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Thompson helped immigrants in legal peril

2007-12-16T07:58:00.000+08:00

from the December 10, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1210/p02s01-uspo.html

He intervened twice as a US senator for noncitizens at risk of deportation, records show.

By Ariel Sabar Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

Fred Thompson has made the tough enforcement of immigration laws a cornerstone of his presidential campaign platform, running television ads in Iowa titled "No Amnesty" and skewering rivals for their immigration records.

But at least twice as a US senator, Mr. Thompson personally intervened on behalf of immigrants at risk of deportation, according to papers in his Senate archives here and interviews with the immigrants.

In 1999, he pleaded with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to reinstate a green-card application from a Korean family who became illegal when their visas expired. In 2000, Thompson passed a private law to grant green cards – or permanent residence – to a disabled Bolivian widow and three of her children. Under public law, the family would have had to leave the United States.

The episodes reveal a greater open-mindedness toward immigrants in legal limbo than has been evident from Thompson on the campaign trail.

"I'm very appreciating about what he do," the Bolivian widow, Jacqueline Salinas, of Memphis, Tenn., said in a phone interview last week. "He's a blessing for my family."

She says she became a US citizen this year.

In letters to federal officials and in remarks in the Senate at the time, Thompson said the families deserved special treatment for "humanitarian reasons" and their "extraordinary circumstances." In memos to Thompson, Senate aides also noted the prospect of positive media coverage.

The headline of an August 1999 news release from his Senate office read, "Thompson Introduces Legislation to Assist St. Jude Cancer Patient."

Ms. Salinas and her husband came to the United States in 1996 on tourist visas so their 7-year-old daughter could receive medical care for a rare cancer. About a year later, her husband and a 3-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident that Salinas says left her paralyzed while seven-months pregnant.

The family stayed in the United States by renewing six-month visas. "Because they do not meet the requirements for permanent residence under current immigration law … the Salinas family will be forced to leave the United States following the expiration of their tourist visas," Thompson said in a September 1999 letter asking Sen. Spencer Abraham, then chairman of the immigration subcommittee, to consider his private bill. "It is my hope that we can act soon to prevent another tragic setback for the Salinas family."

The Korean family, Seung and Eun Kyung Lee, came to the United States with their son in 1988 on business and tourist visas, Mr. Lee said in an interview. When the visas expired around 1994, they became "out of status," or illegal, according to Mr. Lee and a September 1999 memo to Thompson from an aide.

In 1994, the family paid a $1,000 penalty that allowed Ms. Lee's father, a US citizen, to sponsor a petition to "adjust" them to legal status. But in May 1999, with the petition still pending, the father died, which would normally trigger an automatic revocation.

A few months later, Thompson wrote to a senior INS official, asking that the petition be reinstated under a humanitarian exception. "To deport this family and send them back to South Korea now because of INS processing delays … would pose an undue hardship on the Lees and their children," he wrote, describing the family as "model citizens in the Nashville community."

The next month, the INS made the exception. A spokeswoman for US Citizenship and Immigration Services said the agency couldn't comment on specific cases because of privacy laws.

The Lees regained legal status in 2000 when their green-card application was approved, Mr. Lee said. "Mr. Thompson stood for my family," he said in a phone interview last week. "We were very, very happy."

Lee and his wife became citizens this year, he said. He owns a home-building firm, and the family lives in a four-bedroom house in the Nashville suburbs. His son graduated this year from Indiana University.

Both cases were causes célèbres in Thompson's home state of Tennessee. The Lees ran a popular market on Nashville's Music Row and enlisted the support of local music-industry figures.

The Salinas family was profiled in People magazine and championed by Marlo Thomas, the actress whose father, Danny Thomas, founded the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, where Salinas's daughter received pro bono treatment in Memphis.

Among its other merits, a private bill for Salinas and three of her children (a fourth born in the United States was already a citizen) "would likely receive positive media coverage in Tennessee," aides wrote Thompson in a July 1999 memo.

Private bills, unlike public ones, benefit specific individuals and are typically a last resort for people with no other legal recourse. Though Congress once passed dozens a year, in recent years few have succeeded, in part because of the rancorous debate over immigration policy.

Supporters say they're an important safety net. "They're meant to provide relief for people where there's no relief available in the public laws," says Anna Marie Gallagher, an immigration lawyer who wrote a book on the subject.

But critics say they take pressure off Congress to change the system for everyone and are unfair to the untold numbers of other immigrants with similarly compelling stories but no access to lawmakers powerful or willing enough to introduce them. When foreigners are made permanent residents through a private law, it reduces the number of green cards available to other would-be immigrants from the same home countries.

"The role of special legislation seems to come directly out of Animal Farm: that every person is equal, but some people are more equal than others," says Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

Since entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Thompson, who left the Senate in 2002, has been one of the GOP field's most outspoken advocates for the strict enforcement of existing immigration laws. Among other things, his immigration proposal calls for a ban on legal status for illegal immigrants and an end to the preference for adult children of US citizens. That preference set the Lees on a path to citizenship.

"What he did then was work with individuals who had entered the country legally and were in extreme humanitarian and family crises," a Thompson spokesman, Jeff Sadosky, said Friday. Asked whether Thompson would help such families in the same way now, Mr. Sadosky said, "Senator Thompson is always willing to do what he can, openly and in complete accordance with the law, for those law-abiding persons who face exceptionally challenging situations."

The campaign did not answer questions about seeming inconsistencies between his actions as a senator and his current policy proposals.

Not every immigrant who sought Thompson's help got results. His Senate archives contain requests for private bills for two illegal immigrants from Mexico. Thompson or his staff met with the immigrants' supporters, but offered no assistance, said a lawyer who represented one of the men and a Roman Catholic church official who represented the other.

Salinas says that thanks to Thompson, she is living the American dream. Her daughter Gabriela, whose cancer is in remission, and son, Alejandro, started college this year, she says. Her younger children, Omar Jr. and Danny Thomas (named after the St. Jude founder), are thriving in Catholic school.

Salinas says she survives on government disability checks, food stamps, and charity. She recently bought a three-bedroom house with the help of a government program and sees a bright future for her children. "All my life changed when we became residents," she says.
She said she invited Thompson to her son and daughter's high school graduation this spring, but that he sent regrets through an aide. "I know he will be a very, very good president because he has a big heart," she says.

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Are big-spending clergy abusing U.S. tax code?

2007-12-15T07:56:00.000+08:00

from the December 06, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1206/p02s01-uspo.html

Tax exemptions for wealthy media-based ministries lead a senator to ask hard questions.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

Should Congress care if a minister drives a Bentley, flies private jets, or buys a $23,000 commode?

Yes, says Sen. Charles Grassley (R) of Iowa, if the high-spending ways violate the US tax code – especially a tax exemption for religious organizations.

He's given six televangelist ministries a deadline of this Friday to respond to questions on issues ranging from compensation and housing allowances to personal use of assets and unreported income.

"If tax-exempt organizations, including media-based ministries, thumb their noses at the laws governing their preferential tax treatment, the American public, their contributors, and the Internal Revenue Service have a right to know," says Senator Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

In the past five years, Grassley has led probes of nonprofits that unearthed lavish perks at the Smithsonian Institution, conflicts of interest at the Nature Conservancy, and mismanagement at the American Red Cross. Now, he's looking at some of America's largest, media-based ministries.
"Considering tax-exempt media-based ministries today are a billion-dollar industry ... with minimal transparency, it would be irresponsible not to examine this tax-exempt part of our economy," he said in a statement this week.

But church groups and other nonprofits worry that this probe could lead Congress to pass laws that slip into constitutionally protected territory – imposing excessive government oversight on a wide range of churches and other nonprofits.

Last week, National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) wrote to Grassley expressing concern about "the broader implications of this issue, not only for our members, but for all non-profit Christian ministries as well."

The information requested of the six ministries "goes far beyond a mere request for financial records necessary to scrutinize the charitable nature of an organization's operations," said NRB president and CEO Frank Wright in a Dec. 4 statement.

This includes requests for compensation agreements, employment contracts, minutes of board meetings, credit card statements, flight records, plastic surgery expenses, and a detailed account of the personal use of assets.

"There is financial information in an employment contract but also a lot of information that's none of the government's business," says Craig Parshall, NRB senior vice president and general counsel.

While none of the six ministries included in the probe to date is an NRB member, Mr. Parshall says that if abuses are found, Congress may be tempted to move government into the spiritual life of a church.

"There are thousands of Christian ministries engaged in electronic communications who are doing the right things – agonizing about how they are going to use donor dollars. Then you have, perhaps, a handful that have abused the tax laws. That's how bad laws get made," he says.

The six ministries include Without Walls International Church in Tampa, Fla., the World Healing Center Church, Inc. in Grapevine, Tex., Joyce Meyer Ministries in Fenton, Mo., the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., World Changers Church International in College Park, Ga., and Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Newark, Tex.

Grassley says that he chose these six ministries because of "disturbing news coverage" and information provided to his staff by interested third parties.

All six are also associated with the so-called prosperity gospel, which says that God wants people to be financially successful and they can get there by giving generously to church.

Some groups say the decision to target these six may signal that lawmakers are picking and choosing among religions in violation of the Constitution.

"Anytime a Congressional committee gets involved in this kind of issue, a red flag goes up," says Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee in Washington, which advocates for religious liberty.

"A lot of us are not enamored with the prosperity gospel, but this is not a decision for government to make. Government is supposed to enforce the law evenhandedly, not get involved in picking and choosing the best expression of religion," says Mr. Walker.

Americans gave more than $295 billion to charity in 2006, and Congress gives tax breaks to encourage it. Under federal law, churches are exempt from some of the reporting requirements of other tax-exempt organizations, but must ensure that donated funds are used to meet goals of the organization and not be diverted to personal use.

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Bill Richardson: a negotiator's faith in fairness and finding the common good

2007-12-14T07:55:00.000+08:00

from the December 06, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1206/p01s05-uspo.html

The Democratic presidential hopeful, perhaps best known for his success in hostage-rescue missions, says he's motivated by 'a big desire to resolve problems.'

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Des Moines, Iowa

Send in Bill Richardson.

Starting in the 1990s, that became the way to win release of US citizens and others held captive in hostile countries. The energetic negotiator, a congressman back then, brought them home every time – from North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, and Iraq.

His secret weapon: "respect," he says, even for adversaries.

In some ways, Mr. Richardson proved to be particularly suited to the troubleshooting job abroad. Raised in both the United States and Mexico, he'd learned early how to bridge different cultures. And the teachings of his family and his church – to help one's fellow human beings – were a powerful motivator for those rescue missions.

"I have a big desire to resolve problems ... and to help people in need," says Richardson, now a Democratic candidate for president of the United States, during a recent interview on the stump in Iowa. "Coming from two cultures, I appreciate that people have different viewpoints but that everyone should be treated with respect."

One key reason he's running for president now, he says, is to try to bring Americans together to end the current era of intensely polarized politics in the US. Another taps his international credentials: to try to restore America's "moral authority" in the world community, which he sees as severely eroded as a result of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

It may well be Richardson's experience abroad that sets him apart from much of the presidential field. He's currently the popular governor of New Mexico, having won reelection in 2006 with 69 percent of the vote. But he's also served 18 months as United Nations ambassador during the Clinton presidency, run the US Department of Energy, and, before that, pulled off multiple negotiating coups with foreign leaders while a seven-term congressman.

"He really wants America to be a force for peace and democracy, and he understands the need today for interdependence," says long-time friend Mickey Ibarra, who served along with Richardson under Mr. Clinton.

Social justice via Government

The son of an American businessman and a Mexican mother, Richardson cites his family and the Roman Catholic Church as most influential in shaping his convictions and motivations. Catholic social teaching – emphasizing the common good and responsibility for creating a fair society with opportunity for all – is the foundation of his belief that "government exists to help people and be a catalyst for change, but not get in the way by creating barriers," he says.

As governor, he has worked in a coalition with church officials on issues such as eliminating sales tax on food and cracking down on "predatory" lenders to protect low-income borrowers.

"Going to church is an important part of my life and affects a lot of what I do," Richardson says. But in a campaign in which faith has been high-profile, he emphasizes that he does not wear his religion on his sleeve.

The governor also takes a different position from that of his church on abortion. While personally opposed to it, he is on record as saying he believes strongly in individual liberties and medical privacy for women.

Born in Pasadena, Calif., Richardson grew up in Mexico City, where his father headed the Mexican branch of the bank that later became Citibank. In his autobiography, "Between Worlds," Richardson recalls his childhood with passion. His earliest memory, he writes, is of his abuelita (grandma) taking him to church. She saw to it that he said his prayers and went to church – even before the budding star pitcher played a baseball game.

"My grandmother was a big baseball fan, but she regularly cautioned me that I had to stay close to God if I wanted to do well," he writes.

Mano a mano with saddam Hussein

That instruction from his grandmother stood Richardson in good stead during one difficult negotiation in 1995. Indeed, his adherence to religious practice while in Baghdad figured unexpectedly in ending a standoff with none other than Saddam Hussein.

At the time Richardson was on a mission to secure the release of two Americans sentenced to eight years in Abu Graib prison. Working in Kuwaiti oil fields, the pair drove by mistake into Iraq, were captured, and tried as spies.

Conditions were tense. Iraq was under UN sanctions, and the US was dropping bombs on the country.

Richardson and aide Calvin Humphrey sweated out a high-speed drive to Baghdad in 120-degree heat, endured a lengthy meeting with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, and, at last, faced Hussein in a room furnished with armed guards. The discussion took an ominous turn, says Mr. Humphrey, when Richardson, crossing his leg, inadvertently showed the Iraqi president the bottom of his shoe – an insult in the Arab world. Hussein stormed from the room. When he returned later, Hussein learned that Richardson had asked to go to Mass with Mr. Aziz, also a Catholic.

"I understand the Mass is much longer in this country," the congressman said.

"Saddam said, 'That's because you Americans don't confess all your sins,' " recalled Humphrey in a phone interview. "Without missing a beat, Richardson replied, 'Mr. President, I thought it was because you Iraqis have so much more to confess.' "

The quick-witted retort actually made Hussein smile. "He obviously had been testing Richardson," Humphrey says. "That kind of broke the ice.... The look was like, 'You got me on that.' " By the end of the discussion, Hussein agreed to release the two American prisoners.
The root of Richardson's success as a negotiator is that "he shows respect to whomever he is negotiating with," says Humphrey, now senior vice president for international operations at RJI Capital Corp. "He's able to connect on an interpersonal level and looks people in the eye, but still holds fast to his principles and positions."

The governor puts it this way: "I keep my eye on the ultimate objective and let my adversary save face."

From ball field to political field

Although wealthy, the Richardson family lived in a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City, and Bill played with youths of all classes. His father taught him that work had dignity no matter what the work was.

The son describes William Blaine Richardson as "a very strong disciplinarian, a taskmaster" who demanded much. "My father had difficulty telling people they had done a good job; he just pushed them to do even better," the candidate writes in his book. "That's an unfortunate quality I may have developed myself. I put in very long days and sometimes drive my staff nuts."

But the elder Richardson also set an example. "He was very involved in helping poor people, including setting up Little League fields all over Mexico, and telling me it was my responsibility to help the less fortunate," Richardson said during the interview.

His mother, Maria Luisa Lopez-Collada Richardson, he adds, urged him "to try to resolve differences, talk things through, and respect other points of view."

At a tender age, Richardson had occasion to test that approach. For high school, Bill was sent to Middlesex, a prep school in Concord, Mass. There, the Hispanic-American was a fish out of water, struggling to find a sense of identity.

Baseball proved to be his saving grace. He was a star pitcher in Mexico, and when the Middlesex coach saw Bill, he moved him onto the varsity team. Suddenly, the kid tagged "Pancho" was welcome in New England.

"That life experience of traversing two worlds is very much at the core of who Bill Richardson is," says Mr. Ibarra, Clinton's liaison to state and local governments. "He's really figured out how to savor and embrace strengths of both cultures."

Going on to Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Richardson at first dreamed of a pro baseball career, and scouts gave him reason to hope. But his arm gave out and academics took on new luster in his junior year. He got his first taste of politics running for president of his fraternity – and found he was good at it and could make a difference.

The defining moment in his life, he says, came during his graduate year at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. During a trip to Washington in 1971, he was galvanized by a talk by Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota about values and the US role in the world. What struck Richardson most was the senator's passion for public service. "For the first time, I had an inkling of the real potential of political power," Richardson writes in his book. "I felt inspired to make politics and public service my life's work."

The big issues

On the campaign trail, Richardson seems to relish the hard question on the big issue. Take the concern of a woman in Rockwell City, Iowa, who tells him she's worried about illegal immigration.

