Why Republicans like Obama and what it means
Barack Obama is not only popular among Democrats, he’s also an appealing figure to many Republicans. Former GOP House member Joe Scarborough, now a host on MSNBC, reports that after every important Obama speech, he is inundated with e-mails praising the speech — with most of them coming from Republicans. William Bennett, an influential conservative intellectual, has said favorable things about Obama. So have Rich Lowry of National Review and Peggy Noonan. And so have I.
A number of prominent Republicans I know, who would wage a pitched battle against Hillary Clinton, like Obama and would find it hard to generate much enthusiasm in opposing him.
What is at the core of Obama’s appeal?
Part of it is the eloquence and uplift of his speeches, combined with his personal grace and dignity. He seems to be a well-grounded, decent, thoughtful man. He comes across, in his person and manner, as nonpartisan. He has an unsurpassed ability to (seemingly) transcend politics. Even when he disagrees with people, he doesn’t seem disagreeable.
“You know what charm is,” Albert Camus wrote in The Fall, “a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.” Obama has such charm, and its appeal is not restricted to Democrats.
A second reason Republicans appreciate Obama is that he is pitted against a couple, the Clintons, whom many Republicans hold in contempt. Among the effects of the Obama-Clinton race is that it is forcing Democrats to come to grips with the mendacity and ruthlessness of the Clinton machine. Conservatives have long believed that the Clintons are an unprincipled pair who will destroy those who stand between them and power — whether they are political opponents, women from Bill Clinton’s past or independent counsels.
When the Clintons were doing this in the 1990s, it was viewed by many Democrats as perfectly acceptable. Some even applauded them for their brass-knuckle tactics. But now that the Clintons are roughing up an inspiring young man who appears to represent the hope and future of the Democratic Party, the liberal establishment is reacting with outrage. “I think we’ve reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons,” writes Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Many conservatives respond: It’s about time.
A third reason for Obama’s GOP appeal is that unlike Clinton and especially John Edwards, Obama has a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than division and resentment. He stresses that “out of many we are one.” And to his credit, Barack Obama is running a color-blind campaign. “I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina,” Obama said in his victory speech last weekend. “I saw South Carolina.” That evening, his crowd of supporters chanted as one, “Race doesn’t matter.” This was an electric moment. Obama’s words are in the great tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. Obama, more than any figure in America, can help bind up the racial wounds of America. In addition, for the past eight years, one of the most prominent qualities of the American left has been anger, which has served it and the country very poorly. An Obama primary win would be a move away from the politics of rage.
The one thing that will keep Obama’s appeal from translating into widespread support among Republicans is that he is, on almost every issue, a conventional liberal. And while rhetoric and character matter a lot, politics is finally and fundamentally about ideas and philosophy. Whether we’re talking about the Iraq war, monitoring terrorist communications, health care, taxes, education, abortion and the courts, the size of government, or almost anything else, Obama embodies the views of the special-interest groups on the left. In this respect, he should borrow from the Clinton strategy in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran as a “New Democrat,” championed free trade, promised to “end welfare as we know it” and criticized, on hawkish grounds, the “butchers of Beijing.”
Bill Clinton ran an intellectually creative race whose ideas appealed to non-Democrats. Barack Obama has shown no such inclination so far (his speeches, while inspiring, mostly avoid a serious discussion of policies). If he wanted to demonstrate his independence from liberal orthodoxy, for example, he could come out in favor of school choice for low-income families, which would both help poor families and demonstrate support for some of the best faith-based institutions in America: urban parochial schools.
If Obama becomes the Democratic nominee and fails to take steps such as this, his liberal views will be his greatest vulnerability. Obama will try to reject the liberal label — but based on his stands on the issues, at least so far, the label will fit, and it will stick.
Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can reach beyond his ideology.
by chron
Reference: Barack Hussein Obama is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. The U.S. Senate Historical Office lists him as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, the third to have been popularly elected, and the only African American currently serving in the Senate.
