NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST October 21, 2007

**IF YOU CAN'T ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE, CONTACT US AT rays.list@comcast.net and we'll be happy to send the full article.


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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Republicans-Value-Voters.html

Giuliani Tries to Reassure Conservatives

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 21, 2007
Filed at 7:40 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rudy Giuliani tried to find peace with a restless bloc ofthe Republican Party Saturday, telling religious conservatives not to fearhim for his stand on issues such as abortion or expect he would changepurely for political advantage.

The GOP presidential candidate won praise for simply showing up before anaudience that has been casting about for the best social conservative in theRepublican field. But two former governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts andMike Huckabee of Arkansas, shared the limelight with the former New Yorkmayor, handily winning the top two spots in a straw poll of ''valuesvoters'' conducted by the conservative Family Research Council.

Giuliani sought common ground with Christian conservatives by castinghimself as an imperfect man who has asked for guidance through prayer. Herecalled crossing himself during his first day of law school after 16 yearsof attending Catholic schools.

He offered assurances that despite his support for abortion rights, he wouldseek to lower the number of abortions. He pledged that if elected, he wouldappoint conservative judges, support school choice and insist on victory inIraq -- all issues important to the audience at the Values Voter Summit.

The straw poll, conducted online and at the conference, placed Giuliani ineighth place, second to last. The top vote-getter was Romney, who unlikeGiuliani, worked actively to encourage supporters to vote for him. Huckabeewas close behind, but won overwhelmingly among voters who cast the ballotsonsite at the event.

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365Gay.Com

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/10/102107la.htm

Jindal Wins Louisiana Governor's Race

by The Associated Press
Posted: October 21, 2007 - 8:00 am ET

(Baton Rouge, Louisiana) U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation's youngestgovernor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana sinceReconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11opponents.

Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had about 53percent of the vote tallied - more than enough to win Saturday's electionoutright and avoid a Nov. 17 runoff.

"My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. Andguess what happened. They found the American Dream to be alive and wellright here in Louisiana," he said to cheers and applause at his victoryparty.

His nearest competitors: Democrat Walter Boasso with 208,690 votes or 18percent; Independent John Georges had 167,477 votes or 14 percent; DemocratFoster Campbell had 151,101 or 13 percent. Eight candidates divided therest.

"I'm asking all of our supporters to get behind our new governor," Georgessaid in a concession speech.

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365Gay.Com

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/10/102007rudy.htm

Rudy: I'd Appoint Federal Judges Like Roberts, Scalia

by The Associated Press
Posted: October 20, 2007 - 1:00 pm ET

(Washington) Rudy Giuliani told religious conservatives Saturday they shouldneither fear him for his stand on issues such as abortion nor expect hewould change purely for political advantage.

The Republican presidential candidate cast himself as an imperfect man whohas sought guidance through prayer.

In a 40-minute speech received with polite applause, the former New Yorkmayor tried to reach out to social conservatives. He said they share commonground and he invoked, as he often does, Ronald Reagan's admonition that "my80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy."

"My belief in God and reliance on his guidance is at the core of who I am, Ican assure you of that," Giuliani said. "But isn't it better for me to tellyou what I believe rather than change my positions to fit the prevailingwind?"

It was among his better received lines.

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365Gay.Com

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/10/102007obama.htm

The Differing Worlds Of Barack Obama

by The Associated Press
Posted: October 20, 2007 - 1:00 pm ET

(Chicago, Illinois) It was a Wednesday night ritual for Barack Obama: Aftera day of debating taxes, the death penalty or some other divisive issue,he'd head to a meeting of "The Committee."

Lawmakers and lobbyists, Democrats and Republicans alike, would put politicson hold and gather for ... their weekly poker game.

It was a chance for Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, to socializeover cards and cigars (or, in his case, cigarettes). It also was a way forthis son of an African goat herder, this Harvard-educated lawyer, author andprofessor to show he could be just one of the guys.

That was nothing new.

He had already navigated the exotic corners of Hawaii and Indonesia, thehalls of privilege of Cambridge, Mass., and the poverty-wracked streets ofChicago as a boy, a student and a young man.

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365Gay.Com

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/10/101907williams.htm

Stations Face Fines Over Use Of Bush Anti-Gay Shill

by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: October 19, 2007 - 5:00 pm ET

(Washington) Two broadcast companies are facing FCC fines totaling $76,000against two broadcast companies for failing to tell viewers that programs in2004 featuring conservative columnist Armstrong Williams were sponsored bythe Education Department.

