On the Horizon: news from the frontiers of science

from the November 01, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1101/p17s02-stgn.html

A distant comet brightens the night sky, scientists experiment with the world's hottest chili pepper, and how soil effects autumn leaves

By Peter N. Spotts

Comet brightens the night sky

Skywatchers are enjoying an unexpected treat: Comet 17P/Holmes has blossomed from an invisible object some 25,000 times too faint to be viewed with the naked eye to naked-eye brightness in less than a week.

The comet appears in the constellation Perseus as a yellowish "star" near the end of Perseus's left arm, as seen from Earth. It is readily visible through binoculars even with bright moonlight and through all but the worst light pollution, according to editors at Sky & Telescope magazine. And in areas with really dark skies, people have reported seeing it with the naked eye.

The sudden brightening is not unheard of for this comet, discovered in 1892. It brightened, then dimmed, then brightened again between 1892 and 1893. It swings around the sun once every seven years, at a distance of about 200 million miles. Astronomers are puzzling over what has caused the outburst of light. One possible explanation: The comet's approach to the sun has warmed it and caused its surface to crack, leading to an outburst of fresh dust and gas.

Bite this pepper at your own risk

When it comes to spices, chili peppers rank somewhere between mild taste sensation and criminal assault. Now, two plant scientists at New Mexico State University describe what may rank as the most notorious chili of all: the Bhut Jolokia, from Assam, India.

Rumor had it that Bhut Jolokia was the hottest of the hot, but no one had put it to the test. The New Mexico State team, led by Paul Bosland, received a sample seed in 2001. But it took three years of careful cultivation to grow enough of the chilies to provide the seeds needed for detailed, repeated field experiments.

The duo measured this fiery fruit's hotness at a record-breaking 1 million Scoville units, the standard measure of a chili's perceived "heat." By comparison, Jalepeños that grace tacos or salsa only reach 2,500 to 10,000 Scoville units. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the previous hotshot – a variety of Habanero chili called Red Savina – reaches 577,000 Scoville units.

The researchers also were interested in Bhut's ancestry. Using DNA analysis, they concluded that the chili is a derivative of Capsicum chinense, a type that includes Scotch Bonnet peppers. And it appears to have a bit of Capsicum frutescense, which includes Tabasco peppers, thrown in for good measure. The study appears in the current issue of HortScience, a journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science.

Soil's effect on autumn leaves

This time of year, broad-leaf trees throughout the northern hemisphere are turning their characteristic yellows, oranges, and reds. The pigments protect the leaves as they produce a final batch of nutrients that will be stored in the trees' roots over winter.

Now, a researcher with the McDowell Mountain Regional Park near Phoenix suggests that the intensity of those colors may have as much to do with the soil a tree grows in as with the species of tree itself.

Researcher Emily Habinck surveyed a section of forest in a nature preserve outside of Charlotte, N.C., while a grad student at the University of North Carolina. She found that in places where the soil was low in nitrogen and other nutrients, sweet-gum and red maples produced large amounts of a red pigment compared with trees in more nutrient-rich areas. The mechanism apparently allows the leaves to survive longer into the fall so they can deliver the right amount of nutrients to tree roots.

The work bolsters results from a study in 2003 that hinted at how important the production of red pigment can be. Montana State University's William Hoch used genetic techniques to block red-pigment production in red-leafed plants. When he did, the leaves succumbed far faster to the weaker fall sunlight and so delivered less nutrients to plant roots. The results of Ms. Habinck's work are being presented at this week's meeting of the American Geological Society in Denver.

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Berlin's Quiz Taxi attempts cultural hijacking

from the October 26, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1026/p20s01-woeu.html

American at crossroads: Clueless in German, with a game-show host behind the wheel, she chose obscurity over broadcast humiliation.

By Mary Wiltenburg Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Berlin

OK, it did look a little shady. But to a Midwesterner, taxis always do. Waiting at the curb, the minivan's driver seemed lost in thought. I was just off a train, disheveled and sleepy; when I waved to him he roused himself and beckoned me in.

I tossed my suitcase onto the back seat, and he spun around, patted it, and said in German: "That's good, right there." When I gave him my Berlin destination, he smiled oddly and said, "Yes, that'll be just fine."

Looking back, I should have known something was off. But after six months in Germany, where I spoke like a kindergartner too well-versed in historical atrocities, every encounter was a little strange. Some days, I blamed this on a language in which a single umlaut made the difference between "It's so hot and humid!" and "That's so gay!"

But really I was the problem. Without knowing it, I had assumed the shambling air of a perpetual foreigner. Sometimes this provoked rage, especially in bus drivers, a job which seemed, puzzlingly, to be favored by sociopaths. Mostly, though, people took pity on me. As they slowed their direction-giving to a pace comprehensible to an addled chimp, I could see them wondering: "Was I ever that lost?"

Even familiar cues failed me: Smiling, I had been warned, was a sign of stupidity. I looked heavily impaired. Frowning deliberately, I bent over the seatbelt as the taxi driver turned toward the dashboard.

Suddenly lights began to flash and sirens to wail, as though all of Berlin's ambulances were descending on us. I looked up. The driver was watching me intently. He shut off the noise.
I saw two possibilities.

One: I was under arrest. (For what, was unclear.)

Two: This was a German chick-magnet, the continental cousin of those alien hovercraft with neon under lights that cruise America's inner cities.

(Everybody had told me dating in Germany was impossible. But it was hard to imagine anyone so desperate to impress that he'd soup up his taxi minivan.)

I gave the driver a once-over. (Not impossible.)

"Wow," I said, hoping this would get us under way.

The driver regarded me with distaste. "Do you know where you are?" he asked, in a strangely booming voice.

For the first time, I noticed that nearly all the van's windows were tinted black.

Possibility three: I was being kidnapped by an alumnus of the East German secret police.

"You're in Kvitazki!" he thundered, the indecipherable word sounding a lot like a Stasi prison to me.

My eyes were like saucers.

After a long moment, it hit him. "You don't know Quiz Taxi?" he asked in disbelief. "Where are you from?"

"Quiz Taxi," it turned out, was a recently debuted German reality TV show in which unsuspecting participants rode around major cities trying to answer trivia questions for money.

Americans with a clue and cable TV knew it as a spin-off of the Discovery Channel game show, "Cash Cab," which itself was a spin-off of the British original.

I had neither clue nor cable – in fact, I feared TV.

The host sized up none of this. Proudly he directed my attention to this: Aimed at my forehead, ears, and up both nostrils, cameras were already rolling. And there was Geld. "Money!" he said in English, waving a large bill in my face. (And really, does flapping cash ever bode well?)

Still, I thought, what could it hurt? I humiliated myself every time I opened my mouth. Why not do it on national TV in a country full of strangers? For an instant I could see myself when it was all over, acting out the scene for laughing friends. Friends who would get the joke. Friends with televisions.

Then again, in my experience, Americans were a popular punch-line in Germany. I could picture a "Quiz Taxi" producer somewhere rubbing her hands at the chance to expose a bumbling fool like me on prime time.

Besides, who was I kidding? I could barely order brunch. I thanked the host, climbed from the van, and moved down the taxi queue.

An elderly couple had claimed the second cab, so I approached the third. Its driver blinked at me through coke-bottle glasses.

"Are you sure?" the old man asked breathlessly. "I mean, I can take you, but ... you were in the Quiz Taxi."

I was sure. But no one else seemed to be. When we reached the end of the driveway, we found the second taxi waiting for us. Its driver was disgusted.

Gallantly, mine took up for me: "Maybe she doesn't understand Quiz Taxi."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's American."

But when the light changed, he couldn't help himself. Craning around in his seat, he gave it one last try.

"If you change your mind I'll take you back," he said, "just say the word."

When we had put a safe distance between ourselves and the world of broadcast, my curiosity got the better of me.

"Was that man famous?" I asked.

Oh yes, the driver assured me.

"Really?" I mused in German, "Who had knowed?"

"Who knew," he corrected, gently.

"I thought he was ... how do you say ... " I rummaged for the German word.

"Funny?" he offered. "Friendly? Handsome?"

It came back to me from a Hitler biography. "Deranged!" I said proudly.

The driver thought this was a riot. He couldn't get over it.

Neither could I. For the first time in half a year, I felt I understood somebody, and my clumsy story was enough to make him smile. Not just at me: with me.

All the way downtown, the driver and I traded one-liners. As we did, I heard him start to tell the story, working out the details for the next person who happened into his cab.

"I bet you thought you were just going for a ride. Nothing unusual, just wanted to get to Ku'damm," he prompted.

"Yeah," I said, grinning like an idiot, "Yeah, who knew?"

"I bet you'll think twice about getting in a taxi again," he persisted. "From now on, I bet you'll take the bus!"

"The bus?" I said with a shudder. "I don't know about the bus. Maybe a bike."

He howled with laughter. Somehow – who knew? – I'd made my first German joke. He braked abruptly in the middle of the intersection. Traffic swerved around us. He took off his glasses, gasping for air. People were honking.

"You're right," he said, mopping his eyes. "Who knows what could happen on the bus."

[Editor's note: The original version misspelled the author's name.]

