Barbour Cuts Press Aide After Japan Joke
Mississippi Governor and 2012 presidential hopeful Haley Barbour accepted the resignation of his press secretary, Dan Turner, Monday after reporters discovered he included a joke about Japan in his daily press clippings. The joke, which said Otis Reddings' "The Dock of the Bay" was not popular in Japan now, was one of several off-color remarks: Others made fun of Janet Reno and the Cambodian genocide. Turner can commiserate with Gilbert Gottfried, who was dropped as Aflac's spokesman after making several Japan jokes on Twitter. Read it at Politico
Muammar Gaddafi Nears Benghazi
Just one city now stands between Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi's troops and the rebel capital Benghazi. On Monday, Libyan fighter jets began attacking Ajdabiya—what Al Jazeera calls their "last line of defense" before Bengazi. Should Gaddafi's forces advance and capture the city, they'll have access to roads to surround Benghazi and cut off the rebels' supply lines with Egypt. Germany and Russia, meanwhile, raised questions at the UN about a no-fly zone that make it seem increasingly unlikely. A spokesman for the Libyan rebels visiting Paris told European leaders and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "We want a no-fly zone, we want tactical strikes against those tanks and rockets that are being used against us and we want a strike against Gaddafi's compound." Read on Al Jazeera
NRA Passes On Meeting With Obama
Looks like the National Rifle Association is not ready to join hands with the anti-gun lobby just yet, despite what the White House might think. In an editorial in a Tucson newspaper Sunday, President Obama called gun-control lobbyists and the NRA to begin "a new discussion" to regulate guns, but the NRA said Monday they will be attending no such meeting. "Why should I or the NRA go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?" said the NRA's longtime Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre. Justice Department officials will meet with gun-control advocates starting on Tuesday and over the next few weeks to discuss changes in policy, and White House officials had indicated they had expected the NRA would be there as well. Read it at The New York Times
Japan Warns: Stay Inside to Avoid Radiation
Could the manmade disaster surpass the natural one? Experts are calling the Japanese nuclear crisis the worst since Chernobyl after a third explosion and a fire at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Monday. Radiation levels near one reactor were 400 times the normal amount a human should experience in a year. Japan's government has told people living within 20 miles of the plant to stay indoors, and the Tokyo metropolitan government has said it has detected radiation levels 20 times above normal over the city. So far, winds have blown most of the radiation out to sea. As the world watches the disaster unfold, Rory Kennedy, who directed Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable, and Keven McAlester remind us that America's plants are even more vulnerable than the ones in Japan. Read it at The Daily Beast
U.S. Tensions Rise with Saudi Arabia
Could Saudi Arabia's decision to send 2,000 troops to Bahrain hurt its relations with the United States? Things are already tense between the historically close countries, as Saudi Arabia is annoyed at the way the United States dropped support for Egypt's Hosni Mubarak. "They're not in a mode for listening," a U.S. official says of communications with Saudi Arabia. Apparently, Saudi Arabia's King Abdulllah told President Obama he should support Mubarak, even if Mubarak began killing protesters. Obama ignored his advice. "They've taken it personally," a source tells The New York Times, "because they question what we'd do if they are next." Read it at The New York Times
Internet Explorer Adds Do-Not-Track Tool
Will be released Tuesday.
Gang-Rape Lawyer Seeks Gag Order
Would block media from Cleveland, Texas.
Hugo Chavez: Say No to Implants
Tells Venezuelan women to turn down breast implants.
Literature's New Darling from Belgrade
Téa Obreht is just 25.
Three-Year-Old Is UK's 'Youngest Alcoholic'
Was treated in hospital for addiction.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
2,405 Shot Dead Since Tucson
In an op-ed today, Obama laments those killed since the Giffords shooting. But a new ruling—and Dick Cheney—could be a turning point in gun laws.
On a snowy Wednesday evening in February, the main attraction on the marquee at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg, Virginia, was True Grit, the Coen Brothers’ bloody homage to the shoot-’em-up Westerns of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
But the movie playing inside had a very different message to send.
Four years ago, on April 16, 2007, Colin Goddard was one of 49 people shot by Seung-Hui Cho in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall, a mere 1,000 yards from the Lyric Theatre—and one of only 17 who survived.
Shortly after 9 a.m., Cho forced his way into Goddard’s French class, firing on the teacher and then methodically stalking the aisles, pumping an estimated 200 bullets from his Glock 19 and Walther .22 into every student he could see.
Goddard was hit four times: twice in the hips, once in the right shoulder, once in the left knee.
Now he had returned to the scene of the crime. Throughout Goddard’s long recovery—it took a titanium implant and months of physical therapy before he could set aside his crutches and cane and stand on his own two feet—he’d told himself that he wouldn’t let the Virginia Tech massacre define him.
He would graduate and move on with his life. But then came April 3, 2009, and with it a mass shooting at a Binghamton, New York, immigration center that left 13 more people dead. “I watched it on TV all day,” Goddard tells Newsweek. “I knew that all those families were rushing to hospitals without knowing what the outcome would be, having their lives turned upside down. I thought, can we really not do something to make this less likely?
I decided I couldn’t just sit quietly. I had to find a way to address this.”
In a few minutes, the result of Goddard’s efforts, a pro-gun-control documentary called Living for 32, would debut before a full house of 450 Hokies.
Fresh from an acclaimed run at Sundance, the film was tragically well-timed. A little more than a month earlier, in Tucson, Arizona, a college dropout named Jared Lee Loughner had gunned down Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, killing six; the previous weekend, 11 students had been shot and one student killed during a fraternity party in Ohio. The issue was in the air.
But this night, in this town, where the horror of gun violence was no longer an abstraction, had a resonance all its own. “Bringing it here, I thought, was very important,” Goddard, 25, told the audience, emotion evident in his voice. “This is where I grew up as an adult. This is where I came to understand that from such bad can come good.” Staring out from the stage, he saw his fellow ROTC members and remembered when they’d passed the Army’s basic rifle marksmanship course together.
He saw a couple of his fraternity brothers and remembered the good times they’d had at the local shooting range. Making the documentary, Goddard said, “has been part of my healing process.
” But every time there’s “another Tucson,” he confessed, “I’m right back here again.”
Then the lights dimmed, and the film began.
Gun-safety advocates would argue that Obama has a moral duty to stanch the bleeding, and that may be true. But what’s particularly interesting right now isn’t the moral equation.
It’s the practical one.
Are people like Colin Goddard crazy for thinking that they can change the politics of guns in America? Most Beltway types would say yes, and with good reason. The National Rifle Association, which regularly ranks as the most powerful lobbying group in Washington, has long had a stranglehold on the issue.
By outspending, out-organizing, and out-politicking its opponents, the NRA persuaded Democrats, who can control Congress only if they control red districts, to abandon gun safety in the 1980s and 1990s, and since then it has successfully pressed for ever-looser local laws. Consider the case of Tombstone, Arizona, which lies 70 miles southeast of Tucson.
When Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp shot up the O.K. Corral in 1881, civilians weren’t allowed to carry guns in town; a local ordinance required visitors to check their weapons at the Grand Hotel or the sheriff’s office.
But today, Tombstone residents are free to pack concealed firearms pretty much wherever they want, without a permit. The state is now wilder than the Wild West.
The national numbers tell the larger story.
Over the last two decades, the pro-gun lobby has outspent gun-control forces by a factor of 20 to 1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; in 2008 alone, the NRA and its allies shelled out $2.4 million, or 41 times what the other side was able to spend.
In 1988, 18 states had laws that made it easy for civilians to carry concealed handguns in public; now that number is approaching 40. New Mexico may expand concealed carry to elementary schools and preschools and “liquor establishments”; Michigan has pushed to open up day-care centers, sports arenas, and hospitals. Public opinion, meanwhile, has been trending in a similar direction
In 1959, for instance, 60 percent of respondents told Gallup they favored a ban on handguns except for “police and other authorized persons.” Now, after absorbing decades’ worth of NRA messaging—and after a recent drop in crime that sapped some urgency from the issue—more than 70 percent of voters oppose it.
Few politicians are eager to paddle against such a powerful tide, which is why so many of them called for “a new era of civility” after one of their colleagues was shot in the head—as opposed to, say, a new era of gun safety. “When I talk to lawmakers in D.C., they’re always polite,” says New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken gun-control advocate. “But they always say the same thing: ‘Well, guns are important, but I can’t really get into that now.’ ”
President Obama is no exception:
He’s spent the two months since Tucson paying lip service to the issue.
Shortly after the shooting, three of his heaviest hitters—David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, and David Axelrod—began to drop hints about the president’s intentions. Axelrod said there’s “no doubt” Obama “will engage in… that debate.”
Plouffe went further, noting his boss’s support for the assault-weapons ban and promising that “he’s going to address this.” Asked last week for an update, a senior White House official told Newsweek that advisers are still “exploring a variety of ways the president could” weigh in.