Obama was born in Honolulu to a black Kenyan father and a white American mother. He lived most of his early life in the U.S. state of Hawaii. From ages six to ten, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and Indonesian stepfather. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, University of Chicago lecturer, and civil rights lawyer before running for public office and serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for U.S. Senate in 2003.
The following year, while still an Illinois state legislator, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote. As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored legislation for controlling conventional weapons and for promoting transparency in public life; in addition, he made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In the 110th, and current, Congress, he has sponsored legislation on lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel.
Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care as major priorities. He married in 1992 and has two daughters. He has written two bestselling books: a memoir of his youth titled Dreams from My Father, and The Audacity of Hope, a personal commentary on U.S. politics.
FBI wants instant access to British identity data
Senior British police officials are talking to the FBI about an international database to hunt for major criminals and terrorists.
The US-initiated programme, “Server in the Sky”, would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the “war against terror” - the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy.
Biometric measurements, irises or palm prints as well as fingerprints, and other personal information are likely to be exchanged across the network. One section will feature the world’s most wanted suspects. The database could hold details of millions of criminals and suspects.
The FBI is keen for the police forces of American allies to sign up to improve international security. The Home Office yesterday confirmed it was aware of Server in the Sky, as did the Metropolitan police.
The plan will make groups anxious to safeguard personal privacy question how much access to UK databases is granted to foreign law enforcement agencies. There will also be concern over security, particularly after embarrassing data losses within the UK, and accuracy: in one case, an arrest for a terror offence by US investigators used what turned out to be misidentified fingerprint matches.
Britain’s National Policing Improvement Agency has been the lead body for the FBI project because it is responsible for IDENT1, the UK database holding 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual.
IDENT1 was built by the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman. In future it is expected to hold palm prints, facial images and video sequences. A company spokeswoman confirmed that Northrop Grumman had spoken to the FBI about Server in the Sky. “It can run independently but if existing systems are connected up to it then the intelligence agencies would have to approve,” she said.
The FBI told the Guardian: “Server in the Sky is an FBI initiative designed to foster the advanced search and exchange of biometric information on a global scale. While it is currently in the concept and design stages, once complete it will provide a technical forum for member nations to submit biometric search requests to other nations. It will maintain a core holding of the world’s ‘worst of the worst’ individuals. Any identifications of these people will be sent as a priority message to the requesting nation.”
In London, the NPIA confirmed it was aware of Server in the Sky but said it was “too early to comment on what our active participation might be”.
The FBI is proposing to establish three categories of suspects in the shared system: “internationally recognised terrorists and felons”, those who are “major felons and suspected terrorists”, and finally those who the subjects of terrorist investigations or criminals with international links. Tom Bush, assistant director at the FBI’s criminal justice information service, has said he hopes to see a pilot project for the programme up and running by the middle of the year.
Although each participating country would manage and secure its own data, the sharing of personal data between countries is becoming an increasingly controversial area of police practice. There is political concern at Westminster about the public transparency of such cooperation.
A similar proposal has emerged from the EU for closer security cooperation between the security services and police forces of member states, including allowing countries to search each other’s databases. Under what is known as the Prum treaty, there are plans to open up access to DNA profiles, fingerprints and vehicle registration numbers.
by Guardian
Reference: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the primary investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), serving as both a federal criminal investigative body and a domestic intelligence agency. At present, the FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes, making the FBI the de-facto lead law enforcement agency of the United States government. The motto of the bureau is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity”.
In fiscal year 2006, the FBI’s total budget was approximately $8.7 billion, including $495 million in program increases to enhance counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, cyber crime, information technology, security, forensics, training, and criminal programs.
It was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), and the name was changed to the FBI in 1935.
The FBI Headquarters are in Washington, D.C., and the FBI also has 56 field offices located in major cities throughout the United States as well as over 400 resident agencies in smaller cities and towns across the nation, and more than 50 international offices, called “Legal Attaches”, in U.S. embassies worldwide.
Egypt to copyright pyramids
Cairo - In a potential blow to themed resorts from Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.
Zahi Hawass, the charismatic and controversial head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told AFP on Tuesday that the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites.
“The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100-percent copies,” he said.