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Gridlock over how to end flight gridlock

from the October 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1029/p03s03-usgn.html

The airlines balk after the FAA proposes congestion pricing and flight caps for airports in the New York area.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK

It all sounded so easy.

There is a problem: record delays and congestion at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, which ripple through airports across the country. There was an apparent solution: a big meeting among the airlines, the airport managers, and federal regulators to address it. But there's also a reason for sayings like "The devil's in the details."

Intensive meetings last week did yield some results. JetBlue and Delta agreed to shift their schedules to help alleviate congestion during peak periods, and other airlines are weighing similar steps.

But the message for public consumption was clear: The airlines, the airport managers, and more than a dozen business and cultural institutions enlisted to support them are outraged by what they see as failure by the Federal Aviation Administration to prevent the problem in the first place. On Friday, they blasted the FAA and, in particular, the agency's top two proposed solutions: congestion pricing, which would charge airlines more to land during peak periods, and mandatory caps that would reduce by 20 percent the current 100 departing flights per hour.

"There are so many losers from caps, but there is arguably one winner – the federal government, which gets off the hook easy," says Anthony Shorris, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the region's three major airports. "It's a cheap, fast, easy purported solution that allows the federal government to walk away from its responsibilities to make America's air-traffic system what it should be."

While all say they remain committed to working cooperatively to resolve the problem, the heated reaction seemed to take the FAA by surprise. The agency's first statement touted the cooperative process, but also drew the FAA's own line in the sand.

"Allowing a repeat of last summer's record-setting airline delays … is simply not an option," said Department of Transportation spokesman Brian Turmail.

Later, in a phone interview, Mr. Turmail blasted the airlines and airport authority for complaining without offering good short-term solutions of their own." Instead of the airlines spending all of their time giving reasons why something won't work, I think travelers would be better served if they'd spend their time coming up with suggestions that would reduce delays," he said.

At the center of the dispute is how quickly and safely the federal government can upgrade technology and make changes in air-traffic control to increase capacity at New York's airports. The goal is to allow as many passengers and planes to land there as want to.

The FAA's steps thus far

The FAA has redesigned the airspace so that more planes can land and take off at the same time and is implementing that plan. But there's opposition from some communities that would hear more planes roaring overhead. They've brought lawsuits, and some congressmen are threatening to block the plan.

The FAA is also negotiating with the military to open up some restricted airspace over the Atlantic Ocean to create new departure routes. And the agency has announced plans to introduce satellite-based technology that will allow some planes to take off closer together. But it will take as long as three years to implement those changes – and 10 years before the entire air-traffic control system is shifted to a satellite-based technology that will ease congestion everywhere.

So the second key issue, from the FAA's point of view, is what to do in the short term. It wants the airlines to self-police their schedules – meaning that not every traveler who wants to leave at 6 p.m. on a Friday would be able to do so. Some may have to depart at 4 p.m. or 8 p.m., but at least they won't be sitting on the tarmac for an hour or more waiting for all the other scheduled 6 p.m. flights to leave. The FAA has told the airlines that if they don't resolve the problem themselves, it will put caps on the number of departing flights and may implement congestion pricing.

Airlines seek better air-traffic control

From the view of the airlines and the airport authority, the FAA still isn't moving aggressively enough to improve air-traffic control. Talk of imposing caps, they say, will turn back the clock and undermine New York's economy.

"We are opposed to artificial restraints on travel and taxes on travel," says James May, president and CEO of the Air Transport Association, which represents the major carriers. "The constraints they're attempting to put on JFK are reminiscent of traffic levels that were accomplished in 1969. We don't need to look back; we need to look forward."

The FAA's Turmail says operational improvements are "a must and already under way." But he's just as adamant that the airlines must make some changes. "We have to figure out what changes the airlines can make and what the Port Authority can do to avoid these delays in the future," he says.

Advocates for passengers say both sides can do better. "There's some definite denial ... among airlines about how bad the problem is," says Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group for business travelers. "On the other hand, the FAA just seems like it wants to experiment in New York with this congestion pricing and they're not hearing the objections."

Still, there are some hopeful signs for the weary, oft-delayed traveler, says Mr. Mitchell. At least every body's talking about a finding a solution and, in the end, they just might, he says.

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A bridge to Vietnamese cuisine

from the October 31, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1031/p16s01-litr.html

One way for visitors to understand Vietnamese culture is to take a cooking class.

By Dorothy Aksamit Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Hoi An, Vietnam

"Ladies and gentlemen, to your stations!" Those words, spoken with great flair by Chef Hai, made me smile and wonder if he was an aficionado of TV cooking shows.

Earlier that day, our class of 21 foreign visitors had gathered at Hai Scout Café in Hoi An, Vietnam, a riverside town about 18-1/2 miles south of Da Nang. We chatted and got acquainted as we sipped fresh juice, cappuccino, latte, or Vietnamese filtered coffee.

Several of us were American – one couple was bicycling through Vietnam – but the majority were Australian. Most were under 30, but the class also had attracted a few retired couples, which is representative of tourism in Vietnam.

First we would visit Hoi An's large central market. Then we would take a boat ride down the Hoi An River to the Red Bridge Restaurant, the site of the cooking school where we would be taking a half-day class.

Rain didn't dampen our spirits as we unfurled umbrellas and gingerly sidestepped puddles on our way to the market, which offered everything from fresh fish to kitchen equipment.

At the fruit stand, Thanh, our guide, introduced the exotic dragon fruit. It's smooth-skinned, with scales that hint at the cactus that it is. Thanh said that the cactus "stems" (think of a Christmas cactus) can grow up to 20 feet long.

He moved on to show us knobby, yellowish-green custard apples. Inside are creamy-white, custardlike segments. Each segment surrounds a hard brown seed, which we picked out and discarded. Then we sampled the segments. Mmm, good.

In the vegetable section of the market, Thanh chose what looked like a cucumber with ridges. "This is bitter melon, used often in soup," he told us. "It's very good for you, and you must try it 10 times before you decide you don't like it!"

Pausing at a rice stall, we learned that rice paper can be softened by soaking it for a second in tepid water or by wrapping it in a banana leaf for up to 10 hours.

We passed on "the best coffee from Dalat, at 50,000 dong [about $3] a kilo," but most of us bought small metal vegetable graters with tiny loops at one end used for making the slivers of carrot found in the national sauce, nuoc mam. Many of us also purchased tiny three-part gizmos for making drip coffee.

At the fish market, we learned that the fish sold in stalls inside the market are from the sea, while vendors in the outside stalls by the river are selling river fish. Thanh lingered by a huge mound of squid. "The flesh of a fresh squid should be hard and white," he explained.

The rain had changed into a fine mist as we got into a wooden boat that would putt-putt us down the Hoi An River for a 25-minute tour.

As we glided by riverside restaurants, we made notes of Thanh's recommendations to guide us to good places to eat during coming days in the area.

The tuition for this cooking class was just $15, and by that point, I had already had $15 worth of fun – and the cooking hadn't even started. But disembarking at the dock of the Red Bridge Restaurant, which is nestled beneath tall palms, I felt that another round of surprises was in store.

From the dining area of the open-air restaurant, we followed Thanh through a tropical garden to a raised herb garden, where most of us saw lemon grass growing for the first time. We also learned that basil can be used to make a fragrant hair rinse.

After washing our hands, we gathered in the adjacent pavilion, which was definitely worthy of a TV cooking show.

For the next hour, we would be chopping, slicing, peeling, and sautéing, as Chef Hai and his two assistants – all of whom spoke excellent English – demonstrated cooking techniques under a large, angled mirror.

After the demonstrations, we whipped into action at two long tables set up with supplies, including individual gas burners. We would prepare four dishes and tackle edible decorations such as Vietnamese cucumber fans.

The first dish was a simple, straightforward stir-fry – a warm squid salad beautifully presented in a half pineapple.

Next came Asian eggplant in a clay pot. Chef Hai had eliminated most of the oil so it was basically a flavorful boiled dish.

Surprisingly, everyone in the class learned to make a credible cucumber fan and a tomato rose, a lovely garnish for the shrimp rice paper rolls that we created.

I was skeptical about making from scratch the impossibly thin rice paper wrappers that when I'm at home, I buy on Clement Street in San Francisco. But armed with a flexible bamboo sliver about eight inches long, we spread the runny rice batter over a cloth "lid" that was tied over a pan of boiling water. Our spring rolls looked a little ragged but were nonetheless delicious. We couldn't quite say we had mastered the art, but we had all gained more respect for its many deft practitioners that we encountered all over Vietnam.

We also prepared banh xeo, a crepe made with rice flour sprinkled with tiny shrimp, bits of pork, green onions, and bean sprouts. After the cooked crepe is folded over sprigs of mint and basil, small portions are wrapped in lettuce leaves and then dipped in fish sauce. It's one of my favorite dishes back home, and I found that making these Vietnamese "pancakes" is quick and easy – when someone else collects the many ingredients.

After we finished, we had lunch in the adjacent restaurant. It included not only our own culinary efforts, but snapper steamed in banana leaves and ocean fish on a bed of vegetables. Dessert was fresh fruit, artfully presented: rambutan (a reddish, spiny tropical fruit), pineapple spears, and banana slices.