It’s hard not to wonder whether Obama’s plan is to pacify liberal critics by continuing to mention some vague dream of addressing gun safety at some wispy future date—then to cross his fingers and hope they forget.
If you believe the conventional wisdom, this strategy makes a certain sense: Why distract the electorate with a wedge issue when the economy is shaky and the Middle East is blowing up? But what if the chattering class is wrong? What if Obama is missing a rare opportunity?
As much as he might like to move on, the issue isn’t going away—nor should it. On March 4, a federal grand jury returned a 49-count indictment against Loughner, to which he has pleaded not guilty; a few days later, authorities released autopsies of his victims. Last week doctors revealed that Giffords is now walking, speaking in full sentences, and planning to attend
her husband’s shuttle launch in April. The wires, meanwhile, were filled with reports of fatal shootings: at a Sanger, California, birthday party; a Georgia apartment complex; a San Antonio carwash.
All told, an estimated 2,405 Americans have been shot and killed since Tucson, adding to the grim toll of 400,000 felled by guns since Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968. (The estimate of gun murders and accidental deaths is based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.)
Gun-safety advocates would argue that Obama has a moral duty to stanch the bleeding, and that may be true. But what’s particularly interesting right now isn’t the moral equation. It’s the practical one.
Look beyond the hoary Washington logic, and it’s clear that the present moment may be peculiar enough, and the forces at work potent enough, to produce real movement on gun safety—provided Obama proceeds carefully. That means no outlawing specific guns. No relitigating the Second Amendment.
And no frantic liberal overreach. Just two precautions that a majority of voters favor, according to a new Newsweek-Daily Beast Poll: background checks for every gun buyer (which 86 percent of respondents support) and a revival of the recently lapsed ban on the kind of high-capacity clips that Loughner used in Arizona (which 51 percent support).
If Obama came out in favor of these modest reforms, he’d have libertarians (such as the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy), Republicans (Rep. Peter King), independents (Bloomberg), and Democrats (Sen. Frank Lautenberg) on his side. Even Dick Cheney, a longtime hunter and NRA supporter, now admits that “maybe it’s appropriate to reestablish” limits on “the size of the magazine that you can buy to go with semiautomatic weapons.” The diversity of this group reflects a simple truth: that the vast majority of us have more in common with Goddard than with the two-dimensional culture warriors—the latte-sipping elites, the paranoid survivalists—who have dominated the debate for decades. We respect guns, gun owners, and the Second Amendment, and yet we want gun violence to be as rare as possible. We know that guns can contribute to a community’s safety, and yet we acknowledge that none of the 18 mass shootings since May 2007 was stopped by a legal-handgun carrier.
If Obama recognizes this reality, and takes action, it’s possible to imagine us having a grownup conversation about guns for the first time in almost 20 years.
Right now, the signs of hope may be faint. But they do exist. The first is Tucson itself—or, more precisely, the fact that the proposed laws emphasize how preventable Tucson really was. In the House, New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on a Long Island train, has introduced a bill seeking to reinstate the prohibition on high-capacity clips that took effect in 1994 but lapsed when the assault-weapons ban expired 10 years later.
It already has 93 cosponsors—“one of the quickest responses from people on the Hill,” to the knowledge of Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who is now president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In the Senate, Lautenberg has introduced a mirror version of McCarthy’s bill, as well as legislation that requires a background check for every gun sale and prevents people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms or explosives.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is pushing to improve the national electronic database of drug abusers, domestic offenders, and the mentally ill, which currently receives only 5 percent of the money assigned to it after Virginia Tech and lacks millions of records required by federal law. (Arizona, for example, should have sent in 122,000 names between 2008 and August 2010, according to the Justice Department; the state submitted only 4,465.)
With a comprehensive “can’t buy” database and loophole-free background checks, neither Loughner nor Cho would have been allowed to purchase firearms: Loughner’s drug use disqualified him from military service, and Cho had a history of mental illness.
And without access to high-capacity clips, Loughner would have stopped to reload after 15 rounds instead of 31—meaning that he would have been tackled and restrained 16 rounds sooner. “Pro-gun people always argue that laws like these wouldn’t have saved any lives,” says McCarthy. “But of course they would have. Fewer bullets in Loughner’s gun means that fewer shots would’ve been fired—which means that fewer people would have died.”
Despite its conservative leanings, the Supreme Court has also been paving the way for a new kind of gun politics.
For years, the NRA has invoked the Second Amendment to oppose even the most limited gun-safety measures. First of all, they say, the Constitution guarantees individuals “the right to bear arms,” so any restrictions on that right are inherently unconstitutional. And second, once bureaucrats start infringing on a fundamental freedom, what’s to stop them from outlawing guns altogether?
These arguments may have made some legal sense in the past, but not anymore. In 2008 the court ruled that while the Constitution does establish an individual right to bear arms, it does not rule out “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places ... or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
For the first time, the court placed some constitutional parameters on the gun debate. Can the government regulate firearms? Yes. But can it outlaw them altogether? Absolutely not—no matter what the NRA says.
“The decision undermined two of the NRA’s big arguments,” Helmke explains. “One, that you can’t have any restrictions on guns, and two, that ‘gun control’ is code for ‘gun ban.’ ”
It’s counterintuitive, but the current political climate might favor gun control as well. No coalition suffered bigger losses in the 2010 midterms than the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who tend to court NRA support. Meanwhile, only three of the 106 Democrats who backed legislation to close the gun-show loophole lost their seats. The results represent up-to-the-minute proof, says Helmke, that the “NRA can neither save you nor sink you”—an argument that could swing a few Democratic votes in the months ahead.
The public, meanwhile, endorses the current proposals, according to the Newsweek–Daily Beast Poll: 51 percent want to outlaw high-capacity magazines; 67 percent back prohibiting the sale of firearms or explosives to individuals on terrorist watch lists; 83 percent support fully funding the national background-check database; and 86 percent favor instant computerized background checks for every gun buyer
. After tacking right on taxes and spending to appease the newly empowered GOP, Obama will need to throw his base a bone in the run-up to 2012. Gun-control is a natural fit: “liberal” enough to please core Democratic constituencies and cheap enough not to bust the budget.
Obama should also be encouraged by new evidence that the GOP isn’t particularly invested in keeping high-capacity magazines on the market. As a congressman, Cheney was one of the few Republicans willing to vote against noncontroversial bans on cop-killer bullets and plastic guns, which were designed to evade metal detectors. Now he’s open to reviving the moratorium on Loughner-style clips—a huge shift. Conservative stalwart Bill Kristol seems to agree, telling C-SPAN in January, “Let’s look at why this guy could shoot so many shots off so quickly.”
In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, NRA President Wayne LaPierre didn’t bother to explain why high-capacity magazines are necessary. “He knows this is a tough one to defend,” Helmke says. Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 frontrunner, is on record as saying he “would have signed the assault-weapon ban”—a position that will make it hard for his party to oppose a new, less-expansive prohibition on clips if he’s nominated. And in a recent Wall Street Journal column, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan revealed that ultimately “the Republican Party will not go to the wall to defend extended clips.” If Obama and his allies decide to move forward, mainstream Republicans may not battle back as aggressively as everyone expects—even if the NRA insists it “disagrees” with Cheney and Kristol and will “fight any gun-control scenario down the pike,” as public-affairs director Andrew Arulanandam tells Newsweek.
Tucson was the first mass shooting or assassination plot in years in which neither the shooter nor his target died in the melee—an outcome that will shape the media coverage in ways that may benefit the gun-safety cause.
When a killer commits suicide, there’s no need for a trial; when his most prominent victim passes away, a funeral tends to bring the story to an end. But in this case, the coverage will continue indefinitely—Loughner will go on trial; Giffords will keep on recovering—and gun violence will be a topic of debate as long as their twinned tales are in the news. Factor in the anniversaries of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the 1981 Reagan shooting, which are coming up this month and next, and the president and his friends suddenly find themselves with a larger-than-usual window of opportunity to weigh in.
“Obama could go down as one of the greats if he stands up and has the courage to do this,” says Bloomberg, who is spending some of his estimated $18 billion fortune on the issue in the years ahead. “We need leadership.” Back at the Lyric Theatre, Goddard was doing his part.
Watching his documentary, it was impossible to ignore how little we’re doing to stop dangerous people from buying deadly weapons. Of the dozens of private sellers Goddard and his colleagues encountered at gun shows, not one ran a background check before selling them firearms, Goddard says.
Vendors in Maine were the toughest: They requested a local ID. “Minnesota has a system where you can get a permit to buy a gun that proves you can pass a background check, and if you don’t have that, some people won’t sell to you,” he says. “But you can just walk to the next table and buy one there without it.” In Texas, Ohio, and Virginia, Goddard easily bought semiautomatics, often without bothering to show ID. “I bought AK-47s, TEC-9s, a Mach 11, a slew of handguns,” he says.
