Articles of Interest 4-26-08
193 Days until Election Day
MORNING UPDATE:
McCAIN TEAM GROWS…Thursday, the McCain campaign announced Jennifer Hallowell as our Regional Campaign Manager. Jennifer served as the New Hampshire Executive Director for the Giuliani for President campaign, Executive Director of the Indiana State GOP, Strategist for Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, as well as numerous other state and federal campaigns. We’re looking forward to working with her here in Michigan to win this one for John McCain!
GOVERNOR MARK SANFORD…will be the guest of honor at the SE Michigan Ronald Reagan Memorial Dinner to be held on June 10th at the San Marino Club in Troy. For more information, and tickets contact the event co-sponsors, members of the 9th, 12th and 14th Congressional District Committees.
COMMENTARY ONLINE…if you have problems receiving my morning E-mail or the E-mail is blocked because of the wording in some of the content or articles, the entire commentary and clippings are available online at www.migop.blogs.com
RECALL IS ON…it appears taxpayers have collected enough signatures to recall the leader of Michigan’s largest tax increase ever, Democrat Speaker Andy Dillon. Dillon’s staff and Democrat activists are pulling out all the stops to intimidate, harass and figure out some legal ranglings to stop democracy at work. Interesting.
BECOME A PRECINCT DELEGATE!! Fill out and return the Affidavit of Identity to your county clerk or send it to the state party…we’ll handle the filings. Link to form
Many folks have asked…what does a precinct delegate do? Here is some basic information about how we try and organize our precinct delegates to be part of our “political machine” to help elect Republicans.
PETITION CIRCULATORS…time is running out. If you have petitions for judicial or federal candidates…please mail them in so they can track their progress.
THE REST OF THE STORY:
- 11 McCain Regional Campaign Managers spread across the 50 states.
Buzz Jacobs — FL, GA, AL, MS, TN, SC, NC
Doug Davenport — KY, WV, VA, MD, DE
Bill Stepien — NY, NJ
Jon Seaton — OH, PA
Jim Barnett — CT, MA, RI, NH, ME, VT
Craig Goldman — TX, OK, KS, AR, LA, NE
Gentry Collins — IA, MO, IL
Jennifer Hallowell — MI, WI, IN
Ben Golnik — MN, ND, SD, MT, WY, ID
Bettina Nava — AZ, NM, CO, UT
John Peschong — CA, NV, OR, WA, AK, HI
Saul Anuzis
STATE STORIES
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/news-53/1209166154158580.xml&storylist=newsmichigan
Recall group raises more than $100,000
4/25/2008, 7:22 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A group aiming to recall state lawmakers for approving tax increases reports raising more than $100,000 since late October. The recall effort recently has focused on House Speaker Andy Dillon, a Democrat from Wayne County's Redford Township. According to filings Friday, the Michigan Recalls Organization got $46,000 from out-of-state donors. Recall organizers say most of those donors have Michigan business ties. Dillon has raised money to fight the recall. But it's hard to tell how much because he also is up for re-election this year. Recall supporters must submit more than 8,700 valid signatures within the next week to get an election. A court battle continues over recall campaign tactics.
Copper thieves becoming a threat to 9-1-1 service
Growing criminal trade in copper requires response
Rep. Rick Jones
April 25, 2008
When most of us think of dangerous crimes that put our neighborhoods and families at risk, we think of robberies, violent attacks and even murder. Imagine though if you needed to report a crime like I've mentioned above, either as a witness of something you see happening to a neighbor, or God forbid, as a crime victim yourself. You run to the phone to call for help and there is no dial tone. No way to call 9-1-1. This is a terrifying thought, and thankfully, our 9-1-1 phone system is reliable. Still, a growing crime is attacking the very lifeline we all rely on in case of an emergency. Copper theft, and specifically the theft of copper phone wire, is cutting Michiganians off from the help they need in an emergency. Let me explain.