As I sat there, satisfied by the results of my morning at the cooking school, I decided that it had been such fun, so informative, and such a perfect activity for a solo traveler, I should sign up for the night class at Hai Scout Café. And so I did.

Half-day cooking classes

• Red Bridge Cooking School, Thon 4, Cam Thanh, Hoi An, Vietnam. Telephone (from the US): 011-84 510 933222 or 011-84 091 3457029. Website: www.visithoian.com/redbridge.html. E-mail: info@visithoian.com.

• The Red Bridge Restaurant is open daily for lunch and also for dinner on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.

• Those attending the cooking school meet at Hai Scout Café, 98 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street/111 Tran Phu Street, in Old Town Hoi An. Telephone (from the US) 011-84 510 863210.

• Cost, including the market visit, round-trip boat ride, and lunch is $15.

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Clinton's gender poses challenge in Iowa

from the October 26, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1026/p01s04-uspo.html

The leading Democratic presidential contender is in a tight race in Iowa, one of only two states never to have elected a woman to the governor's office or Congress.

By Ariel Sabar Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Ames, Iowa
When Roxanne Conlin stepped into a grain elevator during her 1982 campaign for Iowa governor, the farmers inside, in seed corn hats and overalls, burst into laughter when she asked for their support.

"They all just guffawed until I left," recalls Ms. Conlin, a former US attorney who narrowly lost the open race. "It was not an uncommon reaction. People would say to me, 'What do you think you're doing? You've got four kids, go home.' "

Twenty-five years later, Iowa remains the only state besides Mississippi never to have elected a woman to the governor's office or to Congress. A bedeviling question is how that legacy will play for Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is seeking to become the first woman president and is in a far tighter race for the Democratic presidential nomination in Iowa than she is in other early-primary states.

Senator Clinton told a Des Moines Register columnist this week that she was "shocked" to hear of Iowa's failure to elect a female governor or member of Congress and said it posed a "special burden" for her.

"I have to maybe reassure people here maybe more than I do in New Hampshire, which has had a woman governor," she said.

Anything short of victory in Iowa would puncture the aura of inevitability that surrounds her nomination nationally. Some analysts saw her remarks as an effort to lower expectations in this key early voting state. Interviews with Democratic voters this week suggest that Clinton remains a polarizing figure in Iowa, if not just because of her gender.

"I'm not going to vote for someone just because they have the same reproductive system I do," says Jennifer Lunsford, a dairy farmer who chairs the Jefferson County Democratic Party, in southeast Iowa. "I'm going to vote for someone who has the same convictions."

Ms. Lunsford, who is backing Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, said she was put off by what she sees as Clinton's divisive politics and weak explanation of her 2002 vote for the Iraq war.

At the other end of the spectrum is Stephanie Calhoun, a grandmother of 23, who says Clinton has inspired her to vote for the first time. "It's time for a woman to take charge," Ms. Calhoun, a live-in caretaker for the elderly, said as she waited for takeout Chinese food in downtown Des Moines Wednesday. "She's outgoing, and she's outspoken, and it doesn't matter what kind of shoes she wears."

Current and former female politicians in Iowa say many older residents in this rural state hold traditional views of gender roles. But they say factors with no bearing on Clinton's bid – bad timing, and lack of campaign funds or name recognition – have also played a part in the fate of women candidates for governor and Congress.

Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, a Democrat with no plans to endorse in the caucuses, says of Clinton, "She may face what I and any other woman who has run for political office did, and that's a small percentage of people who will make a decision based on her gender. It is not a make or break."

Clinton's unease over Iowa surfaced publicly in May, when an internal campaign memo calling Iowa "our consistently weakest state" and urging a pullout from the caucuses leaked to the press. Clinton responded that she had rejected the advice and has since ramped up campaign operations here.

She purchased local TV ads to compete with those of former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and campaigned with her husband, Bill Clinton, and the wives of former Gov. Tom Vilsack and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa.

Bonnie Campbell, a former Iowa gubernatorial candidate who co-chairs Clinton's Midwest campaign, says Clinton has gone to lengths to highlight her role as a mother. In a state that prizes strong families, she says, Clinton's decision to stay with her husband through a rocky marriage also resonates. "While her marital status may have hurt her in urban centers, I think it helps here," said Ms. Campbell, a former Iowa attorney general.

Clinton has pulled to the front only in recent polls of Iowa Democrats. For months she had trailed Mr. Edwards, who placed second in Iowa in 2004 and has campaigned in the state for years. She is ahead of her nearest rival by as much as 20 points in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, but her lead here – six points over Edwards in the authoritative Iowa Poll earlier this month – is narrow.

And it remains fragile. According to the Iowa Poll, more Democratic caucusgoers – 41 percent – have ruled her out than they have either Edwards and Senator Obama. Edwards is still the favorite among men, and 42 percent of all Democratic caucusgoers say they thought Clinton's gender would hurt her chances on election day.

Even so, Dianne Bystrom, director of Iowa State University's Catt Center for Women and Politics, said that in Iowa's unusual system of selecting party nominees, Clinton's gender may help in at least one way: The Democrats who attend caucuses are disproportionately female, many of them baby boomers like her.

Invited to talk about women and leadership at the Catt Center on campus here Wednesday, Clinton chronicled the long strides since the suffrage movement and prodded the hundreds of women – and some men – in the audience to vote.

"I relish the opportunity to be part of making history with all of you," she said.

Getting up to leave afterward, Janet Fitzpatrick, a graduate student in women's studies, said she had yet to be persuaded. She said she wanted a Democrat in the White House more than she did a woman and fretted over Clinton's prospects in the general election. "Yes, more women vote now," said Ms. Fitzpatrick, of the nearby town of Nevada, who is torn between Clinton and Edwards. "But are women comfortable voting for another woman? I think a lot of them are just not there yet."

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Thinkers gather to act on world problems

from the October 22, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1022/p25s01-sten.html

Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine, aims to harness synergy to tackle issues.

By Gregory M. Lamb Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Camden, Maine

Pop!Tech, the annual gathering of thinkers and doers in Camden, Maine, that ended on Saturday, has been asking such questions as "What does it means to be a human being at the beginning of the 21st century?" says its curator and host, Andrew Zolli.

But more and more, the conference, now in its 11th year, isn't just posing big questions: It's trying to jump-start big solutions to big problems.

The "Pop!Tech Accelerator," just announced, aims to bring together innovators that meet at the conference to take on big challenges. Its first effort is called Project Masiluleke (it means "to reach out" or "rejuvenate oneself" in Zulu). The project combines the work of iTEACH, a program in South Africa that aims to educate poor people about HIV/AIDS and help them find and take advantage of medical treatment, with an interactive computer program developed by researchers at the University of Connecticut. The program, which helps patients understand and manage their own medical treatment, is part of CHIP (the Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention) at the university.

Pop!Tech has long talked the talk on environmental issues, and in recent years it's begun to walk the walk, too. To compensate for the carbon emissions created by this year's conference (including energy needs on site and travel by its hundreds of participants), Pop!Tech bought carbon-offset credits equal to twice the carbon the meeting created. Thus it claims to be not just "carbon neutral," but "carbon negative."

Anyone, whether at the conference or not, can participate in its carbon-offset plan too. The offsets program offers a quick and simple "carbon footprint" calculator to help individuals determine the amount of carbon emissions they are producing. Then they volunteer to financially support one of three projects: a solar-powered irrigation program in Benin, West Africa; a wildlife corridor and reforestation effort in Nicaragua; or a biomass energy project in Brazil.

"We vetted very, very carefully" in choosing the projects, Mr. Zolli told the conference. "All of the [carbon] credits are legitimate." To put a face on the efforts, a leader from each project addressed the gathering.

A vexing issue for environmentalists has been why the public isn't more up in arms about global warming, given what they see as strong scientific evidence. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, told Pop!Tech that climate change represents a type of threat that humans have trouble coping with. Humans have evolved to respond to four kinds of threats, he says:

1. Threats that have a face. A threat from a person (Hitler, Saddam Hussein), rather than impersonal weather events, elicits a strong response. The anthrax-in-the-mail scare several years ago won attention because a person or persons was perceived to be behind it. Illnesses like influenza or malaria, which have no human face, represent a much greater threat but receive much less attention.

2. Threats that offend us. Global warming doesn't violate our hard-wired moral sensibilities: It's not indecent, impious, disgusting, or nauseating. If this were about "flag burning," "gay sex," or "killing puppies," we'd be in the streets protesting, he says.

3. Threats that represent a clear and present danger. Global warming is a future threat. We duck involuntarily if someone suddenly throws a rock at us. That kind of response to immediate threats has evolved to serve us well over millennia. But our ability to think about the future is still in its infancy (even though some of us do floss our teeth and take out retirement plans). "We haven't quite gotten the knack of treating the future like the present," Dr. Gilbert says.

4. Threats that are sudden. When the rate of change is slow enough, we don't see the changes, he says. Already, we have around us "an ecological nightmare our grandparents would have never tolerated," including polluted air and water, Gilbert says. But we've come to accept these conditions as "normal" because they happened over time.

