Red-light cameras are saving lives even as they make millions in revenue, according to the first definitive study of the subject.
Use of cameras to catch speeders and those who run red lights has proliferated in the past decade, greatly increasing the prospect that drivers in too much of a hurry will get caught. The flash of a camera has become common at District intersections, more than 50 of which are equipped to catch red-light offenders.
A study to be released Tuesday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety finds that traffic fatalities at those intersections dropped by 26 percent over a five-year period, slightly more than the average decline in 13 other camera-equipped cities.
"We're hopeful this will stop some of the backlash against cameras," said Adrian Lund, president of the insurance foundation. "Much of the attention to victims of the camera has been paid to people who received tickets. Hopefully, this will return the focus to the people who have been killed or injured by red-light running."
Drivers often denounce use of the cameras as a naked money-making scheme - and the District made almost $7.2 million on 85,678 red-light tickets from June 2009 through May.
At the same time, almost anyone who regularly drives District streets will attest to the fact that drivers slow in places where they know speed cameras are located and are more likely to stop on yellow at intersections with red-light cameras.
"Our traffic fatalities have been cut in half in four years," said D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier. "We see less high-speed crashes, we see less crashes at what used to be the worst intersections. Because of speed enforcement, when people do crash, it's at a slower speed, so there are less likely to be fatalities."
Lanier also said the cameras conserve police resources. "Those automated enforcement programs can take the place of 100 officers. In order to have the same effect with police officers, I'd have to divert them from crime-fighting."
The institute study said there were five fewer deaths at the District's camera-equipped lights over five years. During that same period across the country, 159 fewer people died in the cities that use cameras, the study found. If cameras had been in use in all cities with populations above 200,000, the institute projected that 815 lives would be saved.
The report looked at 14 cities that had camera programs from 2004 to 2008 and compared their accident rates with those of 48 cities that did not have cameras during the same period. The report acknowledged that earlier studies found an increase in rear-end collisions when red-light cameras were installed. But it said that because right-angle crashes cause more severe injuries and damage than rear-end ones, the net effect was positive.
The institute used police reports gathered by the federal government to analyze intersection mayhem. The 2.2 million intersection crashes recorded in 2009 made up about 41 percent of all accidents. They resulted in 81,112 serious injuries and 7,358 deaths.
Police established red-light running as the cause of 676 deaths and 113,000 injuries. The vast majority of the people who died - 64 percent - were not driving the vehicle that ran the light. They were passengers, other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists.
"This is a solid report," said John B. Townsend II of AAA Mid-Atlantic. "It offers evidence that the program is changing behavior. Of all the forms of automated enforcement, this one's going to stay because the one thing people fear is a T-bone crash."
A survey of D.C. drivers in December by AAA found 8 percent opposed red-light cameras.
"There simply are not enough resources to put a police officer at every intersection, and enforcement at intersections is often dangerous," said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "We have known for years that when the public sees a law being enforced, they will respect it and drive more safely. That has been true with drunk driving and seat-belt laws, and it is also true with red-light cameras."
However, traffic cameras still enliven constituent hotlines as angry drivers who have gotten tickets in the mail berate people who pick up the phones for legislators and council members.
"A lot of people accuse us of tricking them," Lanier said, "but we publish the location of all the cameras on our Web site. We're not trying to hide where they're located from anyone."
Two legislators have introduced bills in Richmond to restrict use of the cameras. One would restrict local jurisdictions from deploying new red-light cameras; the other would require that their use be overseen by the Virginia Department of Transportation.
"We're opposed to the first bill," Townsend said, "and we think the second one would put an onerous burden on the process."
Monday, January 31, 2011
GOOD SIGN FOR FUTURE? Egypt Army: We Recognize Legitimacy of Protests
On Eve of Massive Cairo Protest, Military Says It Will Not Use Violence Against Demonstrators; Last Internet Provider Dark
Chaos is worsening in Egypt as demonstrations continue against President Mubarak and more than 100 people have died. Elizabeth Palmer reports on the latest from Cairo.
CAIRO - Egypt's military promised Monday not to fire on any peaceful protests and recognized "the legitimacy of the people's demands," a sign army support for President Hosni Mubarak may be unraveling. Protesters planned a major escalation, calling for a million people to take to the streets to push Mubarak out of power.
More than 10,000 people beat drums, played music and chanted slogans in Tahrir Square, which has become ground zero of seven days of protests demanding the ouster of the 82-year-old president who has ruled with an authoritarian hand for nearly three decades.
With the organizers' calling for a march by one million people Tuesday, the vibe in the sprawling plaza - whose name in Arabic means "Liberation" - was intensifying with the feeling that the upheaval was nearing a decisive point. "He only needs a push," was one of the most frequent chants, and one leaflet circulated by some protesters said it was time for the military to choose between Mubarak and the people.
The latest gesture by Mubarak aimed at defusing the crisis fell flat. His top ally, the United States, roundly rejected his announcement of a new government Monday that dropped his interior minister, who heads police forces and was widely denounced by the protesters. The crowds in the streets were equally unimpressed.
"It's almost the same government, as if we are not here, as if we are sheep," sneered one protester, Khaled Bassyouny, a 30-year-old Internet entrepreneur. He said it was time to escalate the marches. "It has to burn. It has to become ugly. We have to take it to the presidential palace."
Also on Monday, Mubarak dispatched his newly appointed vice president to announce on state television that talks will begin with all political powers.
Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared on the government-controlled television station to say that Mubarak tapped him to initiate the talks, CBS News' Khaled Wassef reports.
Suleiman, a longtime Mubarak confidant, did not say what the changes would entail or which groups the government would speak with. Opposition forces have long demanded a lifting of strict restrictions on who is eligible to run for president to allow a real challenge to the ruling party, as well as measures to ensure elections are fair. A presidential election is scheduled for September.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the naming of the new government, saying the situation in Egypt calls for action, not appointments.
The State Department said Monday that a retired senior diplomat - former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner - was now on the ground in Cairo and will meet Egyptian officials to urge them to embrace broad economic and political changes that can pave the way for free and fair elections.
The military statement, aired on state TV, was the strongest sign yet that the army was willing to let the protests continue and even grow as long as they remain peaceful, even if that leads to the fall of Mubarak. If the president, a former air force commander, loses the support of the military, it would likely be a fatal blow to his rule.
For days, army tanks and troops have surrounded Tahrir Square, keeping the protests confined but doing nothing to stop people from joining.
Military spokesman Ismail Etman said the army realizes "the legitimacy of the people's demands." He said the military "has not and will not use force against the public" and underlined that the "the freedom of peaceful expression is guaranteed for everyone."
He added the caveats, however, that protesters should not commit "any act that destabilizes security of the country" or damage property.
Looting that erupted over the weekend across the city of around 18 million eased - but Egyptians endured another day of the virtual halt to normal life that the crisis has caused, raising fears of damage to the economy if the crisis drags on. Trains stopped running Monday, possibly an attempt by authorities to prevent residents of the provinces from joining protests in the capital.
A curfew was imposed for a fourth straight day - starting an hour earlier at 3 p.m. Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the second working day, making cash tight. An unprecedented complete shutdown of the Internet was also in its fourth day. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread.
An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was also in its fourth day. At about 11 p.m. on Monday, the last of the service providers, the Noor Group, which had remained online even after the four main providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country Friday morning, went dark.
Cairo's international airport was a scene of chaos and confusion as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the unrest, and countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out.
Some incidents of looting continued. In Cairo, soldiers detained about 50 men trying to break into the Egyptian National Museum in a fresh attempt to loot some of the country's archaeological treasures, the military said. An attempt to break into an antiquities storehouse at the famed Pharaonic Karnak Temple in the ancient southern city of Luxor was also foiled.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
Mubarak appeared fatigued as he was shown on state TV swearing in the members of his new Cabinet. The most significant change in the shakeup was the replacement of the interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who heads internal security forces and is widely despised by protesters for the brutality some officers have shown. A retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi, will replace him.
Of the 29-member Cabinet, 14 were new faces, most of them not members of the ruling National Democratic Party. Among those purged were several of the prominent businessmen who held economic posts and have engineered the country's economic liberalization policies the past decades. Many Egyptians resented the influence of millionaire politician-moguls, who were close allies of the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, long thought to be the heir apparent.
Mubarak retained his long-serving defense minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
A major question throughout the unprecedented unrest has been whether protests that began as a decentralized eruption of anger largely by grassroots activists can coalesce into a unified political leadership to press demands and keep up momentum. There were signs Monday of an attempt to do so, as around 30 representatives from various opposition groups met to work out a joint stance.
The gathering issued the call for Tuesday's escalated protests but did not reach a final agreement on a list of demands. They were to meet again Tuesday to try to do so and decide whether to make prominent reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei spokesman for the protesters, said Abu'l-Ela Madi, the spokesman of one of the participating groups, al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unity is far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas - including students, online activists, grassroots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.
The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.
ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.
In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the group.
Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahrir Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and t-shirts. On Monday, many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters are men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance - a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.
Chaos is worsening in Egypt as demonstrations continue against President Mubarak and more than 100 people have died. Elizabeth Palmer reports on the latest from Cairo.
CAIRO - Egypt's military promised Monday not to fire on any peaceful protests and recognized "the legitimacy of the people's demands," a sign army support for President Hosni Mubarak may be unraveling. Protesters planned a major escalation, calling for a million people to take to the streets to push Mubarak out of power.
More than 10,000 people beat drums, played music and chanted slogans in Tahrir Square, which has become ground zero of seven days of protests demanding the ouster of the 82-year-old president who has ruled with an authoritarian hand for nearly three decades.
With the organizers' calling for a march by one million people Tuesday, the vibe in the sprawling plaza - whose name in Arabic means "Liberation" - was intensifying with the feeling that the upheaval was nearing a decisive point. "He only needs a push," was one of the most frequent chants, and one leaflet circulated by some protesters said it was time for the military to choose between Mubarak and the people.
The latest gesture by Mubarak aimed at defusing the crisis fell flat. His top ally, the United States, roundly rejected his announcement of a new government Monday that dropped his interior minister, who heads police forces and was widely denounced by the protesters. The crowds in the streets were equally unimpressed.
"It's almost the same government, as if we are not here, as if we are sheep," sneered one protester, Khaled Bassyouny, a 30-year-old Internet entrepreneur. He said it was time to escalate the marches. "It has to burn. It has to become ugly. We have to take it to the presidential palace."
Also on Monday, Mubarak dispatched his newly appointed vice president to announce on state television that talks will begin with all political powers.
Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman appeared on the government-controlled television station to say that Mubarak tapped him to initiate the talks, CBS News' Khaled Wassef reports.
Suleiman, a longtime Mubarak confidant, did not say what the changes would entail or which groups the government would speak with. Opposition forces have long demanded a lifting of strict restrictions on who is eligible to run for president to allow a real challenge to the ruling party, as well as measures to ensure elections are fair. A presidential election is scheduled for September.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the naming of the new government, saying the situation in Egypt calls for action, not appointments.
The State Department said Monday that a retired senior diplomat - former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner - was now on the ground in Cairo and will meet Egyptian officials to urge them to embrace broad economic and political changes that can pave the way for free and fair elections.
The military statement, aired on state TV, was the strongest sign yet that the army was willing to let the protests continue and even grow as long as they remain peaceful, even if that leads to the fall of Mubarak. If the president, a former air force commander, loses the support of the military, it would likely be a fatal blow to his rule.
For days, army tanks and troops have surrounded Tahrir Square, keeping the protests confined but doing nothing to stop people from joining.
Military spokesman Ismail Etman said the army realizes "the legitimacy of the people's demands." He said the military "has not and will not use force against the public" and underlined that the "the freedom of peaceful expression is guaranteed for everyone."
He added the caveats, however, that protesters should not commit "any act that destabilizes security of the country" or damage property.
Looting that erupted over the weekend across the city of around 18 million eased - but Egyptians endured another day of the virtual halt to normal life that the crisis has caused, raising fears of damage to the economy if the crisis drags on. Trains stopped running Monday, possibly an attempt by authorities to prevent residents of the provinces from joining protests in the capital.
A curfew was imposed for a fourth straight day - starting an hour earlier at 3 p.m. Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the second working day, making cash tight. An unprecedented complete shutdown of the Internet was also in its fourth day. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread.
An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was also in its fourth day. At about 11 p.m. on Monday, the last of the service providers, the Noor Group, which had remained online even after the four main providers abruptly stopped shuttling Internet traffic into and out of the country Friday morning, went dark.
Cairo's international airport was a scene of chaos and confusion as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the unrest, and countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out.
Some incidents of looting continued. In Cairo, soldiers detained about 50 men trying to break into the Egyptian National Museum in a fresh attempt to loot some of the country's archaeological treasures, the military said. An attempt to break into an antiquities storehouse at the famed Pharaonic Karnak Temple in the ancient southern city of Luxor was also foiled.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
Mubarak appeared fatigued as he was shown on state TV swearing in the members of his new Cabinet. The most significant change in the shakeup was the replacement of the interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who heads internal security forces and is widely despised by protesters for the brutality some officers have shown. A retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi, will replace him.
Of the 29-member Cabinet, 14 were new faces, most of them not members of the ruling National Democratic Party. Among those purged were several of the prominent businessmen who held economic posts and have engineered the country's economic liberalization policies the past decades. Many Egyptians resented the influence of millionaire politician-moguls, who were close allies of the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, long thought to be the heir apparent.
Mubarak retained his long-serving defense minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
A major question throughout the unprecedented unrest has been whether protests that began as a decentralized eruption of anger largely by grassroots activists can coalesce into a unified political leadership to press demands and keep up momentum. There were signs Monday of an attempt to do so, as around 30 representatives from various opposition groups met to work out a joint stance.
The gathering issued the call for Tuesday's escalated protests but did not reach a final agreement on a list of demands. They were to meet again Tuesday to try to do so and decide whether to make prominent reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei spokesman for the protesters, said Abu'l-Ela Madi, the spokesman of one of the participating groups, al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Unity is far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas - including students, online activists, grassroots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.
The various protesters have little in common beyond the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to co-opt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement. American officials have suggested they have similar fears.
ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.
In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the group.
Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahrir Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and t-shirts. On Monday, many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters are men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance - a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.
The right's Tucson bait and switch
In the week since the Tucson, Ariz., massacre, pleas for “civility” have turned into accusations of incivility, and the whole, useful discussion of “civility” versus “vitriol” has turned into the usual argument over competitive victimhood. The vast right-wing conspiracy has played President Barack Obama like a violin.
And they’ve done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the “atmosphere of vitriol” in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner’s head.
Republicans generally praised Obama’s speech at the memorial service in which he took care to absolve conservatives and Republicans of any special responsibility for the tone of the political debate. It is, he said, “a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do.” This sounds like a noble sentiment. But who is to blame for what ails the world if not those who think differently? If those who think the same as you are responsible, it’s time to start thinking differently yourself.
Democrats praised the speech, too. So did the editorial pages. Why not? It had been practically dictated to him by every voice speaking out in the previous week. Given Obama’s conciliatory nature and the rhetorical beating he has been taking lately, the opportunity to earn some “bring us together” points was irresistible.
Any decision to put politics aside is inevitably political. A politician will put politics aside when it is politically helpful to do so. Obama clearly made the right call, under the circumstances. His poll numbers are already up. He is a statesman again, for the moment. But the circumstances were created largely by the political instincts of his political enemies, who are no less his enemies than they were a week ago.
Even more remarkably, in the past week, the question of whether a carefully planned assassination attempt on a member of the United States Congress might have had anything to do with politics has been mocked into oblivion. Well, let’s see. The dominant theme of Loughner’s ravings was suspicion of the government. He apparently didn’t believe in paper money and thought only gold has value. He believed the government was responsible for Sept. 11. And so on. This is not a random collection of nutty opinions. There is a theme to it, and it is not simply that the guy was crazy.
No one is suggesting that one of those voices in the assassin’s head was John Boehner’s cigarette growl or that Loughner had even heard of Sarah Palin when he started saying nutty, paranoid things. No one is suggesting that he got the idea that the number six is somehow indistinguishable from the number 18 from the 2008 Republican Party platform. The suggestion is that we live in a political atmosphere in which nutty views (President Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen.) and alarming rhetoric (“Second Amendment remedies” are the answer to disappointment at the ballot box.) are widespread and often go unrebutted. The suggestion, finally, is that the right is largely responsible for a political atmosphere in which extreme thoughts are more likely to take root and flower.
But all of this is now too uncivil to bring up. So wherever could Loughner have gotten his paranoid contempt for government? Who told him that the government was this hulking, all-powerful “other” determined to control and ruin his life? Official answer: He’s crazy! What more do you need to know?
Well, sure. Is it ever not crazy to buy a gun, take it to a Safeway and see how many people you can kill? It will be interesting to hear what they have to say on right-wing talk radio when Loughner’s lawyers plead insanity. The party line has always been that insanity was not a one-word explanation for anything. Now, apparently, it is.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO.
