Today’s Papers Fired UpBy Daniel Politi
Posted Friday, Jan. 4, 2008, at 6:13 A.M. E.T. Everybody leads with the Iowa caucuses, where Sen. Barack Obama and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won decisive victories. It’s a story of big winners and big losers as everyone agrees that the results represent serious setbacks for both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney. Sen. John Edwards had long made a big point of winning Iowa, and he managed to get second place by receiving 0.3 percent more than the former first lady. Here are the (pretty much final) numbers: Obama 38 percent, Edwards 30 percent, Clinton 29 percent; Huckabee 34 percent, Romney 25 percent, and Fred Thompson virtually tied with Sen. John McCain at 13 percent, though Thompson did get a few more votes. The Democratic field got a bit smaller last night as Sen. Joseph Biden and Sen. Christopher Dodd dropped out of the race after barely registering in the night’s results. There was record turnout on both sides, but the numbers for the Democrats are particularly startling as they had 239,000 people participating in the caucuses, compared with 124,000 four years ago. The big theme of the night is how the results illustrate that voters want change and are not afraid to turn away from the establishment candidates. As USA Today handily summarizes, Obama and Huckabee “triumphed over contenders with stronger establishment backing and more extensive institutional support.” But there’s no rest for the weary, and the candidates had little time to analyze the results before boarding planes to New Hampshire to campaign before Tuesday’s primary, which has taken on a new level of importance, particularly for both Clinton and Romney. The massive turnout by Democrats “served as another warning to Republicans about the problems they face this November in swing states” like Iowa, says the New York Times. According to polls, half of the Democrats were looking for change, and 57 percent said they were attending a caucus for the first time, which were two key factors in propelling Obama to victory. On the Republican side, Huckabee was definitely helped by the fact that 60 percent of caucus-goers described themselves as evangelicals. In a Page One analysis, the Washington Post says that with his overwhelming victory, “Obama shook conventional wisdom to its political core” and the Los Angeles Times echoes the same sentiments by noting that he “overturned some of the fundamental assumptions of modern-day American politics.” Not only did he show that an African-American candidate can win in an overwhelmingly white state, but also that a man could get significant support from women even while running against a strong female politician. Perhaps most importantly though, he’s widely credited for getting supporters to participate in a caucus that was long seen as dominated by veteran political activists. The LAT points out the results “are especially damaging” for Edwards because it will now be difficult for him to portray the race as anything but a contest between Clinton and Obama. Clinton’s advisers haven’t said whether there will be a change in strategy for New Hampshire, but the NYT says a “shift seems likely” because her “multilayered, sometimes contradictory message” that touted both her experience and capacity for change “fell flat in this first contest.” At the same time, it’s important to remember, as the WP points out, the Clinton campaign had always recognized “Iowa was a risk” and would be a tough fight. But it’s difficult to look past the feeling that her two main arguments of experience and electability don’t appear to be resonating with voters as much as Clinton had expected. And, at the very least, her strategy to seem like the inevitable Democratic nominee has been shattered. On the Republican side, things look a bit different. Huckabee’s overwhelming victory is a “devastating blow” (WP) to Romney, mainly because he made no secret that winning the early states was a central part of his strategy. The Wall Street Journal points out Huckabee also broke with conventional wisdom by going with a populist message that “represents a challenge to his historically pro-business party.” But, more than anything, Huckabee’s victory makes it clear that, as the LAT points out, the Republican “nomination remains up for grabs among at least four candidates and may not be resolved” until Tsunami Tuesday next month. According to polls, Huckabee doesn’t really have a chance in New Hampshire (he’s currently battling for a distant third place), which is why everyone points out that the person who might have gained the most from his victory yesterday is McCain. At the same time though, Obama’s victory could end up hurting McCain since they’re both courting some of the same independent voters in New Hampshire. The Post notes that New Hampshire residents “are already being inundated with negative messages” from campaigns and outside groups. These outside groups are likely to take on a more significant role in the campaigns as the primary season heats up and candidates won’t be able to make the kind of personal pleas that were the rule in Iowa. Besides the style of campaigning, also expect a change in the focus of the contest as no one tires of pointing out that New Hampshire is a very different place and the talk will “shift from social and religious issues to taxes and national security,” says the NYT. The NYT‘s David Brooks writes that while he’s lived through nights “that brought a political earthquake,” he’s never been through an event that “brought two” and says both Obama and Huckabee are changing their parties. He describes Obama’s victory as a “huge moment” that brought “political substance” to a “movement that seemed ethereal and idealistic.” Although Huckabee has displayed “serious flaws,” he managed to shift the tone of his party by successfully tapping “into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize.” In other news, the NYT fronts word that the Bush administration is preventing states from expanding eligibility for Medicaid. The administration had never said it would apply the limits of eligibility it imposed on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to Medicaid, but several states are finding out that the administration is also against expanding Medicaid out of fear that families will rely on it instead of buying private insurance. The LAT fronts, and the WP goes inside with, a look at how Nawaz Sharif is trying to change his image to become the main face of the opposition in Pakistan. Although he had recently found himself in the shadow of Benazir Bhutto, many now see him as the only experienced politician that could take on President Pervez Musharraf, even if they are wary because of his not-so-rosy past. Officials in Washington have never been too fond of him because of perceived ties to militants, but U.S. embassy officials are in contact with Sharif and his party, which he sees as a sign of his rising popularity. The NYT fronts the amazing story of a window washer who fell 47 stories into a Manhattan alleyway and somehow survived. Doctors, who described his recovery as “miraculous” and “unprecedented,” said he would likely be able to walk again. “Above 10 stories, most of the time we never see the patients because they usually go to the morgue,” a doctor said. Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
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Thursday, January 03, 2008  | Let’s Just Say, It Was Crowded 
Seth Wenig/Associated Press A crowd of, well, thousands filled Times Square to ring in the new year. January 2, 2008 Let’s Just Say, It Was Crowded How many people rang in the new year at Times Square on Monday night? The simple answer is: One heck of a lot. The complicated answer is: Perhaps only the Police Department knows for sure, and it won’t tell you. “We have stopped providing official counts” of large public gatherings “because no one was ever satisfied with them,” said Paul J. Browne, the department’s deputy commissioner for public information. “Whatever the count was, it was usually never enough for whatever group was involved.” That has not prevented other people, however, from estimating the number of bodies that squeeze into Times Square and its environs every New Year’s Eve. Jeffrey A. Straus, the president of Countdown Entertainment, the company that organizes the ball drop in coordination with the Times Square Alliance, estimated that Monday night’s crowd totaled at least one million people. “I’ve been doing this now for 13 years,” he said. “I’m in the TV truck with our cameras. We can see people from 43rd Street to Central Park on Broadway and Seventh Avenue.” Monday’s crowd was swelled by the mild weather, he said. “People want to be together. That’s what the magic is. People want to be part of that official countdown.” Mr. Straus said that for many years the police shared its estimates with the organizers. The last time the police provided a number was Dec. 31, 2000, he said, when the estimate was also one million people. Other estimates in recent years have been much lower. In most years in the late 1990s, newspaper accounts tended to cite figures of around 500,000. That is fairly consistent with the numbers issued by the Police Department when it still provided crowd estimates. A chart printed in The New York Times in 1993 showed that from 1986 to 1991, police estimates of Times Square attendance on New Year’s Eve ranged from about 300,000 to about 600,000. The one major exception was Dec. 31, 1999, for the countdown to 2000. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was mayor at the time, said that the crowd was “pushing two million.” That prompted an analysis by The Times, which found reason for skepticism. The crowd is penned behind metal barriers on Broadway and Seventh Avenue on the blocks north of 42nd Street, with a lane about 10 feet wide kept clear on the street. That means there is a fair amount of open space. The Times calculated the total surface area on Seventh Avenue and Broadway, including the street and sidewalk, from Central Park South to 34th Street (where many people in 1999 watched the ball drop on large television screens). Using a measurement of two square feet per person, which has long been standard in estimating crowd sizes, the analysis determined that the total capacity of the viewing area that year was approximately 430,000 people. Adding some additional capacity to account for spillover onto side streets, the analysis determined that there was room for about 700,000 people — during what was certainly the most ballyhooed celebration in the history of the Times Square event. This year’s crowd covered less area, however, than that throng. It extended from Central Park South only to 42nd Street, along Broadway and Seventh Avenue, Mr. Browne said, with some additional crowds in Central Park and along the side streets. Mr. Browne said that he did not know how long ago the department stopped releasing its crowd estimates for all sorts of events, from parades to protests, but that it was probably about a decade ago. Paul Wertheimer, the president of Crowd Management Strategies, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm, said that many police agencies across the country became reluctant to reveal crowd-size estimates after the Million Man March in Washington in 1995, which was organized by the Nation of Islam. The National Park Service estimated that the march drew 400,000 people. A furor ensued when the organizers insisted the number was far larger. A year later, the park service said it would no longer make crowd estimates. “What did in fact kind of ruin it, and frightened police agencies or those people that estimated it away, was when it became a political issue,” Mr. Wertheimer said. “The organizers can charge prejudice if they don’t get the numbers that they believe occurred.” But he said police agencies continued to estimate the size of such crowds to help them plan for future events and to evaluate their effectiveness in handling large crowds. The New York Police Department has at least two ways of estimating the size of a large crowd. One is to use aerial photographs taken by a helicopter flying overhead, Mr. Browne said. The police then place a grid over the photograph and count the number of people inside one section of the grid. They can then count the other sections and multiply to come up with an estimate. The second method, used for parades or other events where people are lined up behind metal barriers on streets and sidewalks, relies on a rule of thumb of about 2,500 people per block, Mr. Browne said. That figure is meant to be a total that includes people on both sides of a street, he said. That rule would not seem to apply to the Times Square celebration, however, partly because the barricaded areas were often larger than those for a typical parade. Broadway and Seventh Avenue each run for 17 blocks from 42nd to 59th Streets, for a total of 34 blocks. But multiplying 34 by 2,500, using the parade formula, yields just 85,000 people, clearly a gross underestimate. Mr. Straus, the event organizer, acknowledged that calculating the number of people packed into Times Square on New Year’s Eve can feel a little like guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar. “It’s an art, not a science,” he said. “And at the end of the day, does it really matter? It’s a lot of people.” Al Baker contributed reporting.
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| Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help If anyone can imagine this man as a leader of our country in this critical time where moral leadership is of the utmost importance, please explain how to reconcile this opinion with the facts contained within this story. It closes with the all telling comment, “It was all because of Giuliani,” said Mr. Bisch. “And he got to take the money.“ Michael P. Whelan 
Librado Romero/The New York Times Giuliani Partners in 2004, with Rudolph Giuliani at top center and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, on his right. 
Kyle Green/The Roanoke Times, via Associated Press
John L. Brownlee, a United States attorney in Virginia, obtained plea deals totaling $634.5 million from Purdue and its executives in May.
