Potential problems loom in election voting

Reuters
Potential problems loom in election voting
By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Long lines and long counts threaten to mar next month's U.S. congressional elections as millions of Americans put new voting machines and rules to the test, election officials and experts say.

The result could be delays in knowing whether Democrats capture one or both houses of the U.S. Congress, or whether President George W. Bush's Republicans keep control.

"In close elections, it may be days and weeks before a winner is known in a particular race," said Paul DeGregorio, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, created to oversee a 2002 election law overhaul.

He forecast, however, an improvement over previous elections and said, "I think voters can trust the system."

The election overhaul was passed after the 2000 vote, in which problems deciphering paper ballots in Florida helped fuel a five-week recount fight in which the U.S. Supreme Court handed the presidency to Bush.

The law mandated electronic voting machines with a "paper trail" backup, statewide voter registries and opportunities to cast a "provisional" ballot when a voter's eligibility is in question.

Many of the changes take effect this year, when one-third of voters will cast their ballots on new electronic machines, whose reliability in a national election is unproven.

Ohio, where Democratic voters in 2004 complained that long lines in their neighborhoods kept them from voting, and Pennsylvania are two states with major races where the voting process will be closely watched on November 7.

Other states include Maryland, which had problems with its September primary election, and Georgia and Missouri, where courts threw out new voter identification requirements and experts see a potential for disputes.

"We don't know about the security flaws, we don't know about the error rates," said the Rev. DeForest Soaries, former chairman of the Election Assistance Commission.

172 MILLION AMERICANS

About 172 million Americans are so far registered to vote; 175 million registered for the 2004 presidential election, according to the Election Data Services consulting firm. A smaller share will cast ballots, in 183,000 voting precincts.

In some states there may be confusion after court battles over new state identification requirements. Voters whose eligibility is in dispute can cast provisional ballots, which could add to counting delays in close races.

Election officials also expect more absentee ballots, which take longer to count, cast by voters distrustful of the new machines. In Maryland, for example, the state's Republican governor has encouraged absentee ballots.

There is also a shortage of trained poll workers.

"There's a rather combustible confluence of events taking place in our elections right now," said Century Foundation researcher Tova Wang.

"Where we may find ourselves at the end of Election Day is actually with stacks of paper and long, drawn-out, possibly contentious vote counting," she said. Any delays could spur concerns over the legitimacy of the outcome, she added.

The largest U.S. civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said it would monitor voting in 10 states.

In a predominantly black neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, Democrats have pushed hard to ensure people like Melvin Steward, 72, can vote. Steward said he stood in the rain for four hours in 2004 trying to vote but eventually gave up.

"In my district they shorted us on voting booths. It bothered me because I never missed voting before," Steward said. This time he applied for an absentee ballot.

"I've already turned my papers in," he said.

(Additional reporting by Andrea Hopkins in Ohio)

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US & Iraq Agree on Timeline (or Bush administration agrees on "cut and run" strategy, just doesn't call it that!)

Reuters
U.S. says Iraq agrees on timeline to peace
By Alastair Macdonald

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders have assured the United States they will stick to a timetable of measures over the next year to curb violence and allow U.S. troops to go home, Washington's top officials in Iraq said on Tuesday.

Two weeks ahead of U.S. congressional elections that have put President George W. Bush's Republicans on the defensive over their Iraq strategy, the U.S. ambassador and military commander in Baghdad told voters directly via a rare televised joint news conference success was still possible, and on a "realistic timetable."

Insisting sectarian bloodshed had not caused Washington to water down its goal of a stable, democratic Iraq, envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said he expected Iraqi leaders to make "significant progress in the coming 12 months" in meeting "benchmarks."

He did not refer to any deadline nor spell out any U.S. response if the Shi'ite-led coalition failed to rein in violence, some of it by pro-government militias, or to address concerns among minority Sunnis over sharing Iraq's oil wealth.

"Iraqi leaders must step up to achieve key political and security milestones on which they have agreed," Khalilzad said.

"They have committed themselves to a timeline for making some of those decisions," he added. "We will work with them as closely as possible so that they do meet those benchmarks."

Bush insists the United States must stay to stabilize Iraq -- whose fate Khalilzad insisted was vital to American security -- but the war is increasingly unpopular among Americans and many critics now want a deadline for U.S. withdrawal.

Gen. George Casey, who commands 140,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq despite hopes early this year that a pullout might be under way by election time, again forecast Iraqis would be able to handle most tasks in 12 to 18 months, with some U.S. support.

But he also did not rule out calling in U.S. reinforcements in the near term as he adjusted tactics in response to death squad killings and insurgent attacks that have killed 90 Americans so far this month, the bloodiest in almost a year.

In Washington on Tuesday, a group of U.S. House Republicans wrote to Bush urging him to "urgently deploy Iraqi military forces into the heart of battle" by sending at least 20 of the 114 U.S.-trained Iraqi military battalions to Baghdad.

SHIFTING THE BURDEN TO IRAQI FORCES

"It is crucial that both the U.S. and Iraqi governments recognize that as the battle in Iraq has intensified, so has the need to send Iraqi battalions into the heart of battle," said the letter from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and 32 other Republicans.

Also on Tuesday, a U.S. defense official said the British military hoped to withdraw troops from Iraq within about 12 months, saying the U.K. government wanted to focus its force on the war in Afghanistan.