“We could have bought books that tell you how to convert a semiautomatic to a fully automatic and how to make a homemade silencer. There were .50-caliber sniper rifles being sold to the general public almost everywhere we went.” In fact, the only time Goddard, who now works for the Brady Campaign, came under close scrutiny was when he delivered his weapons to the police. “I had to show my ID and answer all kinds of questions,” he says. “None of which were asked at the point of sale.”
As Living for 32 drew to a close and the lights in the Lyric came up, one student asked Goddard what kind of action Congress had taken since Tucson. Not much, he said. Then he smiled ruefully. “You’d think they would realize that all American citizens want to be sure that weapons are not sold to people who shouldn’t get them,” he continued. “You would think this would reverberate. We need to tell them that there are some simple things that we could be doing. We’re going to be here, pushing this, until it doesn’t need to be done anymore.
Andrew Romano is a senior writer for Newsweek.
But the movie playing inside had a very different message to send.
Four years ago, on April 16, 2007, Colin Goddard was one of 49 people shot by Seung-Hui Cho in Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall, a mere 1,000 yards from the Lyric Theatre—and one of only 17 who survived.
Shortly after 9 a.m., Cho forced his way into Goddard’s French class, firing on the teacher and then methodically stalking the aisles, pumping an estimated 200 bullets from his Glock 19 and Walther .22 into every student he could see.
Goddard was hit four times: twice in the hips, once in the right shoulder, once in the left knee.
He would graduate and move on with his life. But then came April 3, 2009, and with it a mass shooting at a Binghamton, New York, immigration center that left 13 more people dead. “I watched it on TV all day,” Goddard tells Newsweek. “I knew that all those families were rushing to hospitals without knowing what the outcome would be, having their lives turned upside down. I thought, can we really not do something to make this less likely?
I decided I couldn’t just sit quietly. I had to find a way to address this.”
In a few minutes, the result of Goddard’s efforts, a pro-gun-control documentary called Living for 32, would debut before a full house of 450 Hokies.
Fresh from an acclaimed run at Sundance, the film was tragically well-timed. A little more than a month earlier, in Tucson, Arizona, a college dropout named Jared Lee Loughner had gunned down Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, killing six; the previous weekend, 11 students had been shot and one student killed during a fraternity party in Ohio. The issue was in the air.
But this night, in this town, where the horror of gun violence was no longer an abstraction, had a resonance all its own. “Bringing it here, I thought, was very important,” Goddard, 25, told the audience, emotion evident in his voice. “This is where I grew up as an adult. This is where I came to understand that from such bad can come good.” Staring out from the stage, he saw his fellow ROTC members and remembered when they’d passed the Army’s basic rifle marksmanship course together.
He saw a couple of his fraternity brothers and remembered the good times they’d had at the local shooting range. Making the documentary, Goddard said, “has been part of my healing process.
” But every time there’s “another Tucson,” he confessed, “I’m right back here again.”
Then the lights dimmed, and the film began.
Gun-safety advocates would argue that Obama has a moral duty to stanch the bleeding, and that may be true. But what’s particularly interesting right now isn’t the moral equation.
It’s the practical one.
Are people like Colin Goddard crazy for thinking that they can change the politics of guns in America? Most Beltway types would say yes, and with good reason. The National Rifle Association, which regularly ranks as the most powerful lobbying group in Washington, has long had a stranglehold on the issue.
By outspending, out-organizing, and out-politicking its opponents, the NRA persuaded Democrats, who can control Congress only if they control red districts, to abandon gun safety in the 1980s and 1990s, and since then it has successfully pressed for ever-looser local laws. Consider the case of Tombstone, Arizona, which lies 70 miles southeast of Tucson.
When Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp shot up the O.K. Corral in 1881, civilians weren’t allowed to carry guns in town; a local ordinance required visitors to check their weapons at the Grand Hotel or the sheriff’s office.
But today, Tombstone residents are free to pack concealed firearms pretty much wherever they want, without a permit. The state is now wilder than the Wild West.
The national numbers tell the larger story.
Over the last two decades, the pro-gun lobby has outspent gun-control forces by a factor of 20 to 1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; in 2008 alone, the NRA and its allies shelled out $2.4 million, or 41 times what the other side was able to spend.
In 1988, 18 states had laws that made it easy for civilians to carry concealed handguns in public; now that number is approaching 40. New Mexico may expand concealed carry to elementary schools and preschools and “liquor establishments”; Michigan has pushed to open up day-care centers, sports arenas, and hospitals. Public opinion, meanwhile, has been trending in a similar direction
In 1959, for instance, 60 percent of respondents told Gallup they favored a ban on handguns except for “police and other authorized persons.” Now, after absorbing decades’ worth of NRA messaging—and after a recent drop in crime that sapped some urgency from the issue—more than 70 percent of voters oppose it.
Few politicians are eager to paddle against such a powerful tide, which is why so many of them called for “a new era of civility” after one of their colleagues was shot in the head—as opposed to, say, a new era of gun safety. “When I talk to lawmakers in D.C., they’re always polite,” says New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken gun-control advocate. “But they always say the same thing: ‘Well, guns are important, but I can’t really get into that now.’ ”
President Obama is no exception:
He’s spent the two months since Tucson paying lip service to the issue.
Shortly after the shooting, three of his heaviest hitters—David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs, and David Axelrod—began to drop hints about the president’s intentions. Axelrod said there’s “no doubt” Obama “will engage in… that debate.”
Plouffe went further, noting his boss’s support for the assault-weapons ban and promising that “he’s going to address this.” Asked last week for an update, a senior White House official told Newsweek that advisers are still “exploring a variety of ways the president could” weigh in.
It’s hard not to wonder whether Obama’s plan is to pacify liberal critics by continuing to mention some vague dream of addressing gun safety at some wispy future date—then to cross his fingers and hope they forget.
If you believe the conventional wisdom, this strategy makes a certain sense: Why distract the electorate with a wedge issue when the economy is shaky and the Middle East is blowing up? But what if the chattering class is wrong? What if Obama is missing a rare opportunity?
As much as he might like to move on, the issue isn’t going away—nor should it. On March 4, a federal grand jury returned a 49-count indictment against Loughner, to which he has pleaded not guilty; a few days later, authorities released autopsies of his victims. Last week doctors revealed that Giffords is now walking, speaking in full sentences, and planning to attend
her husband’s shuttle launch in April. The wires, meanwhile, were filled with reports of fatal shootings: at a Sanger, California, birthday party; a Georgia apartment complex; a San Antonio carwash.
All told, an estimated 2,405 Americans have been shot and killed since Tucson, adding to the grim toll of 400,000 felled by guns since Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968. (The estimate of gun murders and accidental deaths is based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.)
Gun-safety advocates would argue that Obama has a moral duty to stanch the bleeding, and that may be true. But what’s particularly interesting right now isn’t the moral equation. It’s the practical one.
Look beyond the hoary Washington logic, and it’s clear that the present moment may be peculiar enough, and the forces at work potent enough, to produce real movement on gun safety—provided Obama proceeds carefully. That means no outlawing specific guns. No relitigating the Second Amendment.
And no frantic liberal overreach. Just two precautions that a majority of voters favor, according to a new Newsweek-Daily Beast Poll: background checks for every gun buyer (which 86 percent of respondents support) and a revival of the recently lapsed ban on the kind of high-capacity clips that Loughner used in Arizona (which 51 percent support).
If Obama came out in favor of these modest reforms, he’d have libertarians (such as the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy), Republicans (Rep. Peter King), independents (Bloomberg), and Democrats (Sen. Frank Lautenberg) on his side. Even Dick Cheney, a longtime hunter and NRA supporter, now admits that “maybe it’s appropriate to reestablish” limits on “the size of the magazine that you can buy to go with semiautomatic weapons.” The diversity of this group reflects a simple truth: that the vast majority of us have more in common with Goddard than with the two-dimensional culture warriors—the latte-sipping elites, the paranoid survivalists—who have dominated the debate for decades. We respect guns, gun owners, and the Second Amendment, and yet we want gun violence to be as rare as possible. We know that guns can contribute to a community’s safety, and yet we acknowledge that none of the 18 mass shootings since May 2007 was stopped by a legal-handgun carrier.
If Obama recognizes this reality, and takes action, it’s possible to imagine us having a grownup conversation about guns for the first time in almost 20 years.
Right now, the signs of hope may be faint. But they do exist. The first is Tucson itself—or, more precisely, the fact that the proposed laws emphasize how preventable Tucson really was. In the House, New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a 1993 mass shooting on a Long Island train, has introduced a bill seeking to reinstate the prohibition on high-capacity clips that took effect in 1994 but lapsed when the assault-weapons ban expired 10 years later.
It already has 93 cosponsors—“one of the quickest responses from people on the Hill,” to the knowledge of Paul Helmke, the former Republican mayor of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who is now president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. In the Senate, Lautenberg has introduced a mirror version of McCarthy’s bill, as well as legislation that requires a background check for every gun sale and prevents people on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms or explosives.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is pushing to improve the national electronic database of drug abusers, domestic offenders, and the mentally ill, which currently receives only 5 percent of the money assigned to it after Virginia Tech and lacks millions of records required by federal law. (Arizona, for example, should have sent in 122,000 names between 2008 and August 2010, according to the Justice Department; the state submitted only 4,465.)