December 28, 2007 The Long Run Under Attack, Drug Maker Turned to Giuliani for Help In western Virginia, far from the limelight, United States Attorney John L. Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani. For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse. Mr. Giuliani, celebrated for his stewardship of New York City after 9/11, soon told the prosecutors they were wrong. In 2002, the drug maker, Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., hired Mr. Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him. So it was no small success when, after the call, Mr. Brownlee did what many people might have done when confronted with such celebrity: He went out and bought a copy of Mr. Giuliani’s book, “Leadership.” “I wanted to be prepared for my meetings with him,” Mr. Brownlee said in a recent interview. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Giuliani’s consulting business has received increasing scrutiny, at times forcing him to defend his business as he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination. But his work for Purdue, the company’s first and longest-running client, provides a window into how he used his standing as an eminent lawyer, a Republican insider and a national celebrity to aid a controversial client and build a business fortune. A former top federal prosecutor, Mr. Giuliani participated in two meetings between Purdue officials and the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency investigating the company. Giuliani Partners took on the job of monitoring security improvements at company facilities making OxyContin, an issue of concern to the D.E.A. As a celebrity, Mr. Giuliani helped the company win several public relations battles, playing a role in an effort by Purdue to persuade an influential Pennsylvania congressman, Curt Weldon, not to blame it for OxyContin abuse. Despite these efforts, Purdue suffered a crushing defeat in May at the hands of Mr. Brownlee when the company and three top executives pleaded guilty to criminal charges. Mr. Giuliani, who declined to discuss his work for Purdue for this article, has refused to talk in detail about his firm’s clients. He has said that he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of the firm, which still represents Purdue. Giuliani Partners would not say how much Purdue had paid it, but one consultant to the drug maker estimated that Mr. Giuliani’s firm had, in some years, earned several million dollars from the account. “Everything I did with Giuliani Partners has been totally legal, totally ethical,” Mr. Giuliani recently told The Associated Press. “There’s nothing for me to explain about it. We’ve acted honorably, decently.” In the OxyContin case, Mr. Giuliani’s supporters suggest that as a cancer survivor himself, he was driven by a noble goal: to keep the company’s proven pain reliever available to the widest circle of sufferers. “I understand the pain and distress that accompanies illness,” Mr. Giuliani said at the time. “I know that proper medications are necessary for people to treat their sickness and improve their quality of life.” To drive OxyContin’s sales, Purdue, beginning in 1996, set in motion what D.E.A. officials described as perhaps the most aggressive promotional campaign for a high-powered narcotic ever undertaken. It promoted the drug not only to pain specialists, but to family doctors with little experience in treating serious pain or recognizing drug abuse. As a result of the expanded access, critics charged, OxyContin wound up in the high schools and street corners of rural America where curious teenagers crushed the pill, defeating the time-release formula, and ended up addicts, or in some cases, dead. Dennis Lee, the Virginia state prosecutor for Tazewell County, an area hard hit by OxyContin abuse, said he was stunned several years ago to learn that Mr. Giuliani was working for Purdue. He had a favorable impression of Mr. Giuliani, he said, and a poor opinion of the company, which he said had played down and dissembled about its drug’s problem. “I was shocked,” Mr. Lee said, “that he would basically become a mouthpiece for Purdue.” Denials and Lobbying Giuliani Partners served clients with a range of needs. The firm helped large accounting firms fight computer hackers and promoted Nextel’s efforts to expand its access to public airwaves. But some of the 55-person firm’s clients, like Purdue Pharma, were facing more difficult legal and public relations problems. There were, for instance, the backers of a planned natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound who were facing stiff environmental opposition. Another client was a former cocaine smuggler hoping to win federal contracts for a computer system to track down terrorists. On the business of these clients and others, Giuliani Partners carved out a lucrative niche in corporate consulting, crisis management and security. In the process, Mr. Giuliani, a Brooklyn native whose legal career had largely been spent in government, became a corporate trouble-shooter with homes in the Hamptons and on the Upper East Side. According to financial disclosure forms filed in May, his net worth was more than $30 million. The crisis that brought Purdue to Mr. Giuliani in 2002 involved OxyContin, a time-released form of the narcotic oxycodone, which had turned into a blockbuster product with annual sales of more than $1 billion. But along the way, the pain medication had also become a popular drug for abuse. Among the company’s critics were officials at the Drug Enforcement Administration who said OxyContin had been a factor in hundreds of overdose deaths. Some D.E.A. officials and others also charged that Purdue had hyped the drug’s resistance to abuse and then failed to act swiftly when its misuse became apparent. Purdue Pharma, which is owned by the Sacklers, a New York-area family who are known as museum benefactors, denied it had done anything wrong. But facing a growing number of investigations and lawsuits, it spent millions on public relations experts, lobbyists and top-tier law firms. One piece, however, was missing: a highly credible and well-connected political figure to serve as its point man. Purdue Pharma executives saw Mr. Giuliani as that person, said a former company spokesman. “He was just on the cover of Time Magazine, Man of the Year,” that former official, Robin Hogen, said. “Everyone was talking about his extraordinary leadership in 9/11.” Giuliani Partners became involved in every aspect of the company’s problems, from the ballooning investigation by Mr. Brownlee to repairing its battered image. Mr. Giuliani personally took on some tasks, but a half-dozen members of his firm, including Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, were also involved. Mr. Giuliani’s most important liaison to the company was Daniel S. Connolly, who had been a top lawyer in his administration. He spent so much time at Purdue that he was issued a security pass. “His judgment was always sought on almost any topic,” said Mr. Hogen, who now works for a public relations agency in San Francisco. Mr. Connolly regularly attended Monday morning crisis management sessions to develop programs that would shift the public spotlight away from OxyContin. The issue, the company said, was not its conduct but the larger question of prescription drug abuse. To help draw attention to that issue, Mr. Giuliani became the public face of a program called Rx Action Alliance, a consortium of drug makers, physicians and law enforcement authorities working to curtail such abuse. “He was America’s mayor,” Mr. Hogen said of Mr. Giuliani’s role as a catalyst for the company’s efforts. “People were drawn to him.” One person attracted by Mr. Giuliani’s star power was Mr. Weldon, who was upset because young people in his Pennsylvania district were abusing OxyContin. Mr. Weldon, who lost his seat in 2006, said in a recent interview that he had told the company he planned to publicly speak out against it. “This is really kind of outrageous,” Mr. Weldon recalled telling a Purdue representative. “You have got to do something more than say you are concerned about it.” At Mr. Weldon’s urging, the company agreed to finance a program aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse. It also sent Mr. Giuliani to an inaugural press conference for the program, held at a high school in Mr. Weldon’s district. With Mr. Giuliani at his side, Mr. Weldon opted not to criticize the company. “I am proud to be in Pennsylvania today standing with Curt Weldon — a true leader,” Mr. Giuliani said at the event. “I applaud the efforts of Congressman Weldon and of Purdue Pharma in taking this battle in the right direction.” Credit for Damage Control Asa Hutchinson, the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2002, hardly needed an introduction to Mr. Giuliani. So it was perhaps not surprising that Purdue chose Mr. Giuliani as the person to meet with Mr. Hutchinson at a time when the drug maker was under intense scrutiny by the D.E.A. “You need to have somebody who has clout to get in the door to legitimately make your presentation,” said Jay P. McCloskey, a former United States attorney in Maine who until recently worked for Purdue as a consultant. By 2002, Mr. Giuliani was already helping to raise money for a D.E.A. museum, and his firm was part of a $1 million Justice Department consulting contract to advise it on reorganizing its major drug investigations. The D.E.A. was not only critical of how OxyContin had been marketed, its inspectors had found widespread security and record-keeping problems at the company’s manufacturing plants. Several top D.E.A. staffers were recommending that the agency impose severe sanctions against the drug maker, including possible restrictions on how much OxyContin it could make. At two meetings, the first at Giuliani Partners in early 2002, Mr. Giuliani and Purdue’s executives argued that they were already taking steps to eliminate any problems. Mr. Kerik had been sent to Purdue’s manufacturing plants to revamp internal security, they assured Mr. Hutchinson. The federal investigators, they argued, should back down and give them a chance to prove they could handle the problem on their own. After the meetings, Mr. Hutchinson, who generally did not get involved in individual investigations, asked D.E.A. officials several times to brief him on the inquiry, Laura Nagel, the official in charge of it, has said in previous interviews. She declined to comment for this article. D.E.A. officials say Mr. Giuliani ultimately did not affect the inquiry’s course. But Purdue Pharma did succeed in favorably resolving the matter. In 2004, it paid a $2 million fine to settle the D.E.A. record-keeping charges without admitting any wrongdoing. The sum was far smaller than the amount first recommended by Ms. Nagel, which one former D.E.A. official said was $20 million. By the time of the 2004 settlement, it appeared that Purdue, with Mr. Giuliani’s help, had averted any significant damage. As the tide was turning, the drug maker’s top lawyer, Howard R. Udell, gave credit to Mr. Giuliani. “We believe that government officials are more comfortable knowing that Giuliani is advising Purdue Pharma,” Mr. Udell said in a promotional brochure put out by Giuliani Partners. “It is clear to us, and we hope it is clear to the government, that Giuliani would not take an assignment with a company that he felt was acting in an improper way.” Parents Not Persuaded The limits of stature, though, were evident in Mr. Giuliani’s dealings with Mr. Brownlee, the federal prosecutor from Virginia, whose case against Purdue had been viewed by the company more as a nuisance than a threat. It is easy to see how lawyers for Purdue might have underestimated the prosecutor. He ran a small office with 24 lawyers to cover 52 far-flung counties. But two of those lawyers, working out of a satellite office in the tiny town of Abingdon, Va., near the Tennessee border, had been investigating Purdue since 2002. They had issued some 600 separate subpoenas and collected millions of company documents. The case stretched the office’s resources so thin that state prosecutors had to be deputized to handle other federal cases. By comparison, Purdue’s defense team comprised all-stars, including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Connolly and Mary Jo White, a former United States attorney in New York. Mr. Giuliani had been advising Purdue about how to respond to Mr. Brownlee’s inquiry since its start in 2002, including reviewing documents the company had released in response to his subpoenas. And he shared the defense team’s view that Mr. Brownlee did not have any evidence to link the company to crimes, several of those lawyers said. Early last year, however, Mr. Brownlee told Purdue that he was prepared to indict it and three top executives, including Mr. Udell, the lawyer. The company then handed Mr. Giuliani his most crucial assignment, to talk Mr. Brownlee down. His selection was not by chance, company representatives said. They figured Mr. Brownlee, a younger federal prosecutor, would look up to Mr. Giuliani, who became a legend as a United States attorney in New York. Between June and October 2006, Mr. Giuliani met or spoke with the prosecutor on six occasions. During those conversations, Mr. Giuliani was cordial but pointed in arguing against what he felt were flaws in the case. Mr. Brownlee would not change course, though, even when the Purdue legal team appealed, unsuccessfully, at the 11th hour to his superiors at the Justice Department in Washington. In October 2006, Mr. Brownlee told Mr. Giuliani and Purdue that he expected to ask for a grand jury indictment by the end of the month. Plea discussions ensued and Mr. Brownlee ultimately agreed that the three executives would not have to do jail time. By this time, Mr. Giuliani was actively planning his presidential bid, as well as tending to other clients. On the day the legal team completed the plea deals with Mr. Brownlee, Mr. Giuliani was in Germany, giving a talk to business leaders. He had a conference call with prosecutors for about a minute, but there really was not much left to discuss, except the weather. “He said that it was raining,” Mr. Brownlee recalled. In May, Purdue and its executives, after spending tens of millions of dollars to repair the company’s image, agreed to plea deals to avoid a trial. Together, they paid $634.5 million in fines and payments. After years of denial and a high-profile public relations campaign, the company was forced to admit that it had misled doctors and patients. But to the parents of young people who had died getting high on OxyContin, the absence of jail time was evidence of Mr. Giuliani’s influence. They voiced that view inside and outside the packed courtroom in Abingdon where the men were sentenced in July. Mr. Giuliani was 360 miles away at the time, campaigning in Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he met with local firefighters and talked about 9/11. But his role in the case had been so substantial and sustained, the presiding judge felt compelled to address the parents’ concerns. “It has been implied that because Mr. Giuliani is a prominent national politician, Purdue may have received a favorable deal from the government solely because of politics,” said the judge, James P. Jones of United States District Court. “I completely reject this claim.” Even today, some of those parents are not persuaded. Ed Bisch, whose son died of an OxyContin overdose, said that he believed that Purdue got a free pass for years thanks to Mr. Giuliani. “It was all because of Giuliani,” said Mr. Bisch. “And he got to take the money.”