“If the law is passed then it will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests,” Hawass said.
He said that a ministerial committee had already agreed on the law which should be passed in the next parliamentary session, while insisting the move would not hurt Egyptian artisans.
“It is Egypt’s right to be the only copyright owner for these monuments in order to benefit financially so we can restore, preserve and protect Egyptian monuments.”
However, the law “does not forbid local or international artists from profiting from drawings and other reproductions of pharaonic and Egyptian monuments from all eras - as long as they don’t make exact copies.”
“Artists have the right to be inspired by everything that surrounds them, including monuments,” he said.
Asked about the potential impact on the monumental Luxor Hotel in the US gambling capital of Las Vegas, Hawass insisted that particular resort was “not an exact copy of pharaonic monuments despite the fact it’s in the shape of a pyramid.”
On its website, the luxury hotel describes itself as “the only pyramid shaped building in the world,” but Hawass said its interior was entirely different from an ancient Egyptian setting.
Hawass’s declarations came after the opposition daily Al-Wafd published an article on Sunday called for the Las Vegas hotel to pay a slice of its lodging and gambling profits to the city of Luxor.
“Thirty-five million tourists visit Las Vegas to see the reproduction of Luxor city while only six million visit the real Egyptian city of Luxor,” the paper lamented.
Samir Farag, head of Luxor town council in southern Egypt, home to the legendary Valley of the Kings, said that it would be difficult to prohibit use of pyramid shapes.
“We can’t forbid people from using the name of Luxor and copying monuments from (Luxor) city, which is the world’s richest city for monuments,” he said, adding that “tourists going to Las Vegas doesn’t affect our city’s business.”
Reference: The Pyramids of Egypt are among the largest structures ever built and constitute one of the most potent and enduring symbols of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Most were built during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.
By the time of the early dynastic period of Egyptian history, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas.
The first historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djozer. Imhotep may have been the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other creating an edifice comprised of a number of “steps” that decreased in size towards its apex. The result was the Step Pyramid of Djozer which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhotep’s achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians.
The most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist pharaonic rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, those near Giza, were built. Over time, as authority became less centralized, the ability and willingness to harness the resources required for construction on a massive scale decreased, and later pyramids were smaller, less well-built and often hastily constructed.
Long after the end of Egypt’s own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kings of Napata. While Napatan rule was brief and ceased in 661 BCE, the Egyptian influence made an indelible impression, and during the later Sudanese Kingdom of Meroe (approximately in the period between 300 BCECE 300) this flowered into a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw more than two hundred indigenous, but Egyptian-inspired royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom’s capital city.
How Clinton Lost Her Invincibility
When Hillary Clinton launched her campaign nearly a year ago, the media buzz deemed it near impossible for the likes of Barack Obama and John Edwards to overcome her daunting campaign machine. The endorsements, the money, and the cream-of-the-crop strategists combined with the former First Lady?s incumbent image to make her the clear-cut choice of the Democratic Party establishment.
But the onset of the Iowa caucuses finds Clinton aides racing to lower expectations, bracing for a possible loss there and contemplating a dwindling lead in the polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina. So, what has stripped the mighty Clinton campaign juggernaut of its image of invincibility?
For one thing, it has been a victim of the media hype it helped create. The campaign?s warnings that Iowa was going to be a tough state for Clinton fell mostly on deaf ears. “Iowa was always going to be a challenge and we consistently said that,” says Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. “Nobody hands anyone a presidential nomination.” But her campaign also failed to invest in Iowa until it was nearly too late. While Obama and Edwards spent the better part of the year moving in hundreds of staff and building relationships with grassroots Democratic constituencies, Clinton in the last month belatedly added a hundred staffers.
And while the Clinton campaign hired the best and brightest faces to run its Iowa shop, there?s only so much that can be done without the resources or the candidate. A month away from the caucuses, Clinton had spent 52 days in state, visiting just 38 counties compared with the 99 visited by Edwards and the 68 by Obama. Since then, her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle has moved out to Iowa to personally oversee the operation here, while Clinton has spent an additional 11 of the last 14 days in the state, adding another 14 county visits.