It could be a touchy issue for a Hispanic-American candidate, but Richardson is ready: He declared a state of emergency in New Mexico in 2005 and deployed the National Guard along the border – the first governor to do so, he says. But a border fence will not do the job, he adds.

He ticks off his plan: Double border agents and keep National Guard units there; crack down on document fraud and create an ID system; fine and punish employers who hire undocumented workers; establish a path to legalization for those already here (background check, learn English, pay back taxes and a fine); allow guest workers based on the needs of the US economy; and prod Mexico to create more jobs and "stop giving out maps on the best places to cross the border!"

On Iraq, he says the US military presence there is a recruiting tool for terrorists and discourages countries in the region from helping to resolve Iraq's problems. US forces should withdraw fully, he says, and a "diplomatic surge" should be undertaken to forge a political compromise, along the lines of the Dayton accords on Bosnia. That would become feasible, he says, once it's clear US forces are exiting.

'Power is good'

By most accounts and by his own admission, Richardson is not shy about wielding political power.

"Power is good if you do the right thing," the governor says. It puts one in a position "to fix problems."

The Albuquerque Journal in February wrote that Richardson has "used his power to ... get change in virtually every corner of New Mexico life, from slashing income taxes to creating pre-kindergarten...."

"He's first and foremost a political animal," Ibarra says. "He loves this stuff!"

Richardson has also been called "ambitious" and "pushy." Critics in New Mexico say he's amassed too much power, including reorganizing public education under his stewardship. The governor counters that state schools ranked poorly and were stuck in the status quo. Via a massive campaign for a constitutional amendment, he persuaded voters to pour $700 million more into public education. He calls the reform "my proudest legislative achievement."

Others credit him for having the energy and fortitude to tackle thorny problems, including managing the Department of Energy. Though warned that DOE was "a snake pit" of problems, Richardson says he was eager to take the helm when Clinton tapped him for the post in 1998. The FBI was already investigating Wen Ho Lee for espionage at a DOE laboratory, and Richardson was berated by a congressional panel looking into loose security at the national labs.
Yet DOE staff say he left a positive legacy.

"He understood leadership and the responsibility to take on difficult problems and try to solve them," says David Michaels, then an assistant secretary. "He called me in and said, 'I've heard from workers in Oak Ridge [National Lab] and other places that their work has made them sick. Go talk with them and see what's going on.' "

After Dr. Michaels delivered his findings, Richardson convinced the president and Congress of the need to compensate lab workers for exposure to hazardous materials. Most thought the legislation "would take years to pull off," Michaels says. But Richardson won bipartisan support, and Congress passed the program in 2000.

In Paducah, Ky., where workers had been exposed to plutonium but not told about it, Richardson apologized on behalf of the president.

Says Michaels, now a research professor at George Washington University: "On many issues top advisers would lay out options, and he'd always ask, 'What's the right thing to do?' He didn't mean the politically right thing, but the morally right thing."

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Senate rejects far-reaching energy bill

2007-12-13T07:52:00.000+08:00

from the December 08, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1207/p25s09-uspo.html

But Congress could still pass a slimmer version mandating more efficient cars and more biofuel use.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

There's still hope the nation may get a nice green-energy law for Christmas – not the big fat one environmentalists wanted, but a slimmed-down version that probably includes fuel economy and biofuel provisions.

That scenario emerged Friday, observers say, after the Senate failed to approve a more far-reaching House energy bill that promised to cut US dependence on imported oil and global warming emissions.

Congress still has the possibility to pass two measures with wide bipartisan support: the first major hike in vehicle fuel-economy standards since the 1970s and an enormous boost for US-made biofuels. But House provisions for a $21 billion repeal of tax cuts for the oil and gas industry and a mandate for electric utilities to begin using renewable fuels to generate some of their electricity now appear dead,

Environmentalists called the Senate's procedural vote a victory for supporters of "big coal and big oil" over the nation's needs.

"We are particularly disappointed that despite overwhelming public support for renewable energy and demand for cars that get better gas mileage, that the Senate has missed this opportunity to enact a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and strengthen fuel economy standards," says Anna Aurilio, a congressional analyst for Environment America, a Washington-based environmental group.

Oil industry officials said the impact of the House bill would have harmed energy supplies.
"Our country's energy focus should be on securing American energy supply, not discouraging future American energy production," said Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, in a statement. "Unfortunately the House energy bill sends the wrong – and potentially harmful – message."

Some close observers on Wall Street, however, foresee a new energy bill that will be less sweeping.

"We anticipate that the House will send a lean bill to the Senate next week," one that would only include provisions boosting biofuels and vehicle fuel-economy standards, wrote Kevin Book, senior vice president at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Va., in a letter to investors.

Wind, solar, and geothermal industry proponents were particularly anxious about the fate of some $10 billion to $16 billion of production and other tax credits, which could determine whether those industries go into recession. Under its pay-as-you-go mandate, the Democrat-controlled Congress had hoped to pay for these credits by effectively boosting the taxes on oil companies by repealing recent tax credits they received. Now, it will have to find the money elsewhere, analysts said.

"We call on Senate leaders to work together to ensure that overwhelmingly popular provisions to promote renewable electricity are not left out in the cold as this effort moves forward," Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association, said in a statement Friday.

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Romney moves to allay Mormon concerns directly

2007-12-12T07:51:00.000+08:00

from the December 07, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1207/p01s03-uspo.html

The GOP hopeful said no religious test should be applied to become president as is stated in the Constitution.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

In an echo of John F. Kennedy's election-eve address on Catholicism 47 years ago, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney sought to allay concerns Thursday over his Mormon faith before an audience of invited guests at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas.

Without delving into the specifics of Mormon doctrine, Mr. Romney invoked the Founding Fathers in asserting the nation's religious underpinnings, called for religious tolerance, and highlighted the "common creed of moral convictions" within the varied theologies of American churches.

And, just as the future President Kennedy promised in 1960 that he would not accept instruction from the pope, Romney promised that as president he would answer to "no one religion."

"When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God," Romney said. "If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States."

Romney also referenced Article 6 of the Constitution, which states that "no religious test" shall ever be required as a qualification for office.

"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines," Romney said. "To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths."

The speech comes after months of debate within the Romney campaign over the wisdom of such a move. The Republican candidate has faced persistent reservations by a significant portion of the GOP electorate to voting for a Mormon for president.

He had hoped not to have to deliver such a speech, but decided last week that he should.
Romney would have preferred to let his success in business and government, and in turning around the 2002 Olympics, in addition to his picture-perfect family, speak for itself. By waiting until this point in the campaign – less than a month before the first nominating contest, the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses – he is guaranteed major public attention to his address. But if it backfires, by making Mormonism an even bigger issue, he could damage his political prospects.

Analysts widely assume that the Romney campaign's internal polls indicate that voter resistance to Mormonism was hurting his bid for the GOP nomination, particularly in Iowa, where Evangelicals make up a significant portion of the Republican base. Romney has staked his nomination bid on winning the crucial early contests, first Iowa, then New Hampshire, and has campaigned heavily in both states. For months, polls of likely caucusgoers in Iowa showed Romney winning in Iowa, but in recent weeks, a surge in support for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – an ordained Baptist preacher and an Evangelical – has left the race in a dead heat. Romney remains ahead in New Hampshire, which has a small Evangelical population.

Romney has faced questions about his Mormon faith almost from the moment he entered the 2008 presidential race last January. Some major religious groups in America, such as the Southern Baptists, do not consider Mormons to be Christian, because they do not hold to their view of the Holy Trinity and because they have scriptures separate from the Bible, such as the Book of Mormon. During the campaign, some Evangelicals have objected to Romney's use of Christian terminology, such as when Romney refers to Jesus Christ as "my savior" or "the savior of the world."

Mormons reject that argument, noting that the full name of their church – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – contains the words "Jesus Christ" for a reason.

"Christ is the center of our theology," says Michael Otterson, spokesman for the church, based in Salt Lake City. "We believe him to be the son of God [and] the redeemer of mankind. We believe he atoned for the sins of all mankind."

On the campaign trail, Romney has shown some exasperation at the persistence of the public – and the press – in questioning him about his Mormon faith, and whether he will give a speech addressing the concern. Polling has long shown the challenge Romney faces as the first Mormon presidential candidate with a genuine shot at winning a major-party nomination.

According to a Pew Research Center survey taken in August, 25 percent of GOP voters nationwide say they are "less likely" to vote for a candidate who is Mormon. The issue of Romney's faith is ironic, particularly in this religion-infused campaign. While some candidates regularly use religious language on the stump, the deeply religious Romney has avoided it, preferring instead to speak of values.

In Romney's sole reference to his Mormon faith in the speech, he addressed critics who he said "would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts."

"That I will not do," he continued. "I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs."

The reference to Romney's forefathers was laden with meaning. Romney is descended from a long line of Mormons, going back to the early days of the church in the 1830s.

Romney's father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, ran for president in 1968, but dropped out after a verbal gaffe sank his prospects. Still, Mormonism was not an issue in the senior Romney's campaign. Some historians say that in effect, the Kennedy speech a few years earlier had protected Romney from undergoing scrutiny over his faith. In addition, religion was not the major stump issue it is today. And in the 1960s, the Mormon church was much smaller than it is today.

The rapid growth of the Mormon church, with 5 million members in the US and some 13 million worldwide, is cited as a cause of concern for Evangelicals. Both faiths actively seek to convert one another's members, and some Evangelicals have expressed concern that having a Mormon president would aid in the growth of Mormon membership rolls.

Before Thursday's speech, delivered at the library of former President Bush on the campus of Texas A & M University, Romney was introduced by the former president. Mr. Bush made clear that he was not endorsing Romney's campaign, and had made his library available to other presidential candidates. The audience of 300 included Romney family, friends, and advisers, guests of the library, and guests of the former president. One notable attendee was Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention and an influential evangelical leader. He has not endorsed Romney, but has been supportive of his candidacy.

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Obama and the 'Oprah Effect': can she sway voters?

2007-12-11T07:45:00.000+08:00

from the December 10, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1210/p01s03-uspo.html

Winfrey hit the stump for the first time this weekend for Barack Obama.

By Alexandra Marks Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorand Stacey Vanek Smith Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

DES MOINES, Iowa; and LOS ANGELES

Melanie White wasn't paying much attention to the presidential campaign. But when she heard Oprah Winfrey was coming to Des Moines to campaign for Barack Obama, politics suddenly mattered. She wanted to see Oprah.

Her friend Kim Smith, a committed Obama supporter, told her she could get tickets, but there was a price. "She has to sign her life away to volunteer and caucus for Barack," said Ms. Smith.
Ms. White readily agreed. And so the two 30-something friends sat near the front of a line of more than 18,000 waiting to get into the Hy-Vee Hall in downtown Des Moines, a copy of "O's Guide to Life" and an "Obama '08" bumper sticker between them.

Call it the "Oprah effect," a phenomenon the political world is watching warily. Not because celebrity endorsements are new, but because Ms. Winfrey is more than a celebrity: She's a social icon, an earth mother, a television priestess of sorts whose predominantly female flock takes her words to heart.

"The problem with most celebrity endorsements is that there's no transferability between their talent and real credibility," says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail investment banking firm. "Oprah is different. Oprah has an army out there that really listens. She's one of the great marketing machines in history."

Indeed, Winfrey made Spanx girdles a household name, and much to the envy of high school teachers everywhere, she has gotten thousands of people reading Steinbeck and Tolstoy.
But politics isn't soap powder. And as Winfrey rose to the podium in the packed convention hall to stump for a presidential candidate for the first time in her life, the first lady of television made it clear Saturday that she knows the difference.

"Despite all of the talk, the speculation, and the hype, I understand the difference between a book club and free refrigerators ... and this critical moment in our nation's history," she says. "I came out here for, I suspect, the same reason you did: Because I care about this country."

Celebrity endorsements have been a popular political tool for nearly a century. The government, for example, hired Charlie Chaplin to help sell war bonds in 1918, notes Steven Ross, a history professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "Historically, the real power of celebrities in politics has been getting people to show up for events," he says. "Once they're there, they listen to what the candidate has to say."

Some are getting earnestly involved in the political process because of Winfrey's call to action. Jacqueline Pope and her sister-in-law Sandra Pope drove 90 miles from Ottumwa, Iowa, to be at the Des Moines rally. To them, it was a "package deal." They've supported Obama for some time, but now with Winfrey's endorsement, they're determined to go to the caucus on Jan. 3. It's only the second time in the 18 years Jacqueline has lived in Iowa that she will have gone to a caucus. Sandra, who's lived here just as long, will be going to her first caucus.

"He has a vision, and it's about hope for our country that right now is in very serious trouble," says Jacqueline.

The Popes are two of Winfrey's estimated 8.6 million viewers and they represent a crucial demographic, says Ross. Two-thirds of them are women, and nearly half make less than $40,000 a year, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Many of them are probably not registered to vote, Ross says, and Winfrey could very well get them to the polls. "She could tap in to the 50 percent of the population that doesn't vote," he says. "When Oprah says, 'This is somebody I really support,' she has the potential to reach out to voters who never vote."

But not everyone is convinced that the "Oprah effect" will draw in a significant number of new voters. Dennis Goldford is a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines. "For a good 40 years now, campaigns have tried to market candidates as if they were soap powder or breakfast cereal," he says. "But I don't think people yet blur the line between citizen and consumer."

Margaret Blair is one such rallygoer. She readily acknowledges she came to see Winfrey, and while she says she will listen to Senator Obama, she's "always leaned" toward former Sen. John Edwards – and she likes Gov. Bill Richardson as well.

"I like Obama, too, but I'm especially here because Oprah came with him," she says. "I haven't really decided yet [whom to support.]"

Political analyst Larry Sabato also doubts that Winfrey's success in selling Steinbeck will translate into getting votes for Obama. "Politics is a one-day sale," says Professor Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Charlottesville. "Getting 10,000 people to buy a book is a big deal. Getting 10,000 people to vote doesn't mean anything in a national election. Ultimately, candidates have to make their own sale."

Winfrey has made at least one sure sale for Obama. Melanie White says that come the Jan. 3 caucuses, she'll be standing up for Obama.

But that vote, and others like it, may also cost Winfrey some of her own celebrity. Ross points to Chaplin's film, "The Great Dictator," which carried an antifascist message. "Chaplin was the most famous man in the world, and his career never recovered," says Ross. "People became incredibly angry that he would express his political views."

How the Iowa caucuses work

Iowa’s caucuses for the presidential nomination are meetings that last several hours. County chairs of all 1,784 precincts select the locations for the caucuses – in schools, public buildings, or private homes. Any voter who is a registered Republican or Democrat, and who can prove residency in the state, can attend. At the meetings, participants declare their votes, electing delegates to 99 county conventions, where the delegates for the national convention are selected.

Sources: "Elections A-Z" (CQ), Federal Election Commission, Iowacaucus.org

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Sudan's president pardons 'teddy bear' teacher

2007-12-10T09:22:00.000+08:00

posted December 03, 2007 at 1:00 p.m. EST - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1204/p25s05-woaf.html

The British schoolteacher convicted of insulting Islam is expected to return to England Monday.

By Eoin O'Carroll csmonitor.com

Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher jailed in Sudan for allowing her class to name a teddy bear after the prophet "Muhammad," was pardoned Monday by Sudan's president and was under the protection of her country's embassy in Khartoum. Informed sources said she would be flown home to England later in the day.

The pardon came after a meeting between two Muslim members of Britain's House of Lords, Lord Nazir Ahmed and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
British prime minister Gordon Brown welcomed the news, saying in a press statement that "common sense has prevailed."

Through the course of Ms Gibbons' detention, I was glad to see Muslim support groups across the UK express strong support for her case.

I applaud the particular efforts of Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi in securing her freedom. I am also grateful to our officials for all their work behind the scenes.'

The Associated Press reports that Sudan's ambassador to Britain, Khalid al-Mubarak, was "overjoyed" at the news of Gibbons's release.

"She is a teacher who went to teach our children English and she has helped a great deal and I am very grateful," Mubarak said. "What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family and the British people won't be affected by what has happened."

Gibbons was arrested last week and sentenced to 15 days in prison after she allowed her class of 6- and 7-year-olds in Khartoum's Unity High School to vote on the name for the toy bear, which each of them had taken home and cared for over a weekend. The class voted overwhelmingly for "Muhammad." While that is one of the world's most common human names – and the second-most-popular in Britain – many Muslims consider it insulting to give the name to an animal. On Friday, armed demonstrators took to the streets in Khartoum to protest what they complained was a light sentence. Under Sudanese law, her crime could have carried a penalty of 40 lashes, a fine, and six months in prison. Some of the same protesters massed in front of the British Embassy Monday after the pardon, saying it had wounded their sensibilities.