British officials have told their U.S. counterparts the U.K. military was "near the breaking point" given long deployments in Iraq and weak retention of personnel, the American official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The deaths of three more Americans were announced on Tuesday and a military translator of Iraqi descent was feared abducted, prompting a massive search operation in Baghdad.

"Despite the difficult challenges we face, success in Iraq is possible ... on a realistic timetable," Khalilzad said.

Iraqi officials, marking holidays for the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, had no comment. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's unity government on Monday said its forces would crack down on illegal armed groups.

Six months after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki took office, with vital support from Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, such pledges have yet to curb activity by militias, like Sadr's Mehdi Army, which Khalilzad singled out as needing to be "brought under control."

In Washington, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the Iraqi government needed to move faster to bring stability to the country.

Casey and Khalilzad said U.S. and Iraqi forces faced a tough task against enemies that included not just Sunni al Qaeda militants but also Shi'ite Iran and the Syrian leadership. They decried "decidedly unhelpful" and "cynical" policies pursued by Iraq's two neighbors.

Casey said he planned unspecified tactical changes to curb sectarian bloodshed claiming hundreds of lives a week, notably in Baghdad, where Shi'ites and Sunnis live side by side.

U.S. and Iraqi troops mounted door-to-door searches, set up roadblocks and flew helicopter sorties over the capital in the hunt for the missing translator, who was not named.

The military said he left a U.S. base in the city center's Green Zone on Monday to visit a relative and was snatched by armed men who handcuffed him and bundled him into a car.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny, Ibon Villelabeitia, Paul Holmes and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad, Kristin Roberts in Washington and the London and Moscow bureaus)

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Top US Commander: We May Need More Troops In Iraq...

Yahoo! News
U.S. says more GIs may be needed in Iraq
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer

Two weeks before U.S. midterm elections, American officials unveiled a timeline Tuesday for Iraq's Shiite-led government to take specific steps to calm the world's most dangerous capital and said more U.S. troops might be needed to quell the bloodshed.

U.S. officials previously said they were satisfied with troop levels and had expected to make significant reductions by year's end. But a surge in sectarian killings, which welled up this past summer, forced them to reconsider.

At a rare joint news conference with the American ambassador, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said additional U.S. troops could come from inside or outside Iraq to "improve basic services for the population of Baghdad."

"Now, do we need more troops to do that? Maybe. And, as I've said all along, if we do, I will ask for the troops I need, both coalition and Iraqis," Casey said. There are currently 144,000 U.S. forces in Iraq.

The military has expressed disappointment over its two-month drive to cleanse the capital of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia fighters and death squads. But the Americans also say that for the situation to improve, the Iraqi government must make political concessions to minority Sunnis.

The timeline grew out of recent Washington meetings at which the Bush administration sought to reshape its Iraq policy amid mounting U.S. deaths and declining domestic support for the 44-month-old war. The plan was made public a day after White House press secretary Tony Snow said the U.S. was adjusting its Iraq strategy but would not issue any ultimatums.

U.S. officials revealed neither specific incentives for the Iraqis to implement the plan nor penalties for their failure to do so. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Iraqi leaders had agreed to the timeline, benchmarks heavily laden with enticements to Sunni insurgents.

The lack of any real political consensus even among Shiites, however, has made it extremely difficult for Iraqi leaders to keep deadlines; for example, they missed targeted dates on naming a government and in moving forward on constitutional amendments. Moreover, Tuesday's declarations lacked specifics on how to accomplish the goals.

At the news conference with Casey, Khalilzad said the timeline would require Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to set dates by the end of the year for completing six key tasks.

Five of the markers are clearly designed to mollify Sunni Arabs, the Muslim sect that makes up the bulk of the insurgency and is responsible for most American deaths in Iraq.

The plan seeks deadlines for passing a law that would guarantee the sharing of Iraq's oil wealth, amending the constitution, turning an anti-Baathist organization into a reconciliation body, disbanding Shiite militias and setting a date for provincial elections — all key issues for Sunnis.

The de-Baathification Commission was established after the toppling of Saddam Hussein to ensure that members of the dictator's political organization did not hold government positions.

The sixth measure called for "increasing the credibility and capability of Iraqi forces."

Casey said Iraqi forces would be "completely capable" of controlling the country within the next 1 1/2 years.

"We are about 75 percent of the way through a three-step process in building those (Iraqi) forces," the general said. "It is going to take another 12 to 18 months or so until I believe the Iraqi security forces are completely capable of taking over responsibility for their own security. That's still coupled with some level of support from us."

Casey's estimate of when the Iraqi army will be ready was noteworthy because it has not changed even as the security situation in the country has deteriorated. Iraqis are now being killed at a pace of more than 40 each day in sectarian fighting and revenge killing.

Complicating the matter has been the recent outbreak of sustained Shiite-on-Shiite violence in the once relatively calm south of the country.

To curb the spreading and increasingly brutal killings, Khalilzad said the United States was "inducing Iraqi political and religious leaders who can control or influence armed groups in Baghdad to agree to stop sectarian violence," an apparent reference to recent secret talks the United States has conducted with Sunni insurgents.

Al-Maliki has repeatedly said he would rein in Shiite militias but so far has taken little public action beyond a decision to move aside two police commando leaders. He issued a statement on Monday saying the military had been ordered to take action against any illegal armed group, but the declaration, like the timeline introduced on Tuesday, lacked detail.