“She has never really been ahead here in Iowa,” says Arthur B. Sanders, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines and author of Losing Control: Presidential Elections and the Decline of Democracy. “Her national lead made it easy to assume she would win here as well, especially since her national campaign gave off an image of her ‘inevitable’ victory. And a national press that had not spent time here did not really understand how different the situation was here.”
Clinton has also shaken up her message in recent weeks, trying on different hats: angry Hillary; warm-and-fuzzy mommy Hillary; commander-in-chief Hillary; insurgent change-candidate Hillary. “It’s a very close race in Iowa, and quite naturally, the Clinton campaign has decided to throw in everything it’s got, plus the kitchen sink,” says Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia?s Center for Politics. “She?s both the candidate of change and the candidate of experience, the candidate with a hard side and a soft side, and the candidate of the establishment past and the progressive future. Maybe voters are getting confused, or maybe she?s patching together just enough voters to win or tie. We’ll all find out together on January 3rd.”
In the last week, Clinton straddled both the past and future. She?s paraded an impressive stream of former Clinton Administration officials — including former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, former Veteran Affairs Secretaries Togo West and Hershel Gober, former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark and, of course, her husband, President Bill Clinton — through Iowa while declaring herself an agent of change. “Somebody said at one of my events a little while ago, ?You know, it looks like it takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush,? and I?m ready for the job if that?s what it takes,” Clinton said at a town hall event in Johnston, Iowa, last week.
In harkening to the 1990s, Clinton risks alienating voters who want change. The majority of likely Democratic caucus-goers, 56%, believe change is more important than experience, according a December 19 ABC News/Washington Post poll of likely caucus-goers. Of those, half said they support Obama and 23% are committed to Edwards. Clintongarnered only 15% of the change vote. Conversely, 33% of those polled said they preferred experience over change, and Clinton led amongst those voters, 49% to Edwards? 15% and Obama?s 8%.
Wolfson argues that it takes experience to bring about change: “Hillary brings a lifetime record of accomplishments to this campaign — and yes, some of them were during the ’90s. We think voters are asking — at a time when every candidate is talking about change — who actually has a record of accomplishing it their entire adult life?”
Next week, Clinton will roll out her final pitch to Iowan voters, a tour entitled ‘Time to Pick a President? in which she?s expected to underline her experience in the White House and promise to restore the nation’s good times. “Her closing argument is that America faces huge challenges and has enormous opportunities, and that the nation needs a President with the strength and experience to lead on day one and make the changes we need,” Wolfson says. The jury’s still out on whether the Democratic base in Iowa will buy the idea of insider experience as an effective force for change. But not for long.
Reference: Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is the junior United States Senator from New York, and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election. She is married to Bill Clinton—the 42nd President of the United States—and was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001.
A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham attracted national attention in 1969 when she delivered a controversial address as the first student to speak at commencement exercises for Wellesley College. She began her career as a lawyer after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973, moving to Arkansas and marrying Bill Clinton in 1975, following her career as a Congressional legal counsel; she was named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979 and was listed as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America in 1988 and 1991. She served as the First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992, was active in a number of organizations concerned with the welfare of children, and was on the board of Wal-Mart and several other corporate boards.
As First Lady of the United States, she took a prominent position in policy matters. Her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval by the U.S. Congress in 1994, but in 1997 she helped establish the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Adoption and Safe Families Act. She became the only First Lady to be subpoenaed, testifying before a federal grand jury as a consequence of the Whitewater scandal in 1996. She was never charged with any wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband’s administration. The state of her marriage to Bill Clinton was the subject of considerable public discussion following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
Moving to New York, Clinton was elected to the United States Senate in 2000, the first time an American first lady ran for public office and the first female senator from that state. There she initially supported the George W. Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, which included voting for the Iraq War Resolution. She has subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the Iraq War and has opposed it on most domestic issues. She was re-elected by a wide margin in 2006. Long described as a polarizing figure in American politics, during 2007 she has consistently been the front-runner in polls for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.