Williams was hired by the Bush administration to promote its so-calledmarriage initiative that would have banned same-sex marriage in theConstitution and to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.

Williams (pictured) was paid nearly a quarter million dollars in 2003 by theWhite House to promote the President's agenda in his columns and nationallysyndicated talk show. (story)

Williams did not reveal the existence of the contract even as he expressedhis support for the agenda on the air.

The Federal Communications Commission says the two companies, which ownmultiple stations, violated sponsorship identification rules by notrevealing Williams' financial relationship.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/21border.html?hp

Tighter Border Delays Re-entry by U.S. Citizens

By JULIA PRESTON
October 21, 2007

EL PASO - United States border agents have stepped up scrutiny of Americansreturning home from Mexico, slowing commerce and creating delays at bordercrossings not seen since the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The increased enforcement is in part a dress rehearsal for new rules,scheduled to take effect in January, that will require Americans to show apassport or other proof of citizenship to enter the United States. Therequirements were approved by Congress as part of antiterrorism legislationin 2004.

Border officials said agents along the southern border were asking morereturning United States citizens to show a photo identity document. At thesame time, agents are increasing the frequency of what they call queries,where they check a traveler's information against law enforcement,immigration and antiterror databases.

The new policy is a big shift after decades when Americans arrived at landborder crossings, declared they were citizens and were waved on through.Since the authorities began ramping up enforcement in August, wait times atborder stations in Texas have often stretched to two hours or more,discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local business.

The delays could remain a fact of life across the southern border for thenext few years, border officials said, at least until new securitytechnology and expanded entry stations are installed and until Americans getused to being checked and questioned like foreigners. Last year 234 milliontravelers entered the United States through land border crossings fromMexico.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/weekinreview/21sciolino.html?hp

French Knots
L'Amour Has Little to Do With l'État

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
October 21, 2007

PARIS

THE French - on the right and on the left - have embraced the news thatPresident Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, have divorced with asurprising amount of sang-froid and a collective shrug.

It's partly that the French no longer treat marriage as a particularlysacred institution. The marriage rate here has plunged more than 30 percentin the past generation, and nearly one out of two marriages end in divorce.It's also that the French still seem to think that if Mr. Sarkozy is roamingthe Élysée Palace all alone, it's nobody's business but his own.

According to a poll conducted after the news broke on Thursday, 79 percentdeclared Le Divorce of "little or no importance" in the country's politicallife. A whopping 92 percent of the more than 800 people polled said that thedivorce did not change their opinion of their president.

"In France we still don't put private morality at the center of politicallife," said Stéphane Rozès, director of CSA, the research group thatconducted the poll. "The media and the political elite may want to hype thestory, to Americanize it, but the French people are more sophisticated. Theycan buy the 'People magazines,' but they still profoundly believe that theprivate life of politicians needs to be protected."

Certainly, as the French well know, leaders of other countries have seentheir marriages spectacularly fall apart while in office and survived.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/us/nationalspecial/21louisiana.html?hp

Indian-American Elected Louisiana's Governor

By ADAM NOSSITER
October 21, 2007

NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 20 - Bobby Jindal, a conservative Republican congressmanfrom the New Orleans suburbs and the son of immigrants from India, waselected Louisiana's governor Saturday, inheriting a state that was sufferingwell before Hurricane Katrina left lingering scars two years ago.

Mr. Jindal, 36, defeated three main challengers in an open primary, becomingthis state's first nonwhite governor since a Reconstruction-era figurebriefly held the office 130 years ago.

With more than 90 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Jindal received 53percent, above the 50 percent-plus-one threshold needed to avoid a runoff inNovember. He will be the nation's first Indian-American governor when hetakes office in January.

Mr. Jindal's victory over a state Democratic party weakened by perceptionsof post-hurricane incompetence and corruption was expected, as he has had anoverwhelming lead in polls for months. The incumbent, Gov. KathleenBabineaux Blanco, hurt by stumbles after Hurricane Katrina, did not seekre-election.