And they’ve done a pretty good job of messing with the heads of the liberal media as well. As a result, anyone who even raises the issue of who might be responsible, or more responsible, for the “atmosphere of vitriol” in which we conduct our politics is guilty of contributing to it. In just a few days, it has become the height of political incorrectness to suggest there might be any connection between the voices on right-wing talk radio and the voices in Jared Lee Loughner’s head.
Republicans generally praised Obama’s speech at the memorial service in which he took care to absolve conservatives and Republicans of any special responsibility for the tone of the political debate. It is, he said, “a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do.” This sounds like a noble sentiment. But who is to blame for what ails the world if not those who think differently? If those who think the same as you are responsible, it’s time to start thinking differently yourself.
Democrats praised the speech, too. So did the editorial pages. Why not? It had been practically dictated to him by every voice speaking out in the previous week. Given Obama’s conciliatory nature and the rhetorical beating he has been taking lately, the opportunity to earn some “bring us together” points was irresistible.
Any decision to put politics aside is inevitably political. A politician will put politics aside when it is politically helpful to do so. Obama clearly made the right call, under the circumstances. His poll numbers are already up. He is a statesman again, for the moment. But the circumstances were created largely by the political instincts of his political enemies, who are no less his enemies than they were a week ago.
Even more remarkably, in the past week, the question of whether a carefully planned assassination attempt on a member of the United States Congress might have had anything to do with politics has been mocked into oblivion. Well, let’s see. The dominant theme of Loughner’s ravings was suspicion of the government. He apparently didn’t believe in paper money and thought only gold has value. He believed the government was responsible for Sept. 11. And so on. This is not a random collection of nutty opinions. There is a theme to it, and it is not simply that the guy was crazy.
No one is suggesting that one of those voices in the assassin’s head was John Boehner’s cigarette growl or that Loughner had even heard of Sarah Palin when he started saying nutty, paranoid things. No one is suggesting that he got the idea that the number six is somehow indistinguishable from the number 18 from the 2008 Republican Party platform. The suggestion is that we live in a political atmosphere in which nutty views (President Obama isn’t a U.S. citizen.) and alarming rhetoric (“Second Amendment remedies” are the answer to disappointment at the ballot box.) are widespread and often go unrebutted. The suggestion, finally, is that the right is largely responsible for a political atmosphere in which extreme thoughts are more likely to take root and flower.
But all of this is now too uncivil to bring up. So wherever could Loughner have gotten his paranoid contempt for government? Who told him that the government was this hulking, all-powerful “other” determined to control and ruin his life? Official answer: He’s crazy! What more do you need to know?
Well, sure. Is it ever not crazy to buy a gun, take it to a Safeway and see how many people you can kill? It will be interesting to hear what they have to say on right-wing talk radio when Loughner’s lawyers plead insanity. The party line has always been that insanity was not a one-word explanation for anything. Now, apparently, it is.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO.
GOP budget hawks chicken out early
Well, that didn't take long.
Less than a month after handing the president a shellacking, Republicans who ran against Obama's fiscal recklessness added another trillion dollars to America's debt.
Even before being sworn in to start the 112th Congress, the GOP has become a co-conspirator in what Charles Krauthammer is calling the "swindle of the year"—a scheme that will "pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years."
It seems that the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist is one of the few conservatives left in Washington to give a damn about America's deficit crisis. He is certainly the only columnist who understands what we have been saying on "Morning Joe" for a week: that Barack Obama is about to pass another reckless stimulus bill. But this time, the same GOP leaders who once vilified the president as a socialist will be his closest allies.
Krauthammer dismisses Obama's "newest free lunch" as little more than a second stimulus package that will "blow another $1 trillion hole in the budget."
One GOP senator who voted against Obama's second stimulus plan said the vote was an easy one to take.
"The debt can't just be something we talk about in our campaigns," Nevada's John Ensign told me after casting his no vote Monday night. "These deficits will destroy us. I just couldn't vote for new spending and new tax giveaways without a single offset."
Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, South Carolina's Jim DeMint and Ohio's George Voinovich joined Ensign in voting against the budget busting stimulus plan.
Aside from Krauthammer and the small group of deficit hawks, the rest of the Republican Party is marching in lockstep behind a stimulus plan that puts America deeper in debt than the stimulus scheme devised by Nancy Pelosi in 2009.
All the president had to do to gain their support was wave tax cuts in front of Republican leaders and, like Pavlov's dogs, they began to drool. Once the salivating stops, America will be $1 trillion deeper in debt to China and our growing list of creditors.
By now no one should be surprised by the Republican Party's dementia when dealing with the debt. After all, this is the same party who campaigned forever on fiscal restraint before turning a a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion dollar deficit.
Like Senator Tom Coburn and a few conservative holdovers from the 1990s, I issued early warnings every step of the way.
What is so disturbing six years later is how little things have changed in that time.
This is what I wrote in 2004 in my book "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day":
"If you want tax cuts, you get them. Want to increase defense spending to over $400 billion? Sure. How about an $8 trillion Medicare drug bill? We know it will bankrupt the system but we need those seniors voting for us. And why not keep conservatives happy by passing another tax cut? Maybe then they will forget their president teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass the biggest education bureaucracy bill ever."
Two years later in September 2006, I penned a piece for The Washington Post that is appropriate for President Obama today.
"Our president was wrong to believe that the United States could fight a war, cut taxes and increase federal spending, all at once."
In October 2006, I noted in Washington Monthly that Bush Republicans allowed the federal government to explode at record rates, with spending for the education bureaucracy up 101% under Bush, the Justice Department up 131%, Commerce up 82%, HHS up 81%, State up 80%, the Department of transportation up 65%, and the four agencies targeted for elimination by my 1994 class averaging 85% increases in Bush's first term.
While I was reporting on the Bush Republicans' outrageous spending habits, Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats were promising to put America's financial house in order.
"Democrats are talking about no deficits — we're talking about fiscal responsibility," Pelosi said on the campaign trail in 2006. She bluntly declared that Democrats would "put an end to deficit spending."
Of course we know how that story ended. For four years, Nancy Pelosi presided over the most fiscally reckless Congress in U.S. history.
Like Republicans, Pelosi's Democrats also refused to heed warnings from the few remaining fiscal conservatives in Washington.
Tax cuts, two wars, massive Pentagon budgets, budget busting bailouts, bloated agency increases, and unchecked entitlement growth were the norm under Speaker Pelosi's reign - whether Bush or Obama were sitting in the Oval Office.
Following Barack Obama's victory in 2008, I wrote "The Last Best Hope," blasting the new president for continuing Bush's radical Keynesian approach to economic policy.
"Mr. Obama chose to respond to a crisis brought on by too much spending and too much debt with even more spending and even more debt. Few in the national press noted the absurdity of the president trying to get out of debt by racking up historic deficits."
Few still do.
Instead of deciding this week to borrow another trillion dollars from China, Obama's new GOP friends could have offset Obama's second stimulus plan with longterm budget cuts. That would have sent a message to markets around the world that like Germany and Britain, the United States is ready to get its financial house in order.
Paying for Stimulus II would have also sent a message to voters that Republicans finally mean what they say.
But for now, neither Republicans nor Democrats seem particularly interested in saving this country from economic collapse. I wish both parties the best of luck in the 2012 elections. Judging from last week's pathetic performance, they will both need it.
© 2011 Capitol News
Joe Scarborough
Less than a month after handing the president a shellacking, Republicans who ran against Obama's fiscal recklessness added another trillion dollars to America's debt.
Even before being sworn in to start the 112th Congress, the GOP has become a co-conspirator in what Charles Krauthammer is calling the "swindle of the year"—a scheme that will "pump a trillion borrowed Chinese dollars into the U.S. economy over the next two years."
It seems that the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist is one of the few conservatives left in Washington to give a damn about America's deficit crisis. He is certainly the only columnist who understands what we have been saying on "Morning Joe" for a week: that Barack Obama is about to pass another reckless stimulus bill. But this time, the same GOP leaders who once vilified the president as a socialist will be his closest allies.
Krauthammer dismisses Obama's "newest free lunch" as little more than a second stimulus package that will "blow another $1 trillion hole in the budget."
One GOP senator who voted against Obama's second stimulus plan said the vote was an easy one to take.
"The debt can't just be something we talk about in our campaigns," Nevada's John Ensign told me after casting his no vote Monday night. "These deficits will destroy us. I just couldn't vote for new spending and new tax giveaways without a single offset."
Oklahoma's Tom Coburn, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, South Carolina's Jim DeMint and Ohio's George Voinovich joined Ensign in voting against the budget busting stimulus plan.
Aside from Krauthammer and the small group of deficit hawks, the rest of the Republican Party is marching in lockstep behind a stimulus plan that puts America deeper in debt than the stimulus scheme devised by Nancy Pelosi in 2009.
All the president had to do to gain their support was wave tax cuts in front of Republican leaders and, like Pavlov's dogs, they began to drool. Once the salivating stops, America will be $1 trillion deeper in debt to China and our growing list of creditors.
By now no one should be surprised by the Republican Party's dementia when dealing with the debt. After all, this is the same party who campaigned forever on fiscal restraint before turning a a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $1 trillion dollar deficit.
Like Senator Tom Coburn and a few conservative holdovers from the 1990s, I issued early warnings every step of the way.
What is so disturbing six years later is how little things have changed in that time.
This is what I wrote in 2004 in my book "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day":
"If you want tax cuts, you get them. Want to increase defense spending to over $400 billion? Sure. How about an $8 trillion Medicare drug bill? We know it will bankrupt the system but we need those seniors voting for us. And why not keep conservatives happy by passing another tax cut? Maybe then they will forget their president teamed up with Ted Kennedy to pass the biggest education bureaucracy bill ever."
Two years later in September 2006, I penned a piece for The Washington Post that is appropriate for President Obama today.
"Our president was wrong to believe that the United States could fight a war, cut taxes and increase federal spending, all at once."
In October 2006, I noted in Washington Monthly that Bush Republicans allowed the federal government to explode at record rates, with spending for the education bureaucracy up 101% under Bush, the Justice Department up 131%, Commerce up 82%, HHS up 81%, State up 80%, the Department of transportation up 65%, and the four agencies targeted for elimination by my 1994 class averaging 85% increases in Bush's first term.
While I was reporting on the Bush Republicans' outrageous spending habits, Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats were promising to put America's financial house in order.
"Democrats are talking about no deficits — we're talking about fiscal responsibility," Pelosi said on the campaign trail in 2006. She bluntly declared that Democrats would "put an end to deficit spending."
Of course we know how that story ended. For four years, Nancy Pelosi presided over the most fiscally reckless Congress in U.S. history.
Like Republicans, Pelosi's Democrats also refused to heed warnings from the few remaining fiscal conservatives in Washington.
Tax cuts, two wars, massive Pentagon budgets, budget busting bailouts, bloated agency increases, and unchecked entitlement growth were the norm under Speaker Pelosi's reign - whether Bush or Obama were sitting in the Oval Office.
Following Barack Obama's victory in 2008, I wrote "The Last Best Hope," blasting the new president for continuing Bush's radical Keynesian approach to economic policy.
"Mr. Obama chose to respond to a crisis brought on by too much spending and too much debt with even more spending and even more debt. Few in the national press noted the absurdity of the president trying to get out of debt by racking up historic deficits."
Few still do.
Instead of deciding this week to borrow another trillion dollars from China, Obama's new GOP friends could have offset Obama's second stimulus plan with longterm budget cuts. That would have sent a message to markets around the world that like Germany and Britain, the United States is ready to get its financial house in order.
Paying for Stimulus II would have also sent a message to voters that Republicans finally mean what they say.
But for now, neither Republicans nor Democrats seem particularly interested in saving this country from economic collapse. I wish both parties the best of luck in the 2012 elections. Judging from last week's pathetic performance, they will both need it.
© 2011 Capitol News
Joe Scarborough
Flimflammery over 'Obamacare'
It’s a standard item in the Republican checklist of what’s wrong with Obamacare:
that advocates of the program, in computing its costs, compare six years of expenses with 10 years of revenues.
Because the most important benefits don’t kick in until 2014, the health reform program has an extra four years (2010-2014) to collect money before it has to start paying out.
When the first 10 years is up (government costs and revenues are usually reported over 10-year periods), and every year’s income is compared with every year’s outgo, Obamacare will turn out to cost 60 percent more than projected, Republicans say.
According to the official stats of the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare will actually reduce costs and save the government money over 10 years.
Not so, say Republicans (who voted last week in the House to repeal the whole thing). The accounting is phony. The Democrats are giving themselves a four-year head start.
The first time I heard this particular argument, months ago, I thought, “That can’t be right.”
The deception, if it exists, is too obvious.
Democrats aren’t that stupid. Nor do they think voters are that stupid. Or at least I hoped not. Besides, it makes no sense.
Think about it for a second: Virtually all the new revenues from health care reform are inextricably tied in with the costs — penalties for not carrying insurance and so on.
If it’s not yet required that everybody carry insurance, there can’t be any penalty for not carrying it, can there?
But then, Republicans are not so stupid, and they don’t think voters are so stupid as to think they could get away with this, are they?
Almost any issue involving economic statistics is complicated enough, or can be fudged enough, to create some ambiguity — some argument for your side that isn’t completely wrong.
Could this be one of those rare exceptions?
And sure enough, if you go to the Congressional Budget Office documents, you see that the CBO estimates that the revenue from penalties on corporations and individuals for not carrying insurance are exactly $0 for the first four years.
Total revenues from all sources for the first four years are $32 billion, out of a total for the first decade of $525 billion.
Furthermore, the Republican 10-years-in-six charge has been repeatedly debunked in great detail by prominent liberal bloggers like Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic.
Chait even includes an attractive chart showing that, as you would expect, the costs and revenues of Obamacare phase in more or less together.
No one on the right, at least no one I could find, has even attempted to debunk the liberal challenge to the right’s charge, but the charge keeps getting repeated.
You can challenge these figures if you want. They are 10 months old, and both the economy and the legislation have changed a bit.
But CBO’s director, Doug Elmendorf, said in a letter this month to House Speaker John Boehner that the numbers haven’t changed much.
You can even question the good faith of the CBO, though Republicans’ efforts to discredit this scrupulously neutral organization tend to come and go, depending on whether they care for its conclusions.
But the accusation of counting 10 years of revenues against six years of costs is based (to the extent that it is based on anything beyond raw assertion) on the terms of the legislation, not the CBO’s estimates of its effects.
To be sure, Democrats have their own flimflammery.
And, like most government programs, especially entitlement programs, it’s a good bet that this will cost more than anybody’s current estimate.
The CBO has said Obamacare will actually save the government money (that is, reduce the deficit) over its first 10 years. Well, maybe.
But this is not about Obamacare. It’s about honesty. As I say, this particular charge is special. There is no ambiguity here.
It’s not like the question of what John Kerry did in Vietnam or how often Bill Clinton raised taxes as governor of Arkansas or even if Barack Obama was really born in Kenya.
On issues like these, someone absolutely determined to climb the tree can always find some limb to hang onto. But on the 10-years-in-six business, there are only two possibilities: Either supporters or opponents of Obamacare are attempting a laughably obvious deception.
The opponents have all the advantages except one.
By making their charge, they got to go first. They also benefit from the media’s traditional reluctance to settle arguments like this.
“Fairness” and “balance” create pressure to offer both sides of every story, even stories with only one side.
The only thing supporters of Obamacare have going for them is the truth.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO
© 2011 Capitol News
that advocates of the program, in computing its costs, compare six years of expenses with 10 years of revenues.
Because the most important benefits don’t kick in until 2014, the health reform program has an extra four years (2010-2014) to collect money before it has to start paying out.
When the first 10 years is up (government costs and revenues are usually reported over 10-year periods), and every year’s income is compared with every year’s outgo, Obamacare will turn out to cost 60 percent more than projected, Republicans say.
According to the official stats of the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare will actually reduce costs and save the government money over 10 years.
Not so, say Republicans (who voted last week in the House to repeal the whole thing). The accounting is phony. The Democrats are giving themselves a four-year head start.
The first time I heard this particular argument, months ago, I thought, “That can’t be right.”
The deception, if it exists, is too obvious.
Democrats aren’t that stupid. Nor do they think voters are that stupid. Or at least I hoped not. Besides, it makes no sense.
Think about it for a second: Virtually all the new revenues from health care reform are inextricably tied in with the costs — penalties for not carrying insurance and so on.
If it’s not yet required that everybody carry insurance, there can’t be any penalty for not carrying it, can there?
But then, Republicans are not so stupid, and they don’t think voters are so stupid as to think they could get away with this, are they?
Almost any issue involving economic statistics is complicated enough, or can be fudged enough, to create some ambiguity — some argument for your side that isn’t completely wrong.
Could this be one of those rare exceptions?
And sure enough, if you go to the Congressional Budget Office documents, you see that the CBO estimates that the revenue from penalties on corporations and individuals for not carrying insurance are exactly $0 for the first four years.