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| Giuliani Hits a Rocky Stretch as Voting Approaches 
Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times Rudolph W. Giuliani in Hampstead, N.H., Sunday. Early plans called for largely bypassing the state, as well as Iowa. But then came moves to compete in both, especially New Hampshire. December 24, 2007 Giuliani Hits a Rocky Stretch as Voting Approaches HAMPTON, N.H. — Rudolph W. Giuliani has entered a turbulent period in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, marked by what his aides acknowledge are missteps, sharp shifts in strategy and evidence that reports about his personal life have hurt his national standing. A $3 million investment in radio and television advertising in New Hampshire, a belated effort to become competitive in this state, is now viewed by the campaign as a largely wasted expenditure. A Boston Globe poll published Sunday found that support for Mr. Giuliani had dropped in New Hampshire over the past month, even before any fallout from the decision on Wednesday by an ailing Mr. Giuliani to have his campaign plane turn around and take him back to St. Louis, where he spent the night in the hospital. Some of Mr. Giuliani’s advisers are frustrated at the extent to which his decision not to compete aggressively in Iowa has pushed him to the side of the stage at a moment when the political world’s attention is focused on the caucuses there that will kick off the election season in less than two weeks. Mr. Giuliani’s initial campaign theme, built around his record as mayor of New York, has given way to a new one: “Tested. Ready. Now.” But its introduction, in a speech last Saturday in Tampa, drew little attention on a day when most of the other Republican and Democratic presidential candidates were grabbing the spotlight in Iowa and New Hampshire. Compounding his problems, Mr. Giuliani drew the kind of attention last week that a candidate with declining national poll numbers and a history of treatment for prostate cancer would just as soon avoid after he abruptly entered the hospital in St. Louis and stayed there overnight. His aides declined to provide details of what had happened to Mr. Giuliani, other than he was complaining of flulike symptoms, or what tests he might have undergone. The situation grew even more muddled when Mr. Giuliani disputed what his campaign had said about his condition, saying that in fact he had been suffering from a severe headache and that his doctor would be able to issue a definitive statement this week after seeing test results. As a result of all this, what might have been a one-day campaign trail story was still reverberating on Sunday. Mr. Giuliani’s decision to maintain a light schedule of public appearances compared with his rivals, particularly Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Senator John McCain of Arizona, has stirred concern among some prospective supporters who fear that he does not appear hungry for the job, a criticism that shadowed him when he ran for senator in New York in 2000. “I hate to say this, but I don’t think Rudy wants it badly enough,” Patrick Ruffini, a blogger, wrote on Townhall.com, a conservative Web site. That sentiment by Mr. Ruffini, a former e-mail director for the Republican National Committee, was featured prominently on the editorial page of The Concord Monitor on Sunday, greeting Mr. Giuliani on a day when he had two campaign events in New Hampshire. Mr. Giuliani is still viewed as a very strong candidate with continued high potential in a very unsettled field. He could be helped by the unusual calendar of nominating contests, with the chance it provides for him to pick up large numbers of delegates on Feb. 5 and recover from any early setbacks. “We have always run a campaign that is based on a long-term strategy of getting the most delegates,” said Mike DuHaime, his campaign manager. Still, the difficulties within Mr. Giuliani’s campaign come as he faces changes in the political landscape that do not appear to be to his benefit. For much of the year, he was helped by his positioning as tough on terrorism and by the perception among many Republicans that he was their best weapon to block Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were she to win the Democratic nomination. But issues like immigration are proving far more decisive among Republicans than terrorism, especially since the violence in Iraq has diminished. Mrs. Clinton is struggling to win her own party’s nomination, which has had the effect of undercutting what had been one of Mr. Giuliani’s biggest selling points. Mr. Giuliani’s closest advisers in this campaign include a number of longtime loyalists who, though seasoned in New York City politics, have not run a national campaign before. One of the key questions from the start of his entry into the race has been the extent to which Mr. Giuliani would open up this circle — a small, rarely changing circle of hard-driving New Yorkers, known for tough language and tough tactics — to advisers with national experience. To a certain extent, he has done this. Acting on the recommendation of Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman, Mr. Giuliani named Mr. DuHaime, a former political director of the Republican National Committee, as his campaign director, and Mr. DuHaime brought a number of veterans of the Republican committee with him. But Republicans who have dealt with the campaign say that it is more Anthony Carbonetti, along with other New York insiders, who has Mr. Giuliani’s ear, and who is, with the former mayor, driving many of the major decisions in the campaign. Mr. Carbonetti, who has been a senior adviser to Mr. Giuliani since his early days in New York politics, has continued working at Mr. Giuliani’s consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, and spends much of his time not at Mr. Giuliani’s campaign headquarters in Lower Manhattan, but at the firm’s headquarters in Times Square. The two camps were described by some campaign officials as culturally uneasy with one another. All the senior officials hold Thursday morning conference call strategy sessions, known as “the Chairman’s Call,” because it is led by the Giuliani campaign chairman, Patrick C. Oxford, a long-time fund-raiser. When campaign aides talk about strategy, especially in public settings, they have taken to calling Mr. Giuliani “Ralph” rather than “Rudy,” according to associates of Mr. Giuliani. One participant in the calls, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing internal campaign strategy, said the advisers often spent hours talking about subjects like the logistics of campaign events — where Mr. Giuliani would stand, what the backdrop would be — rather than a long-term message that goes beyond the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or Mr. Giuliani’s record as mayor of New York. Mr. Giuliani and his team are making a tremendous gamble: that he can make only token efforts in Iowa, New Hampshire and, probably, South Carolina, but still go on to win in Florida in late January and in many of the big states holding primaries or caucuses on Feb. 5. His campaign has settled on that strategy after veering back and forth about the right approach. At first, his advisers signaled that he would largely bypass Iowa, as well as New Hampshire, where Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, enjoys a home-field advantage. Then he made moves to compete in both those states, especially New Hampshire, where he invested heavily in advertising and went toe-to-toe with Mr. Romney, who has spent close to $8 million on television spots. But now Mr. Giuliani’s advisers say they have decided that their route to victory is to do well in Michigan on Jan. 15 and to win in Florida on Jan. 29. That would give him strength heading into Feb. 5, when 22 states — including New York, New Jersey and California, all of which have large numbers of delegates and relatively moderate Republican voters — hold their contests. “At the end of the day, it’s a numbers game,” Mr. Carbonetti said. What this has meant is that while the rest of the candidates have been in Iowa, where their every move is followed by hundreds of reporters, Mr. Giuliani has been investing much of his time in fund-raising or paying visits to states which have later contests. His campaign has reached a point where his success is increasingly contingent on other candidates’ failing. If either Mr. Romney or Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, wins two or three of the first contests, Mr. Giuliani’s task will be greatly complicated, particularly if party leaders and contributors begin coalescing around someone who appears to be a winner. Indeed, one of the points of division in Mr. Giuliani’s campaign is how to deal with the sudden threat of Mr. Huckabee. Some of them are arguing that a strong showing by Mr. Huckabee in Iowa would help Mr. Giuliani by muddying the field. Others are warning that Mr. Huckabee could eclipse Mr. Giuliani if they do not knock him back now. Mr. Giuliani’s position has changed notably from even a month ago. For much of this year, Republicans had expressed admiration, and some surprise, at the extent to which he appeared to have dealt with concerns about his views on abortion and gay rights, as well as his private life. Mr. Giuliani showed significant leads in most national polls; he routinely drew warm and enthusiastic receptions from audiences more conservative than he. His advisers say that a recent run of negative news reports, focusing on an extramarital affair and his association with Bernard Kerik, the disgraced former police commissioner that Mr. Giuliani recommended as homeland security secretary, is beginning to take a toll. “I am a little disappointed with his personal life,” said Elisabeth Ackerson, speaking about Mr. Giuliani after attending a Town Hall meeting for Mr. Romney on Saturday evening in Londonderry, N.H. She said was trying to decide among Mr. Romney, Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani. The apparent failure of Mr. Giuliani’s advertising campaign in New Hampshire stirred particular concern among some Giuliani advisers. Mr. Carbonetti said the campaign decided to pull back on the television advertising after determining that the sheer glut from other candidates in New Hampshire was making it impossible for Mr. Giuliani’s spots to break though. “The airwaves were saturated,” he said. Ed Goeas, Mr. Giuliani’s pollster, said he thought any gain from the advertising had been offset by news reports about whether Mr. Giuliani’s city administration in New York had properly accounted for his security costs, including during time he was spending with Judith Nathan, then his girlfriend and now his wife. But other Giuliani advisers said they feared that the failure of the advertising to strengthen him in New Hampshire was evidence that Mr. Giuliani’s attempt to run for president based largely on his record as mayor was flawed. Michael Cooper contributed reporting.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
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| Technology Voters’ Guide: John McCain January 3, 2008 Technology Voters’ Guide: John McCain Declan McCullagh, for News.com;Anne Broache, for News.com Iraq, immigration, taxes, and health care probably have been the four most pressing topics of the 2008 presidential campaign. Technology has made nary an appearance. Sure, there have been the YouTube-ified debates, MySpace.com polls, record-setting fund-raising efforts, and the now-obligatory Google office visits. But knowing where the candidates stand on high-tech topics like digital copyright, surveillance, and Internet taxes can be revealing, which is why we’ve put together this 2008 Technology Voters’ Guide. In late November, we sent questionnaires to the top candidates–measured by funds raised and poll standings–from each major party. We asked each the same 10 questions. Other candidates’ responses: Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Paul, Obama. Not all candidates chose to respond: Republicans Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson rebuffed our requests, as did Democrats Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. In all such cases, we made repeated efforts to try to convince them to change their minds. Read on for responses from Sen. John McCain, or check out CNET News.com’s election coverage roundup, featuring other Technology Voters’ Guide candidate reports. Q: Politicians have been talking for years about the need for high-speed Internet access. Should this be accomplished primarily through deregulation and market forces, or should the federal government give out grants or subsidies, or enact new laws?
John McCain: I believe that we must promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher-quality services for consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new technologies. I have been a leading advocate in the Senate for seeking market-based solutions to increasing broadband penetration. We should place the federal government in the role of stimulator, rather than regulator, of broadband services, remove state and local barriers to broadband deployment, and facilitate deployment of broadband services to rural and underserved communities. Congress has considered Net neutrality legislation, but it never became law. Do you still support the legislation that was re-introduced in 2007 (S 215), which gives the FCC the power to punish “discriminatory” conduct by broadband providers?
McCain: In general, I believe that we need to move to a different model for enforcing competition on the Internet. Its focus should be on policing clearly anticompetitive behavior and consumer predation. In such a dynamic and innovative setting, it is not desirable for regulators to be required to anticipate market developments, intervene in the market, and try to micromanage American business and innovation. Telecommunications companies such as AT&T have been accused in court of opening their networks to the government in violation of federal privacy law. Do you support giving them retroactive immunity for any illicit cooperation with intelligence agencies or law enforcement, which was proposed by the Senate Intelligence Committee this fall (S 2248)?
McCain: The struggle against Islamic fundamentalism is the transcendent foreign-policy challenge of our time. I am committed to winning this battle, enhancing the stature of the United States as beacon of global hope, and to preserving the personal, economic, and political freedoms that are the proud legacy of the great sacrifices of our fathers. Every effort in this struggle and other efforts must be done according to American principles and the rule of law. When companies provide private records of Americans to the government without proper legal subpoena, warrants, or other legal orders, their heart may be in the right place, but their actions undermine our respect for the law. I am also a strong supporter of protecting the privacy of Americans. The issues raised by S 2248, and the events and actions by all parties that the preceded it, reach to the core of our principles. They merit careful and deliberate consideration, fact-finding, and exploration of options. That process should be allowed to proceed before drawing conclusions that may prove to be premature. If retroactive immunity passes, it should be done with explicit statements that this is not a blessing, there should be oversight hearings to understand what happened, and Congress should include provisions that ensure that Americans’ private records will not be dealt with like that again. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s section restricting the “circumvention” of copy protection measures is supported by many copyright holders but has been criticized by some technologists as hindering innovation. Would you support changing the DMCA to permit Americans to make a single backup copy of a DVD, Blu-ray Disc DVD, HD DVD, or video game disc they have legally purchased?
McCain: The Internet and digital technology have provided widespread access to enormous quantities of information. This, in turn, made it necessary to update our copyright laws in 1998 to protect the rights of copyright holders to keep pace with the technological advances that characterize the Information Age. As digitization of commerce, education, entertainment, and a host of other online applications proceeds, international copyright agreements have to be maintained and updated while protecting the rights of copyright owners. I believe now, as I did then, that knowledge and ideas are central parts of what make the U.S. economy productive and competitive. It is vital that this intellectual property be protected and defended. However, we must ensure that such protections are never so onerous as to stifle the very innovation they strive to safeguard. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed extensive Real ID requirements restricting which state ID cards can be accepted at federal buildings and airports. Do you support those regulations as written, would you want to repeal Real ID, or would you prefer something in between? McCain: The 9/11 Commission recommended that the federal government set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses. Consistent with these recommendations, the Real ID act established federal guidelines to prevent fraud in the issuance and acquisition of identity documents. I support full implementation of Real ID but understand that states need to be given enough time and funding to implement the requirements. The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the proposed merger of Google and DoubleClick. Some members of Congress have raised privacy concerns, while others have said the deal should proceed. What are your views? (Editors’ note: We posed this question before the FTC gave the merger unconditional approval on December 20.)
McCain: It is premature to draw conclusions on this specific transaction, prior to the conclusion of the FTC review. I am, however, a vocal advocate of antitrust laws and ensuring that antitrust agencies have the resources they need to protect the competitiveness of the American economy. Although I support the oversight capacity of the U.S. Congress, I believe that oversight should not be confused with the micromanagement of individual regulatory decisions and processes. I have encouraged the FTC to investigate this and other important mergers carefully to ensure the interests of competitiveness. Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about sex offenders using social-networking sites. What, if any, new federal laws are needed in this area?
McCain: The Internet has a dark side–it can expose children to obscene, graphic, and violent content. Government must develop solutions that balance civil liberties against the compelling interest to protect the innocence of our children. While the first line of defense will always involve responsible parents, when it comes to protecting children, government must not shrink from its responsibilities. One thing that must be absolutely clear is that child pornographers and those who would prey on children will find no quarter in the darker recesses of the Internet. Government must implement and aggressively enforce laws to hunt down and jail peddlers of child pornography and sexual predators who stalk children on the Net. This is why I have long fought to keep the Internet safe for our children…(and) recently sponsored the Safe Act of 2007, designed to clarify and enhance the current system for electronic-service providers to report online child pornography, and make the failure to report child pornography a federal crime. I have also aggressively sought to curtail the online activities of sex offenders by sponsoring legislation to ensure that such criminals register additional information such as e-mail addresses on sex offender registries. The Bush administration has supported legally requiring Internet service providers, and perhaps search engines and social-networking Web sites as well, to keep logs on who their users are and what they do. Do you support federal legislation, such as HR 837, to mandate data retention?
McCain: I continue to study the legislation in particular and the issue in general. It is apparent that some well-informed analysts in the ISP, tech, and privacy communities are skeptical of the feasibility and value of this proposal. At the same time, other interested parties, such as the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, support the approach taken in the legislation. I understand both perspectives, believe that further study and alternative proposals are worth exploring, and look forward to finding the best path forward for all those involved. Do you support enacting federal laws providing for any or all of the following: a) a permanent research-and-development tax credit, b) a permanent moratorium on Internet access taxes, and c) an increase in the current limits on H-1B visas?
McCain: We stand on the threshold of a new era: the innovation age. New information and communications technologies are the leading edge of technology innovations that will permeate every aspect of our society, and I am committed to federal policies that ensure America’s competitive edge in technology and innovation. Maintaining our tech edge requires robust basic research and sustained development efforts. I will support innovation by funding basic research, and reforming and making permanent the R&D tax credit. My leadership first kept the Internet tax-free, I recently sponsored legislation that extended that tax ban for seven years, and I seek to permanently ban taxing access to this source of innovation and growth. I continue to be a strong supporter of H-1B expansion, but mere expansion is not enough. Reforms should eliminate the artificial limits and allow the Department of Labor to set a level of visas appropriate for market conditions. We have to know: what’s your favorite gadget?
McCain: My slim, stylish gold Razr phone and I are inseparable.