His national security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, sought to add weight to the prime minister's directive in an interview with CNN. He was, however, equally fuzzy about what action would be taken.

"The Iraqi security forces are going to take on anyone who challenges" them," al-Rubaie said.

Khalilzad said he had assurances from al-Maliki that radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr would disband his Mahdi Army. But al-Sadr draws much of his power from his control over the heavily armed fighters. And al-Maliki draws much of his support from al-Sadr.

For that reason, disbanding the feared militia group appears to be a promise that is unlikely to be kept in the near term. Such a move would leave the other main Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade of the Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, in a dominant position.

Al-Sadr and SCIRI leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim maintain a sharp rivalry for power over Iraq's Shiite majority. Logic dictates that both militias be disbanded simultaneously, which appears highly unlikely.

While Shiite militias and death squad violence represent a major security problem, curbing them would still leave the other half of the equation unsolved — the continued vibrancy of the Sunni insurgency that has been attacking Americans with a vengeance since summer 2003.

The timeline appeared, therefore, largely directed at luring the Sunni establishment away from violence and into the political process.

October has been the deadliest month this year for American forces. The military Tuesday announced the deaths of two more U.S. Marines, a sailor and a soldier. Since the start of the war, 2,801 U.S. service members have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count.

Also Tuesday, the military said it had found no sign of a U.S. Army translator missing after he was believed to have been kidnapped the night before in Baghdad. Troops continued to search the city's downtown on foot and by air.

The military said the soldier, a linguist who was not identified by name, was last seen inside Green Zone on Monday. He was then believed to have left to visit Iraqi relatives in the city.

He was apparently at the relatives' house when three cars carrying masked gunmen arrived. The soldier was handcuffed and driven away. One of the kidnappers then called one of the relatives using the kidnap victim's cell phone, the military said. It didn't say if ransom was demanded.

Across the country, police reported that 11 Iraqis, including two policemen and a soldier, were killed in bombings and shootings; authorities said 14 bodies were found dumped or pulled from the Tigris River.

___

Associated Press correspondents Christopher Bodeen and Hamza Hendawi contributed to this report.

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U.S. official: Britain seeks Iraq pullout in a year

Reuters
U.S. official: Britain seeks Iraq pullout in a year
By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The British military hoped to withdraw troops from Iraq within about a year and London wanted to focus on the war in Afghanistan, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

British officials had told U.S. counterparts the British military was "near the breaking point" due to long deployments in Iraq and weak retention of personnel, said the official, asking not to be identified.

The official's comments offered the first hint Britain's military may have a timetable for withdrawal in mind.

"It's about a year, give or take a few months," the official said.

But another U.S. defense official played down the withdrawal issue, and no immediate comment was available from British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government.

The official said British discussions about troop levels were part of regular, internal military reviews and that the British government had not approached senior U.S. officials with adjustment plans or timetables.

On Sunday, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said Britain was "quite far down" the road toward transferring responsibility for security in Iraq to Iraqi forces but British troops would leave only when the job was done.

About 7,200 British troops are based in southern Iraq and Blair has been U.S. President George W. Bush's closest ally over Iraq.

Britain has launched a large new operation in Afghanistan this year, and commanders have acknowledged they had hoped to accelerate force reductions in Iraq.

Blair and Bush face intense pressure at home over Iraq because of the unrelenting violence.

An opinion poll published on Tuesday showed more than 60 percent of Britons want their troops to be withdrawn this year, and surveys show Bush's policy on Iraq may cost his Republican Party control of Congress in November 7 elections.

A British withdrawal could put more stress on U.S. forces, already facing equipment and funding shortfalls and the possibility of repeat tours of duty in Iraq.

Britain has handed over authority to Iraqi forces for two of the four provinces in its area of responsibility in the south.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff in London)

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Get the Judges

Newsweek
Get the Judges
As dissatisfaction with the judicial system grows, ballot initiatives seeking to curb court power are popping up across the West.
By Andrew Murr

Oct. 24, 2006 - A favorite punching bag of politicians, judges are unpopular in many quarters. Witness the half-dozen state ballot measures in the West that seek to limit the powers of state and local jurists. The proposed changes range from the innocuous-sounding (term limits for appellate judges in Colorado) to the radical, including a proposal that would allow Montanans to recall judges for “any reason” and a South Dakota measure known as “JAIL 4 Judges” that would subject state judges to civil or criminal penalties for unpopular decisions. Uniting the ballot measures is the conviction that court systems are dysfunctional, says Rebecca Love Kourlis, a Republican who stepped down earlier this year from the Colorado Supreme Court. Now executive director for the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver, she is formulating nonpartisan reforms for state courts around the country. She recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Andrew Murr. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Until this year, you were a Colorado Supreme Court Justice, so perhaps you’re well placed to explain why there is so much anger at judges.
Rebecca Love Kourlis: My sense is it falls into two general categories. One of them is dissatisfaction with the court system itself, based on personal experience or the stories of neighbors and friends. People believe the system is inefficient, extraordinarily costly, unpredictable and slow. I think the other general cause is a pretty widespread lack of understanding about what courts are supposed to do. There was an American Bar Association poll taken last year in which most people agreed that courts routinely overruled the will of the majority. Courts are not supposed to be enforcing the will of the majority, except that they are charged with enforcing laws as written. They are also charged with safeguarding constitutional rights and those can be at odds with the views of the majority. But that’s the beauty of our system of government. The courts serve as a check and balance in our system, and many people don’t understand that.