The ascendancy of the Brown- and Oxford-educated Mr. Jindal, an unabashedpolicy wonk who has produced a stream of multipoint plans, is likely to beregarded as a racial breakthrough of sorts in this once-segregated state.Still, it is one with qualifiers attached.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21sun2.html?ref=opinion

Pseudoscientific Bigotry in France

October 21, 2007
Editorial

Immigration issues bring out the worst instincts in politicians who shouldknow better. Congress showed that earlier this year. Now it is the turn ofFrance's Parliament. It is moving toward final approval of an ugly new lawthat would introduce DNA testing as a potential basis for excludingprospective immigrants hoping to reunify with family members already livingin France.

DNA testing can be a useful tool in establishing criminal guilt orinnocence. But it has no rightful place in immigration law. Modern Frenchfamilies, like modern American families, are constituted on many basesbesides bloodlines and genetics. This is something most French politiciansand voters should be aware of.

They should also be aware of the cautionary lessons of modern Frenchhistory. Under the Nazi occupiers and their Vichy collaborators,pseudoscientific notions of pure descent were introduced into French lawwith tragic consequences.

The DNA provision, proposed by a member of Parliament close to PresidentNicolas Sarkozy, has been angrily denounced by the center-left opposition,principled members of the center-right majority and a member of Mr. Sarkozy's cabinet. As a result, the legislation has been hedged with some cautionarylanguage, but not enough. Meanwhile, Mr. Sarkozy, who could have intervenedto stop this bill at any point, and still can, has not, and is not verylikely to.

Though himself the son of a Hungarian immigrant, Mr. Sarkozy has made hispolitical name with harsh criticism of more recent immigrants, especiallyNorth African Arabs. His pandering on this issue helped win him votes thatused to go to far-right extremists like the perennial presidential candidateJean-Marie Le Pen.

Immigrant bashing is an effective vote-getter. Unfortunately, it leads tobad laws, bad policies and needless human suffering for the individuals andfamilies it targets and exploits. Mr. Sarkozy wants to be seen as astatesman. He should act like one.



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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/weekinreview/21moss.html

What to Do About Pixels of Hate

By MICHAEL MOSS
October 21, 2007

ONE by one, starting a few weeks ago, 40 militant Islamist Web sites gotknocked off the Internet. Gone were some of the world's most active jihadisites, with forums full of extremist chatter.

This disappearance mystified American counterterrorism officials. They hadn'tshut them down, they knew, so who had?

Happily claiming credit for the jihadi blackout is a Christian-Lebaneseengineer named Joseph G. Shahda, who is waging a private, and passionate,war on terrorism from his home near Boston.

"These sites are very, very dangerous," Mr. Shahda said. "And I think weshould keep going after them. They are used as recruiting tools forterrorists, arousing emotions, teaching how to hate."

Except it's not quite that simple, when you talk to some terrorism experts.Mr. Shahda's one-man operation highlights the tension over what to do aboutonline jihadi militancy - a tension that has grown along with the material.Perhaps it's better to shut it down, and try to prosecute those involved. Ormaybe the material should be left up, as a way to learn something valuablein the larger battle against terrorists.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/nyregion/21noose.html

Few Answers About Nooses, but Much Talk of Jim Crow

By PAUL VITELLO

BALDWIN, N.Y., Oct. 19 - All the nooses are different, the police say. Someare coiled six times, some eight. Some are simple knots. The one found herethe other day, suspended from a fence in a Highway Department yard, waswrapped with duct tape. All are blunt instruments of racial intimidationbecause of what they represent.

"They represent terrorizing black people and keeping them in their place,"said Ruth Roberson, a parks employee who is black, pausing on Friday morningwhile raking leaves. "Now they don't lynch you. It's all about jobs."

At least seven times in the past few weeks, nooses have been anonymouslytossed over pipes or hung on doorknobs in the New York metropolitan area -four times here on Long Island, twice in New York City, once at a Home Depotstore in Passaic, N.J. The settings are disparate. One noose was hung in apolice station locker room in Hempstead, where the apparent target was ablack police officer recently promoted to deputy chief. Another was drapedover the doorknob of the office of a black professor at Columbia University.

The question of why these things were happening - whether linked to eventssomewhere else, like in Jena, La., or part of some new homegrown vernacularof race hate - seemed to wait in line last week behind the question of wherethe next noose would be found.

Three noose episodes took place on Long Island in three days. On Wednesday,two were found at a sanitation garage in the Town of Hempstead - one of themlooped around the neck of a stuffed animal with its face blackened. OnThursday, a noose was discovered hanging in a Nassau County highwaydepartment yard in Baldwin. On Friday, a worker at the Green Acres shoppingmall in Valley Stream found one slung over a door at a construction site.