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| Obama And Huckabee win in Iowa 
Todd Heisler/The New York Times Supporters of Mike Huckabee at a caucus event in Des Moines. January 3, 2008 Obama and Huckabee Win in Iowa Vote Senator Barack Obama won the Iowa Democratic caucuses tonight in a stunning show of strength by a young African-American candidate who was virtually unknown to America three years ago. He defeated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, and former Senator John Edwards, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004 by a substantial margin. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, the folksy former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher, defeated the vastly better funded and organized Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, riding a wave of support by evangelical Christians who said they were drawn to Mr. Huckabee because they believed he shared their values. The Iowa caucuses drew intense public interest and record turnout on the Democratic side, which featured three compelling candidates waging a fierce campaign that turned on the question of change versus experience. Democratic caucusgoers strongly endorsed Mr. Obama’s vow to change the nature of politics in Washington, decisively preferring his case to Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on her experience in public life as a senator and the spouse of a president and a governor. Mr. Romney conceded early in the evening after falling more than 10 percentage points behind Mr. Huckabee. Mr. Romney, who outspent Mr. Huckabee by more than four to one, conceded in an interview on Fox News. “Congratulations on the first round to Mike,” he said. But he described Iowa as the first inning of a “50-inning ballgame” and vowed to stay in it until the end. Mr. Romney sought to frame his defeat as something of a comeback, saying he had trailed Mr. Huckabee by more than 20 points a few weeks ago. “I’ve been pleased that I’ve been able to make up ground, and I intend to keep making up ground, not just here but across the country,” he said. The crowd at Huckabee headquarters was ebullient as television news programs called the race. One man shouted “serves you right for the negative ads” as Mr. Romney conceded in an interview on Fox News, and applause went up again when newscasters talked about Mr. Huckabee’s success turning out his evangelical base. Mr. Huckabee is expected to board a chartered jet for New Hamphire at 11:30 this evening — something that is almost an extravagance for his bare-bones campaign. In a caucus at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Des Moines, a record 454 Democrats appeared. The enthusiastic crowd heavily favored Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Jon Muller, 42, the chief financial officer of an education nonprofit group, was one of the Obama backers. “One of the charges against Iowa is that we don’t really represent the rest of the country,” he said, alluding to the fact that blacks form less than three percent of the caucus participants. “Here’s a chance to make a statement about the inclusiveness of Iowa.” A sample of early arrivals at the Democratic caucus sites told interviewers that the war in Iraq was the most important issue facing the country, followed closely by the economy and health care. A slim majority of the sample of Democratic caucusgoers said that they were looking for a candidate who could bring about needed change, while only one in five cited experience as the most important factor in deciding whom to support. Those who cited health care as the top issue tended to support Mrs. Clinton, who also attracted strong support from older voters and women. Those who decided whom to support in the last three days tended to back former Mr. Edwards. About a third of Republicans interviewed before they cast their votes cited illegal immigration as the most important issue facing the country, followed by the economy and terrorism. The Republican sample included nearly 60 percent who identified themselves as evangelical Christians, who expressed support for Mr. Huckabee by a two-to-one margin over Mr. Romney. Those who make up their minds in the past three days tended to support Mr. Romney. As the first state to express its presidential preferences, Iowa has gained outsized importance even though relatively small numbers of its citizens turn out for the caucuses, which on the Democratic side, in particular, are conducted under arcane rules that reflect intensity of devotion to a candidate as much as sheer numbers of supporters. Candidates of both parties spent much of the final days of the race trying to minimize expectations. The race on the Democratic side featured three prominent candidates, Senators Obama of Illinois and Clinton and former senator Edwards of North Carolina, each of whom had hopes of winning and fears of coming in third. As the costliest campaign in the three-decade history of the Iowa caucuses headed to an unpredictable finish, thousands of volunteers and campaign aides from across the country descended on neighborhoods and towns to coax voters to caucus gatherings. Politics dominated the radio and television airwaves, with advertisements back to back from morning until night. The most sophisticated presidential campaigns that have ever been waged in Iowa — fully engaged for much of the year — ended in a flurry of old-fashioned get-out-the-vote efforts. The Clinton campaign, for example, has enlisted 5,000 drivers to ferry voters to the caucuses, particularly elderly women, who form a critical well of support. In the end, after a year of political speeches and nearly $35 million in Iowa television advertising, the most important work in the hours before the caucuses was taking place far away from the candidates. Campaigns established telephone hotlines designed to direct voters to their specific precincts. The results in the Democratic caucuses do not reflect the actual percentage of people who expressed a preference for a particular candidate. Rather, they are the percentage of delegates allocated to each of the candidates based on a complex formula; the Democratic Party does not release the actual number of Democrats who caucus for each candidate. The Republican results reflect a direct count of the preferences expressed by those who participated in the Republican caucuses. Mirroring the unusual rush of the nominating calendar — the primary in New Hampshire is a mere five days away — the major candidates planned to pick up as soon as the caucus results were known and flew to New Hampshire to be on the ground for early morning rallies, television appearances and campaign stops. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign plane was scheduled to leave Iowa at midnight. The one exception was Mr. Giuliani, who largely skipped the Iowa caucuses; he spent the day in Florida — the state where he has chosen to make his stand — and was heading to New Hampshire. Reporting was contributed by Julie Bosman in Fort Madison, Cate Doty in Waterloo, Patrick Healy in Cedar Rapids, David D. Kirkpatrick in Fort Dodge, Michael Luo in Bettendorf, and Marc Santora in Derry, N.H.
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| Today’s Papers The Jump OffBy Daniel Politi
Posted Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008, at 6:20 A.M. E.T. The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal‘s world-wide newsbox lead with Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s announcement that the Justice Department has opened a formal criminal investigation into the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes. Mukasey said that after a preliminary inquiry that began Dec. 8, “there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter.” The attorney general didn’t clarify what evidence might have been discovered or what crimes could be under investigation, but everyone agrees the main focus is likely to be obstruction of justice. USA Today leads with news that the price of oil reached $100 a barrel yesterday for the first time. It didn’t stay there for long and ended up closing at $99.62. The NYT points out that the $100 mark apparently came courtesy of a “lone trader” who appeared to be “looking for vanity bragging rights.” Regardless, the price still increased $3.64 and USAT says it won’t be long before it reaches consumers, particularly since experts point out that gasoline prices usually rise in the spring. Mukasey appointed John Durham, the No. 2 federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to lead the investigation. Both the LAT and NYT say that appointing someone from outside Washington was an “unusual move,” but everyone points out that it was a clear attempt to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. In fact, the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, where the CIA’s headquarters is located, has recused itself from the case. The CIA’s inspector general also recused himself because he predicted that he would be called as a witness. No one has anything bad to say about Durham, a veteran prosecutor whom everyone describes as tough and relentless. He’s probably best known for leading an inquiry into allegations that FBI agents and police officers in Boston had ties with the mob. The Post does point out that Durham is a registered Republican, but the LAT notes he’s largely seen as apolitical. Congressional Democrats criticized Mukasey’s decision not to name an independent special counsel, which means Durham won’t have the same broad powers as Patrick Fitzgerald, who recently investigated the leak of the identity of a CIA operative. Durham will report directly to the deputy attorney general, and the NYT points out the investigation will probably last several months and might not be over until after the end of the Bush presidency. Lawmakers vowed to press on with their own investigations, but the LAT says they will likely slow down as some witnesses could now be more reluctant to testify before Congress. After so much waiting, it’s hard to believe it’s finally here. But it’s true; after the most expensive campaign in the history of the Iowa caucuses, tonight actual voters will state their preferences in a race that is still up in the air. All the papers front the last-minute efforts of the campaigns to convince Iowans that they should brave the subfreezing temperatures to caucus. The NYT points out that the vast difference in the level of excitement between the two parties was evident even on the last day as the Democratic contenders spoke to audiences of hundreds of people, while Republicans addressed much more intimate gatherings. The LAT says the Democratic candidates “shifted to a somewhat quieter tone after days of discord” and largely avoided mentioning their opponents by name. On the Republican side, things were a bit more heated. Mike Huckabee suggested Mitt Romney was trying to buy an Iowa victory, and Romney criticized Huckabee for choosing to fly to California for an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The WP points out that some of the candidates were clearly turning their sights to New Hampshire, as Romney also criticized Sen. John McCain, who is his strongest rival in the Granite State. Sen. Barack Obama also seemed to be looking east as he made a plea to Republicans and independents. The NYT notes at the end of the story that “perhaps the biggest uncertainty” lies with Rep. Ron Paul, as some Republicans are worrying that he might turn out more supporters than anticipated. The WP‘s Dan Balz has a helpful guide to the Iowa caucuses and lists eight questions that tonight’s contest could answer. Back to Huckabee’s TV appearance for a moment. The NYT says the trip to California “added to the mystery behind his campaign strategy.” Also strange was that he didn’t seem to realize that he would have to cross a picket line to chat with Jay Leno. Huckabee appeared to be under the impression that the deal reached between the writers’ union and David Letterman’s production company applied to all the late-night shows. Huckabee “does not appear to be able to distinguish between Leno and Letterman and yet is running for president of the United States,” writes the Post‘s Lisa de Moraes. For her part, Clinton taped her appearance on Letterman’s Late Show so she didn’t have to leave Iowa. The LAT catches late-breaking news out of Kenya, where police clashed with protesters who were gathering to stage the banned “million-man march” that was called by the opposition to protest the results of last week’s election. Police fired tear gas, but early-morning wire stories report that the crowds did not appear to be as big as many feared. The country’s main newspapers ran identical banner headlines: “Save Our Beloved Country.” The NYT and LAT front, while the WP goes inside with, dramatic accounts that detail how a mob set fire to a church on Tuesday and killed up to 50 people. “The church turned into an oven,” says the LAT. The NYT notes that Western diplomats are trying to get the government and opposition leaders to the negotiating table, but neither seems open to compromise. “One of the most developed, promising countries in Africa has turned into a starter kit for disaster,” says the NYT. The WP fronts, and everyone mentions, the latest out of Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf defended the decision to postpone the elections until Feb. 18 and announced that Scotland Yard will help investigate the killing of Benazir Bhutto. The WP points out that it’s unclear how much the Scotland Yard team will be able to contribute since the crime scene was compromised and there was no autopsy. The NYT says that the British investigators will probably concentrate on providing “technical support.” In a strange op-ed piece, the LAT‘s Rosa Brooks tries to make a parallel between Bhutto passing on the leadership of her party to her son and the possibility that Clinton will be elected president. She even quotes Bilawal Bhutto’s Facebook profile: “I am not a politician or a great thinker. I’m merely a student.” The NYT‘s Lede blog revealed last night that the profile was a fake. Brooks isn’t alone as several news outlets also fell for the hoax. Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com.
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Wednesday, January 02, 2008 |
| Oil Hits $100 a Barrel for the First Time January 2, 2008 Oil Hits $100 a Barrel for the First Time Oil prices reached the symbolic level of $100 a barrel for the first time on Wednesday, a long-awaited milestone in an era of rapidly escalating energy demand. Crude oil futures for February delivery hit $100 on the New York Mercantile Exchange shortly after noon New York time, before falling back slightly. Oil prices, which had fallen to a low of $50 a barrel at the beginning of 2007, have quadrupled since 2003. Futures settled at $99.62, up $3.64 on the day. The rise in oil prices in recent years has been driven by an unprecedented surge in demand from the United States, China and other Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Booming economies have led to more consumption of oil-derived products like gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Meanwhile, new oil supplies have struggled to catch up. Oil markets have become increasingly volatile and unpredictable, with large swings in 2007 that analysts attributed partly to financial speculation, not just market fundamentals. Political tensions in the Middle East, where more than two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves are located, have also fueled the rise in prices. Gasoline has lagged the rise in the price of oil. It stands at a nationwide average of $3.05 a gallon for regular grade, according to AAA, the automobile club. That is below the all-time peak in May of $3.23 a gallon, but it is 73 cents higher than at this time a year ago. Some analysts worry that gasoline could hit $4 a gallon by next spring if oil prices remain at high levels. Oil is now within reach of its historic inflation-adjusted high reached in April 1980 in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution when oil prices jumped to the equivalent of $102.81 a barrel in today’s money. Unlike the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s, which were caused by sudden interruptions in oil supplies from the Middle East, the latest surge is fundamentally different. Prices have risen steadily over several years because of a rise in demand for oil and gasoline in both developed and developing countries.
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| Gothic Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha From Wikipedia’s newest articles: |
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| Human Rights Overview ..Human rights refers to “the basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law.” The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” The modern human rights movement originates in World War II, but the concept can be identified in all major religions, cultures and philosophies. Ancient Hindu law (Manu Smriti), Confucianism, the Qu’ran and the Ten Commandments all outline some of the rights now included in the UDHR. The concept of natural law, guaranteeing natural rights despite varying human laws and customs, can be traced back to Ancient Greek philosophers, while Enlightenment philosophers suggest a social contract between the rulers and the ruled. The African concept of ubuntu is a cultural view of what it is to be human. Modern human rights thinking is descended from these many traditions of human values and beliefs. 