Total revenues from all sources for the first four years are $32 billion, out of a total for the first decade of $525 billion.
Furthermore, the Republican 10-years-in-six charge has been repeatedly debunked in great detail by prominent liberal bloggers like Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic.
Chait even includes an attractive chart showing that, as you would expect, the costs and revenues of Obamacare phase in more or less together.
No one on the right, at least no one I could find, has even attempted to debunk the liberal challenge to the right’s charge, but the charge keeps getting repeated.
You can challenge these figures if you want. They are 10 months old, and both the economy and the legislation have changed a bit.
But CBO’s director, Doug Elmendorf, said in a letter this month to House Speaker John Boehner that the numbers haven’t changed much.
You can even question the good faith of the CBO, though Republicans’ efforts to discredit this scrupulously neutral organization tend to come and go, depending on whether they care for its conclusions.
But the accusation of counting 10 years of revenues against six years of costs is based (to the extent that it is based on anything beyond raw assertion) on the terms of the legislation, not the CBO’s estimates of its effects.
To be sure, Democrats have their own flimflammery.
And, like most government programs, especially entitlement programs, it’s a good bet that this will cost more than anybody’s current estimate.
The CBO has said Obamacare will actually save the government money (that is, reduce the deficit) over its first 10 years. Well, maybe.
But this is not about Obamacare. It’s about honesty. As I say, this particular charge is special. There is no ambiguity here.
It’s not like the question of what John Kerry did in Vietnam or how often Bill Clinton raised taxes as governor of Arkansas or even if Barack Obama was really born in Kenya.
On issues like these, someone absolutely determined to climb the tree can always find some limb to hang onto. But on the 10-years-in-six business, there are only two possibilities: Either supporters or opponents of Obamacare are attempting a laughably obvious deception.
The opponents have all the advantages except one.
By making their charge, they got to go first. They also benefit from the media’s traditional reluctance to settle arguments like this.
“Fairness” and “balance” create pressure to offer both sides of every story, even stories with only one side.
The only thing supporters of Obamacare have going for them is the truth.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO
© 2011 Capitol News
The week in one-liners - top 10 quotes in politics
"We didn't elect Superman, we elected a human being." - Colin Powell, on President Barack Obama.
"I'm trying to stay out of prison, obviously." - Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, on his current goals.
"Am I looking at the right camera?" - White House advisor David Axelrod, mocking Michele Bachmann's confusing Tea Party Express interview, during his own TV interview.
"In spite of the fact that I'm now on TV, I don't want to be on TV." - Former President George W. Bush, telling C-SPAN how low-key he'd prefer his life to be.
"Granny is safe." - President Obama, defending his health care bill from the "death panel" charges.
"I can't spell at all. ... In fact, you don't have to know how to spell anymore" - Vice President Joe Biden, revealing one of the perks of power.
"It's a tricky job. I'm sure I wouldn't be any good at it." - Incoming White House press secretary Jay Carney, assessing the job in a 2006 interview on C-SPAN.
"I'm Italian. We don't have problems with olives." - Rep. David Cicilline, dinging Rep. Dennis Kucinich in an interview with ABC News.
"Promiscuous." - Former President Bill Clinton, describing political advisor David Gergen’s political switch-hitting, while in Davos, Switzerland.
"Back off." - Sen. Harry Reid, issuing a warning to the White House on its efforts to rein in congressional earmarks.
© 2011 Capitol News
"I'm trying to stay out of prison, obviously." - Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, on his current goals.
"Am I looking at the right camera?" - White House advisor David Axelrod, mocking Michele Bachmann's confusing Tea Party Express interview, during his own TV interview.
"In spite of the fact that I'm now on TV, I don't want to be on TV." - Former President George W. Bush, telling C-SPAN how low-key he'd prefer his life to be.
"Granny is safe." - President Obama, defending his health care bill from the "death panel" charges.
"I can't spell at all. ... In fact, you don't have to know how to spell anymore" - Vice President Joe Biden, revealing one of the perks of power.
"It's a tricky job. I'm sure I wouldn't be any good at it." - Incoming White House press secretary Jay Carney, assessing the job in a 2006 interview on C-SPAN.
"I'm Italian. We don't have problems with olives." - Rep. David Cicilline, dinging Rep. Dennis Kucinich in an interview with ABC News.
"Promiscuous." - Former President Bill Clinton, describing political advisor David Gergen’s political switch-hitting, while in Davos, Switzerland.
"Back off." - Sen. Harry Reid, issuing a warning to the White House on its efforts to rein in congressional earmarks.
© 2011 Capitol News
Diddy knocks President Obama (This from a man who exploits own for money and low values!)
Gracing the cover of the February/March edition of The Source, hip hop star Sean “Diddy” Combs gave President Obama a tough assessment in an interview with the magazine.
"I just want the president to do better," said Diddy, who admitted that he cried with joy when Obama was elected.
Diddy said specifically that he hoped Obama would do more for the underprivileged in America and emphasized that "[many] of those people are African-American."
The hip hop mogul also criticized political game playing: "I'd rather have a black president that was man enough to say that he was doing something for black people have one term than a president who played the politics game have two terms," said Diddy.
© 2011 Capitol News
"I just want the president to do better," said Diddy, who admitted that he cried with joy when Obama was elected.
Diddy said specifically that he hoped Obama would do more for the underprivileged in America and emphasized that "[many] of those people are African-American."
The hip hop mogul also criticized political game playing: "I'd rather have a black president that was man enough to say that he was doing something for black people have one term than a president who played the politics game have two terms," said Diddy.
© 2011 Capitol News
Julian Assange Nailed His 60 Minutes Interview
Julian Assange's 60 Minutes interview last night as much as anything he said, demonstrated how uncomfortable the American mainstream media still is with the idea of handing over control of their business to "an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views."
It didn't help that throughout much of the interview Steve Kroft came across like a severe scolding parent, who needs help programming the VCR.
Assange, meanwhile, appears to have reined in some of his bratty interview tendencies and gave a strong accounting of himself.
As last night was likely the first time much of the country was introduced to Assange this will likely only work in his favor in terms of public support and/or donations.
If you want see the entire interveiw go to:
WWW.CBSNEWS.COM and click '60Minutes'
It didn't help that throughout much of the interview Steve Kroft came across like a severe scolding parent, who needs help programming the VCR.
Assange, meanwhile, appears to have reined in some of his bratty interview tendencies and gave a strong accounting of himself.
As last night was likely the first time much of the country was introduced to Assange this will likely only work in his favor in terms of public support and/or donations.
If you want see the entire interveiw go to:
WWW.CBSNEWS.COM and click '60Minutes'
Egypt Opposition Plans "March of Millions"
Despite Gov't Block of Internet and Shutdown of Transit Services, Activists Seek to Stage Massive Protest Tuesday
CAIRO - A coalition of opposition groups called for a million people to take to Cairo's streets Tuesday to demand the removal of President Hosni Mubarak, the clearest sign yet that a unified leadership was trying to emerge for Egypt's powerful but disparate protest movement.
In an apparent attempt to defuse the weeklong political upheaval, Mubarak named a new government Monday — dropping the widely hated interior minister in charge of security forces.
But the lineup was greeted with scorn in Tahrir Square, the central Cairo plaza that has become the protests' epicenter, with crowds of more than 10,000 chanting for Mubarak's ouster.
"We don't want life to go back to normal until Mubarak leaves," said Israa Abdel-Fattah, a founder of the April 6 Group, a movement of young people pushing for democratic reform.
In what appeared to be a reaction to the opposition call, state TV aired a warning from the military against "the carrying out of any act that destabilizes security of the country."
Egypt's state-run television network EGY reports that some national rail services were being cancelled in an apparent move by authorities to prevent a massive influx of demonstrators before Tuesday's planned protest.
If Egypt's opposition groups are able to truly coalesce, it could sustain and amplify the momentum of the week-old protests. A unified front could also provide a focal point for American and other world leaders who are issuing demands for an orderly transition to a democratic system, saying Mubarak's limited concessions are insufficient.
But unity is far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas — including students, online activists, grassroots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.
So it was not clear how much the groups that met Monday represent everyone. The gathering of around 30 representatives, meeting in the Cairo district of Dokki, agreed to work as a united coalition and supported a call for a million people to turn out for a march Tuesday, said Abu'l-Ela Madi, the spokesman of one of the participating groups, al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction from the Muslim Brotherhood.
But they disagreed on other key points. The representatives decided to meet again Tuesday morning at the downtown Cairo headquarters of Wafd, the oldest legal opposition party, to finalize and announce a list of demands.
They will also decide whether to make prominent reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei spokesman for the protesters, Madi said.
Then, he said, they will march to Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of Mubarak, 82, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
A leading Muslim Brotherhood official told The Associated Press that his group has not decided whom to back as head of the committee, but if the members agree on naming ElBaradei as the head of the committee, "this is fine."
"We didn't deputize anybody because we don't want anybody to be solely in charge," Saad el-Katatni said.
But another spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsy, told the BBC, "The people have not appointed Mohamed ElBaradei to become a spokesman of them."
The coalition also called for a general strike Monday, although much of Cairo remained shut down anyway, with government officers and private businesses closed.
The mood in Tahrir — or Liberation — Square, surrounded by army tanks and barbed wire, was celebratory and determined as more protesters filtered in. Some played music, others distributed food to their colleagues. Young men climbed lampposts to hang Egyptian flags and signs proclaiming "Leave, Mubarak!" A speakers corner formed on one side where people have a chance to grab the microphone and make their voices heard.
Egypt endured another day of the virtual halt to normal life that the crisis has caused. Trains stopped running Monday — raising the prospect that the government was trying to prevent residents of the provinces from joining protests in the capital. Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the second working day. An unprecedented complete shutdown of the Internet was in its fourth day.
Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, the main source of sustenance for most Egyptians.
Cairo's international airport was a scene of chaos and confusion as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the unrest in Egypt and countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out.
A wave of looting, armed robbery and arson that erupted Friday night and Saturday — after police disappeared from the streets — appeared to ease as police reappeared in many districts. Neighborhood watch groups armed with clubs and machetes kept the peace in many districts overnight.
Still some incidents continued. One watch group fended off a band of robbers who tried to break in and steal antiquities from the warehouse of the famed Karnak Temple on the east bank of the Nile in the ancient southern city of Luxor. The locals clashed with the attackers who arrived at the temple carrying guns and knives in two cars around 3 a.m, and seized five of them, handing them over to the military, said neighborhood protection committee member Ezz el-Shafei.
State television aired pictures of men apparently arrested by soldiers for breaking the nighttime curfew imposed last week.
The message from the government, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, is clearly stay off the streets, but it's not working.
Palmer reports that the hours of curfew have been extended Monday - it will now begin at 3 p.m. - but the order to leave Cairo's streets, at least, has been largely ignored by thousands who camped out overnight in Tahrir Square.
Barbed wire sealed off the main road to the square, a central downtown plaza that demonstrators have occupied since Friday, turning it into the national focal point of calls for the ouster of Mubarak, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
Thousands of people had gathered into the square by early morning. Many slept sprawled on the grass or in colorful tents. Others were filtering into the square in the early morning.
In Cairo, soldiers detained about 50 men trying to break into the Egyptian National Museum in a fresh attempt to loot some of the country's archaeological treasures, the military said.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
The White House said President Barack Obama called Britain, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia over the weekend in the U.S. to convey his administration's desire for restraint and an orderly transition to a more responsive government.
European Union foreign ministers urged a peaceful transition to democracy and warned against a takeover by religious militants.
Mubarak's naming of a new Cabinet appeared to be aimed at showing the regime is willing to an extent to listen to the popular anger. The most significant change was the replacement of the interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who heads internal security forces and is widely despised by protesters for the brutality some officers have shown. A retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi, will replace him.
Of the 29-member Cabinet, 14 were new faces, most of them not members of the ruling National Democratic Party. Among those purged were several of the prominent businessmen who held economic posts and have engineered the country's economic liberalization policies the past decades. Many Egyptians resented the influence of millionaire politician-moguls, who were close allies of the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, long thought to be the heir apparent.
Mubarak retained his long-serving defense minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
State newspapers on Monday published a sternly worded letter from Mubarak to his new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, ordering him to move swiftly to introduce political, legislative and constitutional reforms and pursue economic policies that will improve people's lives.
But as news of the new government was heard in Tahrir Square, many of the protesters renewed chants of "We want the fall of this regime."
Mostafa el-Naggar, a member of the ElBaradei-backing Association for Change, said he recognized no decision Mubarak took after Jan. 25, the first day of Egyptian protests emboldened by Tunisians' expulsion of their longtime president earlier in the month.
"This is a failed attempt," said el-Naggar of the new government. "He is done with."
The various protesters are united by little, however, except the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to coopt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement.
ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.
In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the group.
Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahriri Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and Tahrir. Today, many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters are men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance — a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.
Mubarak, a former air force commander in office since 1981, is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates, and it remains highly unlikely that he would allow his government to engage in any dialogue with the Brotherhood.
Rashad al-Bayoumi, the Brotherhood's deputy leader, said besides Mubarak's ouster, the opposition coalition's provisional demands include the release of political prisoners, setting up a transitional government to run the country until free and fair elections are held and prosecuting individuals thought to be responsible for the killing of protesters.
CAIRO - A coalition of opposition groups called for a million people to take to Cairo's streets Tuesday to demand the removal of President Hosni Mubarak, the clearest sign yet that a unified leadership was trying to emerge for Egypt's powerful but disparate protest movement.
In an apparent attempt to defuse the weeklong political upheaval, Mubarak named a new government Monday — dropping the widely hated interior minister in charge of security forces.
But the lineup was greeted with scorn in Tahrir Square, the central Cairo plaza that has become the protests' epicenter, with crowds of more than 10,000 chanting for Mubarak's ouster.
"We don't want life to go back to normal until Mubarak leaves," said Israa Abdel-Fattah, a founder of the April 6 Group, a movement of young people pushing for democratic reform.
In what appeared to be a reaction to the opposition call, state TV aired a warning from the military against "the carrying out of any act that destabilizes security of the country."
Egypt's state-run television network EGY reports that some national rail services were being cancelled in an apparent move by authorities to prevent a massive influx of demonstrators before Tuesday's planned protest.
If Egypt's opposition groups are able to truly coalesce, it could sustain and amplify the momentum of the week-old protests. A unified front could also provide a focal point for American and other world leaders who are issuing demands for an orderly transition to a democratic system, saying Mubarak's limited concessions are insufficient.
But unity is far from certain among the array of movements involved in the protests, with sometimes conflicting agendas — including students, online activists, grassroots organizers, old-school opposition politicians and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, along with everyday citizens drawn by the exhilaration of marching against the government.
So it was not clear how much the groups that met Monday represent everyone. The gathering of around 30 representatives, meeting in the Cairo district of Dokki, agreed to work as a united coalition and supported a call for a million people to turn out for a march Tuesday, said Abu'l-Ela Madi, the spokesman of one of the participating groups, al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction from the Muslim Brotherhood.
But they disagreed on other key points. The representatives decided to meet again Tuesday morning at the downtown Cairo headquarters of Wafd, the oldest legal opposition party, to finalize and announce a list of demands.
They will also decide whether to make prominent reform advocate Mohamed ElBaradei spokesman for the protesters, Madi said.
Then, he said, they will march to Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of Mubarak, 82, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
A leading Muslim Brotherhood official told The Associated Press that his group has not decided whom to back as head of the committee, but if the members agree on naming ElBaradei as the head of the committee, "this is fine."
"We didn't deputize anybody because we don't want anybody to be solely in charge," Saad el-Katatni said.
But another spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsy, told the BBC, "The people have not appointed Mohamed ElBaradei to become a spokesman of them."
The coalition also called for a general strike Monday, although much of Cairo remained shut down anyway, with government officers and private businesses closed.
The mood in Tahrir — or Liberation — Square, surrounded by army tanks and barbed wire, was celebratory and determined as more protesters filtered in. Some played music, others distributed food to their colleagues. Young men climbed lampposts to hang Egyptian flags and signs proclaiming "Leave, Mubarak!" A speakers corner formed on one side where people have a chance to grab the microphone and make their voices heard.
Egypt endured another day of the virtual halt to normal life that the crisis has caused. Trains stopped running Monday — raising the prospect that the government was trying to prevent residents of the provinces from joining protests in the capital. Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the second working day. An unprecedented complete shutdown of the Internet was in its fourth day.
Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, the main source of sustenance for most Egyptians.
Cairo's international airport was a scene of chaos and confusion as thousands of foreigners sought to flee the unrest in Egypt and countries around the world scrambled to send in planes to fly their citizens out.
A wave of looting, armed robbery and arson that erupted Friday night and Saturday — after police disappeared from the streets — appeared to ease as police reappeared in many districts. Neighborhood watch groups armed with clubs and machetes kept the peace in many districts overnight.