There is actually a third reason. I think there is a foam along the top of the wave that I’d attribute to people who believe the courts are too activist. I do think that happens on occasion, but far less than the media would suggest to the average reader. When you look at the millions of cases around the country each year, the number that bubble up to the appellate system where the result could be political is really de minimis.

Let’s talk about the initiatives up for vote on Nov. 7. Amendment 40 would make Colorado the first state to impose term limits on appellate judges. What’s the proposal?
The proposal applies only to appellate judges, not trial judges, and it would apply shorter terms to appellate judges, and a cumulative term limit of 10 years on a particular court. It’s supported by a former state senator, John Andrews, who believes that Colorado’s appellate judges are activist and have made political decisions. It would get rid of five out of seven sitting supreme court justices and seven of 19 state court of appeals justices. My analysis is that if justices are making political decisions, this solution would aggravate that problem. And it would create a brain drain. An enormous amount of experience would be lost. It has the other consequence of requiring the next governor to appoint the majority of the members of the supreme court, and the same problem would recur every 10 years later. It kind of smacks of court-packing.

Andrews and the backers of other initiatives think their proposals make judges more responsive, don’t they?
We don’t want judges to be looking over their shoulders to gauge public opinion. I do not believe judges should be holding a finger to the wind to determine what the majority might want.

We want them to be impartial and committed to the rule of law, making the very best decisions they can. Our institute recently issued a report about judicial accountability and how to measure judicial performance in ways that make judges more responsive to the users of the courts without offending notions of judicial independence.

In South Dakota there’s a measure popularly called “JAIL 4 Judges,” also known as Amendment E. What’s that?
What it would do is eliminate judicial immunity. It would subject them to firing and to criminal and civil liability for decisions that people didn’t agree with. A judge could be taken before a 13-person grand jury, which would determine whether a decision were appropriate or not appropriate. And that grand jury could impose penalties on the judge. It would be pretty devastating. I suspect it would be very difficult to find people to serve on the South Dakota bench if this passed.

In Montana, Constitutional Initiative 98 would allow a broad recall of judges. Under what circumstances?
The way that the language reads, it would allow for recall by petition for “any reason.” Montana already has a provision that would allow for recall for “physical or mental lack of fitness, incompetence, violation of the oath of office, official misconduct or conviction of a felony.” I think opponents are concerned that if it were adopted, judges could be recalled over one unpopular decision. In fact, I think that is what it was intended to do.

Ironically, Montana judges have found that the signatures weren’t gathered according to the rules, so voters may not get a chance to approve this one.
My understanding is that it’s not on the ballot at the moment. The trial judge ruled on the procedural propriety of the signature collecting. It’s before the state Supreme Court now, so it's possible it may be restored.

In Oregon, there’s a proposal to set up judicial districts for the judges in the appellate courts. What’s the purpose and what would the effects be?
The measure would provide geographical representation on the top courts. I think it’s about making judges more accountable to the people. Here the idea is regional accountability. It clearly takes the system away from a straight merit system and focuses it on people who live in a particular geographic part of the state and continue to reside there after they are appointed. I suspect they would maintain more rural roots and avoid an urban concentration.

We like geographic balance in the legislature. What’s wrong with adding that to the upper levels of the judiciary?
In theory I’m not terribly upset by the Oregon proposal. I think that what is troubling about it is that it appears to be politically motivated.

Are there other ballot measures that affect the judiciary?
In three other states there are ballot measures that would limit judicial authority. They aren’t targeted specifically at judges, but they fall under the general category of court-stripping. Proposition 90 in California would restrict government’s right to condemn private property and takes elements of those cases out of the hands of judges. Nevada has a similar measure. North Dakota would limit judicial discretion in custody disputes.

Why is this happening in Western states? Is the anger greater there, or it is just simpler to get measures on the ballots there?
I don’t think this is all about a sagebrush rebellion. I think it’s just a function of where the initiative process is easiest. I think the dissatisfaction with the courts is occurring across the country.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15402973/site/newsweek/

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Drug raid yields Los Alamos documents

Yahoo! News
Drug raid yields Los Alamos documents
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

A drug bust at a trailer park in New Mexico turned up what appeared to be classified documents taken from the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory, authorities said Tuesday.

Local police found the documents while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home, said Sgt. Chuck Ney of the Los Alamos, N.M., Municipal Police Department. The documents were discovered during a search of the man's records for evidence of his drug business, Ney said.

Police alerted the FBI to the secret documents, which agents traced back to a woman linked to the drug dealer, officials said. The woman is a contract employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The official would not describe the documents except to say that they appeared to contain classified material and were stored on a computer file.

FBI special agent Bill Elwell in Albuquerque, N.M., confirmed that a search warrant was executed on Friday night, but he refused to discuss details.

"We do have an investigation with regard to the matter, but our standard is we do not discuss pending investigations," Elwell said.

A spokesman for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, N.M., declined to comment.

Los Alamos has a history of high-profile security problems in the past decade, with the most notable the case of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee. After years of accusations, Lee pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets at the lab.

In 2004, the lab was essentially shut down after an inventory showed that two computer disks containing nuclear secrets were missing. A year later the lab concluded that it was just a mistake and the disks never existed.