"Global warming doesn't push any of our [panic] buttons," Gilbert concludes. "We're sleeping in a burning bed."

Cary Fowler's Global Crop Diversity Trust isn't waiting for a disaster before acting. His organization is working with the Norwegian government to build an underground seed bank in Svalbard, Norway, aimed at preserving the genetic diversity of plants that might become extinct. "This is not the time to start throwing away options," Fowler told the audience at Camden's Opera House. Not only are exotic plants whose genetic properties are little explored being preserved, but a wide variety of common plants as well. Rice alone has 120,000 varieties, he points out.

While the earth has seen climate swings in the past, the suddenness of human-induced global warming will present special problems to agriculture, Fowler says. Humans will either have to modify the environment to suit the crops, or modify the crops to suit the new environment, he says. Seed banks offer resources that can help develop new varieties that will better withstand changes such as more heat and drought.

One example: grass pea, or Lathyrus sativus, is a drought-resistant legume suitable for human consumption and livestock feed in Asia and East Africa. The problem: It contains traces of a neurotoxin. Researchers say that humans who consume it over long periods may become partially paralysed or develop other physical problems. By combining qualities from a wide variety of Lathyrus strains, scientists blend the best drought-resistant qualities with the lowest levels of neurotoxins to create a more useful plant.

How can we restore a healthy environment?

First, study nature in its pristine state to set a baseline for recovery, says Enric Sala, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Diego. Dr. Sala led a research trip to Kingman Reef in the Pacific Ocean to see what coral reefs looked like before they were influenced by humans.

Unlike the dying reefs in much of the world that are turning to slime and algae, Kingman is bursting with life. Dr. Sala found an ecosystem with its food chain intact, dominated by sharks and red snappers and not by little fish. These big predators represent about 85 percent of the reef's total biomass.

This is the standard that we must use to judge the health of the ocean, he says. At Kingman, "The entire food web is upside down" from the way we've been thinking about reefs.

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American youths bridge religious divides

from the October 24, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1024/p13s01-lire.html

Teens in a Boston suburb lead the way in building relationships among religious faiths in their community through Interfaith Action, a program that has captured attention abroad.

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Sharon, Mass.

At Temple Israel, in this small Massachusetts town, young Tehreem Zaidi begins his talk on Ramadan by reciting from the Koran in Arabic. The teenager then explains to the several hundred guests that the main purpose of this Muslim month of fasting is to "attain God consciousness, and to clean up our lives and our souls." He does not consider the fast a burden, "but an honor, to thank God for all my blessings."

Henal Motiwala follows with a vivid description of the Hindu holiday, Navratri, the "nine divine nights" celebrating the victory of good over evil.

And Jennifer Levy tells the story of Sukkot, the joyous Jewish holiday that expresses "appreciation for nature, food on the table, and friends in our lives."

The three poised high school students are hosting "Sacred Seasons," an evening of interfaith hospitality, including a dinner they and other teens have prepared for families in Sharon.

As members of Interfaith Action (IFA), they are part of an eight-year-old experiment to create understanding and respect across religious and ethnic divides among youths and to spread that healthy pluralism to the entire community. Their endeavors have captured the attention as a model for people as far away as Canada, Poland, and the Middle East.

"What they are doing is quite unusual," says Steve Worchel, a University of Hawaii researcher who is beginning a long-term evaluation of the program. "Many times you can change an individual but not the

system. The potential to reach the broader community is unique."

During their high-school years, the students say, they not only develop genuine cross-cultural friendships but also strong leadership skills.

Mike Garber, now a freshman at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., recalls how meaningful it was to learn how to facilitate an interfaith discussion and then see it bear fruit. He tells of an adult discussion session IFA held one evening between orthodox Jews and religious Muslims.

Devout Jews, devout Muslims find commonalities

"When they arrived, the Jews sat on one side of the room and the Muslims on the other," he says. "After we split into groups and facilitated dialogue, they returned later to the main room and kept sharing with each other. They talked about how similar the faiths were, and how they actually had more in common with each other than with less-religious members of their own faiths."

Sharon, an upscale but highly diverse Boston suburb of about 18,000, is a microcosm of a changing American landscape. While the majority of residents is Jewish, the town is home to a large Islamic center and Islamic school, a variety of Christian churches, and several Eastern religions. More than 10 percent of the citizens speak a language other than English in their homes, including Urdu, Hindi, Hebrew, Russian, and Chinese.

At the Sacred Seasons event, guests include people whose background is Pakistani, Indian, Israeli, and Korean. "My daughter joined because she had a friend who was involved, and I think it's a very good idea to get to know other religions," says Kyung Yoo, who has lived in Sharon seven years and attends a Korean Christian church in a nearby town.

For some adults present, it's their first interfaith venture. After the student presentations, the crowd files outside and into a sukkah, the temporary dwelling Jewish families build to eat in during the days of the Sukkot festival. There, special plates of food are laid out so that local Muslims celebrating Ramadan can break the day's fast. A tarp has been spread on the ground for the Muslim sunset prayer.

The guests then join in a South Asian-style dinner, where they are asked to sit at tables with people they do not know. The teens have been careful to ensure that the food meets the dietary needs of all the faiths, though one says finding kosher Indian rice was a challenge!

The IFA's overall program involves youth meetings twice a month, as well as outreach to the public schools and other community agencies.

"During the first half of the year, we learn about different faiths and visit houses of worship," explains Aleena Zaidi, a senior on the leadership team that plans events. "The other half of the year, we put into action what we've learned, through dialogues, conferences, and community service projects."

Active in IFA since her freshman year, Aleena says one of her favorite projects is the antibias and antistereotyping workshops they hold each semester at the middle school.

"We asked the teens a few years ago, 'How do you want to make a difference?' " says Janet Penn, IFA executive director. "They created a program to go to public middle school to teach four classes."

When students first join IFA, they go through a 12-hour leadership training program involving self-awareness and deep listening skills, run by program director Tabitha May-Tolub. Later, they are trained to facilitate programs in the community.

Last March, the group hosted 15 Middle Eastern imams who were on a State Department trip across the United States. The Muslim leaders participated in a public meeting held at the town library, where tough questions were raised, creating some challenging moments.

"The imam from Syria afterward came up and said, through a translator, 'This was the best part of our trip.' " Ms. Penn recalls. "Youths led the dialogue and shared what it was like for them to combine their Muslim identity and their American identity."

That has led to an invitation for the group to travel to Jordan.

Dr. Worchel – who has evaluated several programs aimed at reducing religious and ethnic conflict, including camps such as Seeds of Peace in Maine – says the effects of one-shot programs often don't last over the long term. IFA may show more lasting benefits, he says, because students participate over a two-to-four-year period.

"It's like a farmer tending a field. You plant the seeds, then you water and weed and fertilize," he says. "Also, it's easier to do prevention before a crisis arises than to try to treat it once there's a history of violence and distrust."

$25,000 grant to spread religious pluralism

Dan Resnick, who grew up in Israel and came to the US as a teen, has felt the impact. He joined IFA because his parents wanted him to. "Experiencing that kids from different religions and cultures can come together as friends and work together to produce amazing results really encourages me," he says. "I see it's not just war and conflict and that diversity can actually be good."

Dan suggested that IFA hold a conference for teens throughout the Boston area to share their experience. They partnered with the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, and found that interested high school students showed up from several states in the region.

IFA now has a $25,000 grant to work with other town institutions like the recreation department and the public library to develop long-term programs that foster healthy pluralism more broadly, such as among elderly residents.

The teens are enthusiastic about how interfaith engagement has changed their own lives, too. Aanchal Narang, a Hindu, says she had to go into her own faith more deeply in order to talk about it with others. Many are pleased to have gained new leadership skills, including confidence in public speaking. Virtually all speak of having good friends of different faiths who "hang out together," where before their close friends were like themselves.

"At first maybe you don't expect much from Interfaith," Dan says. "But it really comes through and means a lot to people. And when you apply to college and write about your favorite activities, it stands out."

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A loophole could dim impact in proposed energy-saving bill

from the October 16, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1016/p02s02-uspo.html

New legislation is slated to phase out inefficient bulbs, but efficiency groups are concerned a loophole could diminish impact.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

It's not as portentous as raising fuel-efficiency standards or doling out solar-energy subsidies. Nevertheless, Congress is poised to pass a major energy-saving measure as soon as this month, if it can solve a rather glaring problem: How do you describe an energy-efficient light bulb?

That question is crucial because the new legislation would phase out energy-intensive incandescent bulbs on the basis of their size and shape rather than on the amount of power they draw. As a result, unscrupulous manufacturers could easily skirt the phase-out by changing slightly the shape of their incandescent offerings, efficiency advocates say, dramatically reducing the measure's benefits.

"If this loophole isn't fixed, the nation's savings [for this one provision] will be cut by half or more," says Andrew deLaski, director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, an efficiency effort sponsored by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The new measure aims to replace America's4 billion most inefficient incandescent bulbs with far more efficient light. That move alone could save enough energy to avoid building 40 large coal-fired power plants in the United States, which would make it the third-largest power-saving feature of the energy bill now moving through Congress, according to the ACEEE.