With a comprehensive “can’t buy” database and loophole-free background checks, neither Loughner nor Cho would have been allowed to purchase firearms: Loughner’s drug use disqualified him from military service, and Cho had a history of mental illness.
And without access to high-capacity clips, Loughner would have stopped to reload after 15 rounds instead of 31—meaning that he would have been tackled and restrained 16 rounds sooner. “Pro-gun people always argue that laws like these wouldn’t have saved any lives,” says McCarthy. “But of course they would have. Fewer bullets in Loughner’s gun means that fewer shots would’ve been fired—which means that fewer people would have died.”
Despite its conservative leanings, the Supreme Court has also been paving the way for a new kind of gun politics.
For years, the NRA has invoked the Second Amendment to oppose even the most limited gun-safety measures. First of all, they say, the Constitution guarantees individuals “the right to bear arms,” so any restrictions on that right are inherently unconstitutional. And second, once bureaucrats start infringing on a fundamental freedom, what’s to stop them from outlawing guns altogether?
These arguments may have made some legal sense in the past, but not anymore. In 2008 the court ruled that while the Constitution does establish an individual right to bear arms, it does not rule out “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places ... or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
For the first time, the court placed some constitutional parameters on the gun debate. Can the government regulate firearms? Yes. But can it outlaw them altogether? Absolutely not—no matter what the NRA says.
“The decision undermined two of the NRA’s big arguments,” Helmke explains. “One, that you can’t have any restrictions on guns, and two, that ‘gun control’ is code for ‘gun ban.’ ”
It’s counterintuitive, but the current political climate might favor gun control as well. No coalition suffered bigger losses in the 2010 midterms than the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who tend to court NRA support. Meanwhile, only three of the 106 Democrats who backed legislation to close the gun-show loophole lost their seats. The results represent up-to-the-minute proof, says Helmke, that the “NRA can neither save you nor sink you”—an argument that could swing a few Democratic votes in the months ahead.
The public, meanwhile, endorses the current proposals, according to the Newsweek–Daily Beast Poll: 51 percent want to outlaw high-capacity magazines; 67 percent back prohibiting the sale of firearms or explosives to individuals on terrorist watch lists; 83 percent support fully funding the national background-check database; and 86 percent favor instant computerized background checks for every gun buyer
. After tacking right on taxes and spending to appease the newly empowered GOP, Obama will need to throw his base a bone in the run-up to 2012. Gun-control is a natural fit: “liberal” enough to please core Democratic constituencies and cheap enough not to bust the budget.
Obama should also be encouraged by new evidence that the GOP isn’t particularly invested in keeping high-capacity magazines on the market. As a congressman, Cheney was one of the few Republicans willing to vote against noncontroversial bans on cop-killer bullets and plastic guns, which were designed to evade metal detectors. Now he’s open to reviving the moratorium on Loughner-style clips—a huge shift. Conservative stalwart Bill Kristol seems to agree, telling C-SPAN in January, “Let’s look at why this guy could shoot so many shots off so quickly.”
In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, NRA President Wayne LaPierre didn’t bother to explain why high-capacity magazines are necessary. “He knows this is a tough one to defend,” Helmke says. Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 frontrunner, is on record as saying he “would have signed the assault-weapon ban”—a position that will make it hard for his party to oppose a new, less-expansive prohibition on clips if he’s nominated. And in a recent Wall Street Journal column, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan revealed that ultimately “the Republican Party will not go to the wall to defend extended clips.” If Obama and his allies decide to move forward, mainstream Republicans may not battle back as aggressively as everyone expects—even if the NRA insists it “disagrees” with Cheney and Kristol and will “fight any gun-control scenario down the pike,” as public-affairs director Andrew Arulanandam tells Newsweek.
Tucson was the first mass shooting or assassination plot in years in which neither the shooter nor his target died in the melee—an outcome that will shape the media coverage in ways that may benefit the gun-safety cause.
When a killer commits suicide, there’s no need for a trial; when his most prominent victim passes away, a funeral tends to bring the story to an end. But in this case, the coverage will continue indefinitely—Loughner will go on trial; Giffords will keep on recovering—and gun violence will be a topic of debate as long as their twinned tales are in the news. Factor in the anniversaries of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the 1981 Reagan shooting, which are coming up this month and next, and the president and his friends suddenly find themselves with a larger-than-usual window of opportunity to weigh in.
“Obama could go down as one of the greats if he stands up and has the courage to do this,” says Bloomberg, who is spending some of his estimated $18 billion fortune on the issue in the years ahead. “We need leadership.” Back at the Lyric Theatre, Goddard was doing his part.
Watching his documentary, it was impossible to ignore how little we’re doing to stop dangerous people from buying deadly weapons. Of the dozens of private sellers Goddard and his colleagues encountered at gun shows, not one ran a background check before selling them firearms, Goddard says.
Vendors in Maine were the toughest: They requested a local ID. “Minnesota has a system where you can get a permit to buy a gun that proves you can pass a background check, and if you don’t have that, some people won’t sell to you,” he says. “But you can just walk to the next table and buy one there without it.” In Texas, Ohio, and Virginia, Goddard easily bought semiautomatics, often without bothering to show ID. “I bought AK-47s, TEC-9s, a Mach 11, a slew of handguns,” he says.
“We could have bought books that tell you how to convert a semiautomatic to a fully automatic and how to make a homemade silencer. There were .50-caliber sniper rifles being sold to the general public almost everywhere we went.” In fact, the only time Goddard, who now works for the Brady Campaign, came under close scrutiny was when he delivered his weapons to the police. “I had to show my ID and answer all kinds of questions,” he says. “None of which were asked at the point of sale.”
As Living for 32 drew to a close and the lights in the Lyric came up, one student asked Goddard what kind of action Congress had taken since Tucson. Not much, he said. Then he smiled ruefully. “You’d think they would realize that all American citizens want to be sure that weapons are not sold to people who shouldn’t get them,” he continued. “You would think this would reverberate. We need to tell them that there are some simple things that we could be doing. We’re going to be here, pushing this, until it doesn’t need to be done anymore.
Andrew Romano is a senior writer for Newsweek.
Monday, March 14, 2011
For Bachmann, not quite the facts
| MANCHESTER, N.H. — Michele Bachmann’s suggestion Saturday that the Revolutionary War began in Concord, N.H., rather than Lexington and Concord, Mass., marks the third time in recent months that the potential GOP presidential hopeful has committed a puzzling gaffe about history and current affairs. Making her first trek to New Hampshire as a 2012 prospect, Bachmann told a GOP crowd in Manchester: “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord.” The Revolutionary War began, not in New Hampshire’s capital, but in the famous two towns more than 50 miles away in Massachusetts. For Bachmann, who leads the House Tea Party caucus and champions a return to the Constitution, to get such basic facts wrong about the country’s birth is revealing. Her comment wasn’t just an off-hand reference that she inserted in her remarks. At a fundraiser Friday night on the New Hampshire Seacoast, Bachmann said almost the exact same thing, according to the Minnesota Post. “It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world, you are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard,” Bachmann said. Bachmann’s geographic mix-up prompted derision among some New Hampshire Republicans. “Is she on her way to Lexington, N.H., now?” cracked Matt Suermann, who blogs for RedHampshire, in response to somebody who posted on Twitter that Bachmann had left the building. Told of the congresswoman’s line, another prominent New Hampshire Republican asked: “Seriously, the real question is whether she knows she (got it wrong), I suspect not.” The latest gaffe may not hurt her with those grass-roots activists who are attracted to her for her attacks against the Obama administration, but it could hamper her efforts to be taken seriously among the broader swath of Republicans she’d need to win the nomination. “She makes Sarah Palin look like Count Metternich,” groaned longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy on Twitter after reading about the Concord confusion. And the Lexington and Concord error followed two other instances where Bachmann got important facts wrong. Speaking in January to an Iowa anti-tax group, Bachmann claimed that the authors of the country’s founding documents sought to end slavery. “The very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States,” she said. While some of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were in favor of abolishing slavery, they were, of course, dead when the institution was ended following the Civil War. Bachmann singled out John Quincy Adams as someone who “would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.” But John Quincy Adams, the sixth president who went on to campaign vigorously against slavery while serving in the U.S. House, was not yet 9 years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776; he died in 1848 — nearly two decades before the 13th Amendment was ratified abolishing slavery. Then, in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Bachmann seemed to rely on outdated talking points in suggesting that President Barack Obama should defer to Gen. David Petraeus on how to approach the crisis in Libya. Asked whether it’s in America’s vital interest to remove Muammar Qadhafi from power, the Minnesotan cited Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s recent admonition about avoiding future land wars in Asia. Then she added: “We are extended now in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I think for us to consider further penetration at this time, we need to listen to Gen. Petraeus and what he has to say.” Bachmann, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, should know that Petraeus is the commander of American forces in Afghanistan and is not in the chain of command when it comes to military decisions about Libya. On Saturday morning, she may have served up her most damaging gaffe yet, though. E. Nicholl Marshall of Manchester, who was at the Manchester event, credited Bachmann with delivering “a great speech,” but he added:” My only criticism is there is no Lexington in New Hampshire. And back then Concord was a backwater town, not even a city.” Later in the day, after Bachmann made a stop in Barrington, Mike Castaldo of Dover, a transplant to the Granite State, called the “shot heard ‘round the world” line “a big mistake. They take their heritage very seriously.” Getting Massachusetts confused with New Hampshire while speaking to a group of Granite State Republicans is something most GOP hopefuls avoid. New Hampshire conservatives are fiercely proud of their income-tax-free state’s libertarian traditions — see “Live Free or Die” — and consider their neighbor to the south a haven of left wingers. By late Saturday, Bachmann had taken to Facebook in an attempt to swiftly address her Concord mix-up. “So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire,” she wrote. “It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!” — POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin reported from Washington. |
The Internet was the only medium whose audience grew in the survey, up 17 percent in 2010
Fox News’ Ratings Down 11 Percent
Sure, we expect CNN and MSNBC to lose viewers, but this is more surprising: Fox News’ viewership was down 11 percent in 2010, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
It’s the first time in a dozen years that all three cable news networks lost viewers:
CNN somehow hemorrhaged 37 percent of its viewers,
while MSNBC lost 5 percent.