Granholm signs bill to protect soldiers' civilian jobs
4/25/2008, 5:55 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed legislation aimed at protecting jobs for military personnel when they return to civilian life. The legislation gives those who serve on active duty in the armed forces or National Guard more time to return to their jobs when they return from duty. If active duty military service is less than 180 days, employees have 45 days to regain their jobs. If their active duty military service is longer than 180 days, they have 90 days to regain their jobs. Returning personnel had 15 days to apply for their jobs under the previous law. Granholm announced Friday that she had signed the bill.
http://blog.mlive.com/cns/2008/04/expansion_of_bottle_refunds_of.html
Expansion of bottle refunds offered for approval again
Posted by By TIMOTHY WARDLE
April 25, 2008 13:18PM
LANSING - Picking up roadside trash may soon become a lucrative business, should a revived proposal pass. The latest version - proposed by Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, - would expand Michigan's bottle refund law to include most packaged beverage containers. That would mean almost everything from a water bottle to an energy drink can could be exchanged for a dime. Some products would be excluded, such as milk and dairy drinks, which Meadows described as basic food items. In a 2002 campaign debate, Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposed the state should expand the law to include tea and juice containers. State Sen. Michael Switalski, D-Roseville, has a nearly identical bill that is stalled in the Senate.
It's not a new idea.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/OPINION01/804260311/1007/OPINION
Land rightly protects voter privacy
Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land made the right decision when she turned down a Freedom of Information Act request for a list of voters' political party preferences from this year's presidential primary. The Legislature stupidly put a phrase in the primary law stating that the voter preference lists should be turned over to the two major political parties, but no one else. The primary law also included a section stating that if one part of the law was struck down, the entire statute would be invalid. When a federal judge unsurprisingly threw out the section limiting release of voter preferences, the whole law was struck down. Michigan's prior law, as well as a Supreme Court ruling, protects voter privacy and Land did what was required in keeping the lists secret.
Michigan governor details Israel, Kuwait trip
4/25/2008, 1:02 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan's governor plans to recruit high tech, homeland security and other businesses on her upcoming trip to Israel and Kuwait. The meetings between Jennifer Granholm and Middle East business leaders from Wednesday through May 8 are designed to lure more jobs to Michigan. Michigan is trying to diversify its economy. The state has been hard hit by automotive and other manufacturing layoffs. Michigan's unemployment rate of 7.2 percent in March was highest in the nation. Alternative energy and environmental technologies also will be explored on the Middle East trip. Granholm said Friday she also will meet with government officials during the trip.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/METRO02/804260304/1409/METRO
Runway fix to aid firms using airport
Oakland project will allow big jets to reach more destinations without refueling.
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
WATERFORD TOWNSHIP -- The Oakland County International Airport will extend its main runway by next year, enabling planes to takeoff for major overseas destinations and the West Coast without stopping to refuel. "We are now in a global economy and it's necessary for our businesses to reach Mexico, Europe and Asia," said David VanderVeen, director of Oakland County's Central Services operations, which oversees the airport in Waterford. Currently, a 727 jet is the largest aircraft that can lift off of the main 6,200-foot runway. With an additional 320 feet, these jets will for the first time be able to depart with a full tank of fuel. The move indicates the second busiest airport in Michigan -- which has no commercial passenger flights -- is following the corporate world's lead to go global.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/BIZ/804260340
Farm costs eat profits for struggling Michigan farmers
Record prices for crops are soured by fertilizer, fuel, equipment hikes
Jennifer Youssef / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Grain farmer Cecil Schoenherr thought he hit pay dirt late last year when he sold his 2008 wheat crop on contract for $4 a bushel, much more than the $2.50 he got for it in 2005. But what he didn't foresee was that the cost of fertilizer, herbicides and other materials he needed to grow the crops would triple this year or that the fuel to operate the machinery would be $3.70 a gallon. With the price of grains at record highs, what could have been a financial windfall for Schoenherr and other Michigan farmers is in many cases turning out to be just enough to cover their skyrocketing overhead, farmers and agri-industry experts say.