Magna Carta or “Great Charter” was the world’s first document containing commitments by a sovereign to his people to respect certain legal rights History of human rights
Human rights in the ancient world An inscription of the Code of Hammurabi. While it is known that the reforms of Urukagina of Lagash, the earliest known legal code (c. 2350 BC), must have addressed the concept of rights to some degree, the actual text of his decrees has not yet been found. The oldest legal codex extant today is the Neo-Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu (ca. 2050 BC). Several other sets of laws were also issued in Mesopotamia, including the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1780 BC), one of the most famous examples of this type of document_ It shows rules, and punishments if those rules are broken, on a variety of matters, including women’s rights, children’s rights and slave rights. The prefaces of these codes invoked the Mesopotamian gods for divine sanction. Societies have often derived the origins of human rights in religious documents. The Vedas, the Bible, the Qur’an and the Analects of Confucius are also among the early written sources that address questions of people’s duties, rights, and responsibilities.
Persian EmpireThe Achaemenid Persian Empire of ancient Iran established unprecedented principles of human rights in the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great. After his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the king issued the Cyrus cylinder, discovered in 1879 and recognized by many today as the first human rights document_ The cylinder declared that citizens of the empire would be allowed to practice their religious beliefs freely. It also abolished slavery, so all the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era where slaves typically did such work. These two reforms were reflected in the biblical books of Chronicles, Nehemiah, and Ezra, which state that Cyrus released the followers of Judaism from slavery and allowed them to migrate back to their land. The cylinder now lies in the British Museum, and a replica is kept at the United Nations Headquarters. In the Persian Empire, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were also given the same rights, while women had the same rights as men. The Cyrus cylinder also documents the protection of the rights to liberty and security, freedom of movement, the right of property, and economic and social rights.
Maurya EmpireThe Maurya Empire of ancient India established unprecedented principles of civil rights in the 3rd century BC under Ashoka the Great. After his brutal conquest of Kalinga in circa 265 BC, he felt remorse for what he had done, and as a result, adopted Buddhism. From then, Ashoka, who had been described as “the cruel Ashoka” eventually came to be known as “the pious Ashoka”. During his reign, he pursued an official policy of nonviolence (ahimsa) and the protection of human rights, as his chief concern was the happiness of his subjects. The unnecessary slaughter or mutilation of animals was immediately abolished, such as sport hunting and branding. Ashoka also showed mercy to those imprisoned, allowing them outside one day each year, and offered common citizens free education at universities. He treated his subjects as equals regardless of their religion, politics or caste, and constructed free hospitals for both humans and animals. Ashoka defined the main principles of nonviolence, tolerance of all sects and opinions, obedience to parents, respect for teachers and priests, being liberal towards friends, humane treatment of servants, and generosity towards all. These reforms are described in the Edicts of Ashoka. In the Maurya Empire, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups also had rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka. Slavery was also non-existent in ancient India.
Early Islamic Caliphate- Many reforms in human rights took place under Islam between 610 and 661, including the period of Muhammad‘s mission and the rule of the four immediate successors who established the Rashidain Caliphate. Historians generally agree that Muhammad preached against what he saw as the social evils of his day, and that Islamic social reforms in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery, and the rights of women and ethnic minorities improved on what was present in existing Arab society at the time. For example, according to Bernard Lewis, Islam “from the first denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents.” John Esposito sees Muhammad as a reformer who condemned practices of the pagan Arabs such as female infanticide, exploitation of the poor, usury, murder, false contracts, and theft. Bernard Lewis believes that the egalitarian nature of Islam “represented a very considerable advance on the practice of both the Greco-Roman and the ancient Persian world.”
Muhammad made it the responsibility of the Islamic government to provide food and clothing, on a reasonable basis, to captives, regardless of their religion. If the prisoners were in the custody of a person, then the responsibility was on the individual. Lewis states that Islam brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching consequences. “One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances,” Lewis continues. The position of the Arabian slave was “enormously improved”: the Arabian slave “was now no longer merely a chattel but was also a human being with a certain religious and hence a social status and with certain quasi-legal rights.” Esposito states that reforms in women’s rights affected marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures, including the West, until centuries later. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam states that the general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide and recognizing women’s full personhood. “The dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property.” Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a “status” but rather as a “contract“, in which the woman’s consent was imperative. “Women were given inheritance rights in a patriarchal society that had previously restricted inheritance to male relatives.” Annemarie Schimmel states that “compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work.” William Montgomery Watt states that Muhammad, in the historical context of his time, can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women’s rights and improved things considerably. Watt explains: “At the time Islam began, the conditions of women were terrible – they had no right to own property, were supposed to be the property of the man, and if the man died everything went to his sons.” Muhammad, however, by “instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce, gave women certain basic safeguards.” Haddad and Esposito state that “Muhammad granted women rights and privileges in the sphere of family life, marriage, education, and economic endeavors, rights that help improve women’s status in society.” Sociologist Robert Bellah (Beyond belief) argues that Islam in its seventh-century origins was, for its time and place, “remarkably modern…in the high degree of commitment, involvement, and participation expected from the rank-and-file members of the community.” This because, he argues, that Islam emphasized on the equality of all Muslims, where leadership positions were open to all. Dale Eickelman writes that Bellah suggests “the early Islamic community placed a particular value on individuals, as opposed to collective or group responsibility.”
Human rights in early modern eraThe conquest of the Americas in the 16th century by the Spanish resulted in vigorous debate about human rights in Spain. The debate from 1550-51 between Las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda at Valladolid was probably the first on the topic of human rights in European history. Several 17th and 18th century European philosophers, most notably John Locke, developed the concept of natural rights, the notion that people possess certain rights by virtue of being human. Though Locke believed natural rights were derived from divinity since humans were creations of God, his ideas were important in the development of the modern notion of rights. Lockean natural rights did not rely on citizenship nor any law of the state, nor were they necessarily limited to one particular ethnic, cultural or religious group. Two major revolutions occurred that century in the United States (1776) and in France (1789). The Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 sets up a number of fundamental rights and freedoms. The later United States Declaration of Independence includes concepts of natural rights and famously states “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Similarly, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen defines a set of individual and collective rights of the people. These are held to be universal – not only to French citizens but to all men without exception.
1800AD to World War I Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789 Philosophers such as Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and Hegel expanded on the theme of universality during the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison wrote in a newspaper called The Liberator that he was trying to enlist his readers in “the great cause of human rights” so the term human rights probably came into use sometime between Paine’s The Rights of Man and Garrison’s publication. In 1849 a contemporary, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about human rights in his treatise On the Duty of Civil Disobedience which was later influential on human rights and civil rights thinkers. United States Supreme Court Justice David Davis, in his 1867 opinion for Ex Parte Milligan, wrote “By the protection of the law, human rights are secured; withdraw that protection and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers or the clamor of an excited people.” Many groups and movements have managed to achieve profound social changes over the course of the 20th century in the name of human rights. In Western Europe and North America, labour unions brought about laws granting workers the right to strike, establishing minimum work conditions and forbidding or regulating child labour. The women’s rights movement succeeded in gaining for many women the right to vote. National liberation movements in many countries succeeded in driving out colonial powers. One of the most influential was Mahatma Gandhi‘s movement to free his native India from British rule. Movements by long-oppressed racial and religious minorities succeeded in many parts of the world, among them the civil rights movement, and more recent diverse identity politics movements, on behalf of women and minorities in the United States. The foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the 1864 Lieber Code and the first of the Geneva Conventions in 1864 laid the foundations of International humanitarian law, to be further developed following the two World Wars.
Between World War I and World War IIThe League of Nations was established in 1919 at the negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles following the end of World War I. The League’s goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation, diplomacy and improving global welfare. Enshrined in its Charter was a mandate to promote many of the rights which were later included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The League of Nations had mandates to support many of the former colonies of the Western European colonial powers during their transition from colony to independent state. Established as an agency of the League of Nations, and now part of United Nations, the International Labour Organization also had a mandate to promote and safeguard certain of the rights later included in the UDHR: ..> | “ | the primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. | “ | —Report by the Director General for the International Labour Conference 87th Session | ..>
After World War II
Rights in War and the Geneva Conventions- As a result of efforts by Henry Dunant, the founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Geneva Conventions came into being between 1864 and 1949. The conventions safeguard the human rights of individuals involved in conflict, and follow on from the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, the international community’s first attempt to define laws of war. Despite first being framed before World War II, the conventions were revised as a result of World War II and readopted by the international community in 1949.
The Geneva Conventions are: In addition, there are three additional amendment protocols to the Geneva Convention: - Protocol I (1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts. As of 12 January 2007 it had been ratified by 167 countries.
- Protocol II (1977): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts. As of 12 January 2007 it had been ratified by 163 countries.
- Protocol III (2005): Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Adoption of an Additional Distinctive Emblem. As of June 2007 it had been ratified by 17 countries and signed but not yet ratified by an additional 68 countries.
All four conventions were last revised and ratified in 1949, based on previous revisions and partly on some of the 1907 Hague Conventions. Later conferences have added provisions prohibiting certain methods of warfare and addressing issues of civil wars. Nearly all 200 countries of the world are “signatory” nations, in that they have ratified these conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the controlling body of the Geneva conventions (see below).
Universal Declaration of Human RightsAppalled by the barbarism of World War II, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abbreviated UDHR) is a non-binding declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/217, 1948-12-10 at Palais de Chaillot, Paris). The UDHR urged member nations to promote a number of human, civil, economic and social rights, asserting these rights are part of the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. The declaration was the first international legal effort to limit the behavior of states and press upon them duties to their citizens following the model of the rights-duty duality. ..> | “ | …recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world | “ | —Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 | ..> The UDHR was researched and written by a committee of international experts on human rights, including representatives from all continents and all major religions, and drawing on consultation with leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi. Canadian Law professor John Humphrey, one of the primary authors of the UDHR, ensured that it includes both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. It was predicated on the assumption that basic human rights are indivisible and that the different types of rights listed are inextricably linked. Though this principle was not opposed by any member states at the time of adoption (the declaration was adopted unanimously, with the abstention of the Soviet bloc, Apartheid South Africa and Saudi Arabia), this principle was later subject to significant challenges. The onset of the Cold War soon after the UDHR was conceived brought to the fore divisions over the inclusion of both econonic and social rights and civil and political rights in the declaration. Capitalist states tended to place strong emphasis on civil and political rights (such as freedom of association and expression), and were reluctant to include economic and social rights (such as the right to work and the right to join a union). Socialist states placed much greater importance on economic and social rights and argued strongly for their inclusion. The authors of the UDHR and many states wanted to go beyond the declaration of rights and create legal covenants which would put greater pressure on states to follow human rights norms. Because of the divisions over which rights to include, and because some states refused to ratify any treaties including certain rights (for example, the US refused to ratify any treaty including legally enforceable economic and social rights). Despite the Soviet bloc and a number of developing countries arguing strongly for the inclusion of all rights in a so-called Unity Resolution, the rights enshrined in the UDHR were split into two separate covenants, allowing states to adopt some rights and derogate others. Though this allowed the covenants to be created, it subverted the principle that all rights are linked which was central to the UDHR. Although the UDHR is a non-binding resolution, it is now considered to be part of international customary law.
Human Rights TreatiesIn 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) were adopted by the United Nations, between making the rights contained in the UDHR binding on all states. However they only came into force in 1976 when they were ratified by a sufficient number of countries (despite achieving the ICCPR, a covenant including no economic or social rights, the US only ratified the ICCPR in 1992). The ICESCR commits 155 state parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to individuals.
Since then numerous other treaties (pieces of legislation) have been offered at the international level. They are generally know as human rights instruments. Some of the most significant are: Philosophies of human rights Several theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how and why human rights become part of social expectations. One of the oldest Western philosophies on human rights is that they are a product of a natural law, stemming from different philosophical or religious grounds. Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior which is a human social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume). Human rights are also described as a sociological pattern of rule setting (as in the sociological theory of law and the work of Weber). These approaches include the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls) – a social contract.
Natural rightsNatural law theories base human rights on a “natural” moral, religious or even biological order which is independent of transitory human laws or traditions. Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, –??–??? –?–????, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law, although evidence for this is due largely to the interpretations of his work of Thomas Aquinas. The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics. Some of the early Church fathers sought to incorporate the until then pagan concept of natural law into Christianity. Natural law theories have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and John Locke. In the Seventeenth Century Thomas Hobbes founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. It was discovered by considering humankind’s natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes’ opinion, the only way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. In this lay the foundations of the theory of a social contract between the governed and the governor. Hugo Grotius based his philosophy of international law on natural law. He wrote that “even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate” natural law, which “would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs.” (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus (non esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology. John Locke incorporated natural law into many of his theories and philosophy, especially in Two Treatises of Government. Locke turned Hobbes’ prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect “life, liberty, and property,” people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one. The Belgian philosopher of law Frank van Dun is one among those who are elaborating a secular conception of natural law in the liberal tradition. There are also emerging and secular forms of natural law theory that define human rights as derivative of the notion of universal human dignity. The term “human rights” has replaced the term “natural rights” in popularity, because the rights are less and less frequently seen as requiring natural law for their existence.
Social contractThe Swiss-French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau suggested the existence of a hypothetical social contract where a group of free individuals agree for the sake of the common good to form institutions to govern themselves. This echoed the earlier postulation by Thomas Hobbes that there is a contract between the government and the governed – and led to John Locke‘s theory that a failure of the government to secure rights is a failure which justifies the removal of the government.
ReciprocityThe Golden Rule, or the ethic of reciprocity states that one must do unto others as one would be treated themselves; the principble being that reciprocal recognition and respect of rights ensures that one’s own rights will be protected. This principle can be found in all the world’s major religions in only slightly differing forms, and was enshrined in the “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic” by the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993.