The Internet was the only medium whose audience grew in the survey, up 17 percent in 2010
It’s the first time in a dozen years that all three cable news networks lost viewers:
CNN somehow hemorrhaged 37 percent of its viewers,
while MSNBC lost 5 percent.
The Internet was the only medium whose audience grew in the survey, up 17 percent in 2010
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
21 priests in sex investigation suspended
Philadelphia archdiocese removes priests from ministry while their abuse cases are reviewed
Sex charges facing church officials
PHILADELPHIA - The Philadelphia archdiocese suspended 21 Roman Catholic priests Tuesday who were named as child molestation suspects in a scathing grand jury report released last month.
The priests have been removed from ministry while their cases are reviewed, Cardinal Justin Rigali said. The names of the priests were not being released, a spokesman for the archdiocese said.
"These have been difficult weeks since the release of the grand jury report," Rigali said in a statement. "Difficult most of all for victims of sexual abuse but also for all Catholics and for everyone in our community."
Catholic church official faces criminal charges
KYW-TV's Walt Hunter reports that this is a truly historic announcement. The priests will be investigated by handpicked panel from diocese, led by a former prosecutor. Hunter told CBS Evening News that on Ash Wednesday, from the pulpit, parishoners may be able to see whether their priest was suspended.
The two-year grand jury investigation into priest abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia resulted in charges against two priests, a former priest and a Catholic school teacher who are accused of raping young boys. And in an unprecedented move in the U.S., a former high-ranking church official, William Lynn, was accused of transferring problem priests to new parishes without warning anyone of prior sex-abuse complaints.
The district attorney believes Lynn knowingly recommended abusive priests be reassigned, without ever warning the parishes, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano.
"They did in fact re-offend," said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. "They did in fact rape and sodomize other children."
Archdiocese facing multiple lawsuits for child abuse
The grand jury said as many as 37 priests remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse.
After the release of the grand jury report, the second such investigation in the city, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.
Sex charges facing church officials
PHILADELPHIA - The Philadelphia archdiocese suspended 21 Roman Catholic priests Tuesday who were named as child molestation suspects in a scathing grand jury report released last month.
The priests have been removed from ministry while their cases are reviewed, Cardinal Justin Rigali said. The names of the priests were not being released, a spokesman for the archdiocese said.
"These have been difficult weeks since the release of the grand jury report," Rigali said in a statement. "Difficult most of all for victims of sexual abuse but also for all Catholics and for everyone in our community."
Catholic church official faces criminal charges
KYW-TV's Walt Hunter reports that this is a truly historic announcement. The priests will be investigated by handpicked panel from diocese, led by a former prosecutor. Hunter told CBS Evening News that on Ash Wednesday, from the pulpit, parishoners may be able to see whether their priest was suspended.
The two-year grand jury investigation into priest abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia resulted in charges against two priests, a former priest and a Catholic school teacher who are accused of raping young boys. And in an unprecedented move in the U.S., a former high-ranking church official, William Lynn, was accused of transferring problem priests to new parishes without warning anyone of prior sex-abuse complaints.
The district attorney believes Lynn knowingly recommended abusive priests be reassigned, without ever warning the parishes, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Quijano.
"They did in fact re-offend," said Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams. "They did in fact rape and sodomize other children."
Archdiocese facing multiple lawsuits for child abuse
The grand jury said as many as 37 priests remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse.
After the release of the grand jury report, the second such investigation in the city, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.
Secret Egyptian Security Service Files Exposed
Egyptians can now go online to view hundreds of documents detailing the horrifying activities of the State Security service. But while the agency is on the run, it could still orchestrate terrorist attacks or sectarian violence, writes Ursula Lindsey.
The State Security compound in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City was a fortress of fear. Like the offices of the dreaded domestic-intelligence service across Egypt, it radiated menace.
“This was a place where just driving or walking by it gave me the creeps,” says Hossam Hamalawy, an activist who was twice detained by State Security (although not at that facility).
On Saturday night, Hamalawy and many others entered the facility—in a way they never expected. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I was entering it not as a detainee, not as someone who’s blindfolded.” Instead, he was part of a triumphant, storming crowd, come to hold accountable those they had long feared.
One of the demands of the protesters in Tahrir Square has been the abolition of Egypt’s State Security Investigations Service, which has had free license to spy, kidnap, and torture. Tasked mainly with maintaining the regime in power, it employed at least 100,000 officers and unknown legions of informants.
So far, the authorities here have balked, arguing that the service needs to be reformed and restructured, but remains necessary. This past weekend, Egyptians lost their patience and simply started dismantling it themselves. After reports of documents being burned and moved out by the truckload, crowds converged on its offices in Alexandria, Cairo, and the southern city of Aswan.
Once they broke in, they found hallways knee-deep in shredded paper; empty cells and interrogation rooms; and torture devices. Despite the service’s efforts, not all documents had been destroyed. Activists—some of whom found their own or their friends’ files—picked up armfuls of papers, carried them home and yesterday started posting them online. (One of the main sites is a Twitter feed and Facebook group called SSLeaks.)
Once they broke into security offices, they found hallways knee-deep in shredded paper; empty cells and interrogation rooms; and torture devices.
Egyptians can now browse through pages and pages of documentation of the daily activities of a secret service that controlled everything from university appointments to the guests on TV talk shows to the winners of the next elections to, allegedly, the drug trade. Created mostly to repress an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, the service morphed into a shadow state that even other government ministries had to pay extortion money to.
Although it’s difficult to verify the authenticity of the documents, the size and timing of the dump and the details it contains suggest that most of them are genuine. A memo from February 2008 gives directions in chilling legalese to keep detainees long enough for them to heal from beatings and torture: “It’s been noticed recently that some of the elements transferred to the Special Operations Group from the administrations and branches of the [State Security] apparatus have injuries... a matter that leads us to request that you examine their state and extend their detention until they are on the way to recovery. Please pay careful attention to the cases that will be transferred to the Special Operations Group and ensure their healthy condition and the absence of any injuries.”
The documents also show the security services were drinking their own Kool-Aid. Another undated but apparently recent memo presenting an “analysis of the state of chaos that the country has witnessed recently” states that the protests against former President Hosni Mubarak were the work of “the United States, the European Union, and the Zionist entity,” which created a “plan aiming at tearing the Arab and Muslim world,” with the goal of “making the Arab world lose its national, Islamic identity and forcing the Arab people to normalize with Israel.”
The documents leaked so far also show the security services wire-tapping opposition figures, orchestrating media campaigns, and managing their vast network of informers.
Many documents also show the security services “arranging” elections—instructing the Muslim Brotherhood not to run in certain districts; throwing their support behind members of the president’s ruling party, and making sure no real election-monitoring takes place.
The documents, much like the interiors of the sprawling State Security complexes, now viewable on YouTube—bland reception rooms full of chandeliers and three-star-hotel furniture; endless hallways; archives full of neatly labeled files—are a study in the banality of evil. They reveal a degree of daily interference in the country’s affairs that is staggering in its minuteness and pettiness.
After the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in parliament in 2005, a document from State Security instructs ministries not to collaborate with the new parliamentarians and to make sure they are unable to improve health, education, and housing services in their districts. In August 2010, a man in the province of Baheira tried to open a branch office of Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change. State Security made a list of his properties and instructed the tax authorities to go after him.