Delegate challenges to be heard
4/25/2008, 6:19 p.m. EDT
By NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A plan to award half-delegates for the disputed Michigan and Florida Democratic presidential primaries will get a hearing before party leaders. The co-chairs of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws committee sent members a memo Friday announcing a meeting May 31 to consider the idea. The committee stripped Michigan and Florida of their national convention delegates because they held primaries too early. DNC members in Michigan and Florida have filed challenges to restore the delegates. Under the challenges, all superdelegates from both states would get to vote. The pledged delegates would only count for half votes. Hillary Rodham Clinton won both contests and has been pushing for the delegates to be seated.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/POLITICS/804260329/1022
Democrats delay ruling on fate of Michigan, Florida delegates
Party will not make decision until after May 31 hearing
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Saturday, April 26, 2008
National Democratic Party officials will meet May 31 to hear challenges from Michigan and Florida Democrats seeking to get their states' delegations seated at the national convention. The party's Rules and Bylaws Committee -- the same panel that banned Florida and Michigan delegates -- will meet in Washington. The committee will hear similar proposals from Michigan State University Trustee Joel Ferguson and Florida party official Jon Ausman. Each argues that the rules committee exceeded its authority in banning all the states' delegates. They want the committee to reinstate all the Michigan and Florida superdelegates -- who are delegates by virtue of their positions as elected officials or party leaders. And, they say, the panel can strip only half the states' pledged delegates -- those chosen in primaries that the national party ruled were too early.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916727098046281.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Detroit's Scandal Is About More Than Sex
By SHIKHA DALMIA
April 26, 2008; Page A7
They are calling it "PagerGate." It's a sex scandal involving Detroit's Democratic Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. It broke in January and, as details dribble out, residents are falling into a depression as deep as the one afflicting their economy. Although there is widespread disgust at Mr. Kilpatrick, there is also growing regret that the departure of this flamboyant, 37-year-old two-term mayor will end his nascent economic reforms. Actually, Motown isn't so lucky. The hard fact is that Mr. Kilpatrick was a false prophet under whom the city wasn't going to come back – and not just because of his vices, but his virtues as well.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/NEWS01/804260352/1001/NEWS
E-mails show mayor's side feared leak of deal
Cough up missing document, judge orders Kilpatrick
BY JIM SCHAEFER and JOE SWICKARD
April 26, 2008
E-mails released Friday in a Free Press lawsuit against the City of Detroit show that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's city-paid attorney fretted about the release of a police whistle-blower settlement because of the "potential adverse impact" if the news media got ahold of it. Also Friday in Wayne County Circuit Court, a judge said he wanted Kilpatrick to personally produce a missing legal document that triggered the $8.4-million deal, which kept the mayor's salacious text messages secret. In one e-mail sent last fall, Samuel McCargo, a private lawyer paid by the city to represent Kilpatrick in the police lawsuits, wrote that certain terms of the deal were supposed to have been included in a separate, confidential letter. But Mike Stefani, the lawyer for three cops who sued Kilpatrick, had included the terms in the settlement document itself.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/METRO/804260338
Judge seeks key document in mayor's whistleblower case
Mayor may be ordered to turn over missing motion; his attorney objects on self-incrimination grounds.