Other theories of human rightsSome have attempted to construct an interests theory defense of human rights. For example the philosopher John Finnis argues that human rights are justifiable on the grounds of their instrumental value in creating the necessary conditions for human well-being. Some interest-theorists also justify the duty to respect the rights of other individuals on grounds of self-interest (rather than altruism or benevolence). The biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection.
Concepts in human rights
Indivisibility and categorization of rightsThe most common categorization of human rights is to split them into civil and political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights. Civil and political rights are enshrined in articles 3 to 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICCPR. Economic, social and cultural rights are enshrined in articles 22 to 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the ICESCR. The UDHR included both economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights because it was based on the principle that the different rights could only successfully exist in combination: ..> | “ | The ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his social, economic and cultural rights | “ | —International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, 1966 | ..> This is held to be true because without civil and political rights the public cannot assert their economic, social and cultural rights. Similarly, without livelihoods and a working society, the public cannot assert or make use of civil or political rights (known as the full belly thesis) Although accepted by the signaturies to the UDHR, most of them do not in practise give equal weight to the different types of rights. Western cultures have often given priority to civil and political rights, sometimes at the expense of economic and social rights such as the right to work, to education, health and housing. For example, in the United States there is no universal access to healthcare free at the point of use. That is not to say that Western cultures have overlooked these rights entirely (the welfare states that exist in Western Europe are evidence of this). Similarly the ex Soviet bloc countries and Asian countries have tended to give priority to economic, social and cultural rights, but have often failed to provide civil and political rights. Opponents of the indivisibility of human rights argue that economic, social and cultural rights are fundamentally different from civil and political rights and require completely different approaches. Economic, social and cultural rights are argued to be: - positive, meaning that they require active provision of entitlements by the state (as opposed to the state being required only to prevent the breach of rights)
- resource-intensive, meaning that they are expensive and difficult to provide
- progressive, meaning that they will take significant time to implement
- vague, meaning they cannot be quantitatively measured, and whether they are adequately provided or not is difficult to judge
- ideologically divisive/political, meaning that there is no consensus on what should and shouldn’t be provided as a right
- socialist, as opposed to capitalist
- non-justiciable, meaning that their provision, or the breach of them, cannot be judged in a court of law
- aspirations or goals, as opposed to real ‘legal’ rights
Similarly civil and political rights are categorized as: - negative, meaning the state can protect them simply by taking no action
- cost-free
- immediate, meaning they can be immediately provided if the state decides to
- precise, meaning their provision is easy to judge and measure
- non-ideological/non-political
- capitalist
- justiciable
- real ‘legal’ rights
In The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights Olivia Ball and Paul Gready argue that for both civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights it is easy to find examples which do not fit into the above categorisation. Amongst several others, they highlight the fact that maintaining a judicial system, a fundamental requirement of the civil right to due process before the law and other rights relating to judicial process, is positive, resourse-intensive, progressive and vague, while the social right to housing is precise, justiciable and can be a real ‘legal’ right. Another categorization, offered by Karel Vasak, is that there are three generations of human rights: first-generation civil and political rights (right to life and political participation), second-generation economic, social and cultural rights (right to subsistence) and third-generation solidarity rights (right to peace, right to clean environment). Out of these generations, the third generation is the most debated and lacks both legal and political recognition. This categorisation is at odds with the indivisibility of rights, as it implicitly states that some rights can exist without others. Prioritisation of rights for pragmatic reasons is however a widely accepted neccessity. Human rights expert Philip Alston argues: ..> | “ | If every possible human rights element is deemed to be essential or necessary, then nothing will be treated as though it is truly important. | “ | —Philip Alston | ..> He, and others, urge caution with prioritisation of rights: ..> | “ | …the call for prioritizing is not to suggest that any obvious violations of rights can be ignored. | “ | —Philip Alston | ..> ..> | “ | Priorities, where necessary, should adhere to core concepts (such as reasonable attempts at progressive realization) and principles (such as non-discrimination, equality and participation. | “ | —Olivia Ball, Paul Gready | ..> Some human rights are said to be “inalienable rights.” The term inalienable rights (or unalienable rights) refers to “a set of human rights that are fundamental, are not awarded by human power, and cannot be surrendered.” The adherence to the principle of indivisibility by the international community was reaffirmed in 1995: ..> | “ | All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and related. The internationl community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis | “ | —Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, World Conference on Human Rights, 1995 | ..> This statement was again endorsed at the 2005 World Summit in New York (paragraph 121).
Universalism vs cultural relativismThe UDHR enshrines, by definition, rights that apply to all humans equally, whichever geographical location, state, race or culture they belong to. Proponents of cultural relativism suggest that human rights are not all universal, and indeed conflict with some cultures and threaten their survival. Rights which are most often contested with relativistic arguments are the rights of women. For example Female genital mutilation occurs in different cultures in Africa, Asia and South America. It is not mandated by any religion, but has become a tradition in many cultures. It is considered a violation of women’s and girl’s rights by much of the international community, and is outlawed in some countries. Universalism has been described by some as cultural, economic or political imperialism. In particular, the concept of human rights is often claimed to be fundamentally rooted in a politically liberal outlook which, although generally accepted in Europe, Japan or North America, is not necessarily taken as standard elsewhere. For example, in 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by saying that the UDHR was “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition”, which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law. The former Prime Ministers of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad both claimed in the 1990s that Asian values were significantly different from western values and included a sense of loyalty and foregoing personal freedoms for the sake of social stability and prosperity, and therefore authoritarian government is more appropriate in Asia than democracy. This view is countered by Mahathirs former deputy: ..> | “ | To say that freedom is Western or unAsian is to offend our traditions as well as our forefathers, who gave their lives in the struggle against tyranny and injustices. | “ | —A Ibrabim in his keynote speech to the Asian Press Forum title Media and Society in Asia, 2 December 1994 | ..> and also by Singapore’s opposition leader Chee Soon Juan who states that it is racist to assert that Asians do not want human rights. An appeal is often made to the fact that influential human rights thinkers, such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, have all been Western and indeed that some were involved in the running of Empires themselves. Relativistic arguments tend to neglect the fact that modern human rights are new to all cultures, dating back no further than the UDHR in 1948. They also don’t account for the fact that the UDHR was drafted by people from many different cultures and traditions, including a US Roman Catholic, a Chinese Confucian philosopher, a French zionist and a representative from the Arab League, amongst others, and drew upon advice from thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi. Michael Ignatieff</EM> has argued that cultural relativism is almost exclusively an argument used by those who wield power in cultures which commit human rights abuses, and that those who’s human rights are compromised are the powerless. This reflects the fact that the difficulty in judging universalism versus relativism lies in who is claiming to represent a particular culture. Although the argument between universalism and relativism is far from complete, it is an academic discussion in that all international human rights instruments adhere to the principle that human rights are universally applicable. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the international community’s adherence to this principle: ..> | “ | The universal nature of human rights and freedoms is beyond question. | “ | —2005 World Summit, paragraph 120 | ..> Human rights vs national security National loyalties have been described as a destructive influence on the human rights movement because they deny people’s innately similar human qualities. But others argue that state sovereignty is paramount, not least because it is often the state that has signed up to human rights treaties. Commentators’ positions in the argument for and against intervention and the use of force by states are influenced by whether they believe human rights are largely a legal or moral duty and whether they are of more cosmopolitan or nationalist persuasion. With the exception of the non-derogable human rights (the four most important are the right to life, the right to be free from slavery, the right to be free from torture and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws), the UN recognises that human rights can be limited or even pushed aside during times of national emergency – although ..> | “ | the emergency must be actual, affect the whole population and the threat must be to the very existence of the nation. The declaration of emergency must also be a last resort and a temporary measure | “ | —United Nations. The Resource | ..> Rights that cannot be derogated for reasons of national security in any circumstances are known as peremptory norms or jus cogens.
Legal instruments and jurisdictionThe human rights enshrined in the UDHR, the Geneva Conventions and the various enforced treaties of the United Nations are theoretically enforceable in law. In practice, many rights are are very difficult to legally enforce due to the absence of consensus on the application of certain rights, the lack of relevant national legislation or of bodies empowered to take legal action to enforce them. There exist a number of internationally recognized organisations with worldwide mandate or jurisdiction over certain aspects of human rights: Both these courts exist to take action where the national legal system of a state is unable to try the case itself. If national law is able to safeguard human rights and punish those who breach human rights legislation, it has primary jurisdiction. In over 110 countries National human rights institutions (NHRIs) have been set up to protect, promote or monitor human rights with jurisdiction in a given country. Not all of them are compliant with the United Nations advisory standards as set out in the 1993 Paris Principles, but the number and effect of these institutions is increasing. A deconstructionist critique has been levied at the discourse of human rights by many scholars of critical legal studies. They argue that the logic of liberal human rights discourse is often circular and internally inconsistent, allowing for it to be easily manipulable. Moreover, they argue that human rights discourse often limits actors capacity to conceptualize radical, non-juridical, change.
State and Non-State ActorsHuman rights are the responsibility of, and abuses are committed by, both state and non-state actors. Multi-national companies play an increasingly large role in the world, and are responsible for a large number of human rights abuses. Individuals can also be responsible, in particular for crimes against humanity. Although the legal and moral environment surrounding the actions of governments is reasonably well developed, that surrounding multi-national companies is both controversial and ill-defined. No international treaties exist to specifically cover the behaviour of companies with regard to human rights.