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The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html

The Future Is Drying Up

By JOE GERTNER
October 21, 2007

Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on thiscountry's fresh water as the other water problem, because global warmingmore commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our greatcoastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack -the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that meltseach spring to provide the American West with most of its water - seems tobe a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking ofdangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and thedirector of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the UnitedStates government's pre-eminent research facilities, remarked thatdiminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problemthan slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, thesnowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for NorthernCalifornia, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even themost optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggestthat 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. "There's a two-thirdschance there will be a disaster," Chu said, "and that's in the bestscenario."

In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. Acatastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River - which mostlyconsists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains - has always served as a kindof thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outeredge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on thatwater. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado,Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almostunfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federalgovernment; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suingstate officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim onthe river) bringing international law to bear on the United Statesgovernment. In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly leadto a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies forthe West's industries, agriculture and growing municipalities arethreatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possiblefuture to me, if some of the Southwest's largest reservoirs empty out, theregion would experience an apocalypse, "an Armageddon."

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101902276.html

No Longer the Generals' Burma

By Tom Malinowski
Sunday, October 21, 2007; B07

In 1988, the people of Burma launched a nonviolent struggle for democracyand were met with gunfire. I was working for Sen. Pat Moynihan, about theonly prominent American to notice then what was happening in that isolatedcountry. One day, after the Senate passed its first-ever resolution onBurma, a photo arrived in our office showing a column of Burmese marchingwith a banner reading: "Thank you Senator Moynihan." We were proud butprofoundly sad. We knew that our meager words could not keep those bravepeople from being killed or their movement from being crushed.

Today, Burma's military dictators have again met demands for human rights,this time from Buddhist monks, with force. Some believe that another BurmeseSpring has been extinguished, and that we can do little to help. I disagree.The most recent peaceful uprising reflects fundamental changes within Burmaand the wider world. Its implications won't be felt for some time but can beguided by the right international response.

We should have no illusions about what is going on in Burma. Soldiers arehunting down leaders of the protest movement and torturing them. ReveredBuddhist monasteries are being occupied; the monks are being defrocked,beaten and sometimes killed. Government newspapers demand unity against"neo-colonialist stooges" and "killers in the airwaves" -- the Western radiostations that Burmese depend on for news. People are afraid.

But the government also has reason to worry. By attacking monasteries, ithas created a problem it cannot solve: These sacred spaces cannot be shutforever (any more than Poland's communist government could have closed itsCatholic churches); when they reopen, dissent will reemerge. Through theInternet, Burma's dissidents are more connected to each other and the worldthan ever before. The leadership is more disconnected from its people, andfrom reality, holed up in a bizarre new capital in the jungle.

Meanwhile, Burma's neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nationsno longer stand by the generals; they have expressed "revulsion" over theviolence. The U.N. Security Council, where China vetoed a resolution onBurma nine months ago, has demanded, with China's consent, that Burmarelease political prisoners. It has sent an envoy to mediate the onlysolution that appears realistic -- a negotiated political transition inwhich the military saves some of its status and face.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/20/AR2007102001325.html?hpid=topnews

State Department Struggles To Oversee Private Army

The State Department Turned to Contractors Such as Blackwater Amid a Fight
With the Pentagon Over Personal Security in Iraq

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2007; A01

Last Christmas Day in Baghdad, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad received afurious phone call from Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. AnAmerican -- drunk, armed, wandering through the Green Zone after a party --had shot and killed one of his personal bodyguards the night before, Mahdisaid. He wanted to see Khalilzad right away.

At the vice president's home, Khalilzad found the slain guard's familyassembled. Mahdi demanded the names of the American and his employer. And hewanted the man turned over to the Iraqi government.

After consulting with the embassy's legal officer, Khalilzad identified theshooter as Andrew J. Moonen, an employee of Blackwater USA, the company thatprovides security for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad. But he would not deliverMoonen himself. Within 36 hours of the shooting, Blackwater and the embassyhad shipped him out of the country.

"As you can imagine," the embassy's Diplomatic Security office said in ane-mail to its Washington headquarters the day of Moonen's departure, "thishas serious implications."