During her incarceration Gibbons was held in an anonymous building in Khartoum's suburbs. The Times of London described the conditions there as vastly superior to those under which ordinary Sudanese prisoners live.

She had a bed, which is not normally provided in Sudan's cockroach-ridden jails, and as much food as she wanted, in stark contrast to the rest of the prison system, where relatives must bring in food and water every day. . .

Elteyb Hag Ateya, a director of Khartoum University's peace research institute, said that the government was keen to limit damage from the affair. "Whenever I speak to anyone in government, they say it is a nightmare and they do not want to hear about it again. They do not want any aftermath like the lady going home and holding a press conference complaining about conditions."

The New York Times noted that the teddy bear affair comes at a difficult time for President Bashir, who is seeking to balance the demands of Western governments with those of Muslim hard-liners.

In a way, Mr. Bashir was caught in the middle — or at least the Sudanese government – tried to make it look that way. By letting Ms. Gibbons out early, he risks provoking Muslim hardliners in his country, who are among his key supporters.

But the case hit his desk at a time when United Nations officials and Western governments are increasingly complaining that Sudan is obstructing an expanded peacekeeping force for Darfur, the war-torn region of western Sudan.

Apparently, Mr. Bashir calculated that he didn't need to isolate his government any further.
The incident has already attracted at least one entrepreneur. Online shoppers can purchase a plush bear, Muhammad the Tolerance Teddy, for $20.

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Military chaplains: Prayer and humor hold a combat trauma unit together in Afghanistan

2007-12-09T09:21:00.000+08:00

from the December 04, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1204/p20s01-usmi.html

National Guard First Lt. Kurt Bishop listens to medics letting off steam, nurses coming to terms with death, and doctors showing stress.

By Lee Lawrence Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Forward Operating Base (FOB) Salerno, Afghanistan

Reporter Lee Lawrence spent three months embedded with US military chaplains in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the last of six weekly print and Web video profiles of them. The series concludes tomorrow with Lawrence's personal reporter-on-the-job entry.

First comes a chirping alarm over the PA system, then a woman's lilting voice wafts over this dusty military camp: "Attention on the FOB, Attention on the FOB. Mustang blue. Mustang blue." The tone belies the seriousness of the matter, which is that casualties are incoming and the Army's 396th Combat Support Hospital team – "the Mustangs" – should be ready. The number of victims are color-coded: red for one, white for two, blue for three, and black for mass casualties.

US medics, nurses, doctors – and a chaplain – converge in interlocking tents that form the hospital, preparing for the arrival of three Afghan National Army soldiers injured when their vehicle rolled over an improvised explosive device.

Faces are serious as the team checks supplies and readies the triage room. Among them, Arizona National Guard First Lt. Kurt Bishop – one of five chaplains at this forward operating base of 1,500 soldiers and contractors. He doesn't look the part of either soldier or cleric. His well-fed torso matches the round softness of his face, and he is more likely to trumpet his allegiance to the Ohio State Buckeyes than proclaim his Baptist faith.

"I'm burning that hat of yours," he fires at a medic who'd been wearing a Michigan cap earlier. The medic's attention is yanked from the business at hand, and he looks up, rolls his eyes in mock despair, and then gets back to work. Chaplain Bishop responds with a goofy grin, then scans the closed expressions of the men and women around him, scouting for opportunities to crack them open, if only for a moment. His jokes aren't always knee-slappers, but his almost childlike delivery breaks the tension the way a Roman candle momentarily dispels darkness.

Yet the moment the first stretcher is rushed in, Bishop is all business. He sinks into the background, his jaw working chewing gum, eyes sweeping the tented space. Noticing that a nurse needs a fresh packet of gauze, he picks one off the shelf and hands it to her. Then he pulls on blue gloves and shuttles bloodied bandages to the trash. As an X-ray machine is wheeled in, a young female medic scurries out of the way. She looks worried.

"The fat sterile guy will protect you from the rays," he says, pulling her behind him. She laughs. Her face relaxes. Mission accomplished, Bishop fades into the background watching, ready to lend a hand, a shoulder, an ear.

In this pressure cooker environment, Bishop offers release and relief, whether by listening to a medic let off steam, helping a nurse come to terms with a death, or expressing concern when a doctor shows stress. As the head of this medical team, Lt. Col. Richard Philips explains that by working together on the edge of life and death teams like the Mustangs bond intensely. But with the camaraderie and support also comes the danger of destructive dynamics such as extramarital affairs or pent-up anger. Having a hands-on chaplain is not only good for individuals; it helps the unit. From Colonel Philips's perspective, Bishop acts as an early detection system. Typically, he says, "we call the chaplain when people are drowning, but a chaplain like Bishop is here all the time. He sees them when they're struggling to swim."

Because Bishop has made himself part of the team, Philips adds, when crises come, "even the most foul mouthed, anti-Christian, I-don't-need-any-help person ... pulls [Bishop] aside and goes, 'You know, I did have a question about something.' I've seen more counseling go on by that little port-o-potty out back." He laughs. "You'd have to be here for a year to understand. We're completely cut off from normal life ... and we become like a family. The chaplain tends to the spiritual side that's intangible, and Bishop does that better than most."

• • •

Bishop is new to the chaplaincy but not the military. His father was an Air Force fighter pilot; his older brother flies Army helicopters, and Bishop himself was an enlisted soldier with the 82nd Airborne from 1987 until 1991. He later joined the National Guard, working as a driver at the Officer Candidate School at Fort Lewis, Wash.

When he talks of being called to the chaplaincy, he means it literally. He was sitting at a Burger King, working through the aftershock of a girlfriend's Dear John letter with two chaplains he'd been chauffeuring. Then and there, he says, "I heard God, just as audibly as we're talking, say, 'This is what you're going to do: You're going to be a chaplain.' "

Last year he was commissioned an active-duty Arizona National Guard chaplain. "The call came in 1996," he says with a grin, "I was just a little slow."

Adapting to hospital duty, however, took him no time. The key to being effective, chaplains say, is building relationships. And for Bishop, the bond here was sealed over a tragedy two weeks into his deployment early this year.

Many Afghans heat with kerosene, often tasking the children to cut it with gasoline. And accidents happen.

"We were just coming out of the really bad [winter] season with a lot of burns," Bishop says, when a 6-year-old came in with burns over 45 percent of his body. But he was stable, and the team agreed he was recovering nicely. Then he suddenly and inexplicably died.

The team was in shock. Immediately, Bishop gathered everyone and, as they talked it over, he listened and watched. He says he'd spent enough time hanging around the crew that "I could tell Cejka wanted to open up, but she wasn't going to do it with everybody around. So I asked her to stay behind."

Sgt. Catie Cejka – an emergency medical technician – had been monitoring the boy, and her face still saddens recalling the event: "That was the only time I really talked about it, and I think that helped more than anything."

Had Cejka approached him at Sunday services or a Bible study, Bishop wouldn't have thought twice about addressing the issue in terms of his Christian faith. But their conversation took place at the hospital and, as a chaplain in a secular institution, he's not allowed to impose his religious views on others. Indeed, proselytizing would hinder efforts to establish the kind of open, trusting relationship that enables Bishop to reach out to soldiers in a time of need, whether to help them through troubles or to provide moral guidance. Like many chaplains, Bishop walks this church-state tightrope by preaching his faith at services and, at other times, letting the cross on his uniform suffice unless a soldier broaches the subject. "I did," Cejka says, "so we went into how this is the way things happen, you can't control them, it's God's plan."

• • •

During the "Mustang blue," Bishop's radar is up. He sidles up to a doctor and, in a low voice, asks about the first patient. The doctor shakes his head. The head wounds are severe, he says;there is no recovery in sight.

"I thought so," Bishop says, then melts back into the bustle. When the patient is declared dead, Bishop helps curtain off an area where nurses will prepare the body for transfer to an Afghani morgue. Inside the curtained cubicle, Bishop then helps clean the Afghan soldier's face and body and wrap it in white sheets. Pulling a card from his pocket, he reads a Muslim prayer that asks God to look over the young man's family.

"They don't share my faith," he later says of the Afghan patients treated in the trauma unit, "but that doesn't mean that I don't need to be praying for them. If the least I can do is to read the emergency Muslim prayer off this card that I have, then I am going to do that."

Once the two survivors and the deceased have been moved to a local hospital, medics clean the floor, tidy shelves, align tables. Off in a corner, a man in jeans and polo shirt sits alone. Bishop has never seen the Afghan translator fall so quiet. Within minutes the chaplain is by his side, hand on his shoulder, speaking softly.

Later, on a slow afternoon, the translator approaches Bishop, smiling shyly. The chaplain recognizes the overture and engages him in a conversation that quickly veers to the tragedy and losses of war. The translator had known the Afghan soldier, and his death had hit hard.

After the translator leaves, Bishop stays on, watching the comings and goings of the medical team. "It is amazing to see them come together and lean on each other," he says. "It strengthens my faith because I know it's not a human thing, I know it's God working in people."

Southern Baptist tradition stresses witnessing, and Bishop has come to believe that "everybody witnesses whether they know it or not, and, here, once it gets into a room it's going to circulate. It can be 'hey can I bring you anything,' or it can be that shoulder to lean on, or that person to talk to when people are having tough times."

And every morning before he heads to the hospital, Bishop says, "I pray, 'God, help me get out of the way so you can use me.' "

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Three months with US military chaplains in Iraq and Afghanistan

2007-12-08T09:19:00.000+08:00

from the December 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p20s01-usmi.html

Reporter on the job: Rockets in the shower, gravel in the rollers, and a mouse in the guard tower.

By Lee Lawrence Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Bagram air base, Afghanistan

It was 4 a.m. when my partner, Terry Nickelson, and I landed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan last March to begin a three-month embed with the military. We'd spent three nearly sleepless days traveling to Afghanistan from Atlanta via Frankfurt and Kuwait. The Kuwait transit camp had eaten up most of our energy. That was where we first encountered gravel – not the small, friendly kind that crunches delightfully underfoot, but a big, fat species of gravel that the military has imported by the ton to keep down dust and drain away rain. The downside is that even a short walk feels like a workout on a low-budget beach. (First mental note to self: at any future embed, no suitcases with wheels.)

At Bagram outside our quarters – two windowless cells in a one-story building – Terry and I met to plan for the next day. Our proposal to make a documentary on military chaplains had received approval and our access also extended to a series of chaplain profiles I would spin off for The Christian Science Monitor. It was hard to believe, after many months of planning, that we were actually here, staring at the shadowy presence of mountains in the distance.

Suddenly, light bloomed over that dark outline – and we thought we were seeing the war ... until thunder rumbled. Truth is, it was often hard to remember we were in a war zone, especially on big bases like Bagram. The cafeterias served just about everything from chili to surf and turf and hand-dipped ice cream – not to mention a never-ending supply of chunky peanut butter cookies (and my family worried that I would lose weight). Given the plethora of contractors, there seemed to be almost as many people in civilian clothes walking up and down the main drag as there were military. And the buffer zone separating us from the outside was so large that my husband and brother back home knew far more about what was going on in the rest of Afghanistan than we did. (Note to self: Thank them for their news-filled e-mails.) We had not yet found the supply of "Stars & Stripes" newspapers, and though TV screens played CNN and other channels in the cafeterias, the background noise was so high we had to rely on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. The news anchor might have been talking about the war; we were reading about Anna Nicole.

Probably the most surreal incident in that connection was looking up at the TV at lunch one day to find Stephen Colbert arching an eyebrow, his irony garbled by the bad acoustics. The soldier at the end of my table was straining to hear and having better luck than I. But he wasn't laughing.

Even news that directly affected us was sometimes hard to get. Again in Bagram, Air Force personnel at the hospital asked us one day whether we'd heard that the base had come under attack the day before.

Really? Yes, mortars rained down just inside the perimeter for about four hours – or was it six? Accounts varied, and nobody we spoke to could tell fact from rumor because, though we'd all been right there, we hadn't heard or seen a thing.

By contrast, when rockets hit Salerno, a medium-sized FOB (forward operating base) south of Kabul, we all knew it. I'd just spent two days hopping in and out of Black Hawk helicopters, shadowing Air Force Chaplain Gary Linksy as he traveled to seven tiny outposts to say mass. I'd already discovered that the dust, whether whipped up by nature or the whir of rotor blades, acts like those old dry shampoos that absorb the oil in your hair, leaving it technically clean but feeling dull and gritty.

When I got back to Salerno, I headed straight for the shower trailer. I had the place to myself and was all lathered up when I heard the first big boom. It felt like the world had taken a convulsive in-out breath.

People talk about the fight or flight response – my response was freeze and focus. I stood still, water pouring over me. Then my focus narrowed: Rinse off. Get dressed. Gather toiletries. Poke head out of trailer.

I could see the walls of various structures coming in at angles to one another, as deserted and stark as a De Chirico painting. Another boom. Do I leave? Stay put? Someone is speaking over the loudspeaker, but I can't make out the words. Then laughter – guys must be playing cards over in that tent, so how bad can this be? But, wait, that's not a tent. That's a bunker. A bunker. I need to be in that bunker.

The thought propelled my legs, and the next thing I knew I was staring up at a man with an open, kind face and a body so massive the largest size neck armor was too small. I took one look at Sgt. Robert Walker and stuck to him like glue. When the next rocket hit, those of us near the opening of the bunker saw the dust kick up 300 yards away.

"How bad can it be?" one soldier said, "The guys in the guard tower are still there."

Right on cue, the guys in the guard tower charged down the stairs, chins tucked in and backs hunched. I looked at Sergeant Walker. When he headed for a bunker farther inside the FOB, I was right behind him. (About a week later an all-female singing group called Purple Angels performed at the base – and who do you suppose was their designated driver and bodyguard? You know it – Sergeant Walker.)

We sat in the next bunker for about an hour. A soldier told me all about his wife; a civilian contractor explained bluntly that we were basically defenseless – "If a rocket hits the bunker square on, we're gone." And a jolly-looking fellow brought us bottles of water. (It was my introduction to National Guard Chaplain Kurt Bishop, whose operating room ministry I would later profile for the Monitor.) And here I was clutching toiletries instead of my camera. I consoled myself, thinking that maybe a camera would have stifled conversation – but I now doubt it. (Note to self: About the camera – never leave hooch without it.)

Largely, troops were pretty open and happy to talk once we'd hung around for a while, and especially after we'd gone on patrols with them. At one small FOB, Terry literally ran with marines on three consecutive night patrols. .

I spent hours in guard towers, usually late at night when the watch feels the longest. I heard about future plans ("My ambition," one marine said, "is to get a job I can quit, not signing on any dotted line"), girlfriends back home, and the boredom (on one tower, the guys had been feeding a mouse and were a little worried that he hadn't shown up in a day or so; in another camp, marines spun a fantasy of being on an island with just one obstacle between them and freedom; the challenge was devising ever-weirder ways to get around it).

At first I felt like an interloper – a woman their mothers' age coming in from the civilian world, asking questions, filming – but there was something I hadn't counted on: the power of diversion. I was something different. I broke the routine, and Lance Cpl. Chad Travers a few days later told me in a flat Rhode Island accent, "That was the fastest hour of the watch." So maybe I'm not quite as entertaining as a Purple Angel, but still...

In order to get a feel for what chaplains do and how they fit into the military, Terry and I had from the start decided we needed also to document the lives of the troops. We hadn't realized just how much we would appreciate the diversion this, in turn, gave us – especially with units that got out of their vehicles. For once, we could see the world directly without the mediation of a dirty Humvee window.

Still, it wasn't exactly your usual reporting. We were wearing body armor and helmets and arrived with a bevy of heavily armed men.

Surprisingly, this didn't always get in the way. More than once, Iraqi women pulled me in for a chat, whether they were the wives of sheikhs, teachers in a school, or just women in a neighborhood soldiers were patrolling.

On one mission with a Minnesota National Guard unit in Iraq's Anbar Province, we went to Tourist Town, on the banks of Lake Habbaniyah, a huge body of sparkling blue water that came as a shock and relief in this land of tans and browns. It turns out that Saddam Hussein spent some time in a Swiss resort and liked it so much he duplicated it here.

There amid pine trees and pink oleander, a woman wearing a deep blue head scarf and long caftan had just finished baking flat bread in an open oven and mimed the process for me. She and her teenage daughter invited me in for tea.