Still some incidents continued. One watch group fended off a band of robbers who tried to break in and steal antiquities from the warehouse of the famed Karnak Temple on the east bank of the Nile in the ancient southern city of Luxor. The locals clashed with the attackers who arrived at the temple carrying guns and knives in two cars around 3 a.m, and seized five of them, handing them over to the military, said neighborhood protection committee member Ezz el-Shafei.
State television aired pictures of men apparently arrested by soldiers for breaking the nighttime curfew imposed last week.
The message from the government, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, is clearly stay off the streets, but it's not working.
Palmer reports that the hours of curfew have been extended Monday - it will now begin at 3 p.m. - but the order to leave Cairo's streets, at least, has been largely ignored by thousands who camped out overnight in Tahrir Square.
Barbed wire sealed off the main road to the square, a central downtown plaza that demonstrators have occupied since Friday, turning it into the national focal point of calls for the ouster of Mubarak, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
Thousands of people had gathered into the square by early morning. Many slept sprawled on the grass or in colorful tents. Others were filtering into the square in the early morning.
In Cairo, soldiers detained about 50 men trying to break into the Egyptian National Museum in a fresh attempt to loot some of the country's archaeological treasures, the military said.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, but reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
The White House said President Barack Obama called Britain, Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia over the weekend in the U.S. to convey his administration's desire for restraint and an orderly transition to a more responsive government.
European Union foreign ministers urged a peaceful transition to democracy and warned against a takeover by religious militants.
Mubarak's naming of a new Cabinet appeared to be aimed at showing the regime is willing to an extent to listen to the popular anger. The most significant change was the replacement of the interior minister, Habib el-Adly, who heads internal security forces and is widely despised by protesters for the brutality some officers have shown. A retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi, will replace him.
Of the 29-member Cabinet, 14 were new faces, most of them not members of the ruling National Democratic Party. Among those purged were several of the prominent businessmen who held economic posts and have engineered the country's economic liberalization policies the past decades. Many Egyptians resented the influence of millionaire politician-moguls, who were close allies of the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, long thought to be the heir apparent.
Mubarak retained his long-serving defense minister, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
State newspapers on Monday published a sternly worded letter from Mubarak to his new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, ordering him to move swiftly to introduce political, legislative and constitutional reforms and pursue economic policies that will improve people's lives.
But as news of the new government was heard in Tahrir Square, many of the protesters renewed chants of "We want the fall of this regime."
Mostafa el-Naggar, a member of the ElBaradei-backing Association for Change, said he recognized no decision Mubarak took after Jan. 25, the first day of Egyptian protests emboldened by Tunisians' expulsion of their longtime president earlier in the month.
"This is a failed attempt," said el-Naggar of the new government. "He is done with."
The various protesters are united by little, however, except the demand that Mubarak go. Perhaps the most significant tensions among them is between young secular activists and the Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation. The more secular are deeply suspicious the Brotherhood aims to coopt what they contend is a spontaneous, popular movement.
ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year, but the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood remains Egypt's largest opposition movement.
In a nod to the suspicions, Brotherhood figures insist they are not seeking a leadership role.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the group.
Still, Brotherhood members appeared to be joining the protest in greater numbers and more openly. During the first few days of protests, the crowd in Tahriri Square was composed of mostly young men in jeans and Tahrir. Today, many of the volunteers handing out food and water to protesters are men in long traditional dress with the trademark Brotherhood appearance — a closely cropped haircut and bushy beards.
Mubarak, a former air force commander in office since 1981, is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates, and it remains highly unlikely that he would allow his government to engage in any dialogue with the Brotherhood.
Rashad al-Bayoumi, the Brotherhood's deputy leader, said besides Mubarak's ouster, the opposition coalition's provisional demands include the release of political prisoners, setting up a transitional government to run the country until free and fair elections are held and prosecuting individuals thought to be responsible for the killing of protesters.
Federal Judge Rules Health Law Violates Constitution
A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that requires Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at two-to-two in the lower courts as the conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., ruled that the law will remain in effect until all appeals are concluded, a process that could take two years. However, Judge Vinson determined that the entire law should fall if appellate courts agree with his opinion that the insurance requirement is invalid.
“The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.
In a 78-page opinion, Judge Vinson held that the insurance requirement exceeds the regulatory powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Judge Vinson wrote that the provision could not be rescued by an associated clause in Article I that gives Congress broad authority to make laws “necessary and proper” to carrying out its designated responsibilities.
“If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain,” Judge Vinson wrote.
The judge’s ruling came in the most prominent of the more than 20 legal challenges mounted against some aspect of the sweeping health law, which was enacted last year by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama in March.
The plaintiffs include governors and attorneys general from 26 states, all but one Republican, as well as the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small companies. Officials from six states joined the lawsuit just this month after shifts in party control brought by November’s midterm elections.
The ruling by Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, solidified the divide in the health litigation among judges named by Republicans and those named by Democrats.
In December, Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., who was appointed by President George W. Bush, became the first to invalidate the insurance mandate. Two other federal judges put on the bench by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, have upheld the law.
The Florida plaintiffs, led by the state’s former attorney general, Bill McCollum, ensured they would draw a Republican-appointed judge by filing the lawsuit in Pensacola. Mr. McCollum left office this month after losing last year’s Republican gubernatorial primary, but his successor, Pam Bondi, also a Republican, fully supports the lawsuit.
Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., ruled that the law will remain in effect until all appeals are concluded, a process that could take two years. However, Judge Vinson determined that the entire law should fall if appellate courts agree with his opinion that the insurance requirement is invalid.
“The Act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.
In a 78-page opinion, Judge Vinson held that the insurance requirement exceeds the regulatory powers granted to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Judge Vinson wrote that the provision could not be rescued by an associated clause in Article I that gives Congress broad authority to make laws “necessary and proper” to carrying out its designated responsibilities.
“If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain,” Judge Vinson wrote.
The judge’s ruling came in the most prominent of the more than 20 legal challenges mounted against some aspect of the sweeping health law, which was enacted last year by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama in March.
The plaintiffs include governors and attorneys general from 26 states, all but one Republican, as well as the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small companies. Officials from six states joined the lawsuit just this month after shifts in party control brought by November’s midterm elections.
The ruling by Judge Vinson, a senior judge who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, solidified the divide in the health litigation among judges named by Republicans and those named by Democrats.
In December, Judge Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, Va., who was appointed by President George W. Bush, became the first to invalidate the insurance mandate. Two other federal judges put on the bench by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, have upheld the law.
The Florida plaintiffs, led by the state’s former attorney general, Bill McCollum, ensured they would draw a Republican-appointed judge by filing the lawsuit in Pensacola. Mr. McCollum left office this month after losing last year’s Republican gubernatorial primary, but his successor, Pam Bondi, also a Republican, fully supports the lawsuit.
2012 Republican presidential candidates all have flaws
Mitt Romney can't win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
As governor of Massachusetts, he signed health-care legislation that has considerable similarities to the proposal President Obama championed - the one Republicans have fought tooth and nail.
That's an emerging bit of conventional wisdom about the slow-forming GOP race. And it's right - except that it omits one very important fact: All - that's A-L-L - of the Republicans considering runs for the nomination carry at least one major flaw that could keep them from victory.
"So far, the Republican field looks conventional and flawed," said Mark McKinnon, who was an adviser to President George W. Bush. "To beat Obama, the GOP is going to have to come up with a ticket that is fresh, exciting, unconventional and free of major flaws."
Let's take a look at the Achilles' heel of some of the best-known candidates:
l Haley Barbour: The Mississippi governor virtually invented lobbying - not exactly the ideal background in a very anti-Washington Republican electorate. And his Southern roots - and the gaffe he committed late last year when he seemed to suggest that the civil rights movement wasn't a big deal where he grew up - might not play well in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, the first two nominating contests of 2012.
l Mitch Daniels: The Indiana governor drew widespread criticism among the party base when he suggested that the next president would need to call a "truce" on social issues until the country moved beyond its current economic woes. Social conservatives dominate the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary - and they won't forget Daniels's truce talk anytime soon.
l John Thune: The senator from South Dakota - like many of his Republican Senate colleagues - voted for the Troubled Assets Relief Program in late 2008. Many conservatives view the vote as a sort of scarlet letter, a massive government bailout that is anathema to their limited-government philosophy.
l Newt Gingrich: The former House speaker's appeals to social conservatives in places such as Iowa and South Carolina could be complicated by his very public personal life: He has been married three times.
l Sarah Palin: The former Alaska governor has done next to nothing to build a national political organization or demonstate the ability - or willingness - to grow beyond her committed social conservative base.
l Jon Huntsman: His serving in the Obama administration - albeit as the ambassador to China - won't go down well with many Republican primary voters who detest the current occupant of the White House. And Huntsman's public endorsement of cap-and-trade legislation puts him out of step with most in his party.
l Tim Pawlenty: The former Minnesota governor's biggest problem is a lack of pizazz. Can a candidate who is relatively unknown outside his home state of Minnesota and whose best trait is his "niceness" rise to the top of such a crowded field?
l Mike Huckabee: Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas - particularly his decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who went on to murder four police offers in Washington state - is ripe for a deep opposition-research dive. And Huckabee's record on taxes as governor isn't likely to look much better in the eyes of many Republicans.
Curt Anderson, a GOP consultant who worked with Romney in 2008 but is now unaligned, argued that the candidates' pasts won't win or lose them the nomination.
"The answer to the riddle lies in the future, not the past," he said. "Who can capture the imagination of Republican primary voters? That is the question."
Chris Cillizza Washington Post
As governor of Massachusetts, he signed health-care legislation that has considerable similarities to the proposal President Obama championed - the one Republicans have fought tooth and nail.
That's an emerging bit of conventional wisdom about the slow-forming GOP race. And it's right - except that it omits one very important fact: All - that's A-L-L - of the Republicans considering runs for the nomination carry at least one major flaw that could keep them from victory.
"So far, the Republican field looks conventional and flawed," said Mark McKinnon, who was an adviser to President George W. Bush. "To beat Obama, the GOP is going to have to come up with a ticket that is fresh, exciting, unconventional and free of major flaws."
Let's take a look at the Achilles' heel of some of the best-known candidates:
l Haley Barbour: The Mississippi governor virtually invented lobbying - not exactly the ideal background in a very anti-Washington Republican electorate. And his Southern roots - and the gaffe he committed late last year when he seemed to suggest that the civil rights movement wasn't a big deal where he grew up - might not play well in the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary, the first two nominating contests of 2012.
l Mitch Daniels: The Indiana governor drew widespread criticism among the party base when he suggested that the next president would need to call a "truce" on social issues until the country moved beyond its current economic woes. Social conservatives dominate the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary - and they won't forget Daniels's truce talk anytime soon.
l John Thune: The senator from South Dakota - like many of his Republican Senate colleagues - voted for the Troubled Assets Relief Program in late 2008. Many conservatives view the vote as a sort of scarlet letter, a massive government bailout that is anathema to their limited-government philosophy.
l Newt Gingrich: The former House speaker's appeals to social conservatives in places such as Iowa and South Carolina could be complicated by his very public personal life: He has been married three times.
l Sarah Palin: The former Alaska governor has done next to nothing to build a national political organization or demonstate the ability - or willingness - to grow beyond her committed social conservative base.
l Jon Huntsman: His serving in the Obama administration - albeit as the ambassador to China - won't go down well with many Republican primary voters who detest the current occupant of the White House. And Huntsman's public endorsement of cap-and-trade legislation puts him out of step with most in his party.
l Tim Pawlenty: The former Minnesota governor's biggest problem is a lack of pizazz. Can a candidate who is relatively unknown outside his home state of Minnesota and whose best trait is his "niceness" rise to the top of such a crowded field?
l Mike Huckabee: Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas - particularly his decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, who went on to murder four police offers in Washington state - is ripe for a deep opposition-research dive. And Huckabee's record on taxes as governor isn't likely to look much better in the eyes of many Republicans.
Curt Anderson, a GOP consultant who worked with Romney in 2008 but is now unaligned, argued that the candidates' pasts won't win or lose them the nomination.
"The answer to the riddle lies in the future, not the past," he said. "Who can capture the imagination of Republican primary voters? That is the question."
Chris Cillizza Washington Post
Bloomberg Blames Congress For Gun Sale Loophole In Wake Of Probe
WASHINGTON -- Citing findings from a recent investigation of Arizona gun-show sales, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered a harsh indictment Monday of Congress' failure to close gun-control loopholes that allow individuals to buy weapons from private sellers without a background check.
"We have demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to buy a semiautomatic handgun and a high-capacity magazine, no questions asked," Bloomberg said.
Over the weekend, the mayor's office announced that a team of investigators found they could easily purchase firearms in Arizona without a background check -- even if they volunteered to the sellers that they "probably couldn't pass a background check anyway." The city sent its team to the "Crossroads of the West" gun show in Phoenix from Jan. 22-23 and recorded their attempts to buy firearms without proper clearance.
On Monday, Bloomberg trumpeted the findings as proof that current gun-control regulations are ineffective at keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals, the mentally ill and others who are barred by law from purchasing them.
Private gun merchants are not required to run background checks when they sell firearms, but are barred from providing them to individuals who the seller "has reason to believe" are prohibited from purchasing weapons. In one video, however, a seller at the gun show tells the investigator, "Just need to see an Arizona ID and that's it with me." When the investigator replied that he "probably couldn't pass one," the seller looks down, shakes his head and proceeds with the sale.
The investigators also purchased a Glock 9mm -- similar to the gun alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner used -- without a background check from a private seller at the gun show, which is legal under a loophole in federal firearms laws. Although federally-licensed gun-dealers are required to make background checks before selling guns, private and supposedly "occasional" dealers are not required to conduct such checks.
Critics of the current sales law say the gun-show loophole allows criminals and other prohibited buyers an easy avenue for purchasing guns, but legislation to change that has stalled in Congress. After the Tucson shooting earlier this month, several lawmakers introduced bills to strengthen gun laws, including a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales, but they are unlikely to pass.
Even mandatory background checks would not necessarily prevent guns from falling into the hands of criminals or the mentally ill, however, given massive holes in the background-check system from states that have entered few or no records into federal databases. Bloomberg, whose gun-control advocacy group listed in 2009 40 ways President Barack Obama could rein in illegal gun use without new legislation, argued that the investigation proved Congress needs to appropriate more funding to help states bring the background check system up to date.
"This country must take two simple steps to stop more of the 34 murders that occur with guns every day: make every gun sale subject to a background check, and make sure the background check system has all the required records in it," Bloomberg said. "Congress should act now, but gun show operators shouldn't wait. They can do the right thing today by making sure that every gun sale at their shows is subject to a background check."
He shouldn't expect the White House to step in, though. Obama has signed into law bills that permit the carrying of concealed weapons on trains and in national parks. Last January, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave him an "F" for his first year in office.
Lou Fascio, who owns the largest casino in Reno, Nev., and Bill Goodman, who owns gun shows in Tennessee and Ohio, told New York they will end sales without background checks after New York City investigators targeted their shows in a 2009 undercover operation.
"We have demonstrated how easy it is for anyone to buy a semiautomatic handgun and a high-capacity magazine, no questions asked," Bloomberg said.
Over the weekend, the mayor's office announced that a team of investigators found they could easily purchase firearms in Arizona without a background check -- even if they volunteered to the sellers that they "probably couldn't pass a background check anyway." The city sent its team to the "Crossroads of the West" gun show in Phoenix from Jan. 22-23 and recorded their attempts to buy firearms without proper clearance.
On Monday, Bloomberg trumpeted the findings as proof that current gun-control regulations are ineffective at keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals, the mentally ill and others who are barred by law from purchasing them.
Private gun merchants are not required to run background checks when they sell firearms, but are barred from providing them to individuals who the seller "has reason to believe" are prohibited from purchasing weapons. In one video, however, a seller at the gun show tells the investigator, "Just need to see an Arizona ID and that's it with me." When the investigator replied that he "probably couldn't pass one," the seller looks down, shakes his head and proceeds with the sale.
The investigators also purchased a Glock 9mm -- similar to the gun alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner used -- without a background check from a private seller at the gun show, which is legal under a loophole in federal firearms laws. Although federally-licensed gun-dealers are required to make background checks before selling guns, private and supposedly "occasional" dealers are not required to conduct such checks.
Critics of the current sales law say the gun-show loophole allows criminals and other prohibited buyers an easy avenue for purchasing guns, but legislation to change that has stalled in Congress. After the Tucson shooting earlier this month, several lawmakers introduced bills to strengthen gun laws, including a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales, but they are unlikely to pass.
Even mandatory background checks would not necessarily prevent guns from falling into the hands of criminals or the mentally ill, however, given massive holes in the background-check system from states that have entered few or no records into federal databases. Bloomberg, whose gun-control advocacy group listed in 2009 40 ways President Barack Obama could rein in illegal gun use without new legislation, argued that the investigation proved Congress needs to appropriate more funding to help states bring the background check system up to date.