But as with previous killings by contractors, the case was handled withapologies and a payoff. Blackwater fired Moonen and fined him $14,697 -- thetotal of his back pay, a scheduled bonus and the cost of his plane tickethome, according to Blackwater documents. The amount nearly equaled the$15,000 the company agreed to give the Iraqi guard's family.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/20/AR2007102000533.html?hpid=sec-nation

The Wrong Way to Save Right Whales?

Plan to Slow Ship Speeds in East Coast Waters Stalls as Agencies Fight OverOne of World's Most Endangered Mammals

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2007; A03

Sixteen months ago, a federal agency proposed slowing ships in certain EastCoast waters to 10 knots or less during parts of the year to save the NorthAtlantic right whale, one of the world's most endangered marine mammals,from extinction.

Nine months later, officials at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the situation was so dire that the loss of onemore pregnant female might be the death knell for the species, whosesurviving population numbers fewer than 400.

Today, however, the rule remains the subject of intense debate among seniorWhite House officials, and the toll keeps rising: Since NOAA published theproposed rule, researchers have found three of the whales dead from shipstrikes, and another two suffering from propeller wounds.

The question of how best to protect right whales -- which got their name asthe "right whale" to kill in the heyday of whaling because they floatedafter being harpooned -- has proved vexing to regulators, since attempts toprotect them have economic consequences for powerful politicalconstituencies, including international shipping interests and Mainelobstermen.

Equally important, administration officials have yet to be convinced thatslowing ships as they cross paths with the migrating whales is an effectiveway to protect the imperiled species.

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Sarasota Herald Tribune

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20071021/NEWS/710210826/1017/NEWS0501

Thompson will try to get back on track at tonight's presidential debate in Orlando

By JEREMY WALLACE
jeremy.wallace@heraldtribune.com

ORLANDO -- Coming off a flat performance in his first televised debateearlier this month, former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson has the most to provewhen the Republican candidates for president square off again tonight in anationally televised debate.

Thompson, beset by a series of early miscues and questions about whether hehas the energy to mount a serious campaign, will try to re-establish hisimage in the first televised debate in Florida featuring all the majorcandidates.

"He's got the pressure on him," Darryl Paulson, a University of SouthFlorida political science professor, said of Thompson. "He can't afford tomake any more mistakes. He has to right the ship."

Questions about whether Thompson can become a serious candidate were one ofthe hottest topics Saturday among hundreds of Republicans gathered for astatewide rally here.

Many Republicans gave the actor a pass in the first debate, chalking up hisuncomfortable pauses and lack of command on some issues to first-timejitters. But this time around, Florida Republicans say Thompson needs tojustify the hype his supporters built up before he jumped into the race.

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The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/20/AR2007102000526.html?hpid=sec-health

Democrats Press Children's Health Plan

By KEVIN FREKING
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 20, 2007; 3:41 PM

WASHINGTON -- Democrats invited the head of the March of Dimes to use theparty's Saturday radio address to express her organization's support oflegislation that would expand the children's health program to 10 millionpeople.

Dr. Jennifer Howse said health insurance is the single most important factorin determining whether a child gets needed health care. The March of Dimesis dedicated to improving the health of babies by preventing birth defects,premature birth and infant mortality.

"Every child needs preventive care," Howse said. "It helps them becomehealthy, productive adults."

Howse's address marks the fifth consecutive week in which the Democrats'radio address focused on the State Children's Health Insurance Program. OnThursday, the House failed to override President Bush's veto of a bill thatwould increase spending on the program to $60 billion over five years,double what Bush has proposed.

SCHIP provides government-subsidized health insurance to low-incomefamilies. The vast majority of the 6.6 million participants are children.

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The Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/278961.html

Clinton leads in Iowa, making her the target

By STEVEN THOMMA
Posted on Sun, Oct. 21, 2007

About 10 weeks before Iowans cast their influential votes for presidentialnominees, Hillary Clinton is about to become a piñata.

She has the edge among top candidates for the Democratic presidentialnomination in the state, polls show. But her lead in Iowa is smaller than itis anywhere else in the country. And her chief rivals, Sen. Barack Obama,D-Ill., and former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., probably have to stop herthere if they're going to stop her anywhere.

''At this stage, she looks pretty good. But it puts a big target on herback,'' said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University.``Time is getting short. The other guys have got to shake up the race.''

They already are.

ATTACKING VOTE

Both Edwards and Obama teed off on the New York senator's recent voteencouraging President Bush to declare Iran's Islamic Revolutionary GuardCorps a terrorist foreign organization, calling the Senate's 76-22 approvalof the resolution a ''blank check'' for war like the one that preceded thewar in Iraq. They hope to energize the strong antiwar vote among IowaDemocrats and turn it against Clinton.