It felt rude to stomp into their home with boots, but every time I tried to untie them, they shook their heads and stopped me. So I shed the helmet, and the sight of my sweaty head triggered fits of giggles from mother and daughter. I couldn't tell whether it was my foreign brazenness that tickled and perhaps embarrassed them or whether they were laughing at my helmet hair.

While the woman heated the tea on a kerosene burner, we communicated in gestures and facial expressions. I gathered that life is tough with kerosene being so expensive and a husband out of work, that they are Sunni from Baghdad and left when violence erupted, that their future is a blank page onto which the hand of Allah will inscribe their fate – inshallah.

(Note to self: Be grateful.)

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Heard at Mecca: 'Are you single?'

2007-12-07T09:16:00.000+08:00

from the December 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p01s01-wome.html

Matchmakers ply their trade within Islam's holiest mosque.

By Rym Ghazal Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Mecca, Saudi Arabia

In the midst of overlapping murmurs of prayers in a sea of white-cloaked worshipers, a woman's voice interrupts the collective trance as she asks: "Are you single?"

For hundreds of years, Mecca has been the sacred meeting point of millions of Muslims from across the world. They come to perform the hajj, the annual major pilgrimage, or umrah, a minor pilgrimage that can be performed anytime.

Matchmaking is a profession that's at least as old as Mecca. But until now, say Saudi scholars, it hasn't been practiced at Islam's holiest site.

"These days, practicing Muslim men are having a hard time finding practicing Muslim women," explains Um Mohammad matter-of-factly. She's carrying a tiny blue notebook to jot down personal information about potential brides that she meets inside the Haram Mosque where Muslims circumambulate the holy cubed structure, the Kaaba.

Dressed in a black abaya – including the face covering known as niqab – and sporting black gloves, Um Mohammad (who declined to give her full name) is one of several matchmakers who can be seen approaching "pious" young Muslim women as they pray or perform rituals.

"Devoted Muslims come here, and so there is a better chance of finding a good match," says Um Mohammad, standing no taller than 5 ft. 2 in. She says she makes a minimum of 1,000 riyals ($268) plus gifts, such as perfume, from grateful mothers.

Um Mohammad says she's working for several mothers to find "chaste" wives for their sons in a place that's annually visited by around 3 million people for hajj. This year, the pilgrimage begins Dec. 18.

Aayesh Masri, a 22-year-old Saudi woman who was approached by one of the matchmakers, isn't troubled by the mixing of matchmaking and prayer.

"Why not? It is done under sincere intentions and it is no different than when potential suitors come to your home to meet your family," says Ms. Masri.

Saudi historian Omar Tayeb isn't surprised, either. "Matchmakers are everywhere in Saudi. They find brides in supermarkets, malls, and mosques. Why not near the Kaaba?" he asks.

Modern pilgrims have also grown accustomed to seeing a variety of not-so-sacred activities near the sacred Kaaba, the cube that every Muslim on the planet faces during the five daily prayers.

Worshipers often scramble and push to touch it. Some even rip off a piece of the kiswa – the black silk cloth with gold-embroidered calligraphy covering the rock – as a religious souvenir.
Other Mecca mementos can be obtained more easily. Local entrepreneurs, for example, have long worked the holy marbled white grounds.

"Scissors! Tissue! Prayer book! Only one riyal [about 27 cents]," cries out a boy of 6 struggling in the white sea of pilgrims. One of the rituals of the pilgrimage involves cutting one's hair. Tissues are used for wiping off sweat from the arduous walks between sacred sites.

The vendor's older brother is not far behind, selling Islamic stickers and passing out leaflets for his father's business – Koranic ring tones and customized prayers rugs.

From the corners of the mosque, sheikhs give public lectures, while religious police roam the crowd in search of "indecent conduct" and pickpockets.

Still, some Muslims see the matchmakers as another facet of the spreading commercialization of Mecca, which comes at the expense of its sacredness.

"There is nothing holy about having Pizza Hut right next to the holiest site in Islam," says Mohammed Abdullah Attar, a religious scholar in one of the all-boys' schools in Mecca.

The recent rise in oil prices is creating a new construction boom, funded mainly by members of the Saudi royal family. Some pilgrims comment disparagingly on the new glass-garbed, Vegas-style towers and glitzy five-star hotels encircling the holy site. Several of the towers are part of the Abraj al-Bait Mall (Arabic for "Towers of the House"), referring to the Kaaba's nickname, "the House of God." The mall is a complex of seven 30-story towers, still under construction but already promising to be one of Saudi Arabia's tallest – and most controversial.

"Mecca should be a site of religious contemplation and not a distraction of overpriced materialistic things," says Dr. Attar.

Saudi officials say that the expansion of hotels, stores, and restaurant chains is simply to care for the growing numbers of pilgrims. The city has always had shops and small restaurants, but the numbers were smaller, in part because travel to Mecca was difficult. The roads weren't paved, and there weren't enough hotels.

But after the oil boom of the 1970s, roads were paved, housing expanded, and the influx of pilgrims rose from tens of thousands to millions. Safety figures into the expansion, too, say officials. In some years, hundreds of people have died in stampedes.

"The changes in Mecca are well planned and studied, and are there to cater to the needs of visitors and residents," says a Saudi Interior Ministry official who asked to remain anonymous.
The building boom, notes Mr. Tayeb, is also justified by the spread of Islam. There are more Muslims who must come to Mecca each year.

Non-Muslims are prohibited from entering Mecca, so the commerce still has a distinctive Islamic flair. Koranic verses can be heard playing in some restaurants. And every arriving pilgrim with a cellphone is sent a text message in English and Arabic from the Saudi government: "You are now in Mecca! The dearest place to Allah and his messenger – Peace be upon him – on earth."

Tayeb, the historian, says the traditional Saudi families here in Mecca feel "disappointment" over the modernization, but have accepted it as a reality. And he accepts the presence of matchmakers, as he does the other changes. The Mecca of his childhood is now gone, he says, adding: "The only thing that remains the same is the Kaaba."

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'Tis the season when generosity visits an 'invisible world'

2007-12-06T09:15:00.000+08:00

from the December 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p15s01-lign.html

Newspaper charity drives continue to help families who cannot afford Christmas gifts.

By Marilyn Gardner Columnist

Some of the most heart-tugging stories every December can be found in the charitable appeals various newspapers make to collect money for needy families. Without such donations, the papers say, many children would have no gifts to open.

The names of the funds hint at the need: In Boston, Globe Santa hopes to aid more than 20,000 impoverished families. Operation Jingle Bells, sponsored by the Elgin, Ill., Courier News, pays one major bill for families in need. The Hope Fund at the Albany Times Union in upstate New York helps poor children. At the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, the Santa Fund gives toys and books to children in Massachusetts. And the Houston Chronicle's Goodfellows charity provides toys for those between ages 2 and 10.

As one measure of readers' generosity, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund received $7.6 million from more than 10,000 donors last year.

Day after day in December, these columns tell of families challenged by divorce, widowhood, or poor health. Others can't pay the rent or soaring heating bills. Still others are headed by grandparents who never expected to be raising another generation.

Whatever the situation, the urgent message is: Please give.

These funds serve as useful reminders of a world that remains invisible to millions of Christmas shoppers with money in the bank and credit cards in hand. The parents writing plaintive letters to newspapers seeking gifts for their children aren't the ones pushing gift-laden carts at Toys "R" Us or clutching long grocery lists at Stop & Shop to prepare for a bountiful Christmas meal.
The Yuletide merriment goes on without them, even as Washington reminds the rest of us that it's our duty to spend more than we did last year to keep the economy chugging along.

That's also the indirect reminder publicists keep giving journalists this time of year as they besiege us with press releases that urge us to write about the coolest toys, the newest electronics, even the latest personalized gifts for Fido and Muffy.

But sandwiched among these commercial pitches for gifts are more sobering messages. A new study by Demos finds that one-fifth of middle-class families are living paycheck to paycheck, with little margin of security.

Sometimes the disconnect between the visible world of plenty and the invisible world of need shows up surprisingly close to home.

For a number of years our suburban church has taken part in two charitable efforts to help families in our town who are struggling. The first, in October, is a food drive to stock the local food pantry. A flier posted on the church bulletin board lists preferred foods, while a blue collection bin nearby stands ready for donations. In November and December, the local Community Council appeals for warm scarves, gloves, and mittens, to be given as holiday gifts to those in need.

Tuna and cereal. Mittens and scarves. These primary needs seem out of place in a comfortable suburb. But layoffs and economic reversals, however temporary, can occur anywhere, regardless of ZIP codes and leafy addresses.

One of the most poignant holiday experiences of my childhood dates back to a mid-December Saturday in fourth or fifth grade. Our Girl Scout troop invited girls from the local Children's Home to join us for a pre-Christmas outing downtown. We began with breakfast at Bishop's Cafeteria. Then we gave each girl a dollar – the equivalent of about $7 today – and went to a nearby Woolworth's so they could shop.

When we returned to the Children's Home, they gave us a tour, including their dormitory-style bedrooms and the space where they stored their few belongings. We said our goodbyes, then headed back to the security of our two-parent families and our middle-class homes with a wreath on the door, a Christmas tree in the living room, and presents under the tree.

It was my first encounter with those whose lives were radically different from mine, and it made a profound impression. Nearly every Christmas since then I've thought about those girls, who were so much like us yet whose situations were so different. I can only hope that they have carved out satisfying lives, with families – and Christmas trees and gifts – of their own.

It's a hope that extends to every letter writer asking for holiday help from charity drives. Who knows what lasting memories donors' gifts might bring?

One recipient of Globe Santa's largesse, Leslie Ahern, was 8 in 1957 when her widowed mother asked for help. Decades later, she expressed her gratitude to the paper. "We were no longer alone and scared," she wrote. "There were people out there ... who had never even met us, but who cared about us. That was the very gift we needed most that Christmas. At 8, I learned that people do care and can make a wonderful difference in the lives of other people."

That anonymous generosity, bridging two worlds, could be one of the best presents for givers and recipients alike.

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Sufism may be powerful antidote to Islamic extremism

2007-12-05T09:13:00.000+08:00

from the December 05, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p13s02-lire.html

With its spiritual tradition, 'the Sufi way' is an age-old alternative for radicals and modernists alike.

By Jane Lampman Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Images of Islam have pervaded the news media in recent years, but one aspect of the faith has gotten little attention – Islamic spirituality. Yet thousands in America and millions in the Muslim world have embarked on the spiritual path called Sufism, or the Sufi way. Some see its appeal as the most promising hope for countering the rise of extremism in Islam.

In recent weeks, celebrations in cities on several continents have marked the "International Year of Rumi." Sept. 30 was the 800th anniversary of the birth of Muslim mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, who is a towering figure in Sufi literature and, paradoxically, the bestselling poet in the United States over the past decade.

In the West, Sufism has appealed to seekers attracted by its disciplined spiritual practices as well as its respect for all faiths and emphasis on universal love.

"I was searching, and the writings struck me – particularly the poetry," says Llew Smith, a TV producer in Boston who has joined a Sufi order. "It's direct and consistent about turning you away from the self, but also being connected deeply to the Divine and to other people."

Across the Muslim world, Sufism has been an influential force throughout Islamic history, though it has frequently come under attack by more orthodox Muslims. Some consider it an Islamic heresy because Sufis go beyond the faith's basic tenets and pursue a direct union with God.

Many Muslims today, however, see the spiritual tradition as the potential answer to the extremism that has hijacked the faith and misrepresented it to the world.

"In the Islamic world, Sufism is the most powerful antidote to the religious radicalism called fundamentalism as well as the most important source for responding to the challenges posed by modernism," says Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Nasr has written a new book, "The Garden of Truth," to present Sufi teaching in contemporary language.

"Its influence is immense," Nasr adds. "Sufism has kept alive the inner quality of ethics and spiritual virtues, rather than a rigid morality ... and it provides access to knowledge of the divine reality," which affects all other aspects of one's life.

But Sufi practice faces intense pressures in Islam's internal struggle. "What the Western world is not seeing," says Akbar Ahmed, a renowned Pakistani anthropologist who teaches at American University in Washington, "is that there are three distinct models in play in the Muslim world: modernism, which reflects globalization, materialism, and a consumer society; the literalists, who are reacting, sometimes violently, against the West and globalization; and the Sufis, who reject the search for power and wealth" in favor of a more spiritual path.

Feeling under siege, the average Muslim today is in turmoil, Dr. Ahmed says. To which of these answers will he or she turn? He believes that the spiritual hunger is deep and resonates widely.

Puritanical reformers revile it

While Sufism has been persecuted in Saudi Arabia, it is thriving in such places as Iran, Pakistan, and India outside the modernist cities, says Ahmed, who traveled throughout the Muslim world in 2006. During a visit to the Sufi shrine at Ajmer, India, he encountered a throng of thousands worshiping there.

"Just last week, when former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan, where did he go? To the Sufi shrine in Lahore," he adds.

But can Sufism influence or counter the political rise of the radicals? Puritanical reformers call Sufis heretics. And modernizers have often denigrated them. Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern secular Turkey, for instance, closed down the Sufi orders, including Rumi's Mevlevi order.

Yet, according to a survey Ahmed took of some young people in Turkey last year, their top choice as a role model is a Sufi intellectual, Fetullah Gulen, who has built a large system of schools and is known for his promotion of interfaith dialogue.

Sufis lead reform movements

Historically, Sufism has had greater impact in the Muslim world than have Jewish and Christian mysticism in their communities, says Marcia Hermansen, an expert on Sufism at Loyola University in Chicago.

Not only has it pervaded Islamic art, literature, music, and architecture, but in the realm of political life, several Sufi orders became ruling dynasties, reshaping the map of the Muslim world.

"Some of the greatest reform movements in the 19th century were carried out by Sufis," says Nasr. "Amir Abd al-Kader, the national hero of Algeria, was a Sufi master."

No reliable statistics exist for numbers of Sufis practicing today, as both Sunni and Shiite Muslims may also be Sufis. But many Sufi orders, in which serious students follow a master teacher, have become international in scope. (In the US, Sufi movements vary considerably, and a few have taken on New Age elements and are not directly related to Islam.)

Llew Smith joined the Nimatullahi Order, which has 10 houses of Sufism in the US, but whose teacher – Dr. Javad Nubakhsh – resides in London. Muhammad Nooraee, one of his students, came to the US from Iran 30 years ago and now acts as a spiritual counselor in the house in Boston's South End neighborhood. The local group gathers for meditation twice a week, which sometimes involves music or poetry.

The only requirement for an initiate is that he be a sincere seeker, to "feel thirsty for God," he says during an interview. "In Sufism, we call it 'pain of seeking.' "

The initiate makes the confession of faith to Islam, "submitting your heart to God," but no other rules are required. "The seeker now becomes a disciple, and the teacher walks him or her through the path, what we call tariqah," Mr. Nooraee says. It is a path toward the truth through love, and involves techniques to get close to God.

"One technique involves how to meditate," he says, "focusing attentively on the names of God and negating your ego; the second is service, how to provide selfless service for others without any expectation of return. Once the disciple does both, then he or she starts to experience God. From then on, you see God with the inner eyes of the heart."

Contemplative dimension

Mr. Smith came to this order because he was moved by one of Dr. Nubakhsh's books, and has stayed with it for 20 years. Growing up in a very religious African-American family, he says he might have stayed with Christianity had he found such a deep contemplative dimension that enabled him to work with a teacher. He has visited and corresponds with the master. Meditating with the group in Boston, he finds "a lot of energy of support for the interior spiritual work we are striving to do."

Of course, the real work begins when you go out into the world and live it, and fail, and have to correct yourself, he says, with a laugh. But it has changed his life.

"It's made me recognize how much of a veil the ego is, and how important it is to set it aside," says the TV producer. "And when I get panicked about the world, it has helped me find greater faith in humanity as a manifestation of God."

A brief look at what Sufism teaches

In a new book, "The Garden of Truth," Seyyed Hossein Nasr presents the teachings of Sufism in contemporary language, drawing on his experience of more than 50 years of practice. The Sufi tradition, he says, contains "a vast metaphysical and cosmological set of doctrines elaborated over a long period...." Sufi metaphysics teach the Unity of God and the oneness of being.
Some excerpts:

"Not only were we created by God, but we have the root of our existence here and now in Him."
"In classical Sufism, the answer to the question what does it mean to be human is contained fully in the doctrine of what is usually translated as the Universal or Perfect Man ... [who] is like a mirror before God, reflecting all His Names and Qualities, and is able to contemplate ... God's creation through God's eyes."

Creation is renewed at every instant, according to Sufism's teaching, and "the whole of the material universe, no matter how extended its physical dimensions might be, is like a speck of dust before the grandeur of the world of the Spirit."