Theory of value and propertyHenry of Ghent articulated the theory that every person has a property interest in their own body. John Locke uses the word property in both broad and narrow senses. In a broad sense, it covers a wide range of human interests and aspirations; more narrowly, it refers to material goods. He argues that property is a natural right and it is derived from labour.” In addition, property precedes government and government cannot “dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily.” To deny valid property rights according to Locke is to deny human rights. The British philosopher had significant impacts upon the development of the Government of the UK and was central to the fundamental founding philosophy of the United States of America. Karl Marx later critiqued Locke’s theory of property in his social theory. Reproductive rights are a subset of human rights relating to sexual reproduction and reproductive health, often held to include the right to control one’s reproductive functions, such as the right to reproduce (as in opposition to compulsory sterilization and forced contraception), as well as the right to not reproduce (including support for access to birth control and abortion), the rights to privacy, medical coverage, contraception, family planning and protection from discrimination, harassment and gender-oriented harm. International discourse on reproductive rights first began with the United Nation’s 1968 International Conference on Human Rights. The sixteenth article of the Proclamation of Tehran states, “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children.” Reproductive rights advocates work to secure affordable access to abortion, contraception, as well as education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception, for both men and women. In addition, reproductive rights advocates endeavor to protect all women from harmful gender-based practices. Examples include cultural practices such as female genital cutting, or FGC, as well as state, customary and religious laws that contribute to women’s political and economic disenfranchisment. Human rights violations Human rights violations are abuses of people in ways that abuse any fundamental human rights. It is a term used when a government violates national or international law related to the protection of human rights. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights fundamental human rights are violated when, among other things: ..> - A certain race, creed, or group is denied recognition as a “person”. (Articles 2 & 6)
- Men and women are not treated as equal. (Article 2)
- Different racial or religious groups are not treated as equal. (Article 2)
- Life, liberty or security of person is threatened. (Article 3)
- A person is sold as or used as a slave. (Article 4)
- Cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment is used on a person (such as torture). (Article 5) (See also Prisoners’ rights)
- Victims of abuse are denied an effective judicial remedy. (Article 8)
| - Punishments are dealt arbitrarily or unilaterally, without a proper and fair trial. (Article 11)
- Arbitrary interference into personal, or private lives by agents of the state. (Article 12)
- Citizens are forbidden to leave or return to their country. (Article 13)
- Freedom of speech or religion is denied. (Articles 18 & 19)
- The right to join a trade union is denied. (Article 23)
- Education is denied. (Article 26)
| ..> Human rights violations and abuses include those alleged by non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, World Organisation Against Torture, Freedom House, International Freedom of Expression Exchange and Anti-Slavery International that collect evidence and documentation. Only a very few countries do not commit significant human rights violations, according to Amnesty International. In their 2004 human rights report (covering 2003) the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Costa Rica are the only (mappable) countries that did not violate at least some human rights significantly. Some people believe human rights abuses are more common in dictatorships or theocracies than in democracies because freedom of speech and freedom of the press tend to uncover state orchestrated abuse and expose it. Nonetheless human rights abuses do also occur in democracies. Many suggest the basic problem in dealing with Human Rights is the lack of understanding of the basic laws of fiduciary control. International equity expert Professor Paul Finn has underlined, “the most fundamental fiduciary relationship in our society is manifestly that which exists between the community (the people) and the state, its agencies and officials. “ In equity, a politician’s fiduciary obligations are not only comprised of duties of good faith and loyalty, but also include duties of skill and competence in managing a country and it’s people. It is widely agreed that government is a ‘trust structure’ created by people to manage the needs of society. The relationship between government and the governed is clearly a fiduciary one. Yet rules such as Sovereign Immunity or Crown and Judicial Immunity are now being targeted as the very the tools of oppression that are preventing those being abused from taking action against the person controlling the laws of a country. Originating from within the Courts of Equity, the fiduciary concept was partly designed to prevent those holding positions of power from abusing their authority. Modern arguments suggest any judicial, political or government control over the interests of people engenders moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust. Actors’ conduct should therefore be judged by the most exacting fiduciary standards. The fiduciary relationship arises from the governments ability to control people with the exercise of that power. In effect, if a government has the power to abolish any rights, it is equally burdened with the fiduciary duty to protect such an interest because it would benefit from the exercise of its own discretion to extinguish rights which it alone had the power to dispose of. Credits Articles from Wikipedia.com Photo by Osvaldo Zoom |
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| Mob Sets Kenya Church on Fire, Killing Dozens 
Evelyn Hockstein for The New York Times Members of two tribal groups threw rocks at one another across barricades on Tuesday in the Mathare slum of Nairobi, Kenya January 2, 2008 Mob Sets Kenya Church on Fire, Killing Dozens NAIROBI, Kenya — Dozens of people seeking refuge in a church in Kenya were burned to death by a mob on Tuesday in an explosion of ethnic violence that is threatening to engulf this country, which until last week was one of the most stable in Africa. According to witnesses and Red Cross officials, up to 50 people died inside the church in a small village in western Kenya after a furious crowd doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. In Nairobi, the capital, tribal militias squared off against each other in several slums, with gunshots ringing out and clouds of black smoke wafting over the shanties. The death toll across the country is steadily rising. Witnesses indicate that more than 250 people have been killed in the past two days in bloodshed connected to a disputed election Kenya held last week. The European Union said Tuesday that there was clear evidence of ballot rigging, and European officials called for an independent investigation. Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, who won the election by a razor-thin margin, has refused such an inquiry. Government officials said Tuesday that they would crack down on anyone who threatened law and order, and they banned political rallies. Meanwhile, Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who lost the election, has vowed to hold a million-person march on Thursday, which many Kenyans fear could become a bloodbath. The Kenya celebrated for its spectacular wildlife and robust economy is now a land of distress. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, and some are so frightened that they have crossed into Uganda. “We’ve had tribal fighting before, but never like this,” said Abdalla Bujra, a retired Kenyan professor who runs a democracy-building organization. As for the people burned alive in the church, Mr. Bujra echoed what many Kenyans were thinking: “It reminds me of Rwanda.” While the bloodshed of the past few days in Kenya has fallen far short of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, many Kenyans are worried that it is spiraling out of control. The violence has been a mix of hooliganism, political protest and ethnic bloodletting. Most of the victims have been Kikuyus, the tribe of the president and Kenya’s traditional ruling class. Kikuyus have dominated business and politics since independence in 1963. They run shops, restaurants, banks and factories across Kenya, from the Indian Ocean coast to the scenic savannah to the muggy shores of Lake Victoria in the west. They make up only 22 percent of the population and are part of Kenya’s mosaic of roughly 40 ethnic groups, which have intermarried and coexisted for decades. But the election controversy has created a new dynamic in which many of Kenya’s other tribes, furious about the ballot rigging that may have kept Mr. Kibaki in power, have vented their frustrations against them. “We are easy targets,” said Stephen Kahianyu, a Kikuyu, staring at the embers of his home in Nairobi that was burned to the ground on Saturday. Over the past few days, Kikuyus have fled to police stations and churches for protection. On Monday night, several hundred Kikuyus barricaded themselves inside the Kenya Assemblies of God church in Kiambaa, a small village near the town of Eldoret. The next morning, a rowdy mob showed up. According to witnesses, the mob was mostly Kalenjins, Luhyas and Luos, Mr. Odinga’s tribe, which makes up about 13 percent of the population. They overran Kikuyu guards in front of the church and then pulled out cans of gasoline. There were no police officers around, witnesses said, and no water to put the fire out. Most people escaped. But in addition to those killed, dozens were hospitalized with severe burns. Witnesses said most of the people hiding inside had been women and children. The Eldoret area has become a killing zone. Residents say dozens of Kikuyus have been hacked to death, including four who were beheaded on Monday. In Nairobi, a much-feared Kikuyu street gang called the Mungiki seems to be taking revenge. According to residents in a Luo area, the Mungiki, who are said to take an oath in which they drink human blood, were sweeping through the slums and killing Luos. The government is now blaming Mr. Odinga for the violence. “This isn’t random,” said Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman. “This is part of Raila’s plan to create hysteria and trouble and make us declare a state of emergency,” which Kenya seems to be rapidly approaching, with curfews in several areas and a ban on live news media coverage. Western diplomats have been urging the political leaders to reconcile, but the lines between those leaders seem to be only hardening. Mr. Odinga said he would not talk to Mr. Kibaki until the president admitted that he had lost the election. Still, he urged his followers to calm down. “This is tarnishing our image as democratic and peaceful seekers of change,” Mr. Odinga said. Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki ran together in 2002, in what was considered Kenya’s first free election. The tribal alliance they built steamrolled Kenya’s governing party and was a watershed moment. But the two fell out soon afterward, and diplomats here said that it has been very difficult trying to broker a truce. “We just want them to meet,” said Bo Jensen, the Danish ambassador to Kenya. “But at the moment they’re quite far from each other.” The election did not start off badly. A record number of Kenyans, nearly 10 million, waited in lines miles long on Thursday to scratch an X next to their chosen candidate. Mr. Kibaki, 76, vowed to keep growing Kenya’s economy, one of the strongest in Africa, partly because of its billion-dollar tourist trade. Mr. Odinga, 62, ran as a champion of the poor and promised to end the tradition of Kikuyu favoritism. Voting followed tribal lines, with a vast majority of Luos going for Mr. Odinga and up to 98 percent of Kikuyus in some areas voting for Mr. Kibaki. Tribes, obviously, do matter in Kenya. But for the most part, the country has escaped the widespread ethnic bloodletting that has haunted so many of its neighbors, like Rwanda, Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia. In Kenya, the Kikuyu elite has shared the spoils of the system with select members of other tribes, which has helped defuse resentment. That has led to decades of stability and is a reason why most Kenyans, including Mr. Bujra, the retired professor, do not think their country will end up like Rwanda, where nearly one million people were killed. Clearly, Kenya is a long way from that. “In Rwanda, the conflict was between a small minority and a large majority,” he said, referring to the history of Tutsis dominating the Hutu majority. “Here, it is different, because many tribes have a stake.” But election time in this country, where politics and tribe are so intertwined, is often bloody. Hundreds of people were killed in tribal clashes surrounding the 1992 and 1997 elections. And this time, passions were as high as ever. The early results showed Mr. Odinga well ahead and more than half of Mr. Kibaki’s cabinet losing their Parliament seats and therefore their jobs. But when Mr. Odinga’s lead began to vanish as further results were announced over the weekend, his supporters suspected that something was amiss. It was slow-motion theft to them, and they began to riot. Even before Kenya’s election commission declared Mr. Kibaki the winner on Sunday, election observers said the president’s party had changed tally sheets to reflect more votes than were cast on election day. In some areas, there were more votes for the president than registered voters. On Tuesday, Samuel Kivuitu, the election chairman, said he had been “under undue pressure” to certify the results. Western governments, including the United States, are calling for a vote recount. “It’s the only way forward,” said Graham Elson, the deputy chief of the European observer delegation. Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting from Nairobi, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.
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| Maureen Dowd Deign or Reign? 
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Maureen Dowd January 2, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Deign or Reign? AMES, Iowa Edith Wessel, an 80-year-old white-haired retired nurse, moved slowly up the aisle with her walker after listening to Hillary make her pitch. She told one of the Hillary volunteers that she had “great admiration” for the senator, but also great doubts about whether her strong negatives would sink her in the general election. “I can’t understand why people dislike her so much,” Mrs. Wessel said. The volunteer assured the wavering caucusgoer that the Republicans will slime anyone who gets the nomination and that Hillary has more experience wrestling them than her rivals. Mrs. Wessel is torn. She likes Obama but worries about his experience. She likes Hillary but worries about her baggage. The presidential anglers here are dancing on the head of a pin. The Democratic race — three lawyers married to lawyers who talk too much — is very tight and very volatile. Even the jittery pack of seasoned political operatives gazing into their BlackBerrys doesn’t seem to have a clue which way the Iowa snowdrifts are blowing. Across town, Nancy Hibbs, a 57-year-old nurse, came to listen to John Edwards give his son-of-a-mill-worker rant against corporate greed, complete with a sneer aimed at Obama that anyone who thinks you can “just nice” the carnivorous Republican fat cats into submission is in “Never-Never Land.” Ms. Hibbs had decided after seeing Barack Obama a year ago that she would vote for him. She saw him again Monday night in Ames and felt even more certain that he was the one. After listening to Edwards for 40 minutes on Tuesday, she up and changed her mind, deciding to vote for him. “You can tell in his voice he’s not playing the game, you can hear his moral commitment,” she said. “We need a big turnaround.” And what about Hillary? “I don’t want the same old entrenched politics,” she replied, adding emphatically, “And I don’t want Bill in the White House again.” But Bill very much wants to be in the White House again. He is going around the state relentlessly, giving a speech as tightly choreographed with Hillary’s as a “Dancing With the Stars” routine. “Miss Bill? Vote Hill!” reads one button being sold outside their events. By the time Bill and Hill are finished with you, you could be forgiven for thinking that she had personally forged the peace accord in Northern Ireland while socking away the $127 billion Clinton budget surplus and dodging bullets en route to ending ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The Big Dog pushed the experience card hard. “Whatever’s fixin’ to happen,” whether it’s something like 9/11, Katrina or Pakistan, he said, Hillary is better equipped to face it. As to the health care debacle, he said, “Every president will fail at something or another.” It’s how they dust themselves off that counts. And whether she has learned from her mistakes, of course, is the heart of the matter, and something that voters can never really know — even if they study up as much as Iowans. Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom? She is speaking in a soft, measured voice in these final days, so that, as with Daisy Buchanan, you have to lean in to listen. But is she really different than she was in the years when she was so careless about the people around her getting hurt by the Clinton legal whirlwind that she was dubbed the Daisy Buchanan of the boomer set? The underlying rationale for her campaign is that she is owed. Owed for moving to Arkansas and giving up the name Rodham, owed for pretending to care about place settings and menus when she held the unappetizing title of first lady, owed for enduring one humiliation after another at the hands of her husband. Oddly, Barack and Michelle Obama also radiate a sense that they are owed. Not for a lifetime of sublimation and humiliation, but for this onerous campaign, for offering themselves up to save and uplift the nation, even though it disrupted their comfortable lives. Michelle told Vanity Fair that Americans would have only one chance to anoint her husband, vowing “it’s now or never” and explaining “there’s an inconvenience factor there” and a “really, really hard” pressure and stress on the family that can only be justified if her husband can win the presidency and “change the world.” She told a group gathered at a nursing home in Grinnell on Monday that “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.” So it comes down to this: Will Queen Hillary reign? Will Prince Barack deign? And who is owed more? Thomas L. Friedman is on book leave.