"This country must take two simple steps to stop more of the 34 murders that occur with guns every day: make every gun sale subject to a background check, and make sure the background check system has all the required records in it," Bloomberg said. "Congress should act now, but gun show operators shouldn't wait. They can do the right thing today by making sure that every gun sale at their shows is subject to a background check."
He shouldn't expect the White House to step in, though. Obama has signed into law bills that permit the carrying of concealed weapons on trains and in national parks. Last January, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave him an "F" for his first year in office.
Lou Fascio, who owns the largest casino in Reno, Nev., and Bill Goodman, who owns gun shows in Tennessee and Ohio, told New York they will end sales without background checks after New York City investigators targeted their shows in a 2009 undercover operation.
Glenn Beck Explodes At Chris Matthews
About Bachmann
Glenn Beck exploded at Chris Matthews for his comments denigrating Michele Bachmann and her views on American history.
Matthews called Bachmann a "balloon head" on Tuesday for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly to end slavery." He noted that, besides the fact that many of the founders owned slaves, and that slavery only ended nearly a hundred years after the founding of America, slavery was also protected in the Constitution via the three-fifths clause, which stated that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of all other people when it came to determining how many seats in Congress each state was due.
Beck called the attacks on Bachmann "disgraceful" and said they were happening "because she could run for president of the United States and she could win."
Then he let loose with an epic tirade. After playing the clip of Matthews, Beck took the phrase "balloon head" and ran with it:
"You sir, are a balloon head that was taught by a balloon head and all you did because you're a balloon head was sit in your stupid balloon head Ivy League classroom and be indoctrinated by a balloon head and never ever used your balloon head to ask an intelligent question of the balloon head in the tweed jacket! You self-sanctimonious, self-important balloon head, America has had enough. Do your own homework."
Beck then said that the founders had indeed tried to end slavery. His comments hearkened back to ones he made earlier in January, when he said that the three-fifths clause was put in place to end slavery.
This overlooks the fact that the clause benefited slaveholding states, since the alternative was not to count slaves in the population of states at all. The clause added considerably to the population of the slaveholding states and thus gained them more seats in Congress and more power in the U.S. as a whole.
Also, Matthews was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and the University of North Carolina—neither of which are Ivy League schools.
The Huffington Post
Glenn Beck exploded at Chris Matthews for his comments denigrating Michele Bachmann and her views on American history.
Matthews called Bachmann a "balloon head" on Tuesday for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly to end slavery." He noted that, besides the fact that many of the founders owned slaves, and that slavery only ended nearly a hundred years after the founding of America, slavery was also protected in the Constitution via the three-fifths clause, which stated that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of all other people when it came to determining how many seats in Congress each state was due.
Beck called the attacks on Bachmann "disgraceful" and said they were happening "because she could run for president of the United States and she could win."
Then he let loose with an epic tirade. After playing the clip of Matthews, Beck took the phrase "balloon head" and ran with it:
"You sir, are a balloon head that was taught by a balloon head and all you did because you're a balloon head was sit in your stupid balloon head Ivy League classroom and be indoctrinated by a balloon head and never ever used your balloon head to ask an intelligent question of the balloon head in the tweed jacket! You self-sanctimonious, self-important balloon head, America has had enough. Do your own homework."
Beck then said that the founders had indeed tried to end slavery. His comments hearkened back to ones he made earlier in January, when he said that the three-fifths clause was put in place to end slavery.
This overlooks the fact that the clause benefited slaveholding states, since the alternative was not to count slaves in the population of states at all. The clause added considerably to the population of the slaveholding states and thus gained them more seats in Congress and more power in the U.S. as a whole.
Also, Matthews was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and the University of North Carolina—neither of which are Ivy League schools.
The Huffington Post
House Republicans Plan to Redefine Rape
Drugged, Raped, and Pregnant? Too bad -- Republicans are Pushing to Limit Rape and Incest Cases Eligible for Government Abortion Funding
Rape is only really rape if it involves force, according to the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.
This photos shows the United States Capitol Building-Washington DC, USA. Drugged, raped, and...
For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, with another exemption covering pregnancies that could endanger the life of the mother.
But the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to drastically limit the definition of rape and incest in these cases. The bill, with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors, has been dubbed a top priority in the new Congress by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible.
For example, if a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. Rep. Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.
Given that the bill would also forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents would also not be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.
There used to be a quasi-truce between the pro and anti-choice forces on the issue of federal funding for abortion. Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman.
But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used. The Smith bill represents a frontal attack on these long-standing exceptions.
"This bill takes us backwards to a time when just saying no wasn't enough to qualify as rape. [It] takes us back to a time when just saying 'no' wasn't enough to qualify as rape," says Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women's Law Center.
Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, notes that the new bill's authors are "using language that's not particularly clear, and some people are going to lose protection."
Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes.
"There are a lot of aspects of rape that are not included," Levenson says.
As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.
The bill hasn't been carefully constructed, Levenson notes. The term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and the bill's authors don't offer their own definition. In some states, there is no legal definition of "forcible rape," making it unclear whether any abortions would be covered by the rape exemption in those jurisdictions.
The main abortion-rights groups despise the Smith bill as a whole, but they are particularly outraged by its rape provisions.
Tait Sye, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, calls the proposed changes "unacceptable," while Donna Crane, the policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says that making the "already narrow exceptions for public funding of abortion care for rape and incest survivors even more restrictive" is "unbelievably cruel and heartless."
"This bill goes far beyond current law," says Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a co-chair of the congressional pro-choice caucus.
The "re-definition" of the rape exception "is only one element" of an "extreme" bill, she adds, citing other provisions in the law that pro-abortion rights groups believe would lead to the end of private health insurance coverage for abortion.
"Somebody needs to look closely at this," Levenson says. "This is a bill that could have a dramatic effect on women, and language is important. It sure sounds like somebody didn't want [the exception to cover] all the different types of rape that are recognized under the law."
Rape is only really rape if it involves force, according to the new House Republican majority as it now moves to change abortion law.
This photos shows the United States Capitol Building-Washington DC, USA. Drugged, raped, and...
For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, with another exemption covering pregnancies that could endanger the life of the mother.
But the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to drastically limit the definition of rape and incest in these cases. The bill, with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors, has been dubbed a top priority in the new Congress by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to "forcible rape." This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible.
For example, if a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. Rep. Smith's spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.
Given that the bill would also forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old's parents would also not be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn't be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.
There used to be a quasi-truce between the pro and anti-choice forces on the issue of federal funding for abortion. Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman.
But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used. The Smith bill represents a frontal attack on these long-standing exceptions.
"This bill takes us backwards to a time when just saying no wasn't enough to qualify as rape. [It] takes us back to a time when just saying 'no' wasn't enough to qualify as rape," says Steph Sterling, a lawyer and senior adviser to the National Women's Law Center.
Laurie Levenson, a former assistant US attorney and expert on criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, notes that the new bill's authors are "using language that's not particularly clear, and some people are going to lose protection."
Other types of rapes that would no longer be covered by the exemption include rapes in which the woman was drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, and many date rapes.
"There are a lot of aspects of rape that are not included," Levenson says.
As for the incest exception, the bill would only allow federally funded abortions if the woman is under 18.
The bill hasn't been carefully constructed, Levenson notes. The term "forcible rape" is not defined in the federal criminal code, and the bill's authors don't offer their own definition. In some states, there is no legal definition of "forcible rape," making it unclear whether any abortions would be covered by the rape exemption in those jurisdictions.
The main abortion-rights groups despise the Smith bill as a whole, but they are particularly outraged by its rape provisions.
Tait Sye, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, calls the proposed changes "unacceptable," while Donna Crane, the policy director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, says that making the "already narrow exceptions for public funding of abortion care for rape and incest survivors even more restrictive" is "unbelievably cruel and heartless."
"This bill goes far beyond current law," says Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a co-chair of the congressional pro-choice caucus.
The "re-definition" of the rape exception "is only one element" of an "extreme" bill, she adds, citing other provisions in the law that pro-abortion rights groups believe would lead to the end of private health insurance coverage for abortion.
"Somebody needs to look closely at this," Levenson says. "This is a bill that could have a dramatic effect on women, and language is important. It sure sounds like somebody didn't want [the exception to cover] all the different types of rape that are recognized under the law."
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Today we are proud of Egyptians. We have restored our rights, restored our freedom, and what we have begun cannot be reversed."
MOHAMED ELBARADEI, a Nobel laureate and diplomat, speaking to protesters in Cairo.Egypt
MOHAMED ELBARADEI, a Nobel laureate and diplomat, speaking to protesters in Cairo.Egypt
Bush says he's done with politics, fundraising (GREAT if he'd have done this before 2000)
I don't want to go out and campaign for candidates
I don't want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser.
I don't want to be on these talk shows giving my opinion, second-guessing the current president.
I think it's bad for the country, frankly, to have a former president criticize his successor.
It's tough enough to be president as it is without a former president undermining the current president.
Plus, I don't want to do that.
He adds that he finds this stage of his post-presidency
"very comfortable" and "somewhat liberating."
Bush also acknowledged the irony of using the C-SPAN TV interview to underscore that he does not want to be on TV.
I don't want to be viewed as a perpetual money-raiser.
I don't want to be on these talk shows giving my opinion, second-guessing the current president.
I think it's bad for the country, frankly, to have a former president criticize his successor.
It's tough enough to be president as it is without a former president undermining the current president.
Plus, I don't want to do that.
He adds that he finds this stage of his post-presidency
"very comfortable" and "somewhat liberating."
Bush also acknowledged the irony of using the C-SPAN TV interview to underscore that he does not want to be on TV.
Egypt opposition calls for 1 million on streets
CAIRO — A coalition of opposition groups called for a million people to take to Cairo's streets Tuesday to ratchet up pressure for President Hosni Mubarak to leave.
American and other world leaders were also ramping up pressure for an orderly transition to a democratic system.
The coalition of groups, dominated by youth movements but including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said it wants the march from Tahrir, or Liberation Square, to force Mubarak to step down by Friday.
Spokesmen for several of the groups said their representatives were meeting Monday afternoon to develop a unified strategy for ousting Mubarak. The committee will also discuss whether Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei will be named as a spokesman for the protesters, they said. ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation, said it would not take a leadership role. Western governments and many secular Egyptians have expressed fears about a significant Brotherhood role in Egyptian politics.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," said Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the Brotherhood.
The groups also called for a general strike Monday, although much of Cairo remained shut down, with government officers and private businesses closed.
"We don't want life to go back to normal until Mubarak leaves. We want people to stay away from their jobs until he leaves," Israa Abdel-Fattah, one of the protest organizers and one of the founders of April 6 group, a grassroots movement of young people that has been pushing for democratic reform since 2008.
Banks, schools and the stock market were shut for the second working day. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, the main source of sustenance for most Egyptians.
Barbed wire sealed off the main road to Tahrir Square, a central downtown plaza that demonstrators have occupied since Friday, turning it into the national focal point of calls for the ouster of Mubarak, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
Thousands of people had gathered into the square by early morning. Many slept sprawled on the grass or in colorful tents. Others were filtering into the square in the early morning.
Police and garbage collectors appeared on the streets of Cairo and subway stations reopened after soldiers and neighborhood watch groups armed with clubs and machetes kept the peace in many districts overnight.
One group fended off a band of robbers who tried to break in and steal antiquities from the warehouse of the famed Karnak Temple on the east bank of the Nile in the ancient southern city of Luxor.
The locals clashed with the attackers who arrived at the temple carrying guns and knives in two cars around 3 a.m, and arrested five of them, said neighborhood protection committee member Ezz el-Shafei.
The locals handed the five men to the army, which has posted a handful of soldiers at the vast temple's entrance.
Some 30 to 40 representatives of groups that have protested against Mubarak were meeting to discuss their strategy and plan the post-Mubarak era, said Abouel Elaa Maadi, a representative of al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The meeting excluded the legal opposition parties that had been allowed to operate under Mubarak, Maadi said.
A leading Muslim Brotherhood official told The Associated Press that his group has not decided whom to back as head of the committee, but if the members agree on naming ElBaradei as the head of the committee, "this is fine."
"We didn't deputize anybody because we don't want anybody to be solely in charge," Saad el-Katatni said.
The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's largest opposition movement.
Its support base comes in large part from its elaborate network of social, medical and education services. It made a suprisingly strong showing in parliamentary elections in 2005, winning 20 percent of the legislature's seats, but it failed to win a single seat in elections held late last year and are widely throught to have been rigged in favor of Mubarak's ruling party.
Mubarak, a former air force commander in office since 1981, is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates, and it remains highly unlikely that he would allow his government to engage in any dialogue with the Brotherhood.
American and other world leaders were also ramping up pressure for an orderly transition to a democratic system.
The coalition of groups, dominated by youth movements but including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said it wants the march from Tahrir, or Liberation Square, to force Mubarak to step down by Friday.
Spokesmen for several of the groups said their representatives were meeting Monday afternoon to develop a unified strategy for ousting Mubarak. The committee will also discuss whether Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei will be named as a spokesman for the protesters, they said. ElBaradei, a pro-democracy advocate and former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, invigorated anti-Mubarak feeling with his return to Egypt last year.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to form an Islamist state in the Arab world's largest nation, said it would not take a leadership role. Western governments and many secular Egyptians have expressed fears about a significant Brotherhood role in Egyptian politics.
"We don't want to harm this revolution," said Mohamed Mahdi Akef, a former leader of the Brotherhood.
The groups also called for a general strike Monday, although much of Cairo remained shut down, with government officers and private businesses closed.
"We don't want life to go back to normal until Mubarak leaves. We want people to stay away from their jobs until he leaves," Israa Abdel-Fattah, one of the protest organizers and one of the founders of April 6 group, a grassroots movement of young people that has been pushing for democratic reform since 2008.
Banks, schools and the stock market were shut for the second working day. Long lines formed outside bakeries as people tried to replenish their stores of bread, the main source of sustenance for most Egyptians.
Barbed wire sealed off the main road to Tahrir Square, a central downtown plaza that demonstrators have occupied since Friday, turning it into the national focal point of calls for the ouster of Mubarak, whom they blame for widespread poverty, inflation and official indifference and brutality during his 30 years in power.
Thousands of people had gathered into the square by early morning. Many slept sprawled on the grass or in colorful tents. Others were filtering into the square in the early morning.
Police and garbage collectors appeared on the streets of Cairo and subway stations reopened after soldiers and neighborhood watch groups armed with clubs and machetes kept the peace in many districts overnight.
One group fended off a band of robbers who tried to break in and steal antiquities from the warehouse of the famed Karnak Temple on the east bank of the Nile in the ancient southern city of Luxor.
The locals clashed with the attackers who arrived at the temple carrying guns and knives in two cars around 3 a.m, and arrested five of them, said neighborhood protection committee member Ezz el-Shafei.
The locals handed the five men to the army, which has posted a handful of soldiers at the vast temple's entrance.
Some 30 to 40 representatives of groups that have protested against Mubarak were meeting to discuss their strategy and plan the post-Mubarak era, said Abouel Elaa Maadi, a representative of al-Wasat, a moderate breakaway faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The meeting excluded the legal opposition parties that had been allowed to operate under Mubarak, Maadi said.
A leading Muslim Brotherhood official told The Associated Press that his group has not decided whom to back as head of the committee, but if the members agree on naming ElBaradei as the head of the committee, "this is fine."
"We didn't deputize anybody because we don't want anybody to be solely in charge," Saad el-Katatni said.
The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is Egypt's largest opposition movement.
Its support base comes in large part from its elaborate network of social, medical and education services. It made a suprisingly strong showing in parliamentary elections in 2005, winning 20 percent of the legislature's seats, but it failed to win a single seat in elections held late last year and are widely throught to have been rigged in favor of Mubarak's ruling party.
Mubarak, a former air force commander in office since 1981, is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates, and it remains highly unlikely that he would allow his government to engage in any dialogue with the Brotherhood.
Glenn Beck vs. the rabbis (Is that jackwagon still on TV?)
After MSNBC let go Keith Olbermann last week, Glenn Beck couldn't resist celebrating. "Keith Olbermann is the biggest pain in the ass in the world," he judged.
But Olbermann's departure really should give Beck pause: With political speech coming under new scrutiny, how much longer can Beck's brutal routine continue at Fox News?
The latest omen of Beck's end times came on Thursday -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- when 400 rabbis representing all four branches of American Judaism took out an ad demanding that Beck be sanctioned for "monstrous" and "beyond repugnant" use of "anti-Semitic imagery" in going after Holocaust survivor George Soros.
A Fox News spokesman brushed off the complaint in the usual fashion, attributing it to a "Soros-backed left-wing political organization." But that's not going to fly: The statement's signatories included the chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and his predecessor, the dean of the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical school, and a number of orthodox rabbis.