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The Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5230499.html

Democrats falling short on energy goals
Next few weeks will test whether they can deliver a promised bill

By FRANK DAVIES
San Jose Mercury News
Oct. 20, 2007, 11:24PM

WASHINGTON - Democratic leaders in Congress who confidently pledgedfar-reaching action this year on energy independence and climate changerepeat the phrase "new direction" like a mantra.

But so far, the record of this Congress could be summarized by atext-message acronym: BAU, "business as usual."

The next few weeks will test whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaderscan deliver a new energy bill that raises fuel-efficiency standards forcars, requires utilities to generate more electricity from renewable sourcesand mandates greater efficiency in buildings and appliances.

Pelosi also wants to shift more tax credits and incentives to solar, windand other alternative sources.

Advocates have been frustrated by the slow pace of progress on globalwarming. They hope that a bipartisan bill from Sens. John Warner, R-Va., andJoe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, will jump-start an effort to set acap on carbon emissions and allow producers to trade emissions credits.

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The Detroit News

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071021/OPINION03/710210305/1031

Don't underestimate Hillary Clinton's strength as a woman

Eugene Robinson
Sunday, October 21, 2007

A friend of mine in New York -- a high-powered professional woman -- told methe other day that she thought the country had moved beyond the point wherewomen should want to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she would be thefirst woman president. "Just vote for the best person," she said, with whatsounds like impeccable logic.

But Clinton, according to all the polls, is winning overwhelming supportfrom women voters. And the reason, I think, is that there's a flaw in myfriend's logic: Except in some sort of arcane higher-dimensional geometrycomprehensible only to mathematicians, you can't get beyond a point thatyou've never actually reached.

The fact is that we've never had a female president. And for many womenacross the country -- especially those of the boomer generation who haveseen the role of women in American society change so dramatically --Clinton's election would be a historic milestone and a source of greatpride.

That's certainly not the only reason Clinton leads the national polls forthe Democratic nomination. She started with universal name-recognition andhas proceeded to run a smart, largely mistake-free campaign. She issurrounded by the aura of her husband's eight-year administration, and whilethat may be a mixed blessing if she gets to the general election, it's ahuge asset among the Democratic faithful.

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The Houston Chronicle

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5230490.html

It's better late than never for Bush insiders to tell all

By HELEN THOMAS
Oct. 20, 2007, 4:25PM

President Bush has good reason to worry about his legacy.

Take, for example, the blistering assessment that his administration reapedearlier this month from retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commandedU.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the 2003 U.S. invasion.

In a speech to journalists, Sanchez accused the Bush administration of goingto war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is"living a nightmare, with no end in sight."

So are the Iraqi people, I might add.

But that kind of statement has special import when it comes from a general,who was the top commander in Iraq. This is especially pertinent because thisadministration has put so much stock in the U.S. military leadership inIraq - even wanting us to believe that the military controls major wardecisions.

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The Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/277442.html

English language not endangered

By LEONARD PITTS
Posted on Sun, Oct. 21, 2007

La gente dice que Earl Stewart lo hizo sólo por el poderoso dólar.
(People say Earl Stewart did it only for the almighty dollar.)

El dice que tienen razón.

(He says they're right.)

What's that? The subtitles are distracting? Fine, I'll stop.

But the point here is, all Stewart wanted to do was sell Toyotas. It'ssomething he's been doing for 33 years as the proprietor of Earl StewartToyota in Palm Beach County. Then he hit upon an idea he thought mightexpand his market: Spanish-language commercials with English subtitles. Thespots run on English-language television and, though he speaks no Spanish,Stewart stars in them himself.

The subtitles, he says, were an afterthought. 'I said, `You know, I'm goingto be talking to a lot of people that don't speak Spanish so, as a courtesyor to explain what I'm doing, maybe I should use English subtitles.' It wasreally an effort on my part, albeit a failure, to be nice to the monolingualfolks.''

The ''monolingual folks'' were not feeling the love -- putting it mildly.Stewart says the commercial brought him a ''flood'' of angry, often profanee-mails and phone calls, nine out of every 10 sharply critical of hiscommercial. As described by Stewart, the complaints tended to be longer onemotion than on logic.

more . . . . .


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