But the incident highlighted sloppy inventory control and security failures at the nuclear weapons lab. And the Energy Department began moving toward a five-year program to create a so-called diskless environment at Los Alamos to prevent any classified material being carried outside the lab.

Even though Los Alamos is now under new management, Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said the lab has not done much to clean up its act.

"Los Alamos has always seemed to be rewarded for its screw-ups," Brian said. "We're waiting with bated breath to see if anything has changed."

The idea that police found classified documents at a home where a drug sting was being conducted is disturbing, she said.

"The problem is when you actually have those materials that are supposed to be protected inside the lab and you find them outside the lab in the hands of criminals — that should worry everybody," Brian said.

The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Albuquerque were "evaluating the information obtained as a result of the search warrant," Elwell said.

The federal charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.

___

Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in Washington and Sue Holmes in Albuquerque contributed to this report.

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Limbaugh says actor Fox exaggerating his disease as stem cell issue churns

USA TODAY
Limbaugh says actor Fox exaggerating his disease as stem cell issue churns
By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Rush Limbaugh has accused actor Michael J. Fox of exaggerating the physical effects of his Parkinson's disease in political ads urging viewers to vote for Democrats in next month's election.

The conservative radio host told listeners on Tuesday that Fox's lurching, palsied movements in a TV ad for Missouri Senate challenger Claire McCaskill were "an act." Limbaugh noted that Fox, a longtime advocate for research on embryonic stem cells, has said he sometimes does not take his medication in order to illustrate Parkinson's severe physical effects. Uncontrolled shaking and stiffness are among the symptoms of the nerve disease.

"If this was not an act," Limbaugh said later on the show, "then I apologize."

John Rogers, Fox's spokesman, called Limbaugh's remarks "shameful."

It's an appalling, sad statement," Rogers said. "Anybody who understands Parkinson's disease knows it's because of the medicine that one experiences" body movements like those seen in the ad.

Fox, who has had Parkinson's for 15 years, is supporting candidates who would vote to expand research using stem cells from human embryos.

Embryonic stem cells are the precursor cells to almost every tissue in the body. Advocates of their use in research say they hold more potential to cure spinal cord injuries, diabetes and other diseases than adult stem cells. Opponents say the research with embryonic cells, which destroys the embryos, amounts to abortion. This summer, President Bush used his first veto to kill a bill that would have funded research using leftover fertility clinic embryos that would otherwise have been discarded.

Fox has also made ads for Senate candidate Ben Cardin in Maryland and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.

In the McCaskill spot (claireonline.com), which aired during Game 1 of baseball's World Series on Saturday, Fox says McCaskill, the state auditor, "shares my hope for cures" while her opponent, Republican Sen. Jim Talent, wants to "criminalize" expanded research.

Talent spokesman Rich Chrismer called the ad "false" and says Talent supports "stem cell research that doesn't involve cloning or destroying a human embryo."

The Fox ads are part of a larger effort by Democrats who are using the issue as another weapon against Republicans already hurting from an unpopular war in Iraq and Bush's low approval ratings.

Democrats and interest groups are using ads, campaign events and celebrities in at least 20 House, Senate and governor races to push for more federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Fox's dramatic ads are "very effective" with suburban voters, seniors and parents, says Evan Tracey of the non-partisan Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. "It puts the Republicans on the wrong side of hope."

Other TV spots:

•Singer Sheryl Crow, a Missouri native and breast cancer survivor, appears in an ad (www.missouricures.com) sponsored by the Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures, which backs a state ballot initiative to permit research on embryonic stem cells.

•In Arizona, an ad (www .dccc.org/multimedia) sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee features the granddaughter of Morris Udall, a popular congressman who died of Parkinson's disease in 1998. Loren Udall, who has the autoimmune disease lupus, says that "by voting in Congress to restrict stem cell research, (Republican Rep.) J.D. Hayworth has played politics with people's lives."

Brian Nick of the National Republican Senatorial Committee says such "fear-mongering" ads distort the positions of candidates who favor research using adult stem cells. "It's unfortunate they're using a good man like Michael J. Fox as a political pawn to misrepresent people's view."

Sarah Chamberlain Resnick of the Republican Main Street Partnership, whose members back embryonic stem cell research, says of Missouri's senator, "Talent's entire race is going to come down to stem cells. (McCaskill has) been killing him on it."

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Analysis: Harris stumbles to the finish line

USA TODAY
Analysis: Harris stumbles to the finish line
By Larry Wheeler, Gannett News Service

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Unconventional is one way to describe the troubled Senate campaign of Republican Katherine Harris.

Florida editorial page writers went with "bizarre" and "freak show."

Harris' bid to unseat Bill Nelson, a moderate Democrat, is one of the more entertaining political sideshows of the midterm election, even if it isn't a factor in the high-stakes struggle for control of Congress.

Harris was Florida's top election official six years ago when she gained national attention by certifying George W. Bush the winner in the state's contested presidential election.

She was hailed by GOP voters, assailed by Democrats and savaged by late night TV comics and Internet bloggers.

Now a two-term congresswoman representing Sarasota, Fla., Harris is stumbling toward the finish line of a Senate campaign marred by controversy and indifference from her own party.

"Not only doesn't she have any crossover appeal to Democrats and independents, she's having a hard time keeping Republicans on the reservation," said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc.

Republican Party leaders — including Gov. Jeb Bush — initially opposed Harris' candidacy because she's such a polarizing figure.