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Huckabee rocks the GOP candidate image

2007-12-04T09:12:00.000+08:00

from the November 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1129/p20s01-uspo.html

Where aw-shucks meets off-kilter: A 50-something preacher-turned-presidential-contender can be cool.

By Ariel Sabar Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Moville, Iowa

When aides to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told the high school here that he wanted to play bass guitar with its band during a recent campaign stop, Mark Cripps grew uneasy.

As the longtime band teacher, Mr. Cripps knows how many rehearsals it takes for the teen musicians in this tiny west Iowa town to nail a song. Now a stranger of dubious musical talent – a GOP presidential hopeful no less – wanted to sit in on a couple of numbers with no run-through.

Cripps, a stocky man with the world-weary look of band instructors everywhere, wasn't taking any chances.

"I've got my bass player standing in the wings," he said, pacing nervously in the Woodbury Central High auditorium, as his students tuned up, awaiting the arrival of the Huckabee entourage that October morning. "I instructed the kids: No matter what happens, hang with the job."

Then Huckabee bounded on stage in boots and jeans, grabbed an electric bass, and bowled through "C Jam Blues," a song he'd never played before. His performance was more bravado than finesse. He bent back mid-song to consult with the 12th-grade bass player, who was standing behind him looking ill at ease. But there were no dropped beats, no goofed chords, and Cripps looked genuinely surprised.

"He knew how to ... I don't want to say 'fake it,' but 'survive it,' " Cripps said, as the news crews packed up. Cripps thought he might have even glimpsed politics in the governor's guitar shtick. "He was coming to show you, 'I can do this, I can take charge.'

•••

As Huckabee tells it, his cash-strapped parents bought his first electric guitar from a J.C. Penney catalog for Christmas 1966, after "months of begging." Huckabee was 11. (What is it about Hope, Ark., that inspires would-be presidents to pick up an instrument?)

"The young man played until his fingers almost bled," Huckabee blogged last year, referring to himself in the third person. His teenage bands played sock hops, talent shows, and Saturday night "country music jamborees," and went by names like The Misfits and The Sanction.

"Perhaps you expect that he went on to become a famous and successful musician, gracing the album covers of Grammy-winning recordings," Huckabee blogged. "Not quite."

Huckabee says there is one reason his band, Capitol Offense, made up of wonky former staffers from the governor's office, has opened for the likes of Grand Funk Railroad, Percy Sledge, and Willie Nelson: "If you're the only governor in America with a rock-and-roll band, you get invited to some pretty good gigs."

Performing, he says, helped him overcome stage fright and prepared him for the fishbowl of politics. "For sure, I would have never made it to the Governor's Mansion without music."

Now he's hoping to ride rock 'n' roll to the White House. Huckabee may be known to diehard supporters as the former Southern Baptist minister who sees economic salvation in the abolition of the income tax. But his guitar-plucking has helped cast a popular image as the GOP candidate of "Main Street" – that, together with his diet book ("Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork") and his appearances on "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart." [Editor's note: The original version mischaracterized Huckabee's stance on taxes. He supports the abolition of income tax and the establishment of a flat sales tax.]

Huckabee suggests that a candidate's agility in pop culture is as good a test as any of presidential mettle. "Stephen Colbert gave me the Colbert bump, and that's why I'm doing really well right now in the polls," he told the students, only half-jokingly, of his appearances on the show. "I think you learn more about people by watching how they handle things like 'The Colbert Show' than something that's very tightly scripted."

With his comb-over and dimpled grin, Huckabee is less hipster than cool older guy. He's your favorite uncle, the one with the Eric Clapton concert T-shirt and a gift for one-liners, eager to show that not long ago he was a kid, too. Were there a spectrum of Hollywood wholesome, he'd fall between Jimmy Stewart and Kevin Spacey: a place where aw-shucks meets off-kilter.

Watching Huckabee cycle between social conservative and freewheeling rock 'n' roller makes for some jarring juxtapositions. One night he was in suit and tie talking Social Security with seniors in Sioux City. The next morning he was playing bass in bluejeans with the school band here.

"There's a great way to live life," he said delivering an antidrug message after the jam session, "and that's keep your mind free and clear." But then in another zigzag, he segued into a meditation on 1970s rock when a junior, Jacob Polkinghorn, asked about illegal immigration.

"My views on illegal immigration? By the way, I like your shirt," Huckabee interrupted himself, gesturing at Jacob's T-shirt, with the rainbow-prism cover art from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album.

Jacob grinned broadly.

"Favorite Pink Floyd song?" Huckabee quizzed him. "Mother," Jacob replied, naming a track from the 1979 album "The Wall," a rock opera linked in popular lore with the hallucinogenic drug culture.

Around the time "The Wall" was released, Huckabee explained later in a phone interview, "I was working for a Christian evangelical organization in Texas doing communications."

"I was never a druggie," he added. "I'm probably one of the few people my age that's never even tasted beer."

Those details didn't come up at the high school. Instead, he told Jacob, "When I saw your shirt, I just had to tell you ... it really excites me that guys who are students now love the music that I listened to."

Like your favorite uncle, Huckabee can at times seem to be trying too hard.

•••

The big show was later that October night, across the state, at the Surf Ballroom, in Clear Lake. The venue is a pop landmark: The last place Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) played before their plane crashed in 1959. Posters on the doors beckoned Iowans to Huckabee's "2007–2008 Road to the White House Tour."

October had been a good month. His campaign had raised $800,000 in the first three weeks. And though still in fifth place in most national polls of GOP voters, in Iowa he'd inched into a tie for second. (Now in late November, he is a solid second – even tied for first in some polls.)

"Are you guys ready to have a little fun tonight?" Huckabee roared to a crowd of 400 as his band swept on stage. "We want to show that conservatives, Republicans, Christian believers can have as much fun as anybody else in the whole world."

Capitol Offense, which doesn't play original music, launched into a set of classic rock covers, the sort in any roadhouse jukebox: "Born to be Wild," "Mustang Sally," "Wonderful Tonight."
Huckabee doesn't sing. But he bobbed to the beat, his shimmering electric bass slung from an American-flag strap.

At a table behind the dance floor with his wife and toddler daughter, Justin Herrick said he'd always liked Huckabee's opposition to abortion and gay marriage. But when he read that the candidate had a band, his reaction was, "Wow." So he and his wife drove two hours from Wartburg College, a Lutheran school they attend.

"Usually most ministers would be against the rock 'n' roll thing, but here he is playing it," said Mr. Herrick. "It shows what he's really like on the weekends."

Hanging back in the shadows and scrutinizing Huckabee's technique was Randy Hudson, a bassist in a band he described as "a gospel Hootie & the Blowfish meets Billy Joel."

"At first I thought, 'Is this a gimmick?' " said Mr. Hudson, a college student and former cable-TV installer. But after hearing Huckabee play, Hudson decided otherwise. "By not looking like a politician, you run the risk of people not seeing you as a politician. But he's betting on the fact that people are sick of politicians."

Turning to watch the former governor, Hudson smiled. "He's kind of like Bruce Springsteen running for president, except a nicer guy."

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Candidates get aggressive, but civilly

2007-12-03T09:10:00.000+08:00

from the November 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1129/p01s07-uspo.html

Five weeks before the primaries begin, presidential contenders are taking some substantial swipes at one another.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

Five weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the gloves are coming off in the 2008 presidential race.
In the top tier, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are attacking each other on their experience levels and healthcare plans. John Edwards, a close second in Iowa polls behind the top two, is pounding hard on Senator Clinton's foreign-policy record and years as a Washington insider.

At the top of the Republican pack, Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani are going after each other on immigration, taxes, crime, and values. Fred Thompson is going after Mike Huckabee on immigration and taxes. John McCain is claiming he's more electable than both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani.

And the candidates are naming names. Gone are the genteel references to "my opponent."
What's surprising is not that the rising intensity is happening – all campaigns tend to be about what candidates believe is positive about them and negative about the other guy (or gal). It's that, for the most part, the debates are over substance, not below-the-belt attacks.

"The level of it isn't different from the past; if anything, it's highly civilized and substantive," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is engagement on issues, these are things that matter."

What's new in this presidential cycle is the timing – and the interjection of the holidays into the final stretch of pre-Iowa and New Hampshire campaigning. The first nominating contest, Iowa, will take place earlier in January than ever – Jan. 3, 16 days earlier than the 2004 caucuses. The New Hampshire primary is just five days later.

The challenge for candidates will be how to campaign during and around the holidays – and how to keep stressing their contrasts with opponents – without irritating voters.

Del Ali, an independent pollster based in Maryland, also sees the calendar – and candidates' private polling data – as driving the change in tone in the campaign. "We're inside of 40 days before the first contest," he says. "Now is when people start focusing."

Candidates who are struggling to catch fire have to make their move now, before it's too late. "In the case of [Bill] Richardson and Thompson, it's do or die," Mr. Ali adds. "Though if you want to be vice president, you've got to be careful."

For both Mr. Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, and Mr. Thompson, a Republican former senator from Tennessee, the possibility of being selected as a running mate may in fact be a consideration.

When Governor Richardson leapt to Senator Clinton's defense in a recent Democratic debate, the whispers that he was currying favor with a potential nominee were hard to miss.

Still, Richardson is also showing signs that he's willing to make a mild dig at Clinton's high negatives. In a recent fundraising letter, Richardson warned against nominating a candidate whom the "Republicans can successfully poison for a majority of voters." He added: "It is possible to elect the most qualified candidate, not just the one who is the most well-known or well-funded."

Former Senator Edwards has taken a sharper-edged approach to campaigning than he did four years ago, when he ran for president and wound up on the Democratic ticket as John Kerry's running mate. But he sees no problem with being aggressive about drawing contrasts on issues. In fact, he sees value in it.

"Having been through a general election, I mean, if anybody including Senator Clinton, thinks this is mudslinging – this is milquetoast compared to what we're going to see next fall," Edwards said recently on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We need to have a candidate who's actually ready for that battle."

Indeed, candidates in both parties are predicting that the general election will get as nasty as the last one, and that the relatively civilized tone of the primaries bespeaks a desire not to damage the eventual nominees – while both sides quietly gather ammunition for the general.

Meanwhile, the back-and-forth between the top tier candidates is enough to fill up an inbox overnight, as they charge and countercharge each other over their records. Romney raised the decibel level this week with charges that Giuliani is "very much like Hillary Clinton."

"He's pro-choice like Hillary Clinton. He's pro-gay civil union like Hillary Clinton. He's pro-sanctuary cities like she is…." Romney said in a Fox News Radio interview.

Giuliani has been pounding Romney over his appointment of a judge in Massachusetts who ordered the release of a convicted killer from prison, who is now charged with another killing. Romney has called for the judge's resignation.

On the Democratic side, the top rivals have been duking it out over healthcare. Obama's plan does not include a mandate that all people buy insurance, while Clinton's does. On the experience question, Obama got big news coverage when he questioned how Clinton's years as first lady would qualify her to be president. "My understanding was that she wasn't treasury secretary in the Clinton administration," Obama said.

Political analysts see Obama coming out ahead in such an exchange, as it punctures Clinton's attempts to portray herself as the inevitable nominee.

"It may make Obama seem a little less like a saint, but as doubts begin to creep up about Hillary .... it could hurt her," says Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University.

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GOP YouTube debates: Good marks for new views of candidates

2007-12-02T09:08:00.000+08:00

from the November 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1130/p01s01-uspo.html

A new style of debating has sprung from Internet savvy, and it's beneficial to voters, experts say.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

In the end, Republican presidential candidates didn't face any questions from talking snowmen.
But this week's CNN/YouTube debate lived up to its billing as a free wheeling forum, with the candidates responding to videos that represented the diversity of the nation – from an Alabama woman in a burqa to a fisherman in Cambridge, Md., to a man wielding a Bible asking if the candidates "believe every word of this book."

Now that both parties have held debates featuring citizen-generated videos – the Democrats had theirs in July – observers of the Internet and politics have concluded that the format is here to stay and that it is a boon to voters who benefit from that sense of connection between citizens and their leaders. Candidates reveal views and aspects of themselves that might not necessarily have come through in a more traditional format, with journalists and TV anchors asking the questions, they note.

"When a Tim Russert or a Wolf Blitzer asks a question and a candidate dodges it, there are no real consequences to the candidates," says Michael Cornfield, an adjunct professor in political management at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. "It's harder for them to dodge questions from real people."

On Wednesday night, viewers learned just how committed some of the Republican candidates are to keeping gays out of the military. They learned how hostile Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo is toward legal guest workers – even when addressing a small businessman who says his livelihood depends on them. They learned that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who tends to eschew questions on religion on the campaign trail, can speak comfortably about his view of the Bible. (Some parts are interpretive, some are allegorical, and some are meant to be interpreted "in a modern context," he said.)

The debate also provided the latest forum for the smackdown that Mr. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney have been engaging in for weeks over immigration. CNN set the table by selecting videos dealing with that issue to open the debate. But the two GOP front-runners seemed more than happy to oblige, with each insisting the other was providing a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants during their time as mayor and governor.

But perhaps the most significant aspect of the debate was that it happened at all. When CNN and YouTube proposed a forum for the Republican candidates like the one staged for the Democrats, Mr. Romney and Giuliani cited scheduling conflicts. Romney also balked at the idea of taking a question from an animated snowman, as the Democrats had in their YouTube debate. He called it demeaning.

When the September YouTube debate for the Republicans was canceled, the GOP blogosphere lit up. The party's Web-savvy activists argued that their candidates were making a big mistake in alienating the very people who have embraced the Internet as an important medium for reaching out to voters. At this point just about every demographic is engaging online, though less so with low-income people, the least educated, and some older people.

Internet executives see the integration of the Web into the political process deepening by the day. From 2000, when Arizona Sen. John McCain showed the Web's value in fundraising, to 2006, when then-Sen. George Allen of Virginia botched his reelection campaign by uttering an apparent slur that was caught on video and posted on YouTube, the Web has changed politics for good. On Jan. 1 and 2 – right before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses – the social-networking site MySpace will host an Internet presidential "primary" that the candidates are taking seriously.

"You ignore the digital space and the MySpace generation at your political peril," says Jeff Berman, senior vice president of public affairs at MySpace in Los Angeles.

And so the CNN/YouTube debate was revived for Nov. 28. The irony is that, by holding the debate two months later than originally planned and only five weeks before the Iowa caucuses – the crucial first nominating contest – the stakes were much bigger than they would have been in September. It was the first GOP debate in a month, and with the race for the nomination wide open, anticipation was high. CNN received almost 5,000 video submissions, 2,000 more than they received for the Democratic debate. Of those, 34 were used.

Viewership ratings are not yet known, but at the quadrennial College Convention in Manchester, N.H., students tuned in.

"The Democrats had been going after the youth vote, and now the Republicans are trying to jump on that, too," says Austin Lyman, a sophomore at St. Mary's College in St. Mary's City, Maryland.

"It's nice to see that they recognize that YouTube is a means of communication and connection," added Mr. Lyman, who is from Birmingham, Ala. "Republicans are often known as old-school traditionalists, not seeing the new light. They're the Grand Old Party. [The debate] shows that maybe the old dog can learn new tricks."

Emmanuel Balogun of Pawtucket, R.I., a sophomore at New England College in Henniker, N.H., is a registered Democrat. But with this debate, he says, "I finally saw some likable characters in the Republican Party."

Mr. Balogun thought former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was the most "genuine" with his answers. "He was prepared for all the shots thrown at him," he says.

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Plugging the Internet into clean power

2007-12-01T09:07:00.000+08:00

from the November 29, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1129/p03s01-usgn.html

Google said this week it would invest $100 million in renewable energy sources.

By Ben Arnoldy Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Oakland, Calif.

They are the factories of the Internet economy. US data centers and servers now consume more electricity each year than the entire state of Colorado. In five years, they could require nearly twice as much juice.

And while these data centers don't have smokestacks, many are spewing out greenhouse gases through the electricity they burn. Sensing high-voltage perils to both their public image and bottom line, Google announced Tuesday it will plow $100 million into the research and development of alternative energies.

The move is part of a broader high-tech industry scramble to secure reliable sources of electricity and to use it more efficiently. While worries about global warming factor in the equation, some analysts say major companies are also concerned that electricity could become a limiting factor on their growth.

"What Google has been doing over the past couple of years reflects a concern in the larger IT industry. 2007 is probably going to be looked back on as one of the greener years in data center history," says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, Inc. in Hayward, Calif.

By 2010, up to half of all data centers will be located in places where supplying the needed power will be a problem, says Mr. King. "There's a recognition that availability of electricity does have its limits."