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| Record-Setting Night, Perfect Finish for Patriots 
John Dunn for The New York Times Tom Brady and the Patriots defeated the Giants, 38-35, to finish the regular season at 16-0 December 30, 2007 Patriots 38, Giants 35 Record-Setting Night, Perfect Finish for Patriots EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New England Patriots‘ season began here with a scandal and, of course, a victory. Fifteen games — and fifteen victories — later, they exited Giants Stadium again Saturday night, this time not with a stain on their dynasty but with a new, unblemished addition to it. Their 38-35 victory over the Giants completed a perfect regular season, the first in 35 years. The Patriots (16-0) are the fourth team in N.F.L. history to finish a regular season without a loss. But only one team is the standard for perfection: the 1972 Dolphins, who went 14-0 in the regular season and won Super Bowl VII to finish 17-0. The Patriots will try to do the Dolphins two better. A 19th victory, in Arizona on Feb. 3, would also bring the Patriots their fourth Super Bowl title of the decade. The Giants (10-6) put up more of a fight than almost anyone imagined they would, trading scores with football’s most prolific offense until the Patriots took control in the fourth quarter. Quarterback Eli Manning had one of the best big-game performances in his career, completing 22 of 32 passes for 251 yards and 4 touchdowns. “That was some way to finish this season,” said Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, who shed his dour image to reveal a smile. “They gave us all we could handle. It’s a great feeling. I’m happy. You work all year to try to win. To be able to win them all is great.” Belichick’s coaching career took off during his years as a Giants assistant coach under Bill Parcells. But Belichick’s darkest coaching moment occurred here, too. In the first game of the season, a video camera operator working for the Patriots was caught taping signals by Jets coaches, a violation of N.F.L. rules that cost the Patriots a first-round draft pick and Belichick $500,000. The Patriots, for the first time since their dynasty began in 2001, heard their achievements called into question. But a perfect season and a championship would be a tribute only to the Patriots’ excellence. The Patriots insisted the entire season that the incident had not provided motivation, and in truth, they did not need much more ammunition than an offense that will go down as one of the greatest in history. Fittingly, it was a record-breaking touchdown pass from Tom Brady to Randy Moss that gave the Patriots the lead in the fourth quarter. One play after a wide-open Moss had dropped a pass at the Giants’ 15-yard line, Brady went back to him, finding Moss streaking down the right sideline alone. Moss looked back over his left shoulder at about the 20-yard line, reeled the ball in and glided into the end zone for a 65-yard touchdown reception. The tandem of Brady and Moss has electrified the N.F.L. this season, and this touchdown will be immortalized. It was Brady’s 50 touchdown pass, breaking the record set by Peyton Manning three seasons ago, and it was Moss’ 23rd touchdown reception, breaking a record held by Jerry Rice since 1987. The game was all but meaningless for the Giants, who last week had secured the fifth seed in the National Football Conference playoffs. But in a decision that prompted much discussion — and some head-scratching — Coach Tom Coughlin elected to play his starters in the game, risking injury but producing a dramatic battle. The Giants, playing emotional but pressure-free football, scored more points, 21, against the Patriots than any other team had in the first half this season. They took a 21-16 lead into the locker room at halftime on the back of two scintillating drives led Manning and one electrifying kickoff return that was aided by a celebration penalty on the Patriots. That penalty came after the Patriots’ first touchdown, a 4-yard reception by Moss. That touchdown broke the season scoring record, established by the 1998 Vikings, the team on which Moss, then a rookie, first made his mark. That Vikings team finished 15-1 but did not make it to the Super Bowl. That same season, the Denver Broncos began the season 13-0 before coming to Giants Stadium. That day, an overmatched Giants team stunned the Broncos, 20-16, ending their run at perfection. Because this game had no playoff implications for the Giants, this seemed like an opportunity for the Patriots to cruise untouched into the postseason. Instead, they received one of their biggest scares of the season, with the Giants taking a page from the Philadelphia Eagles, who also challenged the Patriots in a 31-28 loss last month. They pressured Brady; they banged the receivers; they ran the ball effectively; and with five minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Giants held a 12-point lead. But the Patriots have left the rest of the N.F.L. in their wake because they are relentless. They beat the Ravens on Dec. 3 by repeatedly converting fourth downs in the game’s closing moments. On Saturday night, the Patriots marched for a touchdown by Laurence Maroney to close within 28-23 with four minutes left in the third. Then the defense, which had been gashed by the Giants’ running game and by Manning’s inspired passing, held the Giants by unleashing wave after wave of pressure on Manning. As the fourth quarter began, the Patriots were in a familiar place for the second half of the season: driving to take the lead. The running game, a problem for much of the season, was squashed repeatedly, a cause for concern entering the bad-weather weeks of the playoffs. But Brady was able to complete enough short- and medium-range passes — to Wes Welker and Kevin Faulk — that the early lack of the deep passes. On third and 10 from the Giants 28, towels waved on the Giants’ bench and the crowd roared as Moss, hounded with pressure in his face from the line of scrimmage, could not reach high enough for a Brady pass. When the Giants went nowhere on their next drive, it opened the door for the Patriots. Other opponents had seen this moment before, the one where the Patriots are given just enough wiggle room to kick the door of victory open. With one more spectacular Brady-to-Moss moment for the highlight reel and an Ellis Hobbs interception on the left sideline — the lone turnover of the night — the Patriots grabbed the game from the Giants’ grasp and clutched it hard to their chests. “We didn’t get blown out,” Giants linebacker Antonio Pierce said. “We covered the spread, but obviously you can tell that the Giants are going to go out there and play hard, give it our all, and do that for four quarters. Just a couple of mistakes, one mistake on offense and one mistake on defense, and that’s the game.” When Maroney, who will surely be called on more and more as the weather worsens, charged into the end zone with 4 minutes 36 seconds remaining, the Patriots had scored 22 unanswered points and taken a 38-28 lead. On the sideline, the Patriots began to bounce on their toes, sensing, at last, how close — how perfect — they were. “How many teams can say they went 16-0?” cornerback Ellis Hobbs said. “And I guarantee you, choke would have been all over the TV if we had lost.” In past seasons, a few of the 1972 Dolphins commemorated the moment when the final undefeated team loses with a toast. The Champagne remains on ice this season. The New England Patriots are the toast of football.
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| Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West 
Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times IMPERIAL SAND DUNES, CALIFORNIA Registrations of all-terrain vehicles in Riverside County, a few hours from the dunes, have gone up fourfold in recent years. December 30, 2007 Public Lands Surge in Off-Roading Stirs Dust and Debate in West DURANGO, Colo. — In the San Juan National Forest here, an iron rod gate is the last barrier to the Weminuche Wilderness, a mountain redoubt above 10,000 feet where wheels are not allowed. But the gate has been knocked down repeatedly, shot at and generally disregarded. Miles beyond it, a two-track trail has been punched into the wilderness by errant all-terrain-vehicle riders who have insisted on going their own way, on-trail or off. From Colorado‘s forests to Utah‘s sandstone canyons and the evergreen mountains of Montana, federally owned lands are rapidly being transformed into the new playgrounds — and battlegrounds — of the American West. Outdoor enthusiasts are flocking in record numbers to lesser-known forests, deserts and mountains, where the rules of use have been lax and enforcement infrequent. The federal government has been struggling to come up with plans to accommodate the growing numbers of off-highway vehicles — mostly with proposed maps directing them toward designated trails — but all-terrain-vehicle users have started formidable lobbying campaigns when favorite trails have been left off the maps. Even with the plans, federal officials describe an almost impossible enforcement situation because the government does not begin to have the manpower to deal with those who will not follow the rules. To keep the lawbreakers in check, said Don Banks, the deputy state director in Salt Lake City for the federal Bureau of Land Management, the biggest land owner in states like Utah and Nevada, “You’d have to have Patton’s army.” The growing allure of the federal lands coincides with marked changes in how people play, with outdoor recreation now a multibillion-dollar industry. It also comes at a time, according to data compiled by Volker C. Radeloff of the University of Wisconsin, when more than 28 million homes sit less than 30 miles from federally owned land that millions of people increasingly view as their extended backyards. “Forty years ago when I was out cowboying I never saw a soul,” said Heidi Redd, who operates the Dugout Ranch near Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah. “Now it’s at a point where you realize the public land is not yours, you’re just one of the users. And whether it’s A.T.V.’s, horses or climbers, it’s a traffic jam.” Any user can contribute to the traffic jam, but the off-highway vehicles do damage disproportionate to their numbers. In addition to loud engines, they have soft tires and deep treads that bite more deeply than a foot or a hoof. When they go off-trail, consequences often follow: erosion, destruction of fragile desert soils or historical artifacts, and disturbance of wildlife habitats. The temptation to go off-trail, legally or not, comes from the desire for variety, federal land managers say. “The more a route is used, the less challenging it becomes,” said Mark Stiles, the San Juan forest supervisor. “You end up getting lots of little spurs off the main route.” Even a few errant riders, he said, “can do a lot of damage.” Soaring Numbers of Visitors The federal government does a spotty job counting the visitors to public lands — most do not have traditional visitor centers or staffed entry gates — but recent estimates by federal land managers in Utah signal the trend. About 2.7 million people participated in outdoor activities on federal lands near Arches National Park so far this year, roughly double the estimates for 2000. And the number of participants in off-highway vehicle trips grew twice as fast as those in other activities, including things like rafting and sightseeing. This explosive growth — coming at a time when attendance at many of the country’s prized national parks has been below historic highs — has reignited the debate over just what should be done with the country’s public lands. In eastern Utah, six offices of the federal land management agency recently released proposed land-use plans that, among other things, cover recreational uses and the closing of areas to all-terrain vehicles. The proposals have drawn fierce reactions. Campaigns to save popular trails have cropped up on the Internet. “Help us Save Factory Butte,” says one appeal, in reference to a rock formation, a favorite of daring motorcyclists, that was closed on an emergency basis last year to protect cactuses. Another appeal says that a proposal to fence off cottonwood trees at White Wash Dunes near Moab, Utah, a popular playground for all-terrain vehicles, “must be opposed, en masse, by the off-highway community.” On the other side, opponents of the trails have been alarmed that the proposed networks of authorized paths would permanently eliminate large areas of Utah’s unroaded wild lands from consideration as federally protected wilderness areas. Members of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, an environmental group that wants greater restrictions placed on motorized users, have tallied the total miles of motorized trails that would be allowed (about 15,000 miles) and the number of currently roadless acres that would no longer be eligible for federal wilderness protections (more than 2.5 million acres). Lawyers for the group estimate that 82 percent of the lands in Utah that the Bureau of Land Management said had wilderness character in 1999 are now open for energy, mining or motorized recreation. “Everybody’s losing something they thought they had,” said Clifton Koontz, an avid dirt motorbike rider and co-founder of Ride With Respect, a group that teaches people about the bikes and how to minimize damage to the environment. A Delicate Balancing Act The preservation movement that coalesced around John Muir in the late 19th century focused on setting aside public lands, first as parks, then wildlife refuges, then after passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, as wilderness areas “untrammeled by man.” But by the 1990s, federal designations were increasingly disputed by the mining and energy industries. Groups representing makers and riders of off-highway vehicles also had objections, casting the suggested wilderness designations as hostile acts designed to strip riders of their rights. “They want everybody out,” said Russ Englund, who owns a motorcycle shop outside the Bitterroot National Forest, which straddles the Montana-Idaho border and is one of the many flash points. “They think it has to be kept in this pristine state. These people don’t even use it.” Riders of all varieties complain that their critics are off the mark, that motorized sports are about more than a handful of renegades. They say the activities are enjoyed in large part by law-abiding families, and that the motorized vehicles allow older people and the infirm to visit beautiful and remote places otherwise inaccessible to them. “I don’t like being looked at as a bad guy all the time,” said Bob Turri, 79, who likes to ride his all-terrain vehicle near his home in Monticello, in southeastern Utah. On a recent trip to Hidden Canyon, 20 miles from Moab and two miles from the nearest paved road, Mr. Koontz of Ride With Respect said it was possible to design trails that separated the machines from the wildlife. Bighorn sheep sometimes visit Hidden Canyon, and Mr. Koontz pointed to the faint sheep tracks crossing the imprint of tires. “You build the trails below the ridgelines,” he said, explaining that sheep, when startled, are more comfortable heading up to ridges rather than down into canyons, and therefore would naturally stay away from the riders. But federal managers say the outlaw fringe of motor-vehicle users is driving the need for more regulation. While sales of all-terrain vehicles have dipped slightly since 2004, the slippage comes after astronomical growth. Registrations of all-terrain vehicles and motorbikes in California, Colorado, Idaho and Utah tripled from 1998 to 2006; in Riverside County, east of Los Angeles and a couple hours’ drive from the popular Algodones Dunes, registrations went up fourfold. In Wyoming, the registration increases were starker: up fivefold, to 45,000, from 2002 to 2006. Many motorized users say wealthy homeowners are selfish, pushing for restrictions to preserve postcard views. So-called quiet users, those who do not use motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles, often portray those riders as reckless people in their 20s who seek out meadows simply to shred them. Not So Black and White In truth, there are some young thrill-seekers and wealthy armchair environmentalists, but the demographics on both sides are complicated. Many all-terrain-vehicle riders take their grandchildren with them and go fishing. In Utah, where in some rural counties there is one off-highway vehicle for every three or four people, 8-year-olds ride scaled-down versions and older people use them for Sunday outings. Many quiet users, meanwhile, are not rich newcomers but longtime locals who spent their lives in the forest. One of them, Tom Powers, a backcountry hunter in Montana who first hunted elk in the Bitterroot as a young man in 1969, still takes his horse into the woods, but less than before, to avoid the summertime traffic of motorcycles, pickups and all-terrain vehicles. “They’ve ruined what used to be a quality experience in the backcountry, where you were just up there with nature,” Mr. Powers said. The list of complaints is long and varied. Though some hunters enjoy all-terrain vehicles, others complain that hunters using them get so close that their engines spook the game. “There are so many of these machines,” said Dave Petersen, a bow hunter who monitors public lands issues here in Durango for the environmental group Trout Unlimited. “It’s made our big public lands much smaller, for the wildlife and for us.” Environmentalists worry about the destruction of fragile soils and erosion, when outsize Western rainfalls course through the ruts left by hill-climbing all-terrain vehicles. There are also concerns for streams, rivers and wetlands, precious resources in the arid West and magnets for those who think all-terrain-vehicle riding is best when muddy. “They wouldn’t do this in their backyard,” said Liz Thomas, a lawyer for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “But it’s not their backyard.” Trespassing is another problem. Since most land used for outdoor recreation is publicly owned, some riders and hikers pay little heed to “No Trespassing” signs on property that abuts popular federal lands. The hikers are not hard to identify and prosecute, but the all-terrain-vehicle riders can be. A Colorado man, Joe Jepson, ordered two riders off his land last year. One ran him down, breaking his leg. The riders were never identified. Perhaps the biggest damage to the sport’s reputation has come from mass holiday gatherings that have turned ugly or dangerous on public lands like Algodones Dunes in California, a favorite spot at New Year’s. Last Easter weekend at the Little Sahara sand dunes in Utah — a popular spring-break getaway like Florida’s beaches — there was a near-riot, with, among other things, drunken riders forcing women to expose their breasts. A.T.V. fans argue that drunken rowdies are not unique to any particular group. “We have two groups, one that wants to be quiet and then one that wants to have motorized use,” said Mary Laws, the recreation program manager for Bitterroot National Forest. “They both want to be in the forest, so we get the great task of coming up somewhere in the middle.”
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!["It is not a treaty...[In the future, it] may well become the international Magna Carta." Eleanor Roosevelt with the Spanish text of the Universal Declaration in 1949](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EleanorRooseveltHumanRights.gif)