But if the loophole remains, the impact would be smaller.

"It's just too easy to get around the law," Mr. deLaski says. "Some company could make and sell a bulb that costs a fraction of the new efficient bulbs and undermine the whole thing."

For instance: Philips Electronics, one of the world's three largest bulbmakers, plans to unveil in a few weeks a new halogen-based incandescent bulb that uses 25 percent less energy than today's standard incandescent bulb. But because that new bulb's shape is not specifically identified in the bill, an overseas manufacturer could make an inefficient incandescent bulb of the same shape – legally skirt the new rules – and undercut the new high-efficiency bulb's price.

Ever since a Senate committee hearing last month, at which energy-efficiency advocates held up bulbs of varying sizes to show what products could already escape the provisions, industry officials and many lawmakers have agreed there's a big gap in legislation. The question is how to fix it: whether to enact a broad efficiency rule required of any bulb that screws into a socket, with special exceptions for bulbs like black lights, or a narrower measure that bans specific products. Efficiency advocates want the former. Industry favors the latter.

"We are very concerned about loopholes," David Marks, a spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote in an e-mail. But mandating the law for all screw-in bulbs means "we're talking about [exceptions for] many, many types of specialty bulbs. So the question for Congress is to find the right balance of burdens and benefits."

Some bulb manufacturers are optimistic that a remedy will be found.

"We may debate options to the solution," says Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs for Philips Electronics North America. "But we don't want people to get around the system. As far as closing potential loopholes whereby someone less conscientious could profit, this will be fixed."

If it isn't fixed, however, states appear ready to plug the loophole on their own.

At least eight states are weighing legislation. California's legislature has passed a stringent light-bulb bill that awaits the governor's signature. New York's legislature has approved similar bills. Nevada has already enacted a new law that bans inefficient incandescent bulbs based on how much energy they use.

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A loophole could dim impact in proposed energy-saving bill

from the October 16, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1016/p02s02-uspo.html

New legislation is slated to phase out inefficient bulbs, but efficiency groups are concerned a loophole could diminish impact.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

It's not as portentous as raising fuel-efficiency standards or doling out solar-energy subsidies. Nevertheless, Congress is poised to pass a major energy-saving measure as soon as this month, if it can solve a rather glaring problem: How do you describe an energy-efficient light bulb?

That question is crucial because the new legislation would phase out energy-intensive incandescent bulbs on the basis of their size and shape rather than on the amount of power they draw. As a result, unscrupulous manufacturers could easily skirt the phase-out by changing slightly the shape of their incandescent offerings, efficiency advocates say, dramatically reducing the measure's benefits.

"If this loophole isn't fixed, the nation's savings [for this one provision] will be cut by half or more," says Andrew deLaski, director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, an efficiency effort sponsored by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The new measure aims to replace America's4 billion most inefficient incandescent bulbs with far more efficient light. That move alone could save enough energy to avoid building 40 large coal-fired power plants in the United States, which would make it the third-largest power-saving feature of the energy bill now moving through Congress, according to the ACEEE.

But if the loophole remains, the impact would be smaller.

"It's just too easy to get around the law," Mr. deLaski says. "Some company could make and sell a bulb that costs a fraction of the new efficient bulbs and undermine the whole thing."

For instance: Philips Electronics, one of the world's three largest bulbmakers, plans to unveil in a few weeks a new halogen-based incandescent bulb that uses 25 percent less energy than today's standard incandescent bulb. But because that new bulb's shape is not specifically identified in the bill, an overseas manufacturer could make an inefficient incandescent bulb of the same shape – legally skirt the new rules – and undercut the new high-efficiency bulb's price.

Ever since a Senate committee hearing last month, at which energy-efficiency advocates held up bulbs of varying sizes to show what products could already escape the provisions, industry officials and many lawmakers have agreed there's a big gap in legislation. The question is how to fix it: whether to enact a broad efficiency rule required of any bulb that screws into a socket, with special exceptions for bulbs like black lights, or a narrower measure that bans specific products. Efficiency advocates want the former. Industry favors the latter.

"We are very concerned about loopholes," David Marks, a spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wrote in an e-mail. But mandating the law for all screw-in bulbs means "we're talking about [exceptions for] many, many types of specialty bulbs. So the question for Congress is to find the right balance of burdens and benefits."

Some bulb manufacturers are optimistic that a remedy will be found.

"We may debate options to the solution," says Randall Moorhead, vice president of government affairs for Philips Electronics North America. "But we don't want people to get around the system. As far as closing potential loopholes whereby someone less conscientious could profit, this will be fixed."

If it isn't fixed, however, states appear ready to plug the loophole on their own.

At least eight states are weighing legislation. California's legislature has passed a stringent light-bulb bill that awaits the governor's signature. New York's legislature has approved similar bills. Nevada has already enacted a new law that bans inefficient incandescent bulbs based on how much energy they use.

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Can the Democratic Party ignore Florida's primary?

from the October 16, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1016/p01s01-uspo.html

Florida Democrats filed suit against the national party for imposing sanctions against the state for its early primary.

By Ariel Sabar Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON

Does a national political party have to count every vote in choosing its nominee for president? Or can it enforce its rules in a way that leaves some voters ­– or even an entire state – out of the process? Those questions are at the heart of a lawsuit unfolding in Florida that is the latest volley between states and the national parties over the scrambled primary calendar.

The lawsuit, filed this month by Florida's leaders in Congress, accuses the Democratic National Committee and state officials with the unconstitutional and "wholesale disenfranchisement" of Florida's 4 million Democratic voters.

The plaintiffs want the US District Court in Tallahassee, Fla., to undo the DNC's sanctions against Florida for its early primary date. Those sanctions stripped Florida of all its delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention, where the national delegate count determines the party's White House nominee.

Without delegates, the lawsuit alleges, the results of Florida's Jan. 29 primary will be moot, denying a voice to all of the state's Democratic voters – and particularly its blacks, who disproportionately vote Democratic.

Experts in election law say the lawsuit faces significant hurdles, mainly because courts have given political parties wide leeway to set rules for primaries. In landmark cases in Wisconsin in 1981 and Illinois in 1975, the US Supreme Court effectively said that party rules trump state law in the selection of nominees.

Florida lawsuit claims

Still, precedent is relatively scarce. And some experts say a few of the Florida suit's claims – particularly those alleging racial bias under the Voting Rights Act – may be novel enough to draw a judge's eye. The suit also takes an unusual tack in naming as defendants not just the national party but state government, which courts would be likely to hold to a higher standard than a party alone, experts say.

The lawsuit says the Republican-led legislature and GOP Gov. Charlie Crist moved the primary from its traditional March date to January after the DNC had announced the penalties for setting primaries before Feb. 5, a window reserved under Democratic rules for Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

"A suit against the state is on stronger ground than a suit against the party," says Guy-Uriel Charles, an election law specialist and co-dean of the University of Minnesota Law School. "Because one might say that the state moved the primary up specifically to deprive these voters of their rights."

That is a claim Florida officials flatly deny. The legislature, with the governor's support, did vote this spring to move the primaries – Democratic and Republican – to Jan. 29. But after Democratic amendments to set a Feb. 5 primary failed, nearly every Democratic lawmaker joined the Republican majority in favor of the Jan. 29 date.

Several Democrats invoked the same reason as Republicans: to give the nation's fourth most populous state a bigger role in the nominating process.

"Moving the primary up earlier puts Florida center stage," Anthony DeLuise, a spokesman for the governor, said in a phone interview. He said that Governor Crist has declared his support for the lawsuit, which was filed by Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Alcee Hastings, Democrats of Florida, in their capacity as delegates to the convention, and by Janet Taylor, an African-American county commissioner and possible delegate.

"It's the national Democratic Party" – not Florida – "that is unfairly punishing Democratic voters," Mr. DeLuise said.

A DNC spokeswoman, Karen Finney, said the Democratic Party was on firm ground to disregard contests that run afoul of party rules. "The DNC has the absolute legal right to treat the state-run primary as a mere beauty contest," she said in an e-mail interview.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Tampa seemed to second that view in throwing out a somewhat similar lawsuit over the DNC sanctions. "The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that national political parties have a constitutionally protected right to manage and conduct their own internal affairs, including the enforcement of delegate selection rules and the decision as to which state delegates it will recognize," Judge Richard Lazzara wrote.

Citing the First Amendment right to free association, courts tend to treat political parties as private bodies, much as they might a parade organization, which is free to decide who may march.

Kendall Coffey, a Miami lawyer for the Florida plaintiffs, sought in an interview to distinguish his case from such rulings. In those cases, he said, parties had compelling reasons to exclude some voters. In the 1981 Wisconsin case, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that the DNC could ignore that primary because Republicans and other non-Democrats were permitted to participate, a violation of Democratic Party rules.

Limiting a party primary to members of that party is rational, he said. But in the Florida case, Mr. Coffey asserts, the DNC's reasons – to protect the traditional roles of a few early-voting states – are too weak to justify what the lawsuit calls "disenfranchisement on a massive scale" of that party's own members.

"It's one thing if you have a reasonable basis for making minor adjustments based on the goals of the Democratic Party," he said. "But it's completely different to say all 4 million-plus votes count for zero."