Her campaign has suffered multiple staff defections, including that of a top GOP strategist, Ed Rollins, who suggested in interviews that Harris has mental health issues.

The Justice Department launched an investigation into Harris' dealings with a lobbyist who pleaded guilty in a congressional corruption probe.

In August, Harris tried to explain paltry turnout at a major campaign rally by claiming a tree had fallen on an airplane hangar, forcing a last-minute change of venue. Orlando Executive Airport officials said no such incident occurred. Harris ultimately blamed a staffer for providing inaccurate information.

Finally, Harris angered Jews and other people of faith when she told an evangelical magazine that voters were "legislating sin" if they didn't elect Christians to public office.

Through it all, Harris, 49, has maintained a seemingly inexplicable optimism.

"The grass roots have been with us, and we think, come Nov. 7, God willing, we'll be the next senator," Harris said, using the royal "we," after speaking to the Florida Farm Bureau.

That optimism is almost certainly misplaced. Nelson enjoyed a 26 percentage-point advantage in the most recent public opinion survey by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc.

A wealthy born-again Christian, Harris has been so busy bashing Nelson as a tax-and-spend liberal that she's had little time to explore her positions on issues, beyond reciting the Republican orthodoxy: lower taxes, stronger national security and traditional values.

Nelson, a former House member who rode aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986, has positioned himself as a moderate who can work with Republicans to get things done for Florida. He rarely mentions Harris directly on the campaign trail.

Perhaps most troubling for Harris, just 58% of Republican voters supported her, according to the mid-October poll.

"Even in hard times, most Republican candidates generate 80% to 85% support, at a minimum, with their party base," said Coker at Mason-Dixon.

Harris blames her troubles on disloyal staff members and reporters who she says take her comments out of context while fixating on her makeup instead of her record.

"It goes with the territory," she said.

Despite her troubles, Harris enjoys support from many rank-and-file Republicans who share her views.

"I take offense to people remarking to non-essential things like they didn't like her makeup," said Carol LaPlaca, a resident of the Century Village retirement home in West Palm Beach. "Let's talk about her views. Yes, she stands on very high moral views. I'll vote for her."

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Spinning the Course

washingtonpost.com
Spinning the Course
By Dan Froomkin

The latest rounds of spin from the Bush administration are really straining the credulity of the press corps and the public.

First, over the weekend, we were asked to believe that the president's strategy in Iraq has never been to "stay the course." This in spite of all the times in the past that Bush himself has used the phrase, which happens to accurately define his approach.

And now, as of this morning, we're being asked to believe that staying the course (or whatever you want to call it) is working, and that Iraqi security forces could be largely self-sufficient within 12 to 18 months.

Again, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Ibon Villelabeitia writes for Reuters: "Two weeks ahead of congressional elections in which Bush's Republicans are on the defensive over Iraq, the U.S. ambassador and its military commander in Baghdad told a rare joint news conference that success in Iraq was still possible -- and on a 'realistic timetable' that would let U.S. troops start leaving.

"Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad said he expected Iraqi leaders to make 'significant progress in the coming 12 months' -- with support from U.S. troops and officials -- in meeting 'benchmarks' for resolving disputes and curbing sectarian killing.

"He gave no indication of what if any action Washington would take if Iraq's fractious national unity government failed to meet those expectations."

Agence France Presse reports: "The United States' ambassador to Iraq has assured US voters that victory was still possible in this war torn country so long as Iraqi leaders live up to their promises.

"At a news conference Tuesday that was briefly plunged into darkness by one Baghdad's incessant power cuts, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad described the battle to save Iraq from extremists as 'the defining challenge of our era'.

"And, in a direct appeal to the American people two weeks before key midterm congressional elections, he said that it was not too late to pull the country back from the brink."

It's nice talk, but is it even vaguely based in reality?

As Christopher Bodeen writes for the Associated Press: "With violence in Iraq at staggering levels, the United States is battling on both the military and political fronts to tame growing chaos in regions where Sunni insurgent violence now is compounded by sectarian killing."

Not to mention the fact that the central government has yet to prove itself to be remotely effective and that the presence of American troops seems to incite rather than quell violence.

Chuck Schumer , chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, today issued this statement: "This is the ninth time we've been told of a new plan on Iraqization so why should the American people believe, two weeks before an election, that this latest vague plan is going to lead to any change at all. We've been hearing White House promises to turn things over to the Iraqi forces for years -- in 2006, in 2005, in 2004, in 2003 -- but nothing ever seems to change."

He lists the nine new plans, dating back to July 2003.
Stay the Course?

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush and his aides are annoyed that people keep misinterpreting his Iraq policy as 'stay the course.' A complete distortion, they say. 'That is not a stay-the-course policy,' White House press secretary Tony Snow declared yesterday.

"Where would anyone have gotten that idea? Well, maybe from Bush."

Baker then offers several examples of the president using the phrase. (See yesterday's column .)

Baker continues: "But the White House is cutting and running from 'stay the course.' A phrase meant to connote steely resolve instead has become a symbol for being out of touch and rigid in the face of a war that seems to grow worse by the week, Republican strategists say. . . .

"[W]ith midterm elections two weeks away, the Bush team is searching for a formula to address public opposition to the war, struggling to appear consistent and flexible at the same time."