But the demand for data centers – and by extension more electricity to power them – is only going up. It's driven by everything from the popularity of online video to new financial record-keeping requirements for businesses.

Top Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are beating paths to the Pacific Northwest to build data centers along the Columbia River to tap into the area's abundant hydro and wind power. Search engine Ask.com just opened a new data center in Moses Lake, Wash.

The carbon-free, renewable, and cheap hydropower advances both environmental and cost-cutting goals, says spokesman Patrick Crisp. Another bonus: The colder climate reduces energy needed to cool the servers.

Google has also tapped cheap energy in the Midwest and the South – from coal. That appears to have irked the company's founders. "We feel hypocritical as a company, so we want to make the investments so that alternatives are available down the road," said Google cofounder Sergei Brin at a press conference in Mountain View, Calif., Tuesday. The founders outlined their vision to hire 20 to 30 clean energy whizzes and invest in solar-thermal, wind, and geothermal technologies. The goal is simple: Make renewable energy as cheap as coal.

Most analysts saw the move as a mix of public relations and an earnest long-term strategy – though some doubt companies like Google truly face an energy crunch.

"I don't believe in a widespread data center power crisis or other inflated statements," says analyst Chris Mines of Forrester, a market-research company in Cambridge, Mass., via email. "That is a specific problem that some companies face in particular geographies like London and other old center cities." [Editor's note: The original version misidentified Mr. Mines.]

Regardless of electricity supply, Google and other tech giants have serious fiscal reasons to go green. There's a huge expense for companies when computing and storage demands max out individual existing data centers. "The energy density of the servers is so high that the cooling capacity and the power capacity of existing data centers are running [out]," says Rich Brown, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. To forestall having to spend major capital on new data centers, companies are aggressively pursuing energy-efficiency measures. These efforts include upgrading equipment, redesigning air-flows, and reprogramming machines to handle more computations at the same time.

This summer dozens of technology giants including Google, Intel, Dell, IBM, and Microsoft launched the Climate Savers Computing Initiative that commits members to energy-efficiency targets.

But there are still lots of inefficiencies to squeeze out, says Mr. Brown. His team analyzed data center energy use for a congressional report given by the Environmental Protection Agency this summer. "We were really shocked when we dug into this and found out how inefficiently those centers were being operated," Brown says. He estimates small changes could cut energy use at these centers by 20 percent.

However, streamlining can only go so far in offsetting rapid data-center growth. Not only is Google growing extremely fast, it has also pledged to become carbon neutral – a goal forcing them to buy either renewable energy or expensive carbon offsets.

"Google is finding out that making renewables a bigger part of their energy portfolio is really expensive right now," says Brown. Hence the drive for price parity with dirt-cheap coal.

Google's investment is not overwhelming in dollar terms for the clean energy sector, note experts. Last year, $100 billion was invested globally in clean energy, according to Ron Pernick, author of "The Clean Tech Revolution." But Google's announcement is significant for its ability to mainstream the idea that wind and solar can cost as little as coal.

"They've set the bar high and they've given a clear objective, and I think that's what's important about their announcement today," says Mr. Pernick.

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Delivery companies switch to hybrids

2007-11-30T09:06:00.000+08:00

from the November 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1130/p03s02-usec.html

Coca-Cola this week introduced them in New York in a bid to save fuel and cut emissions.

By Ron Scherer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

New York
Every day, Coca-Cola trucks slowly weave their way through New York traffic, eventually stopping at up to 18 grocery stores, restaurants, and bodegas. As a truck makes a delivery, the engine idles, burning fuel and spewing fumes.

But as of Wednesday, Coca-Cola Enterprises started to do things differently in New York. It is using hybrid delivery trucks, which operate just like the cars, using a combination of batteries and horsepower. When the trucks are unloading, there will be no fumes and idling diesel engines.
Instead, the shiny new red-and-white trucks will have 32 percent better fuel economy. And the hybrids' greenhouse-gas emissions will be 90 percent less than those from regular trucks, according to the manufacturer of the new vehicle.

"It's a small step, but it's one of those steps that if we keep taking, we will be leaving a better world for our kids," says Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Coca-Cola's transition to hybrid trucks is part of a push by urban delivery companies to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions. As with the hybrid cars, demand for the green trucks is so strong that companies such as Coca-Cola are willing to pay a 35 to 40 percent premium over the cost of a normal delivery truck. Both FedEx and UPS are also building hybrid fleets in urban areas. In return, the companies cut their fuel consumption.

"You get a return on the investment, but more importantly, it's the right thing to do," says John Brock, president of Coca-Cola Enterprises in an interview at the company's giant distribution center in the South Bronx.

Environmental groups, who have pressed for cleaner air to deal with various health issues, are pleased to see the shift. The Coca-Cola distribution center, for one, is in a heavy industrial area with many trucks on the road. Medical testing has found high rates of asthma among local residents.

"That area has some of the nation's highest asthma rates, so looking for ways to reduce vehicle emissions is good," says Jason Babbie, senior environmental policy analyst at NYPIRG, a nonprofit policy lobbying group in Albany. "This is definitely a positive step."

Groups trying to promote corporate responsibility think it's a good example as well. "It's managing a regulatory risk," says Allison Hannon of the Climate Group, which tries to get businesses and government to work together on climate issues. "There is going to be a price on carbon, the cost of energy is going to go through the roof, and for some companies, it will catch them by surprise."

Cutting down on greenhouse-gas emissions in urban areas is considered an important step in slowing climate change, since urban areas account for as much as 80 percent of the gases. "It's where you can make the biggest difference," says Ms. Hannon, who is based in New York.

Shifting over to the hybrid delivery trucks could be one way to cut down on emissions. For example, the average Coca-Cola truck in New York logs 44,000 miles a year on the city's streets. Because of traffic, it frequently does not get above 30 miles per hour, which is hardly fuel efficient.

"This really is a big deal," says Mr. Bloomberg, who has his own plan to dramatically reduce New York's greenhouse-gas emissions.

UPS, with one of the largest truck fleets in the nation, has purchased 50 hybrids for short-haul deliveries. It estimates that on an annual basis, it will save 44,000 gallons of fuel and will cut emissions by 457 metric tons of carbon dioxide. FedEx is also operating 75 hybrids for short hauls.

By the end of the year, Coca-Cola will have five hybrid trucks on the streets. By the end of next year, it will have 120 nationwide. It would like to add more, but, Brock says, "it's a question of capacity" by the manufacturers.

The Coca-Cola trucks are made by International Truck and Engine Corp., and the hybrid system is supplied by Cleveland-based Eaton Corp. Eaton went into full production in July and says it's now ready to produce as many as companies want to order.

"But there are some limitations with the OEMs [original equipment manufacturers, such as International] and how many they can build," says Ken Davis, vice president of light/medium duty transmissions at Eaton Corp. in Kalamazoo, Mich.

As more companies buy the hybrids, the cost will start to come down, says Mr. Davis. "We have a very aggressive program to get the cost down over the next three years," he says.

The potential market for the hybrids, Davis estimates, is about 15,000 trucks per year, or about 10 percent of 150,000 trucks produced annually. "But who knows. It could go to 15 to 20 percent depending on the cost of fuel," he says.

Coca-Cola and its archrival PepsiCo are starting to push each other on a green agenda. Earlier this year, Pepsi announced a significant investment in renewable power – equal to the total amount of energy used by the company's US operations. And Pepsi is now testing hybrid delivery trucks, Davis says. "Stay tuned," he says.

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Flight risk: more of America's birds are in danger

2007-11-29T09:01:00.000+08:00

from the November 30, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1130/p02s01-usgn.html

Some 178 species are endangered or in decline, new list says. That's up 11 percent from five years ago.

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

With birds increasingly hammered by climate change, habitat loss, and a host of other threats, the list of US species in dire trouble is getting longer.

Unlike many still common "backyard bird" species whose notable declines were documented in a national study this spring, the much-less familiar species on the new "2007 WatchList for US Birds" released yesterday are considered in danger of extinction or in very serious decline.
Some 178 species made this year's watch list, up 11 percent from five years ago.

The masked booby, wandering tattler, and Mexican chickadee are among 12 new species added to the US watch list, which is compiled every five years by the National Audubon Society in New York and the American Bird Conservancy in Washington, both of which are conservation groups.
"The watch list sounds a real warning," said David Pashley, director of conservation programs for the American Bird Conservancy and a coauthor of the list, in a statement.

Many consider the ultimate warning list to be the federal Endangered Species list maintained by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which provides taxpayer-funded recovery plans and habitat protection. But with federal listing rates at historic lows, the new watch list functions as the next best "call to action" to highlight troubled species and halt their decline before it worsens, experts say.

Take, for instance, the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow, which is restricted to a narrow band of salt marsh along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. On one side of the marsh is intense human development and on the other the threat of rising sea levels. Even a one-foot rise in sea level due to global warming would be devastating to the sparrow.

The black-capped vireo in central Texas remains on the list, its slender population threatened by development and the nest parasitism of the brown-headed cowbird.

Yet there is some good news included in the watch list's bird call to arms: 27 species are coming off the list this year – a number of those because of population increases due to habitat protection and other conservation efforts, experts say.

"Certainly some bird species are doing better, and their absence from this new list reflects that," says Gregory Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society.

Among those soaring off the list are the ferruginous hawk, Wilson's phalarope, the worm-eating warbler, and the black oystercatcher, all of which are doing better than they were just five years ago thanks to focused attention, Dr. Butcher says. The Wilson's phalarope, for instance, nests in sloughs of North Dakota where conservation work for waterfowl also helped it recover.

In a few cases, studies found bird populations to be healthier than earlier believed, such as with the McCown's longspur. The small ground-feeding bird, whose warbling call used to be common on the northwestern Great Plains, was listed in the "red" category of the 2002 WatchList – in imminent danger of extinction – but is not listed this time. A closer analysis finds that it is more widely distributed than earlier believed.

Despite continuing growth in the number of bird species in trouble, this year has been notable for some successes. In June, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list – a victory for the federal law that protected it during recovery.

Add the whooping crane, too. While still listed as endangered, the species has rebounded from the brink of extinction – with just a few dozen left – to more than 200 today.

Even so, many species on the watch list should be federally listed as endangered, a protection Butcher says is being more widely recognized for its positive impact.

"The bald eagle, peregrine falcon, the California condor, and the whooping crane all used to be on the endangered list at one time but are doing really well now," he says. "If we take good care of these birds, they can rebound."

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No need to wait till spring for baseball

2007-11-28T08:32:00.000+08:00

from the November 28, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1128/p13s02-litr.html

In seven Caribbean nations, warm weather and high-quality baseball welcome visitors who can't wait for professional play to resume in the US.

By Rick Feingold Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Baseball season isn't over; in fact, it's just begun – in Latin America, that is. There, baseball is a winter sport, and the months of December and January are the perfect time for planning a trip to follow the local action in the Caribbean.

Just as jazz, the original American musical art form, has been exported throughout the world, so has baseball. Within Latin America, baseball leagues are found in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Major League Baseball scouts travel to each of these countries in search of prospects, hoping to find the next David Ortiz or Pedro Martinez. Teams such as the Los Angeles Dodgers have established baseball academies in the Dominican Republic to develop the skills of young athletes so they are prepared to compete in the United States upon signing a major league contract.

Baseball in the Dominican Republic is actually a purer form of the sport than fans now see in the US. The professional game is played as it was in the early and mid-20th century, when it was considered America's national pastime.

Players are accessible at the baseball stadium. "You are closer to the field and the players, compared to a game in the US," says John Lenihan, an auto industry executive who has traveled from New Jersey to Santo Domingo to watch Dominican League baseball. "You can walk down to the dugout and talk to the players."

The Dominican Republic is the most successful country in the world outside the US at cultivating professional baseball talent, so the quality of play is high. Dominicans have regularly been stars on American baseball teams since Ozzie Virgil debuted with the New York Giants in 1956.

Today, many Dominicans are household names among American baseball fans. Albert Pujols was elected the National League Most Valuable Player in 2005. Manny Acta manages the Washington Nationals. This year, Dominicans made up 10 percent of all players in the American major leagues , more than all other Latin American countries combined. So, part of the fun of a visit is watching players who may become the next big stars in the US.

Located on the eastern half of the island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic shares its western border with Haiti. Santo Domingo is the capital of this country of about 9 million people. The economy is poor, and poverty is widespread. For better or worse, baseball is considered the "Dominican dream" and a means out of poverty for many young men.

For tourists, baseball in the Dominican Republic is best experienced during the winter season of November to January, although a second season featuring rookie teams runs from June to August.

Games are played at Quisqueya Stadium in Santo Domingo, which is located off Avenida Tiradentes.

During the regular season, you can buy tickets from the ticket office at the stadium before most games. Seats are inexpensive, compared with the cost in the US. They range from $2 for seats in the outfield bleachers to $10 to $15 for infield seating. Tickets for championship games may be more difficult to come by, although scalpers usually have seats for events that are officially sold out.

Part of the reason for the excellent quality of baseball here is that some major leaguers from the Dominican Republic – often younger players – sharpen their skills by participating in the league during the off-season in the US.

These players are also a big reason that being at the ballpark feels like a family affair. Many of the fans grew up and went to school (or played childhood baseball) with the major-leaguers who are once again playing at home. Also, the players' family members often attend games. I sat with Mrs. David Ortiz at a game in 1999, when he was a rookie with the Minnesota Twins.

"The Dominican Winter League is considered the major leagues of the Caribbean and the best baseball league outside of the US and Japan," says Carlos Sanchez, a sportswriter for the El Caribe newspaper in Santo Domingo.

"In the Dominican Republic, prospects and some veterans play in November and December," he adds. "The best players, usually major league stars, play in January during the time of the championship tournaments."

Fun off the field as well as on

The activity off the field is sometimes as interesting as the game itself. Outside the stadium, vendors sell everything from team pennants and caps to baseballs used in prior games.
Inside Quisqueya Stadium, every seat is close to the field of play, a big improvement over what US fans often experience in major league ballparks.

Frequently there's even excitement between innings. "The Dominican baseball cheerleaders who dance on top of the dugouts to merengue music generate a lot of enthusiasm," points out Mr. Lenihan, the US tourist.

"The fans are always in a good mood at the games," notes Mr. Sanchez. "You can see the scouts at the game and you have an opportunity to meet the players."

How long should a Caribbean winter league baseball visit be? "Five days is the right amount of time for a vacation like this," estimates Lenihan. "You can [also] tour historic churches, Parque Colón, and shop on El Conde. Plan to stay longer if you want to visit the beaches."

Although hurricane Noel did cause damage to the Dominican Republic, all Santo Domingo hotels are again operating at full capacity. Tourist infrastructure is fully functional, and Dominican League Winter Baseball continues to play a full schedule.

Two more choices

Beyond the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Venezuela have winter baseball leagues that attract US visitors:

In Venezuela, the professional league includes eight teams from the cities of Caracas, La Guaira, Maracaibo, Valencia, Barquisimeto, Maracay, Puerto La Cruz, and Porlamar, in a season that runs from October to January. Games are played in the baseball stadium at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas.

The Mexican league is the largest professional baseball organization outside the US. It has a 16-team nationwide league that competes during the summer at the same time as the US leagues. But an eight-team Pacific league competes on the country's west coast between late October and January.

Mexican baseball stadiums are among the largest and best maintained in Latin America. During the winter season, look for games in Mexicali, Mazatlan, and Hermosillo, among other cities. Home schedules are available in English at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/winterleagues/?league=car.

All these winter baseball venues are worthy of a vacation and will provide an opportunity to create your own baseball memories under the warm tropical sun.

If you go

Travel to the Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo is about a four-hour flight from New York or two hours from Miami.

Thestadium: Estadio Quisqueya is located at Ave. Tiradentes at SanCristóbal. A taxi from downtown will be about $5 to $8, and regularseason game tickets cost $2 to $15. (January playoff games are moreexpensive.) Phone: (809) 540-5772.

Game times: Evening games begin at 7:30. Sunday afternoon games begin at 5.

Whereto sit: Major League Baseball scouts can usually be found behind homeplate in Section A-15. These are considered the best seats in thestadium. Seats between first and third base are generally in amplesupply and cost $10 to $15.

Weather: The country enjoys atropical climate – warm and sunny. Daily high temperatures are usuallyin the upper 80s and nightly lows are in the high 60s to low 70s.

Formore information, see the website of the Dominican Republic TouristBoard at www.godominicanrepublic.com or e-mailinfo@godominicanrepublic.com. Find Caribbean League schedules at http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/winterleagues/?league=car.

The Caribbean League Championship Series

For the annual Serie del Caribe, the major baseball powers in theCaribbean region – Venezuela, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic –challenge one another for the championship of Latin America.