Because party primaries are often run and financed by government, courts have set some limits. In a series of rulings from the 1920s to 1950s known as the "white primary cases," for instance, the Supreme Court banned racial restrictions on who could vote.

Lawsuit's potential impact

If even parts of the Florida suit are successful, experts say, it could have far-reaching implications for the balance of power between states and the parties over the primary calendar. "Depending on how any injunction is crafted, parties could potentially lose some of their ability to regulate the primary process," said Michael Kang, an election law specialist at the Emory University School of Law.

The defendants – the DNC, its chairman Howard Dean, and Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning – have 20 days to file an answer to the lawsuit. It is unclear when a judge might rule.
The dispute has particular resonance in Florida, the site of the disputed 2000 presidential election, decided by the Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush, the Republican, over Al Gore, the Democrat. The lawsuit calls the DNC sanctions a "monumental irony": "In the annals of modern politics, no national party has inflicted so devastating and sweeping a 'geographic discrimination' " against its own members.

The strong language suggests to some election-law specialists that the suit is as much a political exercise as a legal one.

"Fundamentally, lawsuits like this are about shaming the national political party into counting the votes," said Nathaniel Persily, a Columbia University law professor who reviewed an early draft of the lawsuit but is not involved with the case. "It seems inconceivable to me that the Democratic convention will lock its doors and leave the Florida delegation outside."

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Why US immigration crackdown is stalled

from the October 16, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1016/p03s03-uspo.html

Mismatched Social Security numbers led to illegal workers – but also legal ones, critics say.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK

His name is Enrique. Like an estimated 17 million others, when he files his 1040 to pay taxes, the Social Security number he uses does not match his name.

For some people, it's because they've changed names or been married – or their employer made a clerical error. Enrique makes no bones about his mismatch; it's because he's not a legal citizen.
Those different explanations for the discrepancies in the Social Security Administration's files are at the center of one of the most heated immigration debates of the year.

Since Congress failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform in June, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has aggressively moved to use Social Security filings to ferret out illegal immigrants. Their target is employers who don't fire workers who have questionable Social Security numbers.

But a crucial, unresolved question is whether the bulk of these mismatches involve legal workers, who could be fired because of a clerical mishap, or illegal immigrants, abusing a system that has long tolerated, and some say even encouraged, their work in the US.

Last week, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled DHS's methods would cause "serious irreparable harm" to workers and employers and put off implementation of the rule indefinitely. He concluded that too many legal workers would be harmed.

DHS is expected to appeal the decision. "We are examining all of the options," says DHS spokeswoman Veronica Nur Valdes.

One of the biggest problems that prompted the judge to halt DHS's plan is the size and complexity of the federal records involved. Each year the Social Security Administration (SSA) processes more than 250 million wage reports from employers. The information is used to determine future Social Security, disability, and survivor benefits for each eligible worker. Last year, an estimated 4 percent of the wage reports had an employee's name that didn't match the corresponding Social Security number – that's about 8 million mismatches. In total, the SSA has 435 million records in its database. A 2006 report by the SSA's inspector general found a total of 17.8 million of those records contained errors.

Advocates of using Social Security numbers to discourage employers from hiring illegal immigrants contend it is in all workers' best interest to correct any inconsistencies, since that database will determine future benefits.

"Nothing is 100 percent perfect," says Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. "The procedures allow 90 days to rectify any errors – and quite frankly, if there are any errors about me, I'd rather find out about it now, rather than when I file for benefits."

He and other advocates note that the law requiring correction of Social Security mismatches has been on the books since 1986. Every year, the SSA sends out more than 100,000 letters warning employers if there are mismatches, but there has been little enforcement. The decision by DHS to include a set of procedures for rectifying the problems – as well as a listing of penalties of up to $11,000 per employee for failure to do so – is a simple way to enforce current law, they say.

"Will it be disruptive to the economy? To some degree sure it will. Will it cripple it? No," says Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. "Employers have known for a long time that this was coming."

Advocates of the DHS plan contend that some 90 percent of the 8 million mismatches from the 2006 filings involve illegal immigrants.

Opponents of the DHS plan point out that that 90-percent estimate is unproven. The SSA itself admits that there are 17.8 million inconsistencies in its database, and opponents say it's impossible to determine the legal status of people with discrepancies. They argue that millions of legal citizens and residents could be unjustly fired if their employer receives a no-match letter.

Among those at risk: Women who have been married and changed their names and legal residents whose paperwork is making its way through the federal immigration system. These critics note that the SSA doesn't have access to files containing a worker's immigration authorization or status. A 2003 University of Illinois study of the "no match" letter found:

"Thirty-four percent of workers who were fired reported that their employer failed to grant them an opportunity to correct their SSN" – Social Security number – even though the SSA's "no match" letter states clearly that it is not an automatic indication that an employee is illegal. Some employers also used the letters indiscriminately against workers who complained of unsafe working conditions or wage-law violations.

"It causes significant instability in local labor markets," says Nik Theodore, director of the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and coauthor of the report.

Moreover, the structure of the federal government makes it difficult to use Social Security numbers as immigration-enforcement tools, say opponents of the DHS plan. For instance, the Internal Revenue System will give individual tax identification numbers to people who are filing to become legal residents – even if they're not yet. Many immigration lawyers encourage their clients to pay taxes each year so as not to run afoul of tax laws.

"Under tax law, regardless of immigration status, you're required to pay taxes," says James O'Malley, an immigration expert in New York. "And the IRS has been very accommodating in that they'll accept the tax return without a proper Social Security number and they will accept a check."

Enrique, who asked that his real name not be used, has applied for legal status. In the meantime, he has been paying taxes for seven years. The reason, he adds, is to "make it a bit easier to get that green card down the road."

The Social Security number he uses: 000-000-000. He knows he'll never get the retirement benefits he's currently paying for, but sees the taxes he pays now as a kind of penalty for his decision to work here before being granted legal status.

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Room for compromise on child-health bill

from the October 18, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1018/p02s01-ussc.html

Even if an override vote fails Thursday, lawmakers and analysts see hope for renewing the popular S-CHIP program.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

After two weeks of vigils, targeted ad campaigns, and putting kids and their families in the klieg lights, House Democrats expect to fall short on a vote to override President Bush's veto of a popular child health-insurance bill.

But even before Thursday's House vote, GOP moderates were scoping out prospects for a Plan B on renewal of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) – one that they could expect to see the president sign.

A starting point is more funding. Mr. Bush has asked for a $5 billion increase in the S-CHIP program over the next five years. Congress passed a bill calling for a $35 billion expansion.

"There is room for a compromise, but it has to come at the income level [determining which families qualify for government help], and the amount of funding," says Rep. Ray LaHood (R) of Illinois, who has been lobbying his caucus to support the current S-CHIP bill. The intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill in the days since Bush's Oct. 3 veto has moved a few votes into the "yes" column, he says, but not enough. "But a lot of Republicans want a bill to vote on."

In the run-up to the override vote, Bush restated his willingness to compromise with Congress over funding levels. "It's time to put politics aside and seek common ground to reauthorize this important program," he said during a press conference Wednesday. "If putting poor children first requires more than the 20 percent increase in funding I proposed, we'll work with Congress to find the money we need."

But a wild card is how and when Democratic lawmakers will agree to come to terms with Republicans on a bill that they say already represents a compromise – and on an issue that could be a winner for them in November 2008 campaigns.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Bush's comments on the children's health bill "distort and misrepresent the facts."

"There is no better example of why Washington is not working for the American people than the president claiming to seek common ground at the same time he is bitterly attacking Congress," she said in a statement.

Other top Democrats also took a hard line on the prospects for a new deal on S-CHIP.

Republicans, meanwhile, are "talking about how to salvage themselves politically," says Rep. David Price (D) of North Carolina. "The president has already dropped his bluster about socialized medicine. If they try to find a way to thread this needle so that they can save face, we need to accommodate them, but only to a very limited extent that does not weaken coverage."

Deep vein of support for the program

Despite the partisan fireworks, there's support for the aims of the 10-year-old program on both sides of the aisle. Neither party wants to be seen as depriving poor children of health insurance.
"Everybody wants it. The program is not going to disappear," says Stuart Rothenberg of The Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter, in Washington. One option, he says, is for Congress to simply extend the program, either through fiscal year 2008 or until the next administration, "when [Democrats] could take over the whole shebang."

"There's going to be something. The real question is whether it will stay on the radar screen between now and November 2008 as a political issue," he adds.

Other elements of a compromise bill GOP moderates are discussing with colleagues in both parties include an assurance that the neediest of poor families get coverage first, before expanding eligibility to higher-income families, and a stronger requirement to verify the US citizenship of families applying for S-CHIP benefits.

Ten states and the District of Columbia provide S-CHIP benefits to families with annual incomes that are 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or $61,900 for a family of four. New Jersey provides benefits for families making $72,275 a year (350 percent of the poverty level). New York requested, but was denied, a federal waiver that would have provided benefits to families with incomes up to $82,600.