Jim Rutenberg and David S. Cloud write in the New York Times: "Mr. Bush used the slogan in a stump speech on Aug. 31, but has not repeated it for some time. Still, [the backpedaling] was a stark example of the complicated line the White House is walking this election year in trying to tag Democrats as wanting to 'cut and run' from Iraq, without itself appearing wedded to unsuccessful tactics there."
Snow Job Watch

Here's the transcript of yesterday's briefing.

"Q Tony, it seems what you have is not 'stay the course.' Has anybody told the President he should stop calling it 'stay the course' then?

"MR. SNOW: I don't think he's used that term in a while.

"Q Oh, yes, he has, repeatedly.

"MR. SNOW: When?

"Q Well, in August, because I wrote a story saying he didn't use it and I was quite sternly corrected.

"MR. SNOW: No, he stopped using it.

"Q Why would he stop using it?

"MR. SNOW: Because it left the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say, well, here's an administration that's just embarked upon a policy and not looking at what the situation is, when, in fact, it's just the opposite. The President is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory, but he also understands that it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to try to make Iraq more secure, and therefore, enhance the clarification -- or the greater precision.

"Q Is the President responsible for the fact people think it's stay the course since he's, in fact, described it that way himself?

"MR. SNOW: No."
Opinion Watch: The War

The New York Times editorial board writes: "For all the talk of timetables for Iraq, there has been little discussion of the timetable that must be handed to George W. Bush. The president cannot leave office with American troops still dying in an Iraq that staggers along just short of civil war, on behalf of no concrete objective other than 'get the job done,' which is now Mr. Bush's rhetorical substitute for 'stay the course.'

Richard Holbrooke writes an open letter to Bush on The Washington Post op-ed page: "In your radio address last week, you said that 'our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging: . . . victory.' You added that the only thing changing 'are the tactics. . . . Commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy, particularly in Baghdad.' One can only hope that you do not mean those words literally -- or believe them. 'Stay the course' is not a strategy; it is a slogan, useful in domestic politics but meaningless in the field."

Holbrooke's advice: "Change your goals, disengage from the civil war already underway, focus maximum effort on seeking a political power-sharing agreement, and try to limit further damage in the region and the world."

Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "Okay, now they're just making stuff up. George W. Bush went on television Sunday and claimed that on Iraq war policy, 'We've never been 'stay the course' ' -- as if no record survived of all the times he has used those very words. Maybe he was trying to outdo Dick Cheney, who went on the radio last week and proclaimed that the beleaguered Iraqi government is doing 'remarkably well.' . . .

"If Bush and Cheney were being sincere, then they're lying to themselves; if not, they're lying to the rest of us. My money is on the latter."
Poll Watch

The mid-term elections are looking more and more like that "accountability moment" Bush thought he'd survived in 2004.

Dan Balz and Jon Cohen write in The Washington Post: "Two weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans are losing the battle for independent voters, who now strongly favor Democrats on Iraq and other major issues facing the country and overwhelmingly prefer to see them take over the House in November, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. . . .

"President Bush's approval rating among all Americans stood at 37 percent. Two weeks ago he was at 39 percent, and in September he was at 42 percent."

Here are the complete poll results .

Susan Page and Jill Lawrence write in USA Today: "Two weeks before Election Day, voters are more focused on national issues than in any previous congressional election, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and they express unprecedented pessimism on the war in Iraq and downbeat attitudes about the economy. . . .

"Bush, whose job approval rating remained at 37%, could be a liability for candidates. By 41%-27%, those surveyed say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes the president than one who supports him."
Optimist in Chief

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg wrote in Monday's the New York Times: "President Bush and his political strategists may be the most outwardly optimistic Republicans in Washington these days, and perhaps the only ones. They are doing their best to fend off the sense of impending doom within their party that they fear will become a self-fulfilling prophecy on Nov. 7. . . .

"The president's professed certainty, shared with outside friends and advisers, is a source of fascination among even his staunchest allies. In lobbying shops and strategy firms around town, the latest Republican parlor game is divining whether the White House optimism is staged, or whether Mr. Bush and his political team really believe what they are saying."
Rove Watch

Kenneth T. Walsh, Paul Bedard and Linda Robinson write for U.S. News: "A big topic among White House insiders as the midterm elections approach is the fate of top political aide Karl Rove if the Republicans lose control of the House or Senate. The consensus is that Rove's image will suffer, big time. 'He will be taken a lot less seriously,' a senior Republican strategist and informal White House adviser says. Indeed, some insiders believe that Rove will leave after the first of the year."

Michael Abramowitz and Zachary A. Goldfarb wrote in Saturday's Washington Post: "Appearing in support of embattled GOP Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), Karl Rove offered biting jibes against House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), took a shot at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and asserted that Democratic policies would leave the country weaker."

Rove "needled congressional Democrats for voting against a GOP plan to try terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Many Democrats said the plan violated basic rights, but Rove rejected that. 'You need to have the ability to try these people without worrying about the ACLU showing up saying, "Wait a minute, did you Mirandize them when you found them on the battlefield," ' he said. 'With all due respect, I don't happen to remember that in World War II, that when we captured Nazis and Japanese and took them to camps, that the first thing we did was provide them legal aid.'"