Today, the once-all-powerful service is on the run. “They must be totally demoralized. I’m sure their operations have been largely disrupted,” says Hamalawy. But like many Egyptians, he is still concerned about the damage they could do. “We’re talking about a crime syndicate,” he says. “These guys are armed, they have the contacts with criminals… once they feel totally cornered they will start lashing out or fighting back.” Many fear the security services, with their back against the wall, will orchestrate terrorist attacks, sectarian violence, or a crime wave—anything to distract and frighten the public.
That’s why it’s important to move to swift and comprehensive prosecution, argues Hamalawy. “We go after everybody, from the informers all the way up to the directors... They definitely need to be put on trial.”
So far, the raids on State Security offices haven’t led to the freeing of detainees—to the despair of relatives who rushed to the scene, hoping to find them. There may be thousands of individuals still in the hands of the service, some of whom have been “missing” for years. Human-rights groups have estimated that the service held between 8,000 and 15,000 prisoners in the last decade (a blurry document from the leaked files, dated 2003, seems to confirm this, putting the number of detainees at 9,412).
It’s also likely that the documents that have been found so far are the least incriminating. State Security has been cleaning shop for a while. An order dated January 26 (a day after protests broke out) instructs all “branch offices” to destroy their “secret archives” (by shredding rather than burning, presumably so as to attract less attention) and to “limit their secret libraries to the fundamentals for the future, without maintaining pictures.”
The documents made public do not discuss the rendition program that Egypt operated for the United States; there is no documentation of secret detention facilities, no transcripts of interrogations, no information about how informers were bribed or blackmailed into collaborating. These documents may have been destroyed already; or they may be in secret, secure locations.
Wherever they are, Egyptians are looking for them.
Ursula Lindsey is a Cairo-based reporter and writer.
The State Security compound in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City was a fortress of fear. Like the offices of the dreaded domestic-intelligence service across Egypt, it radiated menace.
“This was a place where just driving or walking by it gave me the creeps,” says Hossam Hamalawy, an activist who was twice detained by State Security (although not at that facility).
On Saturday night, Hamalawy and many others entered the facility—in a way they never expected. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I was entering it not as a detainee, not as someone who’s blindfolded.” Instead, he was part of a triumphant, storming crowd, come to hold accountable those they had long feared.
One of the demands of the protesters in Tahrir Square has been the abolition of Egypt’s State Security Investigations Service, which has had free license to spy, kidnap, and torture. Tasked mainly with maintaining the regime in power, it employed at least 100,000 officers and unknown legions of informants.
So far, the authorities here have balked, arguing that the service needs to be reformed and restructured, but remains necessary. This past weekend, Egyptians lost their patience and simply started dismantling it themselves. After reports of documents being burned and moved out by the truckload, crowds converged on its offices in Alexandria, Cairo, and the southern city of Aswan.
Once they broke in, they found hallways knee-deep in shredded paper; empty cells and interrogation rooms; and torture devices. Despite the service’s efforts, not all documents had been destroyed. Activists—some of whom found their own or their friends’ files—picked up armfuls of papers, carried them home and yesterday started posting them online. (One of the main sites is a Twitter feed and Facebook group called SSLeaks.)
Once they broke into security offices, they found hallways knee-deep in shredded paper; empty cells and interrogation rooms; and torture devices.
Egyptians can now browse through pages and pages of documentation of the daily activities of a secret service that controlled everything from university appointments to the guests on TV talk shows to the winners of the next elections to, allegedly, the drug trade. Created mostly to repress an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, the service morphed into a shadow state that even other government ministries had to pay extortion money to.
Although it’s difficult to verify the authenticity of the documents, the size and timing of the dump and the details it contains suggest that most of them are genuine. A memo from February 2008 gives directions in chilling legalese to keep detainees long enough for them to heal from beatings and torture: “It’s been noticed recently that some of the elements transferred to the Special Operations Group from the administrations and branches of the [State Security] apparatus have injuries... a matter that leads us to request that you examine their state and extend their detention until they are on the way to recovery. Please pay careful attention to the cases that will be transferred to the Special Operations Group and ensure their healthy condition and the absence of any injuries.”
The documents also show the security services were drinking their own Kool-Aid. Another undated but apparently recent memo presenting an “analysis of the state of chaos that the country has witnessed recently” states that the protests against former President Hosni Mubarak were the work of “the United States, the European Union, and the Zionist entity,” which created a “plan aiming at tearing the Arab and Muslim world,” with the goal of “making the Arab world lose its national, Islamic identity and forcing the Arab people to normalize with Israel.”
The documents leaked so far also show the security services wire-tapping opposition figures, orchestrating media campaigns, and managing their vast network of informers.
Many documents also show the security services “arranging” elections—instructing the Muslim Brotherhood not to run in certain districts; throwing their support behind members of the president’s ruling party, and making sure no real election-monitoring takes place.
The documents, much like the interiors of the sprawling State Security complexes, now viewable on YouTube—bland reception rooms full of chandeliers and three-star-hotel furniture; endless hallways; archives full of neatly labeled files—are a study in the banality of evil. They reveal a degree of daily interference in the country’s affairs that is staggering in its minuteness and pettiness.
After the Muslim Brotherhood won 88 seats in parliament in 2005, a document from State Security instructs ministries not to collaborate with the new parliamentarians and to make sure they are unable to improve health, education, and housing services in their districts. In August 2010, a man in the province of Baheira tried to open a branch office of Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Coalition for Change. State Security made a list of his properties and instructed the tax authorities to go after him.
Today, the once-all-powerful service is on the run. “They must be totally demoralized. I’m sure their operations have been largely disrupted,” says Hamalawy. But like many Egyptians, he is still concerned about the damage they could do. “We’re talking about a crime syndicate,” he says. “These guys are armed, they have the contacts with criminals… once they feel totally cornered they will start lashing out or fighting back.” Many fear the security services, with their back against the wall, will orchestrate terrorist attacks, sectarian violence, or a crime wave—anything to distract and frighten the public.
That’s why it’s important to move to swift and comprehensive prosecution, argues Hamalawy. “We go after everybody, from the informers all the way up to the directors... They definitely need to be put on trial.”
So far, the raids on State Security offices haven’t led to the freeing of detainees—to the despair of relatives who rushed to the scene, hoping to find them. There may be thousands of individuals still in the hands of the service, some of whom have been “missing” for years. Human-rights groups have estimated that the service held between 8,000 and 15,000 prisoners in the last decade (a blurry document from the leaked files, dated 2003, seems to confirm this, putting the number of detainees at 9,412).
It’s also likely that the documents that have been found so far are the least incriminating. State Security has been cleaning shop for a while. An order dated January 26 (a day after protests broke out) instructs all “branch offices” to destroy their “secret archives” (by shredding rather than burning, presumably so as to attract less attention) and to “limit their secret libraries to the fundamentals for the future, without maintaining pictures.”
The documents made public do not discuss the rendition program that Egypt operated for the United States; there is no documentation of secret detention facilities, no transcripts of interrogations, no information about how informers were bribed or blackmailed into collaborating. These documents may have been destroyed already; or they may be in secret, secure locations.
Wherever they are, Egyptians are looking for them.
Ursula Lindsey is a Cairo-based reporter and writer.
SIREN: MANCHIN CALLS OUT OBAMA ON SPENDING -- West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who plans to vote against both the Republican and Democratic versions of a long-term continuing resolution, will deliver a floor speech today in which he says President Barack Obama has failed to lead and needs to step up to the negotiating table. '[B]oth our options are extremely partisan and unrealistic. And neither one will pass. The first is a Democratic proposal that doesn't go nearly far enough. This proposal, which calls for $6.5 billion in new cuts, utterly ignores our fiscal reality ... Or, we could choose a second, even more flawed measure: a GOP proposal that blindly hacks the budget with no sense of our priorities or of our values as a country,' he plans to say. 'Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations - our president - has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for? ... This debate will be decided when the president leads these tough negotiations. And, right now - that is not happening. ... The bottom line is this - the president is the leader of this great nation, and when it comes to an issue of significant national importance, the president must lead. Not the majority leader or speaker, but the president.