Democrats characterize the administration's claims that families making up to $82,600 a year would benefit under the new S-CHIP reauthorization as "myths, inaccuracies, and outright lies." "There will be no wealthy people covered," said Rep. John Dingell (D) of Michigan at a Wednesday briefing on S-CHIP.

Even if the current bill were signed into law, no child in a family with an income of $83,000 a year would be eligible for S-CHIP unless the administration approved it, Democrats say. Moreover, it provides bonus payments for eligible and unenrolled children.

"We're looking for some minimum guarantee that from 85 percent to 95 percent of the poorest families are covered first," says a Republican leadership aide.

GOP seeks tougher citizenship rules

Republicans are also discussing a need to beef up requirements for verifying citizenship. The program currently requires states to verify a family's citizenship before providing S-CHIP benefits. The existing renewal bill allows states to require only an applicant's name and Social Security number – a move that critics say makes it more likely that those in the country illegally can claim benefits.

"There are a number of moving parts on this S-CHIP expansion that could get us to a compromise," says Rep. Phil English (R) of Pennsylvania, a GOP moderate working on a compromise bill. "There are ways to provide service more effectively targeted and [to] come in with a lower cost."

"But most unclear," he adds, "is whether there will be an open door" from the Democratic leadership.

In an op-ed on Wednesday, House Republican leader John Boehner said Democrats have a choice, after House Republicans sustain Bush's veto: "Work with Republicans to renew S-CHIP and accomplish something on behalf of low-income children or continue to play politics and refuse any ... discussions."

Democrats see another choice: Force Bush to veto the bill twice, as a GOP-led Congress did with President Clinton over the 1996 welfare reform bill, and let public opinion help change hearts and minds on the GOP side.

Meanwhile, Bush administration officials say that they are gearing up for a new round of negotiations with Congress on S-CHIP.

"Everyone understands we just need to let the veto process play out," said Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, during a conference call with reporters Wednesday. After the House override vote on Thursday, Secretary Leavitt says that he, National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard, and Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle will immediately make contact with leaders of both parties and relevant committees in Congress.
"We would like to find the common ground that would allow us to get this reauthorized," he said.
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Army of average Joes culls through candidates' files, bios

from the October 17, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1017/p03s03-uspo.html

Citizen journalists are using the Internet to do opposition research in the '08 campaign.

By Ben Arnoldy Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Oakland, Calif.

Mayhill Fowler wrote a significant Web-only political story this week that took the temperature of the Democratic electorate. More remarkable than her conclusion – that Democrats are more undecided and less Iraq-focused than polls suggest – is the whopping 17 reporters in nine states who filed on-the-ground accounts to contribute to it.

The cornucopia of contributors, surpassing what most news outlets could ever afford, cost virtually nothing. That's because the reporters are volunteers, including Ms. Fowler, a Californian, who at age 60 has embraced beat reporting on Barack Obama.

"I looked through all the information that people sent in and I came up with what I thought were the significant things we discovered in these 14 cities on Saturday," she says. Her story was published online by Off the Bus, a project boasting 1,500 citizen journalists and affiliation with The Huffington Post, a liberal website.

"Until [this] post, there's nothing really on the Obama campaign that I think we've brought that the mainstream media can't. It's this kind of joint effort that really is the thing," she adds.

Collaborative citizen-reporting projects like this one are sprouting across the political landscape of Election 2008. Thousands of volunteers are adding muscle to efforts by professional reporters and campaign staff to leave no stone unturned – and no skeletons in the closet. But to drive volunteer interest, many of these "crowdsourcing" efforts draw more energy from partisan fervor than traditional journalism's impartiality, say experts.

"Every project like this [needs to find] the motivations of the contributors: Why would they spend some time and share their knowledge and get it right?" says Jay Rosen, a pioneer of collaborative journalism and copublisher of Off the Bus. "To me, the big advance of these projects is [understanding that] people who don't have the same professional neutrality [as journalists] about things have a lot to say about American politics, too."

In the case of Fowler, she says the aspects of Obama she likes don't prevent her from being inquisitive and at times critical.

What excites many people about politics, however, is taking sides and reveling in the whole spear-chucking tribalism of it all. While opposition research used to be the province of professionals, in this election, the Internet is allowing people to dip in when they have some free time.

Democratic volunteers are publicly digging into Mitt Romney's financial disclosure statements; Republicans have proposed group research into Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's congressional earmarks.

The left-leaning blog Talking Points Memo pioneered this type of distributed opposition research this summer during the controversy over the fired US attorneys. When the Justice Department turned over thousands of e-mails related to the case, blogger in chief Josh Micah Marshall encouraged readers to comb through the data dump for evidence of wrongdoing.

Many hands made light work, as Mr. Marshall's readers readily took up the drudge work, knowing the effort might uncover Bush administration malfeasance.

Experts are mixed on whether campaigns would sponsor collaborative dirt-digging exercises against opponents. "I expect as soon as there is a nominee for either side ... [the campaigns] will start organizationally doing those types of research on the opponent," says David All, a GOP Internet strategist. One reader on the Democratic Party website registered his disgust with the collaborative research into Mr. Romney's finances, writing: "You are actually asking volunteers to help you prepare for negative mudslinging, for free. Some of us really, truly are sick of this kind of campaign."

There is plenty of scope for research into the issues, points out Zephyr Teachout, who was the director of online organizing for former presidential candidate Howard Dean during the 2004 election. For example, volunteers could dig into Senator Clinton's healthcare plan and show in their local communities who would or wouldn't get coverage, she says.

Even nonpartisan political projects, however, have found partisan energy to be a useful motivator for citizen contributions. A new effort called Wiki the Vote creates pages on all 2008 congressional candidates that can be edited by everyone – even campaign staff and other hyperpartisans.

"It's partially to encourage people who have an agenda and have a lot of facts. We don't want to discourage that, we want them to go nuts," says Conor Kenny, editor of the wiki, announced last week by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation. Editors strip out rhetoric but allow imbalances of facts to be rectified organically by what he calls "the arms race factor" of partisans working to one-up each other.

Wiki the Vote contributors can draw on troves of data made more accessible by the Sunlight Foundation, including campaign finance reports. In the past, the group has teamed up professional journalists with volunteers willing to troll through the financial data.

One investigation took only 48 hours to uncover 19 House members who paid their spouses from campaign funds. Another looked into the way earmarks may have been used for personal profit or to reward political allies. These investigations require significant upfront planning to explain to volunteers what's needed and how to file.

For some writers who have tried collaborative journalism, the model raises questions about sustainability.

"People who start off doing them start off very enthusiastic, but I don't know if it's sustainable over a long period of time because they are not getting paid," says Charles Warner, a journalism professor emeritus at the University of Missouri and a participant in one of Mr. Rosen's previous collaborative projects. He says he probably wouldn't try it again.

"People that are into journalism want some kind of byline; they want somebody to read it," he adds.

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John McCain: keeping faith, on his own terms

from the October 18, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1018/p01s06-uspo.html

How the Arizona senator, once a POW 'pastor,' finds purpose in his beliefs and survival.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

New York

John McCain does not believe in destiny. God, he says, gives us life, shows us how to use it, and leaves it to us to carry out as we choose.

In other words, the senior senator from Arizona does not believe that in surviving the ordeal of 5-1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, including torture and extended periods of isolation, he has somehow been tapped by God to become the next president of the United States.

But Senator McCain, now in the thick of his second run for the Republican presidential nomination, does believe that he is still alive for a purpose.

"There is no logical reason for me to be on earth, if you look at my life, so I should spend this time trying to serve a cause greater than myself," says McCain in a Monitor interview.

Until 1981, that meant serving in the US Navy. Since 1983, that has meant representing the people of Arizona, first in the House, then for four terms in the Senate.

As one of the better-known Republican candidates going into the 2008 presidential cycle, McCain brought to the table a well-honed persona born of blunt talk, intense personal drive, irreverent wit, and a dash of profanity. Most of all, perhaps, McCain is known for his strongly held policy views, despite the political costs.

He continues to support a major US military presence in Iraq, for instance, long after a majority of Americans reported they had stopped believing in it. His liberal positions on immigration reform and campaign finance have made him anathema to key segments of the GOP base.

But undergirding McCain's hard-charging image there lies a deep faith in God that he credits with getting him through his toughest moments as a prisoner of war – and which he still relies on. During his imprisonment in Hanoi, "there were times when I didn't pray for one more day or one more hour, but I prayed for one more minute," he says. "So I have very little doubt that it was reliance on someone stronger than me that not only got me through, but got me through honorably."

McCain says he is not "born again" and has not been baptized. He says he is "just a Christian," who for many years has been attending the North Phoenix Baptist Church in Arizona with his family. He was raised in the Episcopal Church and attended Episcopal High School, an elite boarding school in Alexandria, Va., where he was required to attend chapel every morning and church on Sunday. At the US Naval Academy, church attendance was also required.

"So I certainly was exposed!" he says, chuckling.

Apparently a lot of it sank in, though McCain would be the first to admit he was hardly a choir-boy growing up, racking up his share of demerits in high school and teetering right on the edge of expulsion during much of his time at the Naval Academy.

In captivity, covert 'church'

Being taken captive matured him fast, he has said, and over time, he discovered that having faith gave him a common bond with his fellow prisoners.