David Lightman wrote in Saturday's Hartford Courant that, thanks to Rove, Senator Joe Lieberman has gotten significant financial help from the White House donor network.
Latinos and Blacks

Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "A major effort to draw Latinos and blacks into the Republican Party, a central element of the GOP plan to build a long-lasting majority, is in danger of collapse amid anger over the immigration debate and claims that Republican leaders have not delivered on promises to direct more money to church-based social services.

"President Bush, strategist Karl Rove and other top Republicans have wooed Latino and black leaders, many of them evangelical clergy who lead large congregations, in hopes of peeling away the traditional Democratic base. But now some of the leaders who helped Bush win in 2004 are revisiting their loyalty to the Republican Party and, in some cases, abandoning it. . . .

"Complaints among black pastors who had been courted by the White House -- while less pronounced than those of Latino leaders -- have been fueled by a tell-all book by former White House aide David Kuo. The new book says that Bush, referring to pastors from one major African American denomination, once griped: 'Money. All these guys care about is money. They want money.'"
Off the Fence

Wallsten also writes: "The White House now faces a symbolic choice on the border-fence legislation: Does Bush rally the GOP base with a large, pre-election signing ceremony, or does he reject such fanfare in hopes of avoiding long-term damage among Latinos?"

Stephen Dinan and Charles Hurt report in the Washington Times that the decision has been made: Bush will sign it in a ceremony Thursday morning in the Roosevelt Room.

They write: "The decision to have a public ceremony is a reversal for the Bush administration. . . . Although Mr. Bush had committed to signing the bill, aides had said consistently over the past few weeks there would not be a signing ceremony.

"But Republicans in Congress had demanded a public signing, with leaders saying the bill is a major accomplishment that will help their re-election prospects."
Opinion Watch: About That Election

E. J. Dionne Jr. writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "President Bush's six-year effort to create an enduring Republican majority based on a right-leaning coalition is on the verge of collapse. The way he tried to create it could have the unintended consequence of opening the way for an alternative majority. . . .

"The strategy pursued by Bush and Karl Rove has frightened most of the political center into the arms of Democrats. Bush and Rove sought victory by building large turnouts among conservatives and cajoling just enough moderates the Republicans' way. But this approach created what may prove to be a fatal political disconnect: Adventurous policies designed to create enthusiasm on the right turned off a large number of less ideological voters.

"The Democrats' lead in the polls can be thus explained by two factors: the energy of a passionate phalanx of voters desperate to use this election to rebuke Bush, and the disenchantment of moderates fed up with the failures of Bush's governing style and ideology, notably in Iraq."

What's particularly fascinating about Dionne's piece is that it posits the Democrats as a moderate -- not equally extreme -- option to radical Bushism.

That's a far cry from, say, fellow Washington Post columnist David S. Broder 's attempt to exalt what he calls the middle: Senators like John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who actually embrace many of the most critical tenets of radical Bushism.
Torture Watch

Bill Dedman writes for MSNBC: "Speaking publicly for the first time, senior U.S. law enforcement investigators say they waged a long but futile battle inside the Pentagon to stop coercive and degrading treatment of detainees by intelligence interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

In an accompanying piece , Dedman writes that a high-level delegation from Washington flew into Guantanamo even as the debate was ongoing. They included: Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now attorney general; David S. Addington, legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, now his chief of staff; and Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel.
Example to the World

Nick Wadhams writes for the Associated Press: "Several governments around the world have tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they are only following the U.S. example in fighting terrorism, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture said Monday.

"Manfred Nowak said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that if the United States does something, it must be all right."
Vice Watch

In today's Washington Post, Chris Suellentrop reviews "VICE: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency," by Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein.

"With Molly Ivins, Dubose wrote 'Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush,' which was published during Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. 'Vice' is clearly intended as a sequel, but it also comes off as a sort of apology for picking the wrong subject last time.

"As their subtitle indicates, Dubose and Bernstein (the executive editor of the Texas Observer) argue that Cheney is more than merely the Most Powerful Veep Ever. They regard him as the power behind the throne, the regent for Bush's boy president. . . .

"The book's thesis can't be overstated: Dubose and Bernstein think Cheney is a threat to the republic on a scale unseen since the Civil War. (No, really.) They don't quite make the sale for that, partly because to build the case for Cheney's world-historical menace they embrace two contradictory propositions. The first is that his entire political career, dating back to the Ford administration, has involved the single-minded pursuit of one ambition: expanding the institutional power of the executive branch, which Cheney believes was unduly weakened by post-Watergate reforms. . . .

"But Dubose and Bernstein suggest at the same time that 9/11 radicalized Cheney, who was transformed from a sober and moderate conservative into a 'strategic hysteric.' Or perhaps it wasn't 9/11: In one of the book's more distasteful passages, the authors speculate that Cheney's health problems have caused a physiological change in personality. 'It is unknown if Cheney suffered any brain damage from his numerous heart attacks,' they write. They provide no evidence for the supposition."
(Not) Speaking of Cheney

Olivier Knox writes for AFP: "Bush, who used to boast to applause during the 2004 White House race that he had 'picked a fine vice president,' has not mentioned him in a campaign speech in months."
Bush, the 'Money Honey' and 'the Google'

Bush spent some time yesterday afternoon with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo.

Mary Lu Carnevale writes for the Wall Street Journal: "President Bush said he sometimes uses Google's satellite mapping program to transport him back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: 'I'm curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?'

"According to CNBC's unofficial transcript, he replied: 'Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps. It's very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can -- like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.' He added: 'I tend not to email or -- not only tend not to