Beck has outlasted past complaints over his race baiting, his violent words, and his conspiracy theories. He's not new to questionable talk about Jews (years ago he called Barbra Streisand a "big-nosed cross-eyed freak"), and for the past couple of years his Nazi accusations against opponents have come by the hundreds.
But in June, he promoted on air the work of a Nazi sympathizer, Elizabeth Dilling, who had referred, in writings Beck didn't mention, to Eisenhower as "Ike the kike" and Kennedy's New Frontier as the "Jew Frontier." A few days later, Beck referred to Soros's Jewish ancestry, accused him of currency manipulation and said "he's got disturbing hair in his nose."
On July 13, Beck told his Fox News viewers: "Jesus conquered death. He wasn't victimized. . . . If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did." (After complaints, Beck clarified that "the Romans, not the Jews, put Jesus to death.")
Then came Nov. 9, which -- by sheer coincidence, no doubt -- happens to be the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a precursor of the Holocaust. Beck chose that day to launch a three-night series attacking Soros as "the puppet master."
"The prime minister of Malaysia called Soros an 'unscrupulous profiteer,'" Beck reported. "In Thailand, he was branded the 'economic war criminal.' They also said that he sucks the blood from people."
Puppet master. Unscrupulous banker. Bloodsucker. These are hoary anti-Semitic stereotypes. The Malaysian leader's words cited by Beck came from remarks describing a Jewish conspiracy against Muslims.
And Beck wasn't done. He called Soros "a collaborator" with Nazis who "saw people into the gas chambers," and "a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps." In fact, Soros's father had hidden the boy from the Nazis by placing him with a Hungarian man assigned to record belongings of Jewish families that had fled.
"It is not appropriate to accuse a 14-year-old Jew hiding with a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Hungary of sending his people to death camps," the 400 rabbis wrote in their ad on Thursday.
Beck responded on his radio show by joking with his sidekicks that "attacks are coming out at me now that I'm anti-Semitic." Beck employed a variation of a defense he has used before: that he's not anti-Semitic because he's pro-Israel and is a fierce critic of Iran.
That's true, but irrelevant: Many conservative Christians support Israel out of a belief that it will help to bring about the Second Coming. Being pro-Israel and pro-Jew aren't the same.
Beck's warm thoughts about Israel, for example, don't excuse what he did two weeks ago on Fox News, when he identified nine men responsible for the "era of the big lie." He spoke of them as propagandists who saw themselves as an "intelligent minority" manipulating the masses. Of the nine men Beck attacked, eight were Jews. "A classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling," alleged Jeff Goldberg of the Atlantic.
Seventy-five years ago, Father Charles Coughlin, the celebrated "radio priest" of the Great Depression, lost his mass-media platform as he moved from veiled references to "driving the money changers from the temple" to overt anti-Semitism. Now, Beck clings to Fox News's support as evidence that he has not crossed this line.
"Could I put on three hours of television with nothing but lies and smear and keep my job against the most powerful man [Soros] and the most powerful groups in the world?" he asked one night.
It's a question Rupert Murdoch has to confront.
Dana Milbank
Washington Post
But Olbermann's departure really should give Beck pause: With political speech coming under new scrutiny, how much longer can Beck's brutal routine continue at Fox News?
The latest omen of Beck's end times came on Thursday -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- when 400 rabbis representing all four branches of American Judaism took out an ad demanding that Beck be sanctioned for "monstrous" and "beyond repugnant" use of "anti-Semitic imagery" in going after Holocaust survivor George Soros.
A Fox News spokesman brushed off the complaint in the usual fashion, attributing it to a "Soros-backed left-wing political organization." But that's not going to fly: The statement's signatories included the chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and his predecessor, the dean of the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical school, and a number of orthodox rabbis.
Beck has outlasted past complaints over his race baiting, his violent words, and his conspiracy theories. He's not new to questionable talk about Jews (years ago he called Barbra Streisand a "big-nosed cross-eyed freak"), and for the past couple of years his Nazi accusations against opponents have come by the hundreds.
But in June, he promoted on air the work of a Nazi sympathizer, Elizabeth Dilling, who had referred, in writings Beck didn't mention, to Eisenhower as "Ike the kike" and Kennedy's New Frontier as the "Jew Frontier." A few days later, Beck referred to Soros's Jewish ancestry, accused him of currency manipulation and said "he's got disturbing hair in his nose."
On July 13, Beck told his Fox News viewers: "Jesus conquered death. He wasn't victimized. . . . If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would have come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did." (After complaints, Beck clarified that "the Romans, not the Jews, put Jesus to death.")
Then came Nov. 9, which -- by sheer coincidence, no doubt -- happens to be the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a precursor of the Holocaust. Beck chose that day to launch a three-night series attacking Soros as "the puppet master."
"The prime minister of Malaysia called Soros an 'unscrupulous profiteer,'" Beck reported. "In Thailand, he was branded the 'economic war criminal.' They also said that he sucks the blood from people."
Puppet master. Unscrupulous banker. Bloodsucker. These are hoary anti-Semitic stereotypes. The Malaysian leader's words cited by Beck came from remarks describing a Jewish conspiracy against Muslims.
And Beck wasn't done. He called Soros "a collaborator" with Nazis who "saw people into the gas chambers," and "a Jewish boy helping send the Jews to the death camps." In fact, Soros's father had hidden the boy from the Nazis by placing him with a Hungarian man assigned to record belongings of Jewish families that had fled.
"It is not appropriate to accuse a 14-year-old Jew hiding with a Christian family in Nazi-occupied Hungary of sending his people to death camps," the 400 rabbis wrote in their ad on Thursday.
Beck responded on his radio show by joking with his sidekicks that "attacks are coming out at me now that I'm anti-Semitic." Beck employed a variation of a defense he has used before: that he's not anti-Semitic because he's pro-Israel and is a fierce critic of Iran.
That's true, but irrelevant: Many conservative Christians support Israel out of a belief that it will help to bring about the Second Coming. Being pro-Israel and pro-Jew aren't the same.
Beck's warm thoughts about Israel, for example, don't excuse what he did two weeks ago on Fox News, when he identified nine men responsible for the "era of the big lie." He spoke of them as propagandists who saw themselves as an "intelligent minority" manipulating the masses. Of the nine men Beck attacked, eight were Jews. "A classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling," alleged Jeff Goldberg of the Atlantic.
Seventy-five years ago, Father Charles Coughlin, the celebrated "radio priest" of the Great Depression, lost his mass-media platform as he moved from veiled references to "driving the money changers from the temple" to overt anti-Semitism. Now, Beck clings to Fox News's support as evidence that he has not crossed this line.
"Could I put on three hours of television with nothing but lies and smear and keep my job against the most powerful man [Soros] and the most powerful groups in the world?" he asked one night.
It's a question Rupert Murdoch has to confront.
Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Beware Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood
As Washington reviews its policy toward Cairo this weekend, officials should think hard about fostering a Mubarak-led transition rather than one led by protesters. Plus, full coverage of the uprising in Egypt.
Difficult as it may be, let's try for an honest and realistic discussion of Egypt. Of course, the Obama administration, most Americans, most Egyptians, and I myself would prefer a democratic government in Cairo instead of President Mubarak's corrupt and repressive establishment. That's not the issue. The real issue is this: If Mubarak tumbles and if Washington uses its influence—and yes, it does have influence at approximately $3 billion in annual total aid—to push him out, what kind of government will follow his? Will it be even less democratic and more repressive? And what will be the implications for U.S. security in the region?
So, let's stop prancing around and proclaiming our devotion to peace, "universal rights" and people power. Instead, let's step back and look hard at what we know and don't know about this popular explosion in the bosom of one of America's most vital allies—and what the United States can and can't do about it.
The devil we know is President Mubarak. In the history of Mideast bad guys, he's far from the worst. Remember Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomenei, President Ahmadinejad, President Assad of Syria, and the many and varied leaders of Muslim terrorist groups? No sensible American would excuse Mubarak's corrupt regime—a bureaucracy that would make Kafka blush, a nasty police force, and a repressive political system. Very bad, indeed. On the plus side, he's led Egypt's economy to 6 to 7 percent real growth in past years and has conducted a foreign policy highly supportive of U.S. interests.
Most seriously, he failed to institute gradual political and economic reforms. Consequently, his nation is in flames. U.S. administrations haven't been successful in the past when they tried to push Mubarak in this direction. But it stands to reason that he might now be more amenable to reforms and transitions as long as he is not humiliated.
Now, what about the devils we know less—like the protesters? Of course, there's a slew of journalists, pundits, policy experts and professors who say these aren't devils at all, just "the people": democrats, lawyers, and college-educated and moderate women. No doubt, many of the protesters fit that description. But the dutiful press has interviewed only, say, a few hundred of these good souls. Perhaps many are not so democratic. Perhaps many are Egyptian Tea Partiers who want every Egyptian to have Islamic guns like the Founding Pharaohs. Or perhaps many are just furious and poor and unknowledgeable. My guess is no one really knows a great deal about the protesters.
It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.
As for most of the other "devils," they are pretty well known. One leadership candidate, of course, is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former U.N. chief nuclear inspector and a good man. But he has almost no constituency inside Egypt, where he's spent little time in recent years. The people aren't going to give him power, and he probably wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. But he could be part of a future government in an ideal world.
The other "devil," now being proclaimed as misunderstood Islamic democrats, is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they should give us great pause. Baloney and wishful thinking aside, the MB would be calamitous for U.S. security. What's more, their current defenders don't really argue that point, as much as they seem to dismiss it as not important or something we can live with. The MB supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli agreement of 1979, widely regarded as the foundation of peace in the Mideast. Above all, the MB would endanger counterterrorism efforts in the region and worldwide. That is a very big deal.
As for the MB's domestic democratic credentials, let me show some restraint here. To begin with, no one really has any sound idea of how they might rule; they haven't gotten close enough to power to fully judge. But they'd be bad for non-orthodox Islamic women.
And while MB leaders profess support for democracy and free speech, my mother's response still holds: "They would say that, wouldn't they?" What I see is that they've quieted their usual inflammatory rhetoric in return for Mubarak not banning them. It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.
The real danger is that our experts, pundits and professors will talk the Arab and American worlds into believing we can all trust the MB. And that's dangerous because, outside of the government, the MB is the only organized political force, the only group capable of taking power. And if they do gain control, it's going to be almost impossible for the people to take it back. Just look at Iran.
For the record, I am not saying that Arabs or Muslims are incapable of democracy. I am most certainly saying that Arabs, Muslims, or anyone else would find it almost impossible to establish a stable democracy out of chaos and years of corruption and injustice.
The Egyptian Army is another power alternative. And it's possible they could provide a bridge to a future civilian democratic government in Cairo. All we know here is that they've kept their noses out of politics and are thought to be generally loyal to Mubarak. The United States could help persuade the parties—if asked to play that role by the military, Mubarak officials, and "the people."
Now, a final word about America's power in this situation. We haven't got any power to shape events. But that does not mean we are without influence. We have influence by virtue of the billions in aid we provide annually, by dint of years of positive contacts with the Egyptian government and business people, and the like. This means something. If the Obama administration leans to the protesters, that would embolden the protesters and demoralize Mubarak supporters. And mind you, those Americans screaming to support "the people" should understand that no matter how much President Obama sides with "the people," few of them will thank him or America for it. And our soothsayers should also understand that when our other Arab friends watch us help remove Mubarak from power by not backing him, they'll believe that they'll be next on the list if they run into trouble. U.S. power would crumble in the region.
In these circumstances, the least problematic of U.S. policies are as follows:
1. Call on all sides to restore order and stability—with as much restraint on government force as possible. Little or nothing can get done if the killings mount. Under present circumstances, Mubarak won't compromise, and if he did, "the people" would only demand more. And everything would fly out of control again. The Army is best positioned to do what's necessary here, including using minimum necessary force.
2. Shut up publicly as much as possible and use American influence privately to guide Mubarak toward a power transition "he could be proud of." He can't stay in office for long, but he can go in a way that befits a strong ally and allows for a legacy he can be proud of. (And by the way, the White House should also stop threatening publicly to cut off aid to his government. Make such points in private.)
3. Bring in Egyptian voices and others respected by them to speak truth to the people. Tell them it will take years to fix Egypt's mountain of problems. Urge them to say that the start would be a coalition government with Mubarak as president for as short a period as possible and no more than a year, followed by elections supervised by the United Nations.
After a daylong meeting on Saturday, the White House decided to lean in this direction—i.e., away from the protesters and toward Mubarak. But according to officials, Obama will not be saying so explicitly.
Our foremost fear should be an abrupt change of power or chaos that will benefit only extremists. Our foremost worry should be self-delusion.
Difficult as it may be, let's try for an honest and realistic discussion of Egypt. Of course, the Obama administration, most Americans, most Egyptians, and I myself would prefer a democratic government in Cairo instead of President Mubarak's corrupt and repressive establishment. That's not the issue. The real issue is this: If Mubarak tumbles and if Washington uses its influence—and yes, it does have influence at approximately $3 billion in annual total aid—to push him out, what kind of government will follow his? Will it be even less democratic and more repressive? And what will be the implications for U.S. security in the region?
So, let's stop prancing around and proclaiming our devotion to peace, "universal rights" and people power. Instead, let's step back and look hard at what we know and don't know about this popular explosion in the bosom of one of America's most vital allies—and what the United States can and can't do about it.
The devil we know is President Mubarak. In the history of Mideast bad guys, he's far from the worst. Remember Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomenei, President Ahmadinejad, President Assad of Syria, and the many and varied leaders of Muslim terrorist groups? No sensible American would excuse Mubarak's corrupt regime—a bureaucracy that would make Kafka blush, a nasty police force, and a repressive political system. Very bad, indeed. On the plus side, he's led Egypt's economy to 6 to 7 percent real growth in past years and has conducted a foreign policy highly supportive of U.S. interests.
Most seriously, he failed to institute gradual political and economic reforms. Consequently, his nation is in flames. U.S. administrations haven't been successful in the past when they tried to push Mubarak in this direction. But it stands to reason that he might now be more amenable to reforms and transitions as long as he is not humiliated.
Now, what about the devils we know less—like the protesters? Of course, there's a slew of journalists, pundits, policy experts and professors who say these aren't devils at all, just "the people": democrats, lawyers, and college-educated and moderate women. No doubt, many of the protesters fit that description. But the dutiful press has interviewed only, say, a few hundred of these good souls. Perhaps many are not so democratic. Perhaps many are Egyptian Tea Partiers who want every Egyptian to have Islamic guns like the Founding Pharaohs. Or perhaps many are just furious and poor and unknowledgeable. My guess is no one really knows a great deal about the protesters.
It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.
As for most of the other "devils," they are pretty well known. One leadership candidate, of course, is Mohamed ElBaradei, the former U.N. chief nuclear inspector and a good man. But he has almost no constituency inside Egypt, where he's spent little time in recent years. The people aren't going to give him power, and he probably wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. But he could be part of a future government in an ideal world.
The other "devil," now being proclaimed as misunderstood Islamic democrats, is the Muslim Brotherhood, and they should give us great pause. Baloney and wishful thinking aside, the MB would be calamitous for U.S. security. What's more, their current defenders don't really argue that point, as much as they seem to dismiss it as not important or something we can live with. The MB supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli agreement of 1979, widely regarded as the foundation of peace in the Mideast. Above all, the MB would endanger counterterrorism efforts in the region and worldwide. That is a very big deal.
As for the MB's domestic democratic credentials, let me show some restraint here. To begin with, no one really has any sound idea of how they might rule; they haven't gotten close enough to power to fully judge. But they'd be bad for non-orthodox Islamic women.
And while MB leaders profess support for democracy and free speech, my mother's response still holds: "They would say that, wouldn't they?" What I see is that they've quieted their usual inflammatory rhetoric in return for Mubarak not banning them. It would be delusory to take the MB's democratic protestations at face value. Look at who their friends are—like Hamas.
The real danger is that our experts, pundits and professors will talk the Arab and American worlds into believing we can all trust the MB. And that's dangerous because, outside of the government, the MB is the only organized political force, the only group capable of taking power. And if they do gain control, it's going to be almost impossible for the people to take it back. Just look at Iran.
For the record, I am not saying that Arabs or Muslims are incapable of democracy. I am most certainly saying that Arabs, Muslims, or anyone else would find it almost impossible to establish a stable democracy out of chaos and years of corruption and injustice.
The Egyptian Army is another power alternative. And it's possible they could provide a bridge to a future civilian democratic government in Cairo. All we know here is that they've kept their noses out of politics and are thought to be generally loyal to Mubarak. The United States could help persuade the parties—if asked to play that role by the military, Mubarak officials, and "the people."
Now, a final word about America's power in this situation. We haven't got any power to shape events. But that does not mean we are without influence. We have influence by virtue of the billions in aid we provide annually, by dint of years of positive contacts with the Egyptian government and business people, and the like. This means something. If the Obama administration leans to the protesters, that would embolden the protesters and demoralize Mubarak supporters. And mind you, those Americans screaming to support "the people" should understand that no matter how much President Obama sides with "the people," few of them will thank him or America for it. And our soothsayers should also understand that when our other Arab friends watch us help remove Mubarak from power by not backing him, they'll believe that they'll be next on the list if they run into trouble. U.S. power would crumble in the region.