Here'show it works: The baseball teams with the best record in each countryadvance to postseason playoffs, which end with a national champion.Each country's champion team is then allowed to select from the bestplayers remaining in its league to form a national "all-star" team.
Thesenational teams travel to the host country, where they play around-robin series of six games (a daily day-night double-header forsix consecutive days).

If two teams are tied with thebest record after six games, they compete in a playoff game todetermine the Caribbean League Champion.

La Serie delCaribe rotates each year among the countries. The next one will takeplace Feb. 2-7, 2008, in Santiago, Dominican Republic,

TheChampionship Series is a festive event. Opening night includes livelyceremonies much like those held at US All-Star games. The president ofthe host country is usually in attendance.
A troupe of dancers and musicians is sent by each country to present a display of native song and dance.

Mexicois traditionally represented by a large mariachi band. The DominicanRepublic and Venezuela compete to outdo one another with colorfulcostumes and spirited dances.
Each show is presented on the infield and, as befits a championship series, ends with a big fireworks display.

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Military chaplains: a Presbyterian pastor patrols with his flock of soldiers in Iraq

2007-11-27T08:30:00.000+08:00

from the November 27, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1127/p20s01-usmi.html

Army Capt. Ron Eastes carries a big responsibility - but no weapon - in his 'ministry of presence' with the 82nd Airborne.

By Lee Lawrence Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Baghdad

Vendors and shopkeepers are gearing up for business along a market street in the northeastern neighborhood of Adhamiya, when a platoon of American soldiers disgorges from Humvees. The soldiers fan out up and down the street. Even on a low-key patrol to make their presence known and gather intel, the soldiers have to stay on the qui vive. Eyes dart up to rooftops and down side alleys; while one soldier smiles and nods greetings to a vendor, another peers to the back of the store.

From a distance the soldiers are indistinguishable: domed helmets, dark glasses, and tight-fitting armored vests in camouflage grays and greens. But closer inspection reveals differences. From the back of one soldier, a radio antenna quivers: platoon leader. Across the chest of another, only gloved hands – no rifle, no side arm strapped to thigh: chaplain. In orbit around him, another soldier, rifle ready: chaplain's assistant and bodyguard. Should fighting break out, he'll shove his charge behind a wall, to the ground, under a vehicle.

Chaplain Ron Eastes is on this patrol with members of his 82nd Airborne Army unit not because he is helping with the platoon's mission, but because the platoon itself is his mission.

"I've heard it said that a shepherd needs to smell like his sheep," he explains, "and if I'm going to care for these guys, I need to be where they are."

And being where they are can mean joining soldiers in a ritual of cigars and banter as a distant mullah chants the call to prayer and the sky darkens beyond the concertina wire at their combat outpost (COP) in north Baghdad. Or playing cards with troops visiting from a smaller outpost. Or walking, outside "the wire," among stalls selling housewares and food in a Baghdad bazaar.
The smell of sheep, Chaplain Eastes knows, comes with more than a whiff of risk.

• • •

Eastes, a captain, isn't new to the military. As an enlisted soldier in the '90s, he served two years in this same battalion in Fort Bragg, N.C. But there was something missing. Eastes says he felt that "eternal significance wasn't there, and I longed for that."

So, in December 1999, he left active duty and enrolled at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., always thinking that, if he could just "marry the military and ministry, that could be my niche." Five years and two children later, he joined the chaplain corps.

Although one of his primary duties is to provide religious services, Sunday mornings aren't the best gauge of his effectiveness. Fighting the whir of the mess hall air conditioner one Sunday last May, the soft-spoken West Virginia pastor dissected the Book of Job to a congregation of four.

Sure, this conservative Presbyterian would love to look up one Sunday and find the room packed. But, unlike a civilian minister, he can't count on the soldiers at COP War Eagle to share his theology. So Eastes applies his denomination's notion of grace. "We differentiate between common grace and sovereign grace," he explains, sitting in a cubicle inside the camp's former gym. On the wall behind him, the faces of his children stare back, the third only 2 years old.

"God causes the rain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous [and] the sun to shine on the wicked and the righteous." That is common grace, he says. "Sovereign grace: the Gospel. Probably 95 percent of my ministry is common grace."

Capt. Jon Harvey, an energetic officer who heads a battery called The Bulls, has a more secular term for this: "This isn't going to sound nice, but Ron is like background noise. And that's exactly what a chaplain should be."

The value of this "background noise" comes clear on a day when soldiers detain an Iraqi sniper suspected of wounding a high-ranking US officer. After poring over intel reports, they decide to apprehend the suspect at his workplace during what looks like a routine patrol. From the operations center back at War Eagle, Eastes follows the soldiers' reports and is pleased that no shots are fired, no doors kicked in. And, within hours, the soldiers are back, and the detainee is shut in a cell with plywood walls and padlocked door. A soldier sits on a stool beside the door while two others watch from nearby. The prisoner and soldiers wait in silence.

Well aware that a soldier's anger can flare at the sight of a man thought to have shot one of their own, Eastes strolls over with calm concern and pauses by the guard. From a distance it's impossible to hear what the chaplain and soldier are saying – but the words exchanged aren't what is important. What matters is that Eastes is getting the soldier to talk; if there is pent-up anger, he can spot and, he hopes, defuse it.

"There's probably a little venom that boils up," Eastes later says with characteristic understatement, "but I've been impressed by the way [detainees] have been treated [here]."
He volunteers that this hasn't always been the case in this war. "We aren't going to run from that. But these guys know the difference between right and wrong." And Eastes aims to keep reminding them.

It is a classic example of what chaplains call their "ministry of presence." Its effect is as impossible to quantify as that of a guardrail on a mountain road: Nobody can know how many accidents – if any – are prevented because of its presence, but we believe it makes a difference. In war, when a sense of right and wrong can disappear into the fog of adrenaline and anger, the chaplain can act as a "guardrail," and officers who rely on them as such talk about the value of troops having a safe place to let off steam and regain equilibrium.

"There's a switch that a soldier has to flip somewhere mentally and emotionally that allows [him to consider] an individual to be a target," Eastes explains. In war, "there's something healthy about seeing someone as an enemy."

By doing so, soldiers can overcome what some psychologists term an innate resistance to kill. What makes this war especially difficult is that the switch can't stay permanently flipped because, as Eastes says, they're "dealing with folks day in and out." Should a sniper open fire during a fact-finding mission, military training will kick in and flip that switch; and, at the end of the day, Eastes will be on the lookout to make sure it has "unflipped." And if soldiers have pulled the trigger or seen comrades killed or wounded, he's there to help them process the experience or to get them other help.

Even on missions deemed too dangerous for Eastes to accompany, he tries to provide a presence. When the platoon headed out to capture the suspected sniper, Eastes joined them in the motor pool to offer a prayer for those who wished it. In a semicircle of bowed heads, he read Psalm 91, popular verses of protection. He then prayed: "If they have to make a split-second decision, I ask you to give them wisdom; if they have to make the decision to shoot, to engage another individual, I ask that the bullet goes straight."

The issue of prayer has been politicized in recent years, with the focus entirely on when and how chaplains can pray in Jesus' name without excluding or offending non-Christians. But this overshadows another important question: Should chaplains ask for divine intervention in the outcome of war or limit prayers to petitions for protection and the right conduct of war?

Often a line only becomes visible when a chaplain crosses it, and Eastes's own prayer could be said to come close. Some might interpret it as a request that God favor his unit's mission; others might hear a request that no innocent bystanders be hurt. As an officer, Eastes makes no bones about wanting US soldiers to be successful; he is equally clear that his concern is the conduct of war, not whether God endorses it.

Even well-defined lines are sometimes contested. In the US, chaplaincy historian John Brinsfield notes, Civil War generals defined chaplains as noncombatants long before the Geneva Conventions. In 1909, the military designated a specific position to assist and protect the chaplain.

Still every war has chaplains who break the rules. In 2003, a convoy came under attack in Iraq, and the chaplain picked up a rifle and joined the fray. Like many chaplains, he had prior military service and was no stranger to firearms.

Chaplains generally agree that they shouldn't fight, but some would like to see chaplains, like noncombatant medics, have the right to carry a weapon for self-defense. Eastes's grandfather, a World War II chaplain, "was given the option to carry a .45. He chose not to. But," Eastes adds, "this is not our grandfathers' war." Chaplains have no guarantee that, if captured, they'll be treated as noncombatants.

Every Army chief of chaplains since World War II has argued that arming chaplains would detract from their primary focus of caring for soldiers and open the way for commanders to use them as combat assets.

Eastes agrees that there are powerful arguments for the interdiction, but he says that, as a father and husband, he would like to see the senior leadership reopen the debate. In the meantime, he is neither crossing the line nor letting the risk it entails stop him from meeting his men where they are – on the streets of Baghdad.

•On Dec. 4: Part 6. A steady presence and cornball humor makes National Guard Chaplain Kurt Bishop a team-builder in a combat hospital in Afghanistan.

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In New Hampshire, the swing voters who count first

2007-11-26T08:28:00.000+08:00

from the November 20, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1120/p01s04-uspo.html

In New Hampshire, undeclared voters dominate the political landscape and may hold the key to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

By Ari Pinkus Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Manchester and Nashua, N.H.

As schoolteacher Betty Ward evaluates the 16 candidates running for president, uppermost in her mind is: Who will get US troops out of Iraq? She's mulling over whom to vote for.
Donna Richards will vote for someone who can be trusted and whose aim is to bring about peace. Her choice: undecided.

Attorney Andre Gibeau is seeking a candidate with courage to return to Congress much of the power he believes was usurped by President Bush.

Meet some of New Hampshire's freethinking and increasingly dissatisfied independents, who quite possibly hold the key to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. They dwarf the ranks of registered Democrats or Republicans in this state. What they're thinking may well signal which themes will strike a chord with the roughly 20 percent of voters nationwide who consider themselves independents.

"New Hampshire will be a good test to see what [independents] find attractive on both sides," says Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Despite their diversity, New Hampshire's independents share some characteristics. They tend to be among the most fiscally conservative of the state's voters. The bad feelings they harbor toward the Bush administration's runaway spending have moved them further away from the GOP, and state polls consistently show they've been tilting toward the Democrats. But they're frustrated with the polarization in American politics and are increasingly dissatisfied with both parties for their inability to tackle America's most intractable problems.

"More than anything they have a lack of confidence in the political leadership," says Dick Bennett, head of American Research Group, a nonpartisan polling firm in Manchester.

Russ Ouellette is among those who have lost faith in political professionals and wants to hear candidates talk about wide-ranging reform. "We can't respond to hurricanes," says the business consultant from Bedford, N.H. "We're at war with an enemy that seems almost made up. We're supposed to live in fear all the time, yet go shopping to solve the problem."

In general, voters are feeling insecurity in nearly every area of their lives, Mr. Bennett says. "People go to work and when they return home they find gas is 7 cents higher."

In the current political environment, the message that resonates most is one that promises hope for a better future and solves such problems. A recurring theme in presidential elections, it's a far more important point to stress this time "because the world we live in is more complex," he adds.

Independents here say that they want a leader who is not only a problem solver but is also forward-thinking.

"I think whoever gets elected now will have a lot more responsibility to the future than presidents of the past," says Ms. Richards. "Before, the focus was on the economy: 'What can I have now?' I think with things like global warming, the depletion of our oil resources, Medicare and Social Security, the next president needs to be forward-thinking, a steward of the planet and the people on it and the programs so we're not headed for a wall ... down the road.

But this can-do spirit should not come at the expense of empathy, she and others agree.

"I would like to see somebody who cares more about the country than the party, someone who really cares about the future of our children and the children I teach, like what does the future look like 15 if not 20 years down the road," says Ms. Ward, who voted for Republican John McCain in the 2000 primary and Democrat Howard Dean in the 2004 primary.

Independents are especially strong here because state rules allow them to pick up a ballot from either party on primary day, cast their vote, and then return to undeclared status before they leave the polls. Their numbers are growing. In 1992, they constituted 22 percent of the state's electorate, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington. Now at 44 percent, they're far more numerous than registered Democrats (26 percent) and Republicans (30 percent).

Those numbers translate into real power. In 2006, independents helped unseat the state's two US representatives, reelect a Democratic governor, and give Democrats control of both houses in the state legislature for the first time since 1912.

But lately independents have become disenchanted with the Democratic Party because of a lack of action in Congress on a withdrawal plan from Iraq since the 2006 midterm elections, Bennett says.

"What our country is doing does not represent me as an American," Ward says. "I think there's a disconnect between what our policies are and what people want. In 2006, the election was to stop the war. To take the majority rule and make some impact.... Now we might be going to Iran. The war hasn't stopped in Iraq."

Many of independents' votes are still up for grabs in the upcoming primary, which has not yet been officially scheduled. While 41 percent of the state's voters say they plan to vote in the Democratic primary, another 40 percent haven't decided which primary they will vote in, according to a poll taken last month by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Just 19 percent plan to participate in the GOP primary, the poll reported.

The growth of independents is mirrored nationwide. In 1960, only 1.6 percent of the electorate identified themselves as independent; in 2004, they accounted for 21.7 percent in the 28 states and the District of Columbia that register voters by party, according to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.

Their numbers have swelled because many voters have become "dulled" by or have stopped believing in politics, says Curtis Gans, the center's director.

As the state waits for New Hampshire's secretary of state, Bill Gardner, to set the primary date, independents, in particular, say they are thankful that the election isn't tomorrow since they haven't found their candidate yet.

"I'm glad I don't have to decide yet. I have one little vote but to me it's very important," Richards says.

Independent voters of all stripes share what kind of president they seek.

Betty Ward, schoolteacher:

"There's so many tiers of handlers. Like a corporation within itself. They're so guarded. They're so worried about winning. I just don't think all of this is real; it's almost surreal. I would like something really authentic. I want to feel that somebody up there has hope.... I want to be inspired."

Andre Gibeau, attorney:

"I want the professor candidate. I want the person who takes it all in and thinks about it and puts together the people to think about it."

Russ Ouellette, consultant:

"There are bigger issues to talk about than who are you voting for. Let's talk about reform."

Donna Richards, small-business owner:

"What I'm looking for ... has to do with who they are as a person and what their policies are, as well. It has to be someone who ... will speak the truth and act according to what he or she has set forth as their core values or principles or policies. I think we've lost that ... trust in our leaders. I think that's not only important to us as citizens of this country, but on the world stage they need to be credible." .

Since independents aren't organized or listed on any party's Rolodex, they play a special role in Granite State politics. They're observers rather than activists, says Arnie Arnesen, a New Hampshire TV and radio talk-show host.

So campaigns reaching out for their support are tailoring their message – with varying levels of success.

Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has focused on appealing to female voters, has the support of 45 percent of women who are likely to vote in the Democratic primary, according to a poll released by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion on Nov. 11.

Barack Obama is targeting the 18-to-24 demographic, which tends to register as undeclared, says Dick Bennett, head of American Research Group. Mr. Obama leads Ms. Clinton by 13 percent among first-time voters, according to the Marist poll. Overall, he is closing a 20-point gap with Clinton, the Democrats' front-runner.

But "There's been no clear candidate for change. No one's grabbed that mantle, not even Obama," says Dante Scala, a political scientist.

Former Democratic Sen. John Edwards hopes that he will. "My message runs across party lines and ideological lines," he told reporters after a recent speech.

On the Republican side, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani garners 24 percent of independents, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona captures 22 percent and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney draws 19 percent in the Marist poll. Giuliani receives more backing from moderates than his rivals.

At the same time, GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul of Texas has piqued the interest among some people here by talking about limited government and withdrawing troops from Iraq. He has polled as high as 7 percent.

"He's the only [Republican] who doesn't scare the daylight out of me," says attorney Andre Gibeau, mostly because of Mr. Paul's focus on constitutional rights. "I don't think any enemy from the outside can do the damage to the United States that we can do internally if we change the nature of our democracy."

Senator McCain's campaign is seeking to revive the magic McCain had when he courted and won voters in 2000. In that New Hampshire primary, the antiestablishment candidates McCain and Bill Bradley (D) competed for support among independent voters, who turned out by a significant margin to help McCain trounce George W. Bush by 19 points.

Although polls show independents are poised to vote in the Democratic contest this time, Mr. Scala cautions that if the Democratic primary looks as if it's going to be a rout, they may vote in the Republican contest instead.

Betty Ward says she's likely to decide which ballot to choose on Election Day and make her final decision in the voting booth. "I really don't know at this point because it's just too far off," she adds.