Paul Egan and Mike Wilkinson / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
DETROIT-- The stage was set Friday for a possible clash between a judge's demands in a civil case and Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's Fifth Amendment rights as a defendant in his criminal case. Wayne Circuit Judge Robert Colombo Jr., who is presiding over a public records lawsuit brought by The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, said Friday he may order Kilpatrick to produce a key document related to the city's $8.4 million settlement of police whistle-blower lawsuits in 2007. Attorney James C. Thomas, who is representing the mayor in both his criminal perjury case and in the civil public records case, told Colombo the Fifth Amendment, which shields defendants in criminal cases from self-incrimination, should protect the mayor from such an order.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/NEWS01/804260312
Another lawyer hired without council's OK
The pay is just under limit that requires approval
BY ZACHARY GORCHOW
April 26, 2008
City of Detroit officials gave a contract to the private attorney hired to assist with requests in the criminal investigation of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick that was $500 below the threshold that is required for council approval. The $24,500 contract to James Burdick is the second time in two months that the city's Law Department has come under scrutiny for awarding a contract just below the threshold to an attorney. In February, the city awarded a $24,950 contract to Mayer Morganroth's firm for representation in the lawsuit against the city by the family of slain stripper Tamara Greene. Although the Burdick contract was approved by the administration March 20, it was only disclosed Friday to the council's Budget, Finance and Audit Committee as part of an overall report on contracts between $5,000 and $25,000.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/COL06/804260383
Business leaders fret about impact of blaming mayor
BY TOM WALSH
April 26, 2008
Metro Detroit's business leaders are split on whether to leave scandal-plagued Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick alone or push him to resign from office, in part because they are fearful of inflaming racial divisions in the region. "That's one of the reasons, no doubt in my mind, that the white businesspeople don't want to come out and say anything, because they're thinking that with a divided community, you know, everybody's going to jump on them," industrialist and former Detroit Pistons basketball star Dave Bing told me Friday. Doug Rothwell, president and chief executive officer of Detroit Renaissance, the powerful group of about 50 corporate chief executives, confirmed Friday that the Renaissance board is divided about whether to take a visible public stand in the mayoral controversy or whether to remain low-key, continuing to support worthy city projects while letting the mayor's criminal case on perjury and other charges run its course.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/METRO/804260330
Bing's comments about Mayor Kilpatrick get support
Text-messaging scandal frustrates other executives; some won't criticize Kilpatrick.
Christine MacDonald / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
DETROIT -- Another influential African-American business leader spoke out Friday about the City Hall text-messaging scandal, a day after Detroit industrialist Dave Bing's call for corporate leaders to stop "playing it safe" and speak out. Jon Barfield, president and chairman of the Livonia-based Bartech Group, said the "deadlock" over the scandal needs to be resolved, but said he wasn't calling for the resignation of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is at the heart of the controversy and faces criminal charges as a result of the secret $8.4 million whistle-blowers settlement. "The situation needs to resolve itself so the city can move forward," Barfield said, calling Kilpatrick -- whom he supported in the past two mayoral elections -- an "extraordinary" politician. "We need to break this deadlock one way or the other. I'm saddened by the state of affairs."
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/METRO/804260406/1409/METRO
Customs seize cocaine at border, woman arrested
Doug Guthrie / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
DETROIT -- A 21-year-old Sterling Heights woman was arrested this week at the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel attempting to smuggle 7 pounds of cocaine into Canada in her handbag, according to the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. The woman told authorities she was going to visit relatives in Windsor before officers selected her for inspection and discovered three heavily wrapped packages of white powder cocaine in her purse. "A lot of people don't realize that Customs and Border Protection performs inspections of travelers both inbound to and outbound from the U.S.," said Port Director Roderick Blanchard. "When we do outbound inspections we are looking for many of the same things we look for during inbound inspections, drugs, money, and people. We are also looking for things that are restricted or that require licensing for export such as some types of technology."
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/METRO02/804260332/1409/METRO
Attorney to fight for casino, racetrack at Silverdome site
Plans of general counsel for NAACP face legal hurdles as Pontiac nears sale of facility.
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News
Saturday, April 26, 2008
PONTIAC -- H. Wallace Parker is known in many circles as a hard-nosed criminal lawyer who represents the poor and fights to keep the downtrodden from being wronged because of their skin color. So what is he doing proposing a horse racetrack at the Pontiac Silverdome? The Bloomfield Hills attorney, better known as general counsel for the NAACP in north Oakland County, is also a longtime thoroughbred breeder. In fact, before Ladbroke-Detroit Race Course closed in 1998, several of his horses ribboned there. And he says he will race again at a track he plans to build on the Dome site at Interstate 75 and M-59. "At all costs, we want a racino there," Parker said. A racino is a combined race track and casino, and is legal in a handful of states -- not including Michigan. Gambling is limited to slot machines at some racinos; others include table games.
http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/NEWS01/804260343/1001/NEWS
King band gets final dollars for Olympics
BY CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
April 26, 2008
It's official: Detroit's King High School band is headed to the Olympics in Beijing this summer. After months of fund-raising and big donations from philanthropists and businesses, two employees from GMAC Financial Services in Southfield quietly slipped into the King band room Friday carrying a check for $10,000. The employees -- Rhonda Gaylor, whose son attends the school, and alumna Sandra Mullen, whose niece is a pom-pom girl with the band -- also raised another $2,220 at work. Gaylor said $179 of that was change from coworkers' desk drawers. The band had needed $11,706.54 to reach the $380,000 cost to to perform in a music festival during the Olympics.
NATIONAL STORIES
If you want to see a display of pure political courage, then John McCain is your man
Dominic Lawson:
Friday, 25 April 2008
Barack Obama has lost it. Not the Democrat nomination – he remains the favourite in that increasingly bitter battle; no, what he has lost is the aura of invincible charm which had hitherto repelled all incoming fire, like some invisible force-field. That has disappeared with the publication of his remarks to a private dinner for wealthy Democrat donors in San Francisco about his difficulties in attracting support from the blue-collar vote in the de-industrialising Midwest. That sophisticated audience laughed – it's on tape – when he told them how such people found it hard to buy the message of "a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama". Oddly, it was not this explicit imputation of racism against people whose votes he had failed to capture which has caused Obama the biggest problem. It was his follow-up remarks: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or... anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations".
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/politics/26mccain.html?ref=politics
McCain Goes Where Few Republicans Dare, Deep in Democrats’ Territory
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
April 26, 2008
NEW ORLEANS — “I want to inform you that everybody in the camp here is not a Republican,” an African-American participant at a town-hall-style meeting at Xavier University told Senator John McCain of Arizona here on Thursday. “I got that impression,” Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, replied dryly, in the middle of a pummeling from the audience about his backing for the Iraq war and his endorsement by a pastor who has blamed the sins of New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina. Mr. McCain was at the end of a weeklong tour to America’s “forgotten places,” otherwise known as swaths of the country where Republicans dare not go — the Black Belt of Alabama, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the coal-mining hollow in Appalachia where President Lyndon B. Johnson declared his war on poverty.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080425/D9094LIG0.html
Clinton lobbies superdelegates after Pennsylvania win
Apr 25, 5:16 PM (ET)
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton, capitalizing on her Pennsylvania primary victory, reached out this week to uncommitted Democratic superdelegates. "Her pitch was that she had just had a substantial victory in Pennsylvania and her campaign had raised quite a bit of money because of it," said Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma. "There wasn't a hard push or a hard sell. She asked me what are some of the things she needs to be talking about. I just told her the No. 1 issue is the economy." Boren remains uncommitted but noted "it's really important to me how my district voted" - for Clinton. Clinton also met with Reps. Ike Skelton of Missouri, Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, Ron Klein of Florida and Brad Ellsworth of Indiana, among others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/politics/26delegates.html?ref=politics
Superdelegate Stalemate Shows No Sign of Easing
By LARRY ROHTER and CARL HULSE
April 26, 2008
Jeanne Lemire Dahlman, a Montana superdelegate and rancher, has declared her allegiance to Senator Barack Obama. But she said voters in her state, whose primary is June 3, are thrilled by the unresolved Democratic nominating fight, which gives them a potential voice in a nominating process that has usually bypassed them.“A part of me would like to wrap this up,” she acknowledged. “But I think Senator Clinton should continue, unless she tanks in Indiana.” The Pennsylvania primary was supposed to help clarify the picture for the 795 Democratic superdelegates, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s strong victory there on Tuesday has in many ways complicated matters for them, furthering a stalemate that has deeply divided the party even as top Democrats called this week for them to make up their minds by June.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/opinion/26herbert.html?ref=opinion
Heading Toward the Danger Zone
By BOB HERBERT
April 26, 2008
Barack Obama is winning, so why does it look like Hillary Clinton is having all the fun? Senator Obama has been thrown completely off his game by a combination of political attacks (some fair, some foul), a toxic eruption (the volcanic Jeremiah Wright was a gift from the gods to the Clintons and the G.O.P.), and some pretty serious self-inflicted wounds. You can almost feel the air seeping out of the Obama phenomenon. The candidate and his aides are brainstorming ways to counter the Clinton death-ray machine and regain the momentum. They need to generate some new excitement and enthusiasm, and they need to do it soon. Despite all the new voters who have been brought into the process, Democrats are filled with anxiety about their prospects in November. A nervous operative told me on Friday: “If we lose this election, it would be like Johnson losing to Goldwater.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article3811396.ece
Obama and Clinton: two cynical losers
Despite having all the trumps, the Democrats have squandered the chance of a lifetime
Gerard Baker
April 25, 2008
How do they do it? How do the Democrats manage to squander repeatedly and with such ease the chance of a lifetime? What inverse alchemy have they created that turns the gold bullion of electoral opportunity into the base metal of political oblivion? Eight years of George Bush, an unpopular war and a recession have handed the Democrats their best chance, not merely of winning their first presidential election in 12 years, but of achieving a rare, once-in-a- generation transformational shift in American politics. Four fifths of the American public think the country is on the wrong track. The President wallows in the highest disapproval ratings since polling began. The Republican Party has spent most of a decade bungling almost everything it touches, abandoning its principles and sinking into a mire of corruption, hypocrisy and incompetence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/us/politics/26ticket.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
G.O.P. Now Sees Obama as Liability for Ticket
By CARL HULSE
April 26, 2008
WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama is starring in a growing number of campaign commercials, but the latest batch is being underwritten by Republicans. In a sign that the racial, class and values issues simmering in the presidential campaign could spread into the larger political arena, Republican groups are turning recent bumps in Mr. Obama’s road — notably his comment that small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion out of bitterness and a fiery speech by his former minister in which he condemned the United States — into attacks against Democrats down the ticket. “The public, week by week, is becoming more familiar with his big-government, far-left vision for America,” said Ed Patru, a spokesman for Freedom’s Watch, an advocacy organization that is portraying Mr. Obama as ultraliberal in an advertisement running in Louisiana before a special election for a House seat.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/24/media-jump-ship-from-obam_n_98545.html
Media Jump Ship From Obama To Clinton
Thomas B. Edsall
April 24, 2008 10:02 PM
In a blink of an eye, the media has jumped ship from the Obama campaign and become a crucial Clinton ally, pressing just the message -- that Obama is a likely loser in the general election -- that Hillary and her allies have been promoting for the past six weeks. The new tenor of media coverage is visible almost everywhere, from Politico, Time and The New Republic to The Washington Post and The New York Times. For Hillary, the shift is a potential lifesaver as she struggles to keep her head above water; without it, she would, metaphorically, drown. Until now, she, her husband, and her campaign aides have been trying, with little success, to make the case that Obama has potentially fatal flaws. For the first time, reporters working for magazines, newspapers and web sites have abruptly decided that she might well be right, and the results for Obama have been brutal:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=3105288&page=1
The Note: Jeremiah's Jeremiad
Wright's Reemergence Compounds Questions for Obama in Key Stretch
By RICK KLEIN with MIKE ELMORE
April 25, 2008
Pennsylvania was Sen. Barack Obama's chance to salt away his lead, answer the demographic questions about his candidacy -- and put the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in his rearview mirror. It was a nice thought. Make that oh-for-3 -- and objects in that mirror are now uncomfortably close. Pennsylvania's wake has left Obama arguing that he's still ahead (and doing so on the side of not counting votes in two key states), explaining why he can't close the deal (despite the fact that it's not clear Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton can even make a deal work) -- and coping with the sudden, very public reemergence of that pastor he wished would spend the next six months in East Paraguay. Lurking just off-stage for all of this is Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., refueling for the fall but also well into a savvy act of political positioning (and more than happy to pick up any Democrat's pieces when the time is right).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/25/AR2008042503707.html?hpid=topnews
Party Fears Racial Divide
Attacks Could Do Lasting Harm, Democrats Say
By Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Mosk
Saturday, April 26, 2008; A01
The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies -- African Americans and wealthy liberals -- who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama. Clinton's solid win in the Pennsylvania primary exposed a quandary for the party. Her backers may be convinced that only she can win the white, working-class voters that the Democratic nominee will need in the general election, but many African American leaders say a Clinton nomination -- handed to her by superdelegates -- would result in a disastrous breach with black voters.
http://www.charlotte.com/409/story/595639.html
Is '08 a Democratic year?
Democrats historically have found ways not to win the White House
Posted on Fri, Apr. 25, 2008
Robert D. Stacey
Even as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to slug it out in the final few Democratic primaries, most observers believe whichever candidate emerges from the primaries already has the inside track to the White House. Due to a number of Republican weaknesses, 2008 is supposed to be the Democrats' year. But before Michelle Obama starts measuring the White House for new drapes, let's take a look at historical precedent. The first Republican to win a presidential election was Abraham Lincoln. Since that initial success, the GOP has won 23 presidential elections compared to just 14 for the Democrats. Since the Civil War only four Democrats -- Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and Samuel Tilden -- have won a majority of the popular vote. (Tilden in 1876, lost the Electoral College vote and never became president.)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916576952046159.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Ready for Real Change
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
April 26, 2008; Page A9
Settling in across from Steny Hoyer in his Capitol office, I tell the Maryland Democrat he'd "really make my day" if he'd use this interview to finally endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president. "I don't mind making your day," he says, with a smile that suggests he genuinely means it. "If it didn't mean unmaking mine," he finishes, still gleaming. That's Mr. Hoyer. A quarter-century in Congress has gained him a reputation as the ultimate politician – ambitious but pragmatic, collegial but shrewd. Those skills helped crown him the youngest-ever president of Maryland's Senate, and propelled him to the U.S. Congress, where, in 2007, he became Democratic majority leader.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916465140946149.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
The Foul Play Act
Wall Street Journal
April 26, 2008; Page A8
Every now and then – once or twice a year – Congress attempts to do the work that its constituents sent the Members to do. But most days are like Wednesday, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could find nothing more pressing than to force an awkward vote on Republicans in an election year. The vehicle was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which passed the House last summer but which President Bush has threatened to veto. Ms. Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber for 20 years before retiring a decade ago. Only after she took her pension – and her old boss had died – did she sue her former employer for pay discrimination. Last May, the Supreme Court sensibly ruled that the statute of limitations on these cases means what it was intended to mean. To wit: A claim that is not filed in a timely fashion (within 180 days in most pay-discrimination suits) should be thrown out.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916804732546311.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Twenty-Five Years Later, A Nation Still at Risk
By CHESTER E. FINN JR.
April 26, 2008; Page A7
Today marks the 25th anniversary of "A Nation at Risk," the influential Reagan-era report by a blue-ribbon panel that alerted Americans to the weak performance of our education system. The report warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." That dire forecast set off a quarter century of education reform that's yielded worthy changes – yet still not the achievement gains we need to turn back the tide of mediocrity. After decades of furthering educational "equality," the 1983 commission admonished the country, it was time to attend to academic excellence and school results. Educators didn't want to hear this and a generation later many still don't. Our ponderous public-school system resists change. Teachers don't like criticism and are loath to be judged by pupil performance. In educator circles, one still encounters grumbling that "A Nation at Risk" lodged a bum rap.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916309243845933.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks
Property Tax Revolt
Wall Street Journal
April 26, 2008; Page A8
Arizona has been hit hard hit by the real-estate bust, with the average home value down 17% in a year and a record number of foreclosures. So Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano has devised a clever way to revive the housing market: Raise property taxes. Last week Ms. Napolitano vetoed a bill that would have made a two-year suspension of the state property tax permanent. "It's untimely. It's untenable. It's unwise," she said of her untimely and unwise veto. So as housing values slide, Arizonans next year will get walloped with an extra $250 million property tax bill. Arizona is one of a growing list of states and big cities looking to raise taxes on homes to close budget gaps in 2008 and 2009. Housing values are expected to decline by $1.2 trillion this year, according to Global Insight Inc., an economic consulting firm, and that means tens of billions of dollars in lost taxes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/133652
The Green Phantom
Global warming's curious absence as a campaign issue.
Evan Thomas
Apr 24, 2008
In the summer of 2006 I went to see Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who was running the Democrats' successful effort to regain control of the House of Representatives. I had been reading a great deal about global warming in the mainstream press ("Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid" warned Time). So I asked Emanuel, how are the environment and global warming playing out there in the heartland? Is it stirring voters? No, he replied. In the 2006 congressional elections global warming was virtually a nonissue, he said, a low-priority item way behind the war and the economy and old staples like education and health care. Global warming is an issue for the elites, he said, not for the average voter. That's still true. The mainstream media continues to write urgently about global warming. Last month NEWSWEEK asked on its cover which candidate will be the most green.
http://www.nysun.com/news/food-crisis-eclipsing-climate-change
Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries
Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels
By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 25, 2008
The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels. With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down. One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food. “I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said.
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080426/NATION/804260333/1020
Prices create food crisis
U.N. leader calls for quick action to aid distribution
Veronika Oleksyn / Associated Press
Saturday, April 26, 2008
VIENNA, Austria -- A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday. Ban said the U.N and the rest of the world are very concerned and immediate action is needed. He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties. "This steeply rising price of food -- it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for an additional $755 million. "The United Nations is very much concerned, as (are) all other members of the international community," Ban said.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120906433966742371.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Food and Free Trade
By NANCY BIRDSALL and ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
April 25, 2008
Costco and Sam's Club, two giant American retailers, just announced that they are limiting purchases of rice by their customers. Meanwhile, in the developing world, the World Bank estimates soaring food prices threaten to put 100 million people back into the ranks of the hungry, threatening to reverse decades of progress that prosperity had achieved. Rising food prices may well signal the onset of a new kind of era, in which elevated food prices are a long-term reality driven by three key changes: rapid demand for more and more energy-intensive food in fast-growing Asia; the competition that new biofuels are posing for land; and the effect of climate-change-induced drought on global agricultural supplies. And while Asia is one of the dynamos of the world economy, it is also most vulnerable to food price increases: Most of the world's poorest people still live there, and the price of rice, a staple of the consumption basket in Asia, has risen especially sharply in recent days.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120907994764042837.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Dying Russia
By NICHOLAS EBERSTADT and HANS GROTH
April 25, 2008
Russia is a European country, and its population patterns are unmistakably European in a number of respects, e.g. low birth rates, rising illegitimacy ratios and immigration tensions, and an aging population. But its demographic profile and future prospects differs in two important respects that bode ill for Russia's long-term economic outlook – to say nothing of the Kremlin's ambitious goal of becoming the world's fifth-largest economy by the year 2020. First, Russia's health and mortality situation is vastly worse than Western Europe's. Life expectancy for Russian men is astonishingly low, well below current levels in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. And trends have been moving in the wrong direction for decades. In 2005, male and female life expectancy at birth in Russia were both lower than they had been 40 years earlier.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080425/russia_media_freedom.html?.v=2
Russian lawmakers support tighter media rules on libel
Russian lawmakers give backing to tighter media rules on slander, libel
Friday April 25, 3:47 pm ET
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's lower house of parliament voted Friday to widen the definition of slander and libel and give regulators the authority to shut down media outlets found guilty of publishing such material. The legislation, passed by the State Duma 339-1, is the latest attempt by the government to squeeze the country's increasingly embattled news media. The bill allows authorities to suspend and close down media outlets for libel and slander -- punishment that is identical to that for news media found to be promoting terrorism, extremism and racial hatred. It also expands the definition of slander and libel to "dissemination of deliberately false information damaging individual honor and dignity." The legislation will be considered in two more readings before heading to the upper house of parliament, where approval is likely, and then goes to President Vladimir Putin for signing.