In these circumstances, the least problematic of U.S. policies are as follows:
1. Call on all sides to restore order and stability—with as much restraint on government force as possible. Little or nothing can get done if the killings mount. Under present circumstances, Mubarak won't compromise, and if he did, "the people" would only demand more. And everything would fly out of control again. The Army is best positioned to do what's necessary here, including using minimum necessary force.
2. Shut up publicly as much as possible and use American influence privately to guide Mubarak toward a power transition "he could be proud of." He can't stay in office for long, but he can go in a way that befits a strong ally and allows for a legacy he can be proud of. (And by the way, the White House should also stop threatening publicly to cut off aid to his government. Make such points in private.)
3. Bring in Egyptian voices and others respected by them to speak truth to the people. Tell them it will take years to fix Egypt's mountain of problems. Urge them to say that the start would be a coalition government with Mubarak as president for as short a period as possible and no more than a year, followed by elections supervised by the United Nations.
After a daylong meeting on Saturday, the White House decided to lean in this direction—i.e., away from the protesters and toward Mubarak. But according to officials, Obama will not be saying so explicitly.
Our foremost fear should be an abrupt change of power or chaos that will benefit only extremists. Our foremost worry should be self-delusion.
Obama pulls away from Mubarak
The Obama administration Saturday continued inching away from the besieged government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as observers in Washington and Cairo began to conclude that the autocrat has little chance of restoring his authority.
Key American officials spent Saturday morning in a two-hour meeting and another hour briefing President Barack Obama that afternoon.
Obama “reiterated our focus on opposing violence and calling for restraint; supporting universal rights and supporting concrete steps that advance political reform within Egypt,” according to a White House description of the later meeting.
But in terms of officials words on the spiraling crisis — one that holds enormous stakes for U.S. foreign policy — administration officials spoke only in a Twittered whisper, allowing Obama’s Friday night call on Mubarak to move swiftly toward political reform to set the tone.
“The people of Egypt no longer accept the status quo. They are looking to their government for a meaningful process to foster real reform,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley wrote Saturday morning. “The Egyptian government can’t reshuffle the deck and then stand pat. President Mubarak’s words pledging reform must be followed by action.”
Obama’s pressure on Mubarak and the fact that defenses of Mubarak and the “stability” he brings the region from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden earlier in the week haven’t been repeated, have led many observers to conclude that the administration is readying for the end of the Mubarak era.
Foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan, who co-chairs the bipartisan Egypt working group that has been urging the administration to prepare for the post-Mubarak era, said he welcomed Obama’s comments, which came after the president spoke with Mubarak Friday night.
“They’re not as on the fence as people think,” Kagan, of the Brookings Institution, said by e-mail Saturday, referring to the U.S. administration. “I think the administration knows there has to be some kind of transition soon.”
That transition appears decreasingly likely to be Mubarak’s son Gamal, whom the BBC reported had arrived with his brother in the United Kingdom, a report Egyptian state television denied. (A State Department official said Saturday he did not know whether the report was true, but noted that similar rumors have been flying for days.) And Mubarak struggled to signal change Saturday without giving into protesters’ demands that he step down, appointing Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman as his vice president.
The appointment of the veteran Egyptian security official and Mubarak confidant who has dealt extensively with Washington on the peace process, counter-terrorism, and other security matters, came hours after Mubarak announced overnight that he would dissolve his cabinet and implement political and economic reforms.
The appointment of Suleiman, a Mubarak confidant and foe of Islamic radicals who has a strong working rapport with Washington as well as Israel and other Middle East capitals, could suggest a potential transition figure and bulwark against instability as Mubarak’s exit is envisioned, from Washington’s perspective. But Egyptian protesters are unlikely to be appeased by the appointment, Washington Egypt experts said, given his close association with the Mubarak regime and the human rights abuses and torture perpetrated by Egypt’s security apparatus.
“I doubt that Suleiman will be acceptable as vice president, and therefore heir apparent to the presidency, to the protestors,” said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Michele Dunne, a former U.S. official who co-chairs the Egypt working group with Kagan. “He is closely linked to Mubarak and, as head of intelligence, linked to human rights abuses over the years.”
“The message [of Suleiman’s appointment] is intended to be, even if Mubarak goes, the system remains,” said Jon Alterman, an Egypt expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
On the ground, looters and criminals appeared at times to be filling the vacuum that police, beaten back by protesters, had left. The Associated Press reported that 74 people have died since the anti-government protests began five days ago. The Egyptian Army fanned out across Cairo to guard government buildings and historical sites like the Egyptian Museum, where looters ripped the heads off two mummies and damaged a handful of small artifacts before being caught by soldiers, according to the country’s antiquities chief.
And even as the chaos raged, the Washington consensus that Mubarak’s days are numbered was hardening.
“It’s hard to imagine Mubarak is president in a year,” said Alterman.
“This is the E-N-D,” Council on Foreign Relations Egypt specialist Steven Cook wrote Saturday. “Unless the military is willing to enforce martial law/spill blood, it’s hard to see how Hosni and Omar … hang [on].”
A transition, though, could be unstable and uncertain, and a key American strategic relationship remains in flux, with the path forward utterly unclear.
One top dissident, international diplomat and nuclear expert Mohamed El Baradei, said he found Obama’s remarks “disappointing” — an early mark that the next Egyptian regime may have political reasons to position itself against the U.S. where Mubarak did not.
“The only way out for Mubarak is to allow free and fair, competitive elections, including inviting international monitors to come in,” said Kagan. “And right away, because they have to monitor months of campaigning leading up to the elections.”
“If Mubarak announced this right away, it could prevent him from being toppled,” Kagan said. “It is possible that Egyptians would still want Mubarak out even if he made these concessions, but I think it could work.”
The Associated Press
Key American officials spent Saturday morning in a two-hour meeting and another hour briefing President Barack Obama that afternoon.
Obama “reiterated our focus on opposing violence and calling for restraint; supporting universal rights and supporting concrete steps that advance political reform within Egypt,” according to a White House description of the later meeting.
But in terms of officials words on the spiraling crisis — one that holds enormous stakes for U.S. foreign policy — administration officials spoke only in a Twittered whisper, allowing Obama’s Friday night call on Mubarak to move swiftly toward political reform to set the tone.
“The people of Egypt no longer accept the status quo. They are looking to their government for a meaningful process to foster real reform,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley wrote Saturday morning. “The Egyptian government can’t reshuffle the deck and then stand pat. President Mubarak’s words pledging reform must be followed by action.”
Obama’s pressure on Mubarak and the fact that defenses of Mubarak and the “stability” he brings the region from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden earlier in the week haven’t been repeated, have led many observers to conclude that the administration is readying for the end of the Mubarak era.
Foreign policy scholar Robert Kagan, who co-chairs the bipartisan Egypt working group that has been urging the administration to prepare for the post-Mubarak era, said he welcomed Obama’s comments, which came after the president spoke with Mubarak Friday night.
“They’re not as on the fence as people think,” Kagan, of the Brookings Institution, said by e-mail Saturday, referring to the U.S. administration. “I think the administration knows there has to be some kind of transition soon.”
That transition appears decreasingly likely to be Mubarak’s son Gamal, whom the BBC reported had arrived with his brother in the United Kingdom, a report Egyptian state television denied. (A State Department official said Saturday he did not know whether the report was true, but noted that similar rumors have been flying for days.) And Mubarak struggled to signal change Saturday without giving into protesters’ demands that he step down, appointing Egyptian intelligence chief Gen. Omar Suleiman as his vice president.
The appointment of the veteran Egyptian security official and Mubarak confidant who has dealt extensively with Washington on the peace process, counter-terrorism, and other security matters, came hours after Mubarak announced overnight that he would dissolve his cabinet and implement political and economic reforms.
The appointment of Suleiman, a Mubarak confidant and foe of Islamic radicals who has a strong working rapport with Washington as well as Israel and other Middle East capitals, could suggest a potential transition figure and bulwark against instability as Mubarak’s exit is envisioned, from Washington’s perspective. But Egyptian protesters are unlikely to be appeased by the appointment, Washington Egypt experts said, given his close association with the Mubarak regime and the human rights abuses and torture perpetrated by Egypt’s security apparatus.
“I doubt that Suleiman will be acceptable as vice president, and therefore heir apparent to the presidency, to the protestors,” said the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Michele Dunne, a former U.S. official who co-chairs the Egypt working group with Kagan. “He is closely linked to Mubarak and, as head of intelligence, linked to human rights abuses over the years.”
“The message [of Suleiman’s appointment] is intended to be, even if Mubarak goes, the system remains,” said Jon Alterman, an Egypt expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
On the ground, looters and criminals appeared at times to be filling the vacuum that police, beaten back by protesters, had left. The Associated Press reported that 74 people have died since the anti-government protests began five days ago. The Egyptian Army fanned out across Cairo to guard government buildings and historical sites like the Egyptian Museum, where looters ripped the heads off two mummies and damaged a handful of small artifacts before being caught by soldiers, according to the country’s antiquities chief.
And even as the chaos raged, the Washington consensus that Mubarak’s days are numbered was hardening.
“It’s hard to imagine Mubarak is president in a year,” said Alterman.
“This is the E-N-D,” Council on Foreign Relations Egypt specialist Steven Cook wrote Saturday. “Unless the military is willing to enforce martial law/spill blood, it’s hard to see how Hosni and Omar … hang [on].”
A transition, though, could be unstable and uncertain, and a key American strategic relationship remains in flux, with the path forward utterly unclear.
One top dissident, international diplomat and nuclear expert Mohamed El Baradei, said he found Obama’s remarks “disappointing” — an early mark that the next Egyptian regime may have political reasons to position itself against the U.S. where Mubarak did not.
“The only way out for Mubarak is to allow free and fair, competitive elections, including inviting international monitors to come in,” said Kagan. “And right away, because they have to monitor months of campaigning leading up to the elections.”
“If Mubarak announced this right away, it could prevent him from being toppled,” Kagan said. “It is possible that Egyptians would still want Mubarak out even if he made these concessions, but I think it could work.”
The Associated Press
Black? White? Asian? More Young Americans Choose All of the Above
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — In another time or place, the game of “What Are You?” that was played one night last fall at the University of Maryland might have been mean, or menacing: Laura Wood’s peers were picking apart her every feature in an effort to guess her race.
“How many mixtures do you have?” one young man asked above the chatter of about 50 students. With her tan skin and curly brown hair, Ms. Wood’s ancestry could have spanned the globe.
“I’m mixed with two things,” she said politely.
“Are you mulatto?” asked Paul Skym, another student, using a word once tinged with shame that is enjoying a comeback in some young circles. When Ms. Wood confirmed that she is indeed black and white, Mr. Skym, who is Asian and white, boasted, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” in affirmation of their mutual mixed lineage.
Then the group of friends — formally, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association — erupted into laughter and cheers, a routine show of their mixed-race pride.
The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.
One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating.
Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense of identity. Ask Michelle López-Mullins, a 20-year-old junior and the president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, how she marks her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”
They are also using the strength in their growing numbers to affirm roots that were once portrayed as tragic or pitiable.
“I think it’s really important to acknowledge who you are and everything that makes you that,” said Ms. Wood, the 19-year-old vice president of the group. “If someone tries to call me black I say, ‘yes — and white.’ People have the right not to acknowledge everything, but don’t do it because society tells you that you can’t.”
No one knows quite how the growth of the multiracial population will change the country. Optimists say the blending of the races is a step toward transcending race, to a place where America is free of bigotry, prejudice and programs like affirmative action.
Pessimists say that a more powerful multiracial movement will lead to more stratification and come at the expense of the number and influence of other minority groups, particularly African-Americans.
And some sociologists say that grouping all multiracial people together glosses over differences in circumstances between someone who is, say, black and Latino, and someone who is Asian and white. (Among interracial couples, white-Asian pairings tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, according to Reynolds Farley, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.)
Along those lines, it is telling that the rates of intermarriage are lowest between blacks and whites, indicative of the enduring economic and social distance between them.
Prof. Rainier Spencer, director of the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” says he believes that there is too much “emotional investment” in the notion of multiracialism as a panacea for the nation’s age-old divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence of race, it’s a new tribe,” he said. “A new Balkanization of race.”
But for many of the University of Maryland students, that is not the point. They are asserting their freedom to identify as they choose.
“All society is trying to tear you apart and make you pick a side,” Ms. Wood said. “I want us to have a say.”
The Way We Were
Americans mostly think of themselves in singular racial terms. Witness President Obama’s answer to the race question on the 2010 census: Although his mother was white and his father was black, Mr. Obama checked only one box, black, even though he could have checked both races.
Some proportion of the country’s population has been mixed-race since the first white settlers had children with Native Americans. What has changed is how mixed-race Americans are defined and counted.
Long ago, the nation saw itself in more hues than black and white: the 1890 census included categories for racial mixtures such as quadroon (one-fourth black) and octoroon (one-eighth black). With the exception of one survey from 1850 to 1920, the census included a mulatto category, which was for people who had any perceptible trace of African blood.
But by the 1930 census, terms for mixed-race people had all disappeared, replaced by the so-called one-drop rule, an antebellum convention that held that anyone with a trace of African ancestry was only black. (Similarly, people who were “white and Indian” were generally to be counted as Indian.)
It was the census enumerator who decided.
By the 1970s, Americans were expected to designate themselves as members of one officially recognized racial group: black, white, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean or “other,” an option used frequently by people of Hispanic origin. (The census recognizes Hispanic as an ethnicity, not a race.)
Starting with the 2000 census, Americans were allowed to mark one or more races.
The multiracial option came after years of complaints and lobbying, mostly by the white mothers of biracial children who objected to their children being allowed to check only one race. In 2000, seven million people — about 2.4 percent of the population — reported being more than one race.
According to estimates from the Census Bureau, the mixed-race population has grown by roughly 35 percent since 2000.
And many researchers think the census and other surveys undercount the mixed population.
The 2010 mixed-race statistics will be released, state by state, over the first half of the year.
“There could be some big surprises,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, meaning that the number of mixed-race Americans could be high. “There’s not only less stigma to being in these groups, there’s even positive cachet.”
Moving Forward
The faces of mixed-race America are not just on college campuses. They are in politics, business and sports. And the ethnically ambiguous are especially ubiquitous in movies, television shows and advertising. There are news, social networking and dating Web sites focusing on the mixed-race audience, and even consumer products like shampoo. There are mixed-race film festivals and conferences. And student groups like the one at Maryland, offering peer support and activism, are more common.
Such a club would not have existed a generation ago — when the question at the center of the “What Are You?” game would have been a provocation rather than an icebreaker.
“It’s kind of a taking-back in a way, taking the reins,” Ms. López-Mullins said. “We don’t always have to let it get us down,” she added, referring to the question multiracial people have heard for generations.
“The No. 1 reason why we exist is to give people who feel like they don’t want to choose a side, that don’t want to label themselves based on other people’s interpretations of who they are, to give them a place, that safe space,” she said. Ms. López-Mullins is Chinese and Peruvian on one side, and white and American Indian on the other.
That safe space did not exist amid the neo-Classical style buildings of the campus when Warren Kelley enrolled in 1974. Though his mother is Japanese and his father is African-American, he had basically one choice when it came to his racial identity. “I was black and proud to be black,” Dr. Kelley said. “There was no notion that I might be multiracial. Or that the public discourse on college campuses recognized the multiracial community.”
Almost 40 years later, Dr. Kelley is the assistant vice president for student affairs at the university and faculty adviser to the multiracial club, and he is often in awe of the change on this campus.
When the multiracial group was founded in 2002, Dr. Kelley said, “There was an instant audience.”
They did not just want to hold parties. The group sponsored an annual weeklong program of discussions intended to raise awareness of multiracial identities — called Mixed Madness — and conceived a new class on the experience of mixed-race Asian-Americans that was made part of the curriculum last year.
“Even if someone had formed a mixed-race group in the ’70s, would I have joined?” Dr. Kelley said. “I don’t know. My multiracial identity wasn’t prominent at the time. I don’t think I even conceptualized the idea.”
By the 2000 census, Dr. Kelley’s notion of his racial identity had evolved to include his mother’s Asian heritage; he modified his race officially on the form. After a lifetime of checking black, he checked Asian and black.
(Dr. Kelley’s mother was born in Kyoto. She met her future husband, a black soldier from Alabama, while he was serving in the Pacific during World War II.)
Checking both races was not an easy choice, Dr. Kelley said, “as a black man, with all that means in terms of pride in that heritage as well as reasons to give back and be part of progress forward.”
“As I moved into adulthood and got a professional job, I started to respect my parents more and see the amount of my mom’s culture that’s reflected in me,” he said. “Society itself also moved.”