GOP RELIEVED AT ENSIGN DEPARTURE -- 'Sen. John Ensign's decision to retire rather than run for reelection in 2012 is a huge boost for Senate GOP leaders, who feared the Nevada Republican was waging an unwinnable battle for a third term and might cost the party a Senate seat,' John Bresnahan and Manu 'The Machine' Raju write for POLITICO. 'Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other top Senate Republicans appear to have played little direct role in forcing Ensign out, but the relief over that decision was palpable in GOP circles on Monday. ... Ensign's announcement will have little, if any, impact on the ongoing investigation by the Senate ethics committee into his affair with Cindy Hampton, a former campaign aide and the wife of Doug Hampton, himself a former top Ensign aide, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the committee. Boxer told POLITICO the Ensign investigation 'will continue on course.' ... 'It eliminates some obvious issues in the race, but we still have to see who gets into the primary,' [National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John] Cornyn told POLITICO. 'But the obvious issues won't be involved.'' http://politi.co/eN22Kf
TEA PARTY SOPHISTICATES FOCUS ON REDISTRICTING -- Alex Isenstadt reports for POLITICO on the growing interest in redistricting among top Tea Party activists. 'With state legislators across the country set to redraw the congressional landscape, the tea party is attempting to further the political gains it made last fall when a slate of activist conservatives won House and Senate seats. 'They understand that the way districts are drawn impacts our political culture perhaps more than anything else,' said Mark Meckler, co-founder and coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots,' Alex writes. 'To local groups reorganizing to take on redistricting fights ... there could be nothing more true to the tea party spirit than fighting the sort of tailor-made districts and partisan line-drawing that serve as a once-a-decade incumbent protection plan.' http://politi.co/egyIij
FROSH INVITES DONORS TO TESTIFY -- 'Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) praised the panel of witnesses at a recent Transportation and Infrastructure Committee field hearing in his district, saying, 'The best ideas come from individuals who see and breathe the issues not just from Washington.' But it doesn't hurt if those individuals are also campaign donors,' Roll Call's Jennifer Yachnin writes. 'Among the panel of four private-sector witnesses at the hearing held at Oklahoma City Community College in February, three were donors to the freshman lawmaker's campaign last cycle. There are no rules prohibiting campaign donors from appearing before Congressional committees ... But ... observers said it is remarkable to have so many donors on a single panel. 'When you have these things that are supposed to be representative of the community and everyone is a campaign supporter, that does seem a little bit odd,' said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation.' http://bit.ly/efHNk7
LOCKE TO CHINA -- President Barack Obama has chosen Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to succeed Jon Huntsman as U.S. ambassador to China - signaling a more focused White House effort to press Asia's emerging economic superpower on trade issues, according to administration officials,' Glenn Thrush writes for the hometown paper. 'Locke, 51, is a third generation Chinese-American with roots in Hong Kong and China's coastal Guangdong province - and the first person of Chinese ancestry to serve as a U.S. governor. He is fluent in Cantonese and didn't speak English until he was five years old.' http://politi.co/eDguuO
SUCCESSOR? NOT CLYBURN -- Ever since President Obama won in 2008, there's been a rumor mill devoted solely to the idea that Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) would take a position in the Cabinet. Dormant for a while, it started up again within minutes of the Locke news breaking. Sources in Clyburn's camp say he's not interested.
PERHAPS A REPUBLICAN LAWMAKER -- Idle Huddle speculation here, but with the White House doing more to reach out to the business world -- and to wrap its arms around top Republicans as the election season heats up -- but it could be a post that goes to a Republican member of Congress. Before Locke was appointed Commerce secretary, then-Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was the White House choice. But Gregg dropped out after a tug-of-war over whether he would have control over the census -- the most partisan issue the department deals with. Since the census won't happen for another decade, that issue is off the table. Could Obama neutralize a foe, help pick up a House or Senate seat, or simply court the business community better by picking a Republican lawmaker? Maybe.
PUSHBACK ON YESTERDAY'S HUDDLE -- A well-informed reader notes that the questions raised about reconciliation only matter if there's a budget agreement between the House and Senate -- and that doesn't appear anywhere on the horizon at moment.
GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, and welcome to The Huddle, where gerrymandering is a four-letter word if you draw the lines just right, Hollywood has been fully eclipsed by Charlie Sheen and it's been 28 years since Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the 'Evil Empire.'
Please send tips, suggestions, complaints, corrections, the testimony of donors, and sports scores (like Fennville 65, Lawrence 54 in the opening round of the Michigan state high school basketball playoffs) to jallen@politico.com If you don't already, you can follow me on Twitter @jonallendc. Fast Break is @JakeSherman. New followers include @RepLankford and @JoanneDNC.
TODAY IN CONGRESS -- The House is in at 2 p.m., with legislative business beginning at 4 p.m. and votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. Two bills are up for consideration under suspension of the rules, meaning they need a two-thirds majority for passage. They are HR 570, the Dental Emergency Responder Act, sponsored by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), and HR 525, the Veterinary Public Health Workforce and Education Act, sponsored by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (R-Wis.). The dental responder bill would require 'the inclusion of dental health facilities in the National Health Security Strategy for purposes of preparedness during public health emergencies.' Here's a CRS summary of the veterinary bill http://politi.co/erGSXj
The Senate's in at 9:30 a.m. with two hours of morning business, 30 minutes of which is devoted to remarks by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). After that, the Senate's back to the patent bill, with an intermission from noon to 2:15 p.m. for party lunches.
AROUND THE HILL -- The Christian Science Monitor has Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy at its breakfast this morning. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has his pen and pad at 10:30 in H-144. Majority leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has his at 2 p.m. in his office. Reps. George Miller and Rosa DeLauro are talking about workers' rights at 2 p.m. in HVC 215.
SPEAKING OF KERRY SPEAKING -- Kerry will introduce longtime former aide Heather Higginbottom at her Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee confirmation hearing. Higginbottom, who worked for Kerry from 1999 to 2007, has been nominated to the post of deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Here's part of what Kerry will say: 'Neither Washington nor the West Wing has dampened Heather's idealism or spirit of service - she's smarter, tougher, more steeped in all the issues and more versed in the many challenges facing every state that makes up the mosaic of our country, but in every way that adds up to character, Heather is still the person that walked into my office for that first day of work as a legislative assistant in 1999, and that too is a reason why I am proud to recommend her swift confirmation as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.' Higginbottom is currently deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.
HUDDLE SCOOPLET: TEEN DRIVING SAFETY BILL -- In response to teen car accidents, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Tim Bishop, both Democrats of New York, are unveiling legislation today that would force states to adopt a new set of minimum standards for licensing teen drivers. With the threat of cuts to federal highway funding as a penalty for non-compliance, states would have to adopt a three-tiered licensing process, raise the age for a non-restricted license to 18, prohibit the use of cell phones during the first two stages of licensing and prohibit night driving during the intermediate stage. It would also give the secretary of Transportation the authority to impose additional requirements. States would have three years to become compliant. After that they would lose 3 percent of federal highway funding in the first year, 5 percent in the second year and 10 percent for each additional year. 'This legislation will give young drivers better education and more experience before they get out on the roads, keeping us all safer and saving lives," Gillibrand said. In addition to Gillibrand and Bishop, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are also supporting the effort.
SPLITTSVILLE: GOP LEADERS ON 'RADICALIZATION' OF MUSLIMS -- By Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman -- 'The top two House Republican leaders are divided over how to handle the bubbling controversy surrounding Homeland Security Chairman Peter King's hearing into "radicalization" in the American Muslim community. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the highest-ranking Jewish member of Congress, is squarely behind King as he takes shots from civil libertarians and religious groups over his decision to target one group in his investigation of the causes of terrorism. ... But Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are keeping their distance from King, perhaps trying to avoid letting this issue become a distraction for the GOP majority. 'Chairman King is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee" is all Boehner spokesman Michael Steel would say when asked about the controversy.' http://politi.co/eUOqtz
NY TIMES EDITORIAL: 'PETER KING'S OBSESSION' -- 'Not much spreads fear and bigotry faster than a public official intent on playing the politics of division. On Thursday, Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is scheduled to open a series of hearings that seem designed to stoke fear against American Muslims. His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.' http://nyti.ms/gn4vrR
SENATE WHIP RACE: ALEXANDER TOO MODERATE? -- Over the weekend, the Nashville Tennessean coupled a National Journal rating of Lamar Alexander as the 30th most conservative of 40 GOP senators with his run to move up from Conference chairman to Republican whip. 'Alexander's reputation for bipartisanship and moderation may hurt him,' Bill Thoebald writes. 'Alexander has one challenger so far, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Cornyn's conservative ranking: tied for No. 1.' http://bit.ly/eDmAAg
GOP RELIEVED AT ENSIGN DEPARTURE -- 'Sen. John Ensign's decision to retire rather than run for reelection in 2012 is a huge boost for Senate GOP leaders, who feared the Nevada Republican was waging an unwinnable battle for a third term and might cost the party a Senate seat,' John Bresnahan and Manu 'The Machine' Raju write for POLITICO. 'Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other top Senate Republicans appear to have played little direct role in forcing Ensign out, but the relief over that decision was palpable in GOP circles on Monday. ... Ensign's announcement will have little, if any, impact on the ongoing investigation by the Senate ethics committee into his affair with Cindy Hampton, a former campaign aide and the wife of Doug Hampton, himself a former top Ensign aide, according to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the committee. Boxer told POLITICO the Ensign investigation 'will continue on course.' ... 'It eliminates some obvious issues in the race, but we still have to see who gets into the primary,' [National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John] Cornyn told POLITICO. 'But the obvious issues won't be involved.'' http://politi.co/eN22Kf
TEA PARTY SOPHISTICATES FOCUS ON REDISTRICTING -- Alex Isenstadt reports for POLITICO on the growing interest in redistricting among top Tea Party activists. 'With state legislators across the country set to redraw the congressional landscape, the tea party is attempting to further the political gains it made last fall when a slate of activist conservatives won House and Senate seats. 'They understand that the way districts are drawn impacts our political culture perhaps more than anything else,' said Mark Meckler, co-founder and coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots,' Alex writes. 'To local groups reorganizing to take on redistricting fights ... there could be nothing more true to the tea party spirit than fighting the sort of tailor-made districts and partisan line-drawing that serve as a once-a-decade incumbent protection plan.' http://politi.co/egyIij
FROSH INVITES DONORS TO TESTIFY -- 'Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) praised the panel of witnesses at a recent Transportation and Infrastructure Committee field hearing in his district, saying, 'The best ideas come from individuals who see and breathe the issues not just from Washington.' But it doesn't hurt if those individuals are also campaign donors,' Roll Call's Jennifer Yachnin writes. 'Among the panel of four private-sector witnesses at the hearing held at Oklahoma City Community College in February, three were donors to the freshman lawmaker's campaign last cycle. There are no rules prohibiting campaign donors from appearing before Congressional committees ... But ... observers said it is remarkable to have so many donors on a single panel. 'When you have these things that are supposed to be representative of the community and everyone is a campaign supporter, that does seem a little bit odd,' said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation.' http://bit.ly/efHNk7
LOCKE TO CHINA -- President Barack Obama has chosen Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to succeed Jon Huntsman as U.S. ambassador to China - signaling a more focused White House effort to press Asia's emerging economic superpower on trade issues, according to administration officials,' Glenn Thrush writes for the hometown paper. 'Locke, 51, is a third generation Chinese-American with roots in Hong Kong and China's coastal Guangdong province - and the first person of Chinese ancestry to serve as a U.S. governor. He is fluent in Cantonese and didn't speak English until he was five years old.' http://politi.co/eDguuO
SUCCESSOR? NOT CLYBURN -- Ever since President Obama won in 2008, there's been a rumor mill devoted solely to the idea that Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) would take a position in the Cabinet. Dormant for a while, it started up again within minutes of the Locke news breaking. Sources in Clyburn's camp say he's not interested.