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Democrats take defensive tack with Bush

2007-11-25T08:23:00.000+08:00

from the November 21, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1121/p02s01-uspo.html

They keep the Senate open this week to block high-level White House appointments.

By Gail Russell Chaddock Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The Senate wrapped up its business with unusual dispatch on Tuesday. Sen. Jim Webb (D) of Virginia, the designated presiding officer, called the chamber to order. "Under the previous order, the Senate stands in recess until Friday," he said. He banged the gavel, and then he left. It took 22 seconds.

But what the session lacked in depth, it made up for in political purpose. By keeping the Senate in session, however briefly, Democrats prevent President Bush from making high-level appointments while Congress is in recess, thus avoiding the process of Senate confirmation.
"We're preserving the Constitution," Senator Webb said, after the pro-forma session. "It's appropriate given how [the Bush administration] is abusing the confirmation process."

From confirmations to annual spending bills and war funding, Mr. Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress are at odds – with both sides settling into procedural trench warfare.
Democrats are playing defense since they lack the 60 votes to prevent a Senate filibuster or the two-thirds in both chambers needed to overturn a presidential veto.

A pro-forma session to block recess appointments is a new tactic for lawmakers. Since the late 1980s, party leaders have talked about the possibility of using such sessions to stop recess appointments as well as pocket vetoes, which allow the president to keep a bill unsigned until the legislative session is over. But this week marks the first time it's been carried out.

"It's one of those small things that can be instantly effective," says Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "It also reflects the utter lack of trust that Democrats have vis-à-vis the president and the belief that he will exploit every opportunity provided him."

The White House wants the Senate to take up some 200 executive branch and judicial nominations, including those for two Cabinet secretaries, three members of the Federal Reserve, and the US surgeon general.

Democrats worry that Bush may use the two-week Thanksgiving break to fill some of them, especially with people who are controversial. One is James Holsinger, who is being considered for surgeon general and has drawn criticism for a 1991 paper on the "pathophysiology of male homosexuality."

Bush's previous recess appointments include John Bolton as UN ambassador and Judges Charles Pickering and William Pryor to the US Court of Appeals. With 165 recess appointments, President Bush ranks No. 4, behind Presidents Reagan, Truman, and Eisenhower. President Clinton made 140 recess appointments, according to the US Senate Historical Office.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid says Bush is stalling on nominating Democrats for bipartisan oversight agencies.

"The Senate will be coming in for pro-forma sessions during the Thanksgiving holiday to prevent recess appointments. My hope is that this will prompt the president to see that it is our mutual interests for the nominations process to get back on track," said Senator Reid.

On Tuesday, leaders on the House Appropriations Committee stepped up the war of words with the White House – and fellow Democrats in the Senate – over stalled Iraq war funding. The Pentagon says that Bush's $196.4 billion request is needed by January to avoid the shutdown of US bases and some 100,000 layoffs.

"Rather than working with Congress on a responsible war-spending package, this administration is executing a plan to plunder from these essential base budget accounts in order to fund a continuation of the president's misguided war," said Rep. John Murtha (D) of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, in a press briefing.

He and Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D) of Wisconsin say that they will not move another war-funding bill this year, unless it includes three conditions: a requirement that all troops deployed into combat be fully trained and equipped, a ban on torture, and a goal of getting out of a combat role in Iraq by December 2008. President Bush threatens to veto any bill that includes conditions that restrict the Pentagon and commander in chief.

Before the Thanksgiving nonrecess, the Senate rejected two war-funding bills. The Democratic version, which also passed the House, provided $50 billion toward Bush's $196.4 billion request, but with a "goal" of completing a transition out of a combat role in Iraq by December 2008. It fell seven votes short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. A GOP version, which provided $70 billion without a timetable for withdrawal, failed 45 to 53.

In response, Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii, who chairs the Defense appropriations subcommittee, said they would work on a version of the bill that is less restrictive.

Nearly two months into the new fiscal year, Democrats have passed only two of 12 annual spending bills. Last week, the House failed to override a presidential veto of the biggest domestic spending measure, the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education bill totaling $606 billion. The White House threatens vetoes on all but one of the remaining bills unless Democrats meet his budget limit.

"Democrats face a tough situation: a Republican president who was just unwilling to compromise on many policies, even if it meant plummeting popular ratings, and a very effective and disciplined Republican minority," says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J.

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Stem-cell advance opens up the field

2007-11-24T08:21:00.000+08:00

from the November 23, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1123/p01s01-uspo.html

With a new technique's lower cost and scrubbed-up ethics, more labs are likely to enter the arena.

By Peter N. Spotts Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Colonies of tiny cells flourishing in petri dishes in the US and Japan are reshaping the political and ethical landscape surrounding human stem-cell research.

In the process, these diminutive colonies also may level the playing field in stem-cell research – internationally and domestically.

These are some of the effects analysts say they see coming out of this week's announcements that two teams have genetically reprogrammed skin cells so that they take on the traits of embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are the subject of intense medical interest because of their ability to develop into any of the major cell types in the human body. Over the long term, these stem cells could become the foundation for therapies for a range of diseases, scientists say. This week's announcement suggests it will be possible for scientists to study these cells without the ethical and political difficulties of harvesting them from unused human embryos.

For the emerging field of stem-cell research, "this is enormous," says Jesse Reynolds, a policy analyst at the liberal Center for Genetics and Society, based in Oakland, Calif. "I can't think of another development "that has been this big,"

"This is a paradigm shift," agrees Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. "This will have a huge impact on the ethical debate."

That debate has centered on the sources for human embryonic stem cells – especially those that have the potential to be patient-specific. For research purposes, scientists have turned to fertility clinics where patients either have donated their nascent embryos to research or no longer need them to start a family. But the process of extracting the stem cells destroys these soon-to-be embryos, technically called blastocysts. The destruction is abhorrent to those who hold that human life begins at conception.

The ethical debate grows more heated when cloning – the most controversial idea for generating patient-specific stem cells – enters the picture. In 1997, a team in Scotland led by Ian Wilmut cloned Dolly the sheep from adult tissue by extracting the DNA from nucleus of adult cells and injecting it into the emptied nuclei of unfertilized sheep eggs. The eggs were fertilized, then implanted into ewes.

The approach is banned in humans. Last week, however, scientists from the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, reported for the first time that they had used the technique to generate embryonic stem cells cloned from an adult primate – a macaque monkey. This strongly hinted that eventually the approach could work with humans.

But the technique, which in principle could draw on a patient's own cells to generate new tissue for treatments, is highly inefficient – requiring many eggs to yield one successful clone from which stem cells can be drawn and nurtured. It implies generating nascent embryos exclusively as stem-cell factories. And it raises the concern among many people that the approach will lead eventually to cloning humans as a means of reproduction.

By contrast, the US and Japanese teams discovered genetic triggers that could in effect turn back the clock on already-developed cells. Working independently, each team found four genes that, when introduced into the nucleus of skin cells, yielded cells indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells. The Japanese team, led by Kazutoshi Takahashi at the University of Kyoto, used the approach on mice last year. His lab, and one led by the University of Wisconsin's James Thompson, essentially tied for the race to test the approach using human cells.

For now, the two groups' work "changes everything and changes nothing; and caution is warranted," says Dr. Thompson. "This changes everything because these are not from embryos." But, he adds, it changes nothing because scientists still don't know how embryonic stem cells morph into the wide variety of cell types in the body. The caution comes because without that information, it's unclear if the new cells can live up to their promise. Thus, research on human embryonic stem cells is still vital, he emphasizes.

Still, some labs appear to be doing that. In Scotland, Dr. Wilmut announced earlier in the week that his lab is dropping the cloning approach and focusing on the genetic reprogramming approach as well.

If this is any indication, a shift in stem-cell research could follow. The new technique's relative ease, lower cost, higher output, and scrubbed-up ethics are likely to draw more labs into the field, Thompson suggests.

Moreover, such an expansion might further invigorate US research in the face of aggressive competition from countries like Britain and Japan.

The advance could trigger some interesting political shifts, some analysts suggest. For example, US restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research could become harder to change in light of these discoveries, according to Alta Charro, a University of Wisconsin law professor.

Already, the issue appears to be losing traction, Mr. Reynolds adds. Earlier this month, for instance, New Jersey voters rejected a plan to borrow $450 million for the state's stem-cell research program.

Indeed, the defeat, the discoveries, and the prospect that a new administration might loosen the federal purse strings for human embryonic stem research could add an element of uncertainty to existing or planned state stem-cell programs.

"Right now, all of the activities on the pro-stem-cell front in the states has been driven by the lack of federal funding for this research," says Patrick Kelly of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. "So if a new administration comes in and approves more federal funding, the need in the states is going to be diminished." But in states with existing programs "I don't think they'll ever be redundant."

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Shifting expectations game for '08

2007-11-23T08:20:00.000+08:00

from the November 23, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1123/p01s03-uspo.html

The Iowa caucuses are now clearly up for grabs on the Democratic side, among three top candidates.

By Linda Feldmann Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

When news broke this week that a major poll put Sen. Barack Obama four points ahead of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Iowa, the political world stopped and took notice.

Here was confirmation that the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the first nominating contest in the 2008 presidential elections, are indeed up for grabs – and that the clear Democratic front-runner in national polls, Senator Clinton, is far from a sure thing in the crucial first race. The Washington Post/ABC News poll of 500 likely Iowa caucusgoers also put former Sen. John Edwards within striking distance, four points behind Clinton. In short, factoring in the 4.5-point margin of error, Iowa is a three-way statistical dead heat.

Other data in the poll provided warning signs to Clinton. Iowa voters are demonstrating growing interest in a candidate who provides a "new direction and new ideas" over strength and experience, and Senator Obama wins handily among those voters.

But for Clinton, there's a bit of a silver lining in the news: Because she is not the clear favorite in Iowa, she does not face an expectation that she will win. And if she pulls out a victory, that's big news.

On the Republican side, former Gov. Mitt Romney has led the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first primary state, for months – and thus he is expected to win both. If he does, it's important but not earth-shattering. If he loses one or both, the earth shakes.

"That's the key: Whatever expectations are, you always want to do better than expected," says Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Every campaign, from the highflying front-runners to the lowliest long shots, faces the same calculations. And each, in its own way, is playing off those expectations. Sen. John McCain – the early GOP front-runner, now averaging fourth place in national polls – has pulled back his efforts in Iowa to concentrate on New Hampshire, which he won big in 2000.

So if Senator McCain does poorly in Iowa on Jan. 3, it will not be big news. But it would raise the stakes for him in New Hampshire. Conservative pundit William Kristol argues that McCain should run TV ads in Iowa anyway and try for at least a third-place showing there, which could give him a bounce heading into the New Hampshire primary (probably five days later, on Jan. 8). Polls show McCain averaging 6.6 percent in Iowa, currently fifth place. Typically, only three candidates from each major party come out of Iowa viable.

In a way, the biggest maverick in the race is former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He has a healthy lead in national polls for the Republican nomination, but he trails in Iowa and New Hampshire. His stated strategy is to hold his campaign firepower for the big-delegate primaries where he expects to do well, such as Florida (Jan. 29) and California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois (all Feb. 5).

While playing down his effort in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Giuliani has nevertheless campaigned in both places, though not much until recently. Through Nov. 21, he spent 19 days in Iowa this year, versus 60 days for Mr. Romney, according to the Iowa Democratic Party.
(Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has surged into second place among Republicans in Iowa in the past month, has visited 58 times.) Romney has also spent big in the early states, building an organization and airing television ads early and often. Giuliani, in contrast, has husbanded his big war chest, airing his first TV ad of the campaign just this week – in New Hampshire.

The Giuliani campaign insists it can lose the first several contests and still win the nomination.
"What we see is there's the possibility of two paths" to the nomination, campaign director Mike DuHaime told reporters last week. He acknowledges that the early states can help a candidate build momentum, which is why Giuliani has made some effort in those states. "But we also recognize that with so many large delegate-rich states moving up so early in the process, that it's impossible to think that it [will] be over after only three states vote," he says.

By dampening expectations for the early states, Giuliani is holding open the possibility of a "surprise" victory in an early state – perhaps Michigan or South Carolina, where he and Romney are neck and neck. Still, by not making the concerted, long-term effort that the early states have come to expect, Giuliani may indeed be shut out there. Yet if he still goes on to win the nomination, he will have broken the mold: Since the advent of the modern primary system in 1972, no candidate has lost the first three contests and still won the nomination.

As for Romney, the only way he can beat expectations in the early going is not just to win, but to win convincingly.

In 2000, George W. Bush won the Iowa caucuses in a multicandidate field with 41 percent of the vote. "If Romney were to hit one-third or more, that looks pretty good," says Mr. Goldford, the political scientist. "But if he stays around 27 or so, then you have to ask, has he peaked?"

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Pentagon is left scrambling to pay for war

2007-11-22T08:19:00.000+08:00

from the November 19, 2007 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1119/p02s01-usmi.html

Secretary Robert Gates says Congress's failure to fund war operations means furloughs at US bases are likely.

By Gordon Lubold Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

Congress's failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens of domestic military bases and imperil the livelihoods of tens of thousands of defense workers.

The congressional inaction may trigger Secretary Robert Gates to carry out his threat last week to furlough as many as 200,000 civil servants and defense contractors this winter, raising the stakes for Democratic lawmakers determined to tie war funding to a drawdown of US troops from Iraq.

Before lawmakers left town Friday for their Thanksgiving recess, they did approve the Pentagon's $470 billion base budget, but not a supplemental funding request to pay for war operations. Democrats don't want to fund that $189 billion defense request from President Bush unless the money is tied to deadlines, or at least goals, to bring the bulk of troops home from Iraq by the end of 2008.

One Democratic measure, to provide $50 billion for war operations as long as the Pentagon aims to all but finish the redeployment of troops by December 2008, failed in the Senate on Friday. Another measure backed by Republicans, to provide $70 billion with no such deadline language, also failed, leaving the Pentagon uncertain about how to pay for the next several months of operations in Iraq.

That leaves the Pentagon with no choice, according to Secretary Gates, who said bluntly last week that the furloughs would be "the least undesirable" of the limited options if it runs out of money. The Defense Department would begin laying off nonuniformed defense workers, effectively shutting down all Army bases by February, followed by at least some Marine bases a month later.

The urgency stems from federal laws that require workers to be notified 60 days in advance that they might be furloughed in another month.

Though Gates is considered one of the least partisan members of the Bush Cabinet, some see his strategy as politically shrewd. It may well force congressional Democrats to back away, at least for now, from their strategy to tie war funding to a troop-withdrawal deadline, says Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank near Washington.
Otherwise, Democrats could be seen as not supporting troops in the field, even though the furloughs would not affect troops directly at first.

"If this is yet another cat-and-mouse game over war funding, people should be clear that Gates is the cat, because in the end the Democratic mice are not going to be able to have their way," he says.

At the Pentagon Thursday, Gates complained that an uncertain funding stream at best creates busy work for defense planners – and at worst negatively affects the troops.

"The high degree of uncertainty on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform," he said.

Unlike during last year's budget showdown with Congress over war funding, the Pentagon this time has little wiggle room for moving money around, said Gates. The Pentagon currently can move only about $3.7 billion into accounts for war operations – roughly the equivalent of one week's worth of war funding.

That's largely true, says Rep. Joe Sestak (D) of Pennsylvania, a former Navy admiral who worked on the Pentagon's Joint Staff before retiring and running for Congress. "Money is only so fungible among various accounts," he says. "Congress makes it that way."

Representative Sestak voted in favor of the ultimately unsuccessful proposal to fund war operations at $50 billion as long as troops start leaving soon. But he says he doesn't want Congress to micromanage the war via its purse strings and says the better option for Democratic lawmakers is to put such goal-post language in an authorization bill instead of insisting that it be part of an appropriations bill. The distinction would give Pentagon planners a date to work toward, without directly affecting their ability to spend the money Congress appropriates for war operations.

"It makes Congress a less blunt instrument," Sestak says.

Only when lawmakers end their rancor over the war can the two parties come to an agreement about how to proceed, he says. "I don't think we sit down enough with the other side to work things out."

This is not the first time the Pentagon has threatened severe consequences for delayed or insufficient war funding. Earlier this year during budget negotiations for fiscal 2007, the Defense Department said it would have to curtail critical predeployment training for troops and other procurement programs if Congress didn't provide enough money for the war. But the situation was different then, because the Pentagon already had what's called "bridge supplemental" funding that allowed it more flexibility to get through budgetary dry spells. This year, no such supplemental funding exists – hence the Pentagon's threat to begin shutting down US bases.

Ultimately, gridlock over war funding may not end until after the '08 election, says think tank analyst Mr. Thompson.

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