Finding Camaraderie
In fall 2009, a question tugged at Sabrina Garcia, then a freshman at Maryland, a public university with 26,500 undergraduates: “Where will I fit in?” recalled Ms. Garcia, who is Palestinian and Salvadoran.
“I considered the Latina student union, but I’m only half,” she said. “I didn’t want to feel like I was hiding any part of me. I went to an M.B.S.A. meeting and it was really great. I really feel like part of a group that understands.”
The group holds weekly meetings, in addition to hosting movie nights, dinners, parties and, occasionally, posts broadcasts on YouTube.
Not all of its 100 or so members consider themselves mixed race, and the club welcomes everyone.
At a meeting in the fall, David Banda, who is Hispanic, and Julicia Coleman, who is black, came just to unwind among supportive listeners. They discussed the frustrations of being an interracial couple, even today, especially back in their hometown, Upper Marlboro, Md.
“When we go back home, let’s say for a weekend or to the mall, they see us walking and I get this look, you know, sort of giving me the idea: ‘Why are you with her? You’re not black, so she should be with a black person.’ Or comments,” Mr. Banda, 20, said at a meeting of the group. “Even some of my friends tell me, ‘Why don’t you date a Hispanic girl?’ ”
Mr. Banda and Ms. Coleman are thinking about having children someday. “One of the main reasons I joined is to see the struggles mixed people go through,” he said, “so we can be prepared when that time comes.”
And despite the growth of the mixed-race population, there are struggles.
Ian Winchester, a junior who is part Ghanaian, part Scottish-Norwegian, said he felt lucky and torn being biracial. His Scottish grandfather was keen on dressing him in kilts as a boy. The other side of the family would put him in a dashiki. “I do feel empowered being biracial,” he said. “The ability to question your identity — identity in general — is really a gift.”
But, he continued, “I don’t even like to identify myself as a race anymore. My family has been pulling me in two directions about what I am. I just want to be a person.”
Similarly, Ms. López-Mullins sees herself largely in nonracial terms.
“I hadn’t even learned the word ‘Hispanic’ until I came home from school one day and asked my dad what I should refer to him as, to express what I am,” she said. “Growing up with my parents, I never thought we were different from any other family.”
But it was not long before Ms. López-Mullins came to detest what was the most common question put to her in grade school, even from friends. “What are you?” they asked, and “Where are you from?” They were fascinated by her father, a Latino with Asian roots, and her mother with the long blond hair, who was mostly European in ancestry, although mixed with some Cherokee and Shawnee.
“I was always having to explain where my parents are from because just saying ‘I’m from Takoma Park, Maryland,’ was not enough,” she said. “Saying ‘I’m an American’ wasn’t enough.”
“Now when people ask what I am, I say, ‘How much time do you have?’ ” she said. “Race will not automatically tell you my story.”
What box does she check on forms like the census? “Hispanic, white, Asian American, Native American,” she said. “I’m pretty much checking everything.”
At one meeting of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, Ms. Wood shared a story about surprises and coming to terms with them. “Until I was 8 years old, I thought I was white,” she told the group. “My mother and aunt sat me down and said the guy I’d been calling Dad was not my father. I started crying. And she said, ‘Your real father is black.’ ”
Ms. Wood’s mother, Catherine Bandele, who is white, and her biological father split up before she was born. Facing economic troubles and resistance from her family about raising a mixed-race child, Ms. Bandele gave her daughter up for adoption to a couple who had requested a biracial baby. But after two weeks, she changed her mind. “I had to fight to get her back, but I got her,” Ms. Bandele said. “And we’re so proud of Laura.”
Eventually Ms. Wood’s closest relatives softened, embracing her.
But more distant relatives never came around. “They can’t see past the color of my skin and accept me even though I share DNA with them,” she said. “It hurts a lot because I don’t even know my father’s side of the family.”
Ms. Wood has searched the Internet for her father, to no avail.
“Being in M.B.S.A., it really helps with that,” she said. “Finding a group of people who can accept you for who you are and being able to accept yourself, to just be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m O.K. just the way I am!’ — honestly, I feel that it’s a blessing.”
“It took a long time,” she said.
Now Ms. Wood is one of the group’s foremost advocates.
Over dinner with Ms. López-Mullins one night, she wondered: “What if Obama had checked white? There would have been an uproar because he’s the first ‘black president,’ even though he’s mixed. I would like to have a conversation with him about why he did that.”
Absent that opportunity, Ms. Wood took her concerns about what Mr. Obama checked to a meeting of the campus chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. last year. Vicky Key, a past president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, who is Greek and black, joined her. The question for discussion was whether Mr. Obama is the first black president or the first multiracial president.
Ms. Key, a senior, remembered someone answering the question without much discussion: “One-drop rule, he’s black.”
“But we were like, ‘Wait!’ ” she said. “That’s offensive to us. We sat there and tried to advocate, but they said, ‘No, he’s black and that’s it.’ Then someone said, ‘Stop taking away our black president.’ I didn’t understand where they were coming from, and they didn’t understand me.”
Whether Mr. Obama is considered black or multiracial, there is a wider debate among mixed-race people about what the long-term goals of their advocacy should be, both on campus and off.
“I don’t want a color-blind society at all,” Ms. Wood said. “I just want both my races to be acknowledged.”
Ms. López-Mullins countered, “I want mine not to matter.”
“How many mixtures do you have?” one young man asked above the chatter of about 50 students. With her tan skin and curly brown hair, Ms. Wood’s ancestry could have spanned the globe.
“I’m mixed with two things,” she said politely.
“Are you mulatto?” asked Paul Skym, another student, using a word once tinged with shame that is enjoying a comeback in some young circles. When Ms. Wood confirmed that she is indeed black and white, Mr. Skym, who is Asian and white, boasted, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” in affirmation of their mutual mixed lineage.
Then the group of friends — formally, the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association — erupted into laughter and cheers, a routine show of their mixed-race pride.
The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by immigration and intermarriage.
One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating.
Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense of identity. Ask Michelle López-Mullins, a 20-year-old junior and the president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, how she marks her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”
They are also using the strength in their growing numbers to affirm roots that were once portrayed as tragic or pitiable.
“I think it’s really important to acknowledge who you are and everything that makes you that,” said Ms. Wood, the 19-year-old vice president of the group. “If someone tries to call me black I say, ‘yes — and white.’ People have the right not to acknowledge everything, but don’t do it because society tells you that you can’t.”
No one knows quite how the growth of the multiracial population will change the country. Optimists say the blending of the races is a step toward transcending race, to a place where America is free of bigotry, prejudice and programs like affirmative action.
Pessimists say that a more powerful multiracial movement will lead to more stratification and come at the expense of the number and influence of other minority groups, particularly African-Americans.
And some sociologists say that grouping all multiracial people together glosses over differences in circumstances between someone who is, say, black and Latino, and someone who is Asian and white. (Among interracial couples, white-Asian pairings tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, according to Reynolds Farley, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.)
Along those lines, it is telling that the rates of intermarriage are lowest between blacks and whites, indicative of the enduring economic and social distance between them.
Prof. Rainier Spencer, director of the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” says he believes that there is too much “emotional investment” in the notion of multiracialism as a panacea for the nation’s age-old divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence of race, it’s a new tribe,” he said. “A new Balkanization of race.”
But for many of the University of Maryland students, that is not the point. They are asserting their freedom to identify as they choose.
“All society is trying to tear you apart and make you pick a side,” Ms. Wood said. “I want us to have a say.”
The Way We Were
Americans mostly think of themselves in singular racial terms. Witness President Obama’s answer to the race question on the 2010 census: Although his mother was white and his father was black, Mr. Obama checked only one box, black, even though he could have checked both races.
Some proportion of the country’s population has been mixed-race since the first white settlers had children with Native Americans. What has changed is how mixed-race Americans are defined and counted.
Long ago, the nation saw itself in more hues than black and white: the 1890 census included categories for racial mixtures such as quadroon (one-fourth black) and octoroon (one-eighth black). With the exception of one survey from 1850 to 1920, the census included a mulatto category, which was for people who had any perceptible trace of African blood.
But by the 1930 census, terms for mixed-race people had all disappeared, replaced by the so-called one-drop rule, an antebellum convention that held that anyone with a trace of African ancestry was only black. (Similarly, people who were “white and Indian” were generally to be counted as Indian.)
It was the census enumerator who decided.
By the 1970s, Americans were expected to designate themselves as members of one officially recognized racial group: black, white, American Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean or “other,” an option used frequently by people of Hispanic origin. (The census recognizes Hispanic as an ethnicity, not a race.)
Starting with the 2000 census, Americans were allowed to mark one or more races.
The multiracial option came after years of complaints and lobbying, mostly by the white mothers of biracial children who objected to their children being allowed to check only one race. In 2000, seven million people — about 2.4 percent of the population — reported being more than one race.
According to estimates from the Census Bureau, the mixed-race population has grown by roughly 35 percent since 2000.
And many researchers think the census and other surveys undercount the mixed population.
The 2010 mixed-race statistics will be released, state by state, over the first half of the year.
“There could be some big surprises,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, meaning that the number of mixed-race Americans could be high. “There’s not only less stigma to being in these groups, there’s even positive cachet.”
Moving Forward
The faces of mixed-race America are not just on college campuses. They are in politics, business and sports. And the ethnically ambiguous are especially ubiquitous in movies, television shows and advertising. There are news, social networking and dating Web sites focusing on the mixed-race audience, and even consumer products like shampoo. There are mixed-race film festivals and conferences. And student groups like the one at Maryland, offering peer support and activism, are more common.
Such a club would not have existed a generation ago — when the question at the center of the “What Are You?” game would have been a provocation rather than an icebreaker.
“It’s kind of a taking-back in a way, taking the reins,” Ms. López-Mullins said. “We don’t always have to let it get us down,” she added, referring to the question multiracial people have heard for generations.
“The No. 1 reason why we exist is to give people who feel like they don’t want to choose a side, that don’t want to label themselves based on other people’s interpretations of who they are, to give them a place, that safe space,” she said. Ms. López-Mullins is Chinese and Peruvian on one side, and white and American Indian on the other.
That safe space did not exist amid the neo-Classical style buildings of the campus when Warren Kelley enrolled in 1974. Though his mother is Japanese and his father is African-American, he had basically one choice when it came to his racial identity. “I was black and proud to be black,” Dr. Kelley said. “There was no notion that I might be multiracial. Or that the public discourse on college campuses recognized the multiracial community.”
Almost 40 years later, Dr. Kelley is the assistant vice president for student affairs at the university and faculty adviser to the multiracial club, and he is often in awe of the change on this campus.
When the multiracial group was founded in 2002, Dr. Kelley said, “There was an instant audience.”
They did not just want to hold parties. The group sponsored an annual weeklong program of discussions intended to raise awareness of multiracial identities — called Mixed Madness — and conceived a new class on the experience of mixed-race Asian-Americans that was made part of the curriculum last year.
“Even if someone had formed a mixed-race group in the ’70s, would I have joined?” Dr. Kelley said. “I don’t know. My multiracial identity wasn’t prominent at the time. I don’t think I even conceptualized the idea.”
By the 2000 census, Dr. Kelley’s notion of his racial identity had evolved to include his mother’s Asian heritage; he modified his race officially on the form. After a lifetime of checking black, he checked Asian and black.
(Dr. Kelley’s mother was born in Kyoto. She met her future husband, a black soldier from Alabama, while he was serving in the Pacific during World War II.)
Checking both races was not an easy choice, Dr. Kelley said, “as a black man, with all that means in terms of pride in that heritage as well as reasons to give back and be part of progress forward.”
“As I moved into adulthood and got a professional job, I started to respect my parents more and see the amount of my mom’s culture that’s reflected in me,” he said. “Society itself also moved.”
Finding Camaraderie
In fall 2009, a question tugged at Sabrina Garcia, then a freshman at Maryland, a public university with 26,500 undergraduates: “Where will I fit in?” recalled Ms. Garcia, who is Palestinian and Salvadoran.
“I considered the Latina student union, but I’m only half,” she said. “I didn’t want to feel like I was hiding any part of me. I went to an M.B.S.A. meeting and it was really great. I really feel like part of a group that understands.”
The group holds weekly meetings, in addition to hosting movie nights, dinners, parties and, occasionally, posts broadcasts on YouTube.
Not all of its 100 or so members consider themselves mixed race, and the club welcomes everyone.
At a meeting in the fall, David Banda, who is Hispanic, and Julicia Coleman, who is black, came just to unwind among supportive listeners. They discussed the frustrations of being an interracial couple, even today, especially back in their hometown, Upper Marlboro, Md.
“When we go back home, let’s say for a weekend or to the mall, they see us walking and I get this look, you know, sort of giving me the idea: ‘Why are you with her? You’re not black, so she should be with a black person.’ Or comments,” Mr. Banda, 20, said at a meeting of the group. “Even some of my friends tell me, ‘Why don’t you date a Hispanic girl?’ ”
Mr. Banda and Ms. Coleman are thinking about having children someday. “One of the main reasons I joined is to see the struggles mixed people go through,” he said, “so we can be prepared when that time comes.”
And despite the growth of the mixed-race population, there are struggles.
Ian Winchester, a junior who is part Ghanaian, part Scottish-Norwegian, said he felt lucky and torn being biracial. His Scottish grandfather was keen on dressing him in kilts as a boy. The other side of the family would put him in a dashiki. “I do feel empowered being biracial,” he said. “The ability to question your identity — identity in general — is really a gift.”
But, he continued, “I don’t even like to identify myself as a race anymore. My family has been pulling me in two directions about what I am. I just want to be a person.”
Similarly, Ms. López-Mullins sees herself largely in nonracial terms.
“I hadn’t even learned the word ‘Hispanic’ until I came home from school one day and asked my dad what I should refer to him as, to express what I am,” she said. “Growing up with my parents, I never thought we were different from any other family.”
But it was not long before Ms. López-Mullins came to detest what was the most common question put to her in grade school, even from friends. “What are you?” they asked, and “Where are you from?” They were fascinated by her father, a Latino with Asian roots, and her mother with the long blond hair, who was mostly European in ancestry, although mixed with some Cherokee and Shawnee.
“I was always having to explain where my parents are from because just saying ‘I’m from Takoma Park, Maryland,’ was not enough,” she said. “Saying ‘I’m an American’ wasn’t enough.”
“Now when people ask what I am, I say, ‘How much time do you have?’ ” she said. “Race will not automatically tell you my story.”
What box does she check on forms like the census? “Hispanic, white, Asian American, Native American,” she said. “I’m pretty much checking everything.”
At one meeting of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, Ms. Wood shared a story about surprises and coming to terms with them. “Until I was 8 years old, I thought I was white,” she told the group. “My mother and aunt sat me down and said the guy I’d been calling Dad was not my father. I started crying. And she said, ‘Your real father is black.’ ”
Ms. Wood’s mother, Catherine Bandele, who is white, and her biological father split up before she was born. Facing economic troubles and resistance from her family about raising a mixed-race child, Ms. Bandele gave her daughter up for adoption to a couple who had requested a biracial baby. But after two weeks, she changed her mind. “I had to fight to get her back, but I got her,” Ms. Bandele said. “And we’re so proud of Laura.”
Eventually Ms. Wood’s closest relatives softened, embracing her.
But more distant relatives never came around. “They can’t see past the color of my skin and accept me even though I share DNA with them,” she said. “It hurts a lot because I don’t even know my father’s side of the family.”
Ms. Wood has searched the Internet for her father, to no avail.
“Being in M.B.S.A., it really helps with that,” she said. “Finding a group of people who can accept you for who you are and being able to accept yourself, to just be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m O.K. just the way I am!’ — honestly, I feel that it’s a blessing.”
“It took a long time,” she said.
Now Ms. Wood is one of the group’s foremost advocates.
Over dinner with Ms. López-Mullins one night, she wondered: “What if Obama had checked white? There would have been an uproar because he’s the first ‘black president,’ even though he’s mixed. I would like to have a conversation with him about why he did that.”
Absent that opportunity, Ms. Wood took her concerns about what Mr. Obama checked to a meeting of the campus chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. last year. Vicky Key, a past president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, who is Greek and black, joined her. The question for discussion was whether Mr. Obama is the first black president or the first multiracial president.
Ms. Key, a senior, remembered someone answering the question without much discussion: “One-drop rule, he’s black.”
“But we were like, ‘Wait!’ ” she said. “That’s offensive to us. We sat there and tried to advocate, but they said, ‘No, he’s black and that’s it.’ Then someone said, ‘Stop taking away our black president.’ I didn’t understand where they were coming from, and they didn’t understand me.”
Whether Mr. Obama is considered black or multiracial, there is a wider debate among mixed-race people about what the long-term goals of their advocacy should be, both on campus and off.
“I don’t want a color-blind society at all,” Ms. Wood said. “I just want both my races to be acknowledged.”
Ms. López-Mullins countered, “I want mine not to matter.”
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