PERHAPS A REPUBLICAN LAWMAKER -- Idle Huddle speculation here, but with the White House doing more to reach out to the business world -- and to wrap its arms around top Republicans as the election season heats up -- but it could be a post that goes to a Republican member of Congress. Before Locke was appointed Commerce secretary, then-Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was the White House choice. But Gregg dropped out after a tug-of-war over whether he would have control over the census -- the most partisan issue the department deals with. Since the census won't happen for another decade, that issue is off the table. Could Obama neutralize a foe, help pick up a House or Senate seat, or simply court the business community better by picking a Republican lawmaker? Maybe.
PUSHBACK ON YESTERDAY'S HUDDLE -- A well-informed reader notes that the questions raised about reconciliation only matter if there's a budget agreement between the House and Senate -- and that doesn't appear anywhere on the horizon at moment.
GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, and welcome to The Huddle, where gerrymandering is a four-letter word if you draw the lines just right, Hollywood has been fully eclipsed by Charlie Sheen and it's been 28 years since Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the 'Evil Empire.'
Please send tips, suggestions, complaints, corrections, the testimony of donors, and sports scores (like Fennville 65, Lawrence 54 in the opening round of the Michigan state high school basketball playoffs) to jallen@politico.com If you don't already, you can follow me on Twitter @jonallendc. Fast Break is @JakeSherman. New followers include @RepLankford and @JoanneDNC.
TODAY IN CONGRESS -- The House is in at 2 p.m., with legislative business beginning at 4 p.m. and votes postponed until 6:30 p.m. Two bills are up for consideration under suspension of the rules, meaning they need a two-thirds majority for passage. They are HR 570, the Dental Emergency Responder Act, sponsored by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), and HR 525, the Veterinary Public Health Workforce and Education Act, sponsored by Rep. Tammy Baldwin (R-Wis.). The dental responder bill would require 'the inclusion of dental health facilities in the National Health Security Strategy for purposes of preparedness during public health emergencies.' Here's a CRS summary of the veterinary bill http://politi.co/erGSXj
The Senate's in at 9:30 a.m. with two hours of morning business, 30 minutes of which is devoted to remarks by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). After that, the Senate's back to the patent bill, with an intermission from noon to 2:15 p.m. for party lunches.
AROUND THE HILL -- The Christian Science Monitor has Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy at its breakfast this morning. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has his pen and pad at 10:30 in H-144. Majority leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has his at 2 p.m. in his office. Reps. George Miller and Rosa DeLauro are talking about workers' rights at 2 p.m. in HVC 215.
SPEAKING OF KERRY SPEAKING -- Kerry will introduce longtime former aide Heather Higginbottom at her Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee confirmation hearing. Higginbottom, who worked for Kerry from 1999 to 2007, has been nominated to the post of deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Here's part of what Kerry will say: 'Neither Washington nor the West Wing has dampened Heather's idealism or spirit of service - she's smarter, tougher, more steeped in all the issues and more versed in the many challenges facing every state that makes up the mosaic of our country, but in every way that adds up to character, Heather is still the person that walked into my office for that first day of work as a legislative assistant in 1999, and that too is a reason why I am proud to recommend her swift confirmation as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.' Higginbottom is currently deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.
HUDDLE SCOOPLET: TEEN DRIVING SAFETY BILL -- In response to teen car accidents, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Tim Bishop, both Democrats of New York, are unveiling legislation today that would force states to adopt a new set of minimum standards for licensing teen drivers. With the threat of cuts to federal highway funding as a penalty for non-compliance, states would have to adopt a three-tiered licensing process, raise the age for a non-restricted license to 18, prohibit the use of cell phones during the first two stages of licensing and prohibit night driving during the intermediate stage. It would also give the secretary of Transportation the authority to impose additional requirements. States would have three years to become compliant. After that they would lose 3 percent of federal highway funding in the first year, 5 percent in the second year and 10 percent for each additional year. 'This legislation will give young drivers better education and more experience before they get out on the roads, keeping us all safer and saving lives," Gillibrand said. In addition to Gillibrand and Bishop, Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are also supporting the effort.
SPLITTSVILLE: GOP LEADERS ON 'RADICALIZATION' OF MUSLIMS -- By Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman -- 'The top two House Republican leaders are divided over how to handle the bubbling controversy surrounding Homeland Security Chairman Peter King's hearing into "radicalization" in the American Muslim community. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the highest-ranking Jewish member of Congress, is squarely behind King as he takes shots from civil libertarians and religious groups over his decision to target one group in his investigation of the causes of terrorism. ... But Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are keeping their distance from King, perhaps trying to avoid letting this issue become a distraction for the GOP majority. 'Chairman King is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee" is all Boehner spokesman Michael Steel would say when asked about the controversy.' http://politi.co/eUOqtz
NY TIMES EDITORIAL: 'PETER KING'S OBSESSION' -- 'Not much spreads fear and bigotry faster than a public official intent on playing the politics of division. On Thursday, Representative Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is scheduled to open a series of hearings that seem designed to stoke fear against American Muslims. His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.' http://nyti.ms/gn4vrR
SENATE WHIP RACE: ALEXANDER TOO MODERATE? -- Over the weekend, the Nashville Tennessean coupled a National Journal rating of Lamar Alexander as the 30th most conservative of 40 GOP senators with his run to move up from Conference chairman to Republican whip. 'Alexander's reputation for bipartisanship and moderation may hurt him,' Bill Thoebald writes. 'Alexander has one challenger so far, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Cornyn's conservative ranking: tied for No. 1.' http://bit.ly/eDmAAg
You'll Never Guess Who Beat Out Obama For 'Hottest' Politician In America
Apparently what makes a politic an hot is straight-talk.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who's made a name for himself with his straight talk, beat out President Obama in a Quinnipac poll that asked American voters rate their feelings about politician.
Christie scored 57 degrees, topping President Obama by a full half degree.
Quinnipac notes his heat might have been higher (or lower, depending!) were it not for the fact only 55% of American voters don't yet know enough about Christie to form an opinion.
Christie didn't merit the tops marks however.
The hottest title belongs to Michelle Obama
(someone alert Rush Limbaugh) who scored 60.1 degrees.
The second hottest was Bill Clinton at 59.2.
Sarah Palin, meanwhile, clocked in at 38.2.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who's made a name for himself with his straight talk, beat out President Obama in a Quinnipac poll that asked American voters rate their feelings about politician.
Christie scored 57 degrees, topping President Obama by a full half degree.
Quinnipac notes his heat might have been higher (or lower, depending!) were it not for the fact only 55% of American voters don't yet know enough about Christie to form an opinion.
Christie didn't merit the tops marks however.
The hottest title belongs to Michelle Obama
(someone alert Rush Limbaugh) who scored 60.1 degrees.
The second hottest was Bill Clinton at 59.2.
Sarah Palin, meanwhile, clocked in at 38.2.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Tracking Obama's Campaign Promises
The Obameter Scorecard
PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.
We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.
The report card provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.
We rate their status as Not Yet Rated, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.
The report card provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)