinton. It's the final weekend before Tuesday's presidential primary in Pennsylvania, and he and his mother are out canvassing in suburban Pittsburgh, a printout of persuadable Democrats and a stack of campaign literature in hand. Joe Machi, their first "customer," is still undecided. "I'll just toss a coin," jokes the real estate investor, as Ann Frantti hands a Hillary pin to his young son. Then he gets serious: "I still want to hear more about the issues, rather than this peripheral stuff." In a way, Mr. Machi represents the holy grail of the final push for votes in Pennsylvania: white male Democrats. As a group, they are nearly evenly divided between Senator Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama. And individually, white male Democrats express the most ambivalence about the two candidates.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120881878986032809.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_leftbox
Democrats' Rules Set Stage for Messy Nomination
Effort to Avoid Back-Room Deals Could Cause Chaos
By JUNE KRONHOLZ
April 22, 2008; Page A6
No matter how Pennsylvania votes, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton is likely to clinch the nomination with Tuesday's primary or even with the remaining nine contests in May and June. That means the Democratic nomination is likely to be settled by rules, committees and uncommitted superdelegates, and possibly by a floor fight at the Denver convention in August. How did the Democrats get into this mess? The short answer is that they have two candidates of roughly equal popularity and organizational strength. The longer answer starts with Hubert Humphrey, picks up steam with George McGovern, has a lot to do with fund raising and hits the rocks on the aspirations of Michigan and Florida for a bigger voice in the nomination. The party shut down its legendary smoke-filled rooms where ties could be broken and decisions brokered after the chaotic 1968 Chicago convention.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120873961916530121.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_topbox
Party Chiefs Plan Push To Avoid Long Fight
By JACKIE CALMES
April 21, 2008; Page A1
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton unveiled new negative television ads and attacked each other personally from the stump this weekend ahead of Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary, stoking more worries among Democrats that the party's eventual nominee will head into the general election badly damaged. The rising vitriol is prompting more Democrats to demand that party leaders do something to end the battle. But no single leader or clique exists within the fractious party to end the fight, and those with influence insist voters must have their say.
Road Map to Defeat
By BOB HERBERT
April 19, 2008
The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose. Jimmy Carter managed to win the White House in 1976 by looking pious and riding a wave of anti-Watergate revulsion. After four hapless years, he dutifully handed the keys back to the G.O.P. Bill Clinton tried hard to lose, with sex scandals and whatnot, during the 1992 campaign. But Ross Perot wouldn’t let him. Mr. Clinton won with a piddling 43 percent of the vote. For eight years, Mr. Clinton tried to throw the presidency away (with sex scandals and whatnot), but he was never able to succeed.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/21/mcgovern_hart/
The haunting of the Democrats
The party is caught in an excruciating Catch-22. Whether it chooses the establishment figure or the liberal reformer, history offers many paths to defeat.
By Andrew O'Hehir
April 21, 2008
History, in Marx's famous dictum, tends to repeat itself: the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. So what do you call it the third time around? A bad sitcom? A bad marriage? A bad dream? All three of those seem like viable ways of describing the Democratic Party's current predicament, locked in an endless and self-destructive struggle with itself, like a would-be Buddhist penitent unable to atone for eons' worth of bad karma. Even in the annals of Democratic ritual suicide, the 2008 campaign is something special: It's not just that the protracted and painful nomination struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeats all the classic themes of intra-Democratic conflict -- left vs. center, reformer vs. the Establishment, pragmatist vs. idealist, call it what you will -- up to and including the fact that the differences between the candidates are mainly semiotic rather than substantive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/us/politics/21web-nagourney.html?pagewanted=print
What Should Be the Purpose of a Presidential Debate?
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
April 21, 2008
WASHINGTON — Considering that the debate in Philadelphia last Wednesday may well have been the final meeting between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in this presidential race, it is notable that most of the commentary has focused not on the candidates, but on the moderators. In on-line postings, bristling newspaper commentary, and numerous letters-to-the-editor, the ABC moderators — Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos — have been excoriated for pressing a line of tough questioning aimed primarily at Mr. Obama. The interrogation was characterized by their critics as trivial and demeaning to the presidential selection process in general. “We the undersigned deplore the conduct of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson at the Democratic Presidential debate on April 16: The debate was a revolting descent into tabloid journalism and a gross disservice to Americans concerned about the great issues facing the nation and the world,” a group of 40 mostly liberal journalists and bloggers wrote in an open letter to ABC.
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/873904.html
Democratic Party line and Pelosi are bad for free trade
By Daniel Weintraub -
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, April 20, 2008
Californians gain more from free trade than the people of almost any state in the country. But their leading representative in Congress – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco – is trying to kill a new trade agreement with Colombia, aligning herself with a wing of the Democratic Party that has grown increasingly hostile to consensual acts of commerce. By itself the Colombia deal is modest. But as a symbol of this country's commitment to trade it is huge. U.S. labor unions, especially the AFL-CIO, have made the agreement's defeat a major goal for 2008, even though the deal would help, not hurt, American workers. And the Democrats' two remaining presidential candidates have both opposed it. Pelosi could have been the grown-up on this issue, drawing on her own state's experience to show that globalization, just like technology, has made our economy more dynamic and robust, and, over the long term, healthier.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102555.html
Ethanol's Failed Promise
By Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; A19
The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These "food-to-fuel" mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis. Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability. Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic energy source.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_happy_people.html
Free People Are Happy People
—especially when strong personal morality guides their choices.
Arthur C. Brooks
Spring 2008 Vol 18 No 2
The earliest American definition of liberty—stated frequently by the Founding Fathers—is about constraints on personal actions: if I don’t hurt anybody else, I should be free to pursue my own will. As Thomas Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, “A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” Despite more recent attempts to expand our understanding of freedom to include claims on one another or on government—FDR’s 1941 State of the Union speech, for example, which mentioned “freedom from want”—about two-thirds of Americans still define freedom in terms of doing what they want, being able to make their own choices, or having liberty in speech and religion.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/04/21/2008-04-21_benedictions.html
Benedictions
New York Daily News
Monday, April 21st 2008, 4:00 AM
Pope Benedict's visit proved to be a very special few days for New York and for Catholics nationwide. He came. He spoke. He conquered. Upclose and personal, Benedict is a formidable, remarkable man - a person of high learning and deep sincerity. His presence brought into view the faith that flows too often unrecognized beneath the surface of this big, temporal city. Believers of all stripes, Catholic and not, observed him in awed reverence, in person by the thousands and by the millions via television. There seemed to be endless moments of meaning. To witness the Pope kneel at Ground Zero, to watch the pontiff bless the site where horror once reigned, to see him speak with survivors and families and responders, was to feel stirrings of hope. "God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world," he prayed. "Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120882272770233085.html?mod=todays_columnists
The Pope and the President
By WILLIAM MCGURN
April 22, 2008; Page A23
He came. He spoke. He confounded. In the run-up to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to America, the assurance was that the Bishop of Rome would take the president of the United States to the papal woodshed. One of the more wishful versions appeared in the Washington Post, whose author confidently asserted that "Pope Benedict XVI will show how much his worldview differs from President Bush's when he denounces the continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq before the U.N. General Assembly." As it happened, Benedict said nothing remotely close to denouncing the "occupation of Iraq." One reason, perhaps, is his knowledge that a U.S. withdrawal before there is an Iraqi government in place that can defend its people is a prescription for a bloodbath.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_living_legacy_of_maggie_th.html
The Living Legacy of Maggie Thatcher: How the Politics of Conviction Saved Britain
By Suzanne Fields
April 21, 2008
If it's true, as Marc Antony observed over the bier of Julius Caesar that "the good that men do is oft interred with their bones," Margaret Thatcher is an exception proving the rule. Maggie, at 82, is still very much with us, and the bones of her legacy are still up and dancing around with the vigor and grace of a prima ballerina. The other day, the London Daily Telegraph commissioned a poll to ask who Britons regard as their greatest post-World War II prime minister. Maggie blew everyone away, even Winston Churchill (with the crucial footnote that Sir Winston of the war years was excluded from consideration). If Maggie in her salad days stood for election today, the poll found, she would sweep in with another landslide. Thirty-four percent of those polled said Lady Thatcher was the best of the post-war gaggle, while Sir Winston trailed with 15 percent, and Tony Blair (11 percent), Harold Wilson (9 percent) and Clement Attlee (7 percent) lagged so far behind as to be irrelevant to the exercise.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/133085
‘We Will Not be Blackmailed’
In an exclusive interview, Pakistan's new prime minister spells out his plans for fighting terrorism and stabilizing his volatile country.
By Ron Moreau
Apr 21, 2008
Pakistan's newly elected Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani faces a host of pressing problems. Since taking office late last month, Gilani, 55, said that his priority would be trying to establish law and order in the wake of a spate of deadly suicide bombings, one of which killed the leader of his Pakistan People's Party, Benazir Bhutto, late last December. While Gilani ruled out holding talks with any armed militants along the Afghan border, foreign or Pakistani, he said that military force would be a last resort. First he wanted to concentrate on bringing economic development to the poverty-stricken region. The scion of a powerful landowning and spiritually influential family in Multan, which emigrated to the subcontinent from Syria some 500 years ago and which traces its ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad, he also ruled out any unilateral U.S. military strikes into Pakistan, hinted that parliament will strip Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of his power to dissolve the government and will soon restore the senior judges whom Musharraf sacked last November.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042001752.html
Hunger Pains for Mubarak
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, April 21, 2008; A15
It's well known that the run-up in oil prices in recent years has had the unpleasant consequence of enlivening autocrats in oil-producing countries, from Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hugo Chávez. Now the latest swing in global commodities seems to be triggering a reverse effect: As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering. Oddly, one of them is Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the government of North Korea faces another food crisis; bread prices explain in part why Pervez Musharraf lost control of Pakistan's government in February.