Orson Swindle, an ex-POW who spent the last 20 months of his captivity at McCain's side, recalls how important "church" was when he and the others were being held individually in separate rooms. Every Sunday, after the midday meal was finished, the dishes were washed, and the guards had departed, the senior officer in the area would signal that it was time to pray together, by coughing in a way that signaled the letter "c" for church – one cough and then three coughs.

"It was time for a solid stream of thought among those of us there," says Mr. Swindle, now a policy adviser in Washington. "We all silently said the Pledge of Allegiance, we repeated the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer, and anything else you'd want to [say] in there that would get us some help – but not out loud. If we were heard talking, they would come in and start torturing us."

Toward the end of the war, when the North Vietnamese lightened up a bit and put the POWs together in a room, the prisoners organized Sunday church services. McCain was the room chaplain, "not because the senior ranking officer thought I was imbued with any particular extra brand of religion, but because I knew all of the words of the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed," the senator says.

McCain conducted services and gave sermons, of sorts. "It was a topic, a talk," he says. "We had a choir that was marvelous…. The guy who directed it happened to have been previously the director of the Air Force Academy choir."

McCain will always remember the first Christmas they were allowed to have a service together. They had never been able to have a Bible before, but shortly before this particular Christmas, the Vietnamese handed McCain a King James Bible, a piece of paper, and a pencil. He jotted down bits of the nativity story from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

"On Christmas Eve, the first time we had been together – some guys had been there as long as seven years – we had our service," he says. "We got to the point where we talked about the birth of Christ, and then sang 'Silent Night,' and I still remember looking at the faces of those guys – skinny, worn out – but most of them, a lot of them, had tears down their faces. And they weren't sorrow, they were happiness that for the first time in so many years we were able to worship together."

For McCain, there were other moments of grace in prison. While in solitary confinement, he would be left for the night with his arms tied back in a painful position. One night, a guard walked in and loosened the ropes, then came back five hours later and tightened up the ropes again, without saying a word. Two months later, on Christmas Day, McCain was allowed to stand outside for 10 minutes in a courtyard, and that same guard came up to him. The guard stood beside him for a minute, then drew a cross in the dirt with his sandal and stood there for a minute, looking at McCain silently. A few minutes later he rubbed it out and walked away.

"My friends, I will never forget that man," McCain recounts during a town-hall meeting with voters, his voice choked with emotion. "I will never forget that moment. And I will never forget the fact that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult things are, there's always going to be someone of your faith and your belief and your devotion to your fellow man who will pick you up and help you out and bring you through."

It was, he said later, the most transcendent and uplifting experience of his imprisonment.

Faith and hate

Faith is a theme that runs through many of McCain's writings – and to him it means more than religion. In his first book, a family memoir called "Faith of My Fathers," McCain writes that his senior officers stressed "the three essential keys to resistance" during captivity – faith in God, faith in country, and faith in one's fellow prisoners. Of those three, the final one – keeping the faith in one another, the intense desire not to fail one's friends – was "our final defense," he writes. "This is the truth of war, of honor and courage, that my father and grandfather had passed on to me."

The warrior legacy of McCain's father and grandfather – both also named John Sidney McCain, both four-star Navy admirals – is ingrained in the senator's being. But it isn't until his fourth book, "Character Is Destiny," published in 2005, that he reveals another ingredient that he says was essential to his resistance as a POW: hatred.

"You come to hate your enemies, and not in the abstract because you believe they serve some hateful purpose, but in reality, and individually," he writes.

How, McCain is asked, does that square with his Christian faith, which teaches followers to love their enemies? In the same book, after all, he writes admiringly about how the once-imprisoned South African leader Nelson Mandela "believes truly that love is the natural condition of the heart, and that hatred is as much a burden to the hater as it is to the hated."

"It's a very difficult contradiction," McCain says, "because in the heat of battle, you have to hate. But when the battle is over, you have to love." That's why, he says, he fought hard for reconciliation and normalization of relations with Vietnam after the war ended. "There are certain individuals that I hope I never see again, for my own personal benefit," he says. "But I thought that if we wanted to heal the wounds of war and bring our veterans home – because a lot of them never came all the way home – it was important to have a normalization of relations with Vietnam."

A way of life

Ultimately, like most of the presidential candidates, McCain prefers to treat his faith as a personal matter. But in a Republican primary where the religious conservative vote is up for grabs, the fact that McCain attends North Phoenix Baptist Church – a large evangelical church that is part of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention – made the papers last month. McCain is usually still identified as an Episcopalian, though even during the 2000 campaign, it was no secret that he attended a Baptist church and had a spiritual adviser there in Pastor Dan Yeary. He still does.

"It wasn't so much a rejection of the Episcopal Church," says McCain. "It was, I came into that church, I sat down, I got the message of redemption and love and forgiveness, and it resonated with me. I found going to that church was beneficial to me in my life."

McCain says he prays daily, but not in the ritualized manner of his father, the grandson of an Episcopal minister. Admiral McCain prayed twice daily on his knees, with a Bible – probably to help him resist alcohol, says his son.

"It was a very deep, sincere prayer," says Roberta McCain, the senator's mother, who was also raised as an Episcopalian. "We didn't really talk about it much, I just accepted it…. Religion was not a big topic in our family."

In a way, the McCains' multigenerational emphasis on military service and focus on honor, courage, duty, and country are a form of family religion. McCain's youngest son is a marine and the next oldest is a junior at the Naval Academy.

"If it's not a religion, it's a way of life, particularly amongst the professional officer corps," the senator says. As a teen, he dreamed of studying history at Princeton University, but there was no question that he would attend the Naval Academy.

Now, says his old POW friend Orson Swindle, "John is an incredible student of history. He has the capacity to speed read and he retains it. His whole family is like that."

Of McCain's five books, all co-written with longtime aide Mark Salter, three are collections of profiles of historical figures McCain admires. The first focuses on courage, the second on character, and the new one, "Hard Call," on leadership.

"I think he feels those things need to be said, because so many people are almost embarrassed to mention moral qualities in public," says Margaret Kenski, a Republican pollster based in Arizona.

McCain admits that he has failed to live up to his own ideals on many occasions. Unlike many politicians, he readily owns up to mistakes. He takes the blame for the failure of his first marriage. In his second memoir, he outlines his mistakes in his involvement in what came to be known as the Keating Five scandal. His advocacy for limiting the role of money in politics stems from that brush with political death. Ditto his crusade against pork-barrel spending in Congress.

McCain has also made it clear that, in the current presidential race, he would rather go down fighting for what he believes is right than to bend his positions to public opinion. Iraq, immigration, torture – all are issues he feels passionately about but that aren't necessarily going to land him in the Oval Office. After he started the race with the aura of the GOP heir apparent, his campaign imploded during the summer amid charges of mismanagement and overspending.

Now, he says, he's back on track, and raised a respectable $6 million in the third quarter of 2007. But he smiles wanly when the view of some pundits is suggested: that he's happy to be back as the old maverick McCain, not the establishment front-runner.

"If I could convince you of that fact…." He laughs. "I think we'd all like to be the front-runner, but I'm very comfortable where I am, especially since we're seeing some traction and movement."

Indeed, in New Hampshire, where he walloped George W. Bush in the 2000 primary by 19 percentage points, McCain is once again competitive for the lead among Republican voters.

Reaching out to religious right

McCain has also managed to keep himself in the news with controversial comments. In a recent interview with Beliefnet.com, McCain said he agreed with the assertion of a majority of Americans in a recent poll that the Constitution establishes the United States as a Christian nation.

"But I say that in the broadest sense," he continued. "The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn't say, 'I only welcome Christians.' We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles."

The "Christian nation" comment raised some eyebrows, leading his campaign to issue a clarification: "The senator did not intend to assert that members of one religious faith or another have a greater claim to American citizenship over another. Read in context, his interview with Beliefnet makes clear that people of all faiths are entitled to all the rights protected by the Constitution, including the right to practice their religion freely."

While causing concern in some corners, the flap over "Christian nation" may have done him some good among a constituency he has courted with limited success – religious conservatives.
"Just like in 2000, he can't get it [the nomination] without getting a significant number of us," says Gary Bauer, president of the group American Values. "When he said that, he took it on the chin, but it was the kind of thing that would get our people to sort of sit up and take notice and take another look."

Still, McCain is not likely to become the darling of the religious right. He's a reliable opponent of abortion rights, though he is not vocal about it. He supports research on human embryos left over from fertility treatments, a position that puts him at odds with religious conservatives. The same is true of his opposition to an amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage.
During the 2000 campaign, McCain famously dissed top leaders of the Christian right, but this time around, he has reached out to that wing of the GOP.

Even if McCain's edgy side still gets him in hot water, it is his patriotism that best defines him for those who know him. McCain himself says that if he hadn't gone into politics after the Navy, "I probably would have tried to go into the foreign service or some other line of work that allowed me to continue to serve."

But the rough-and-tumble of politics probably suit McCain better. His friends say he has mellowed in recent years. Has he also become more spiritual? "No," says his mother, "but I'm not looking for it. I just know that what he says, he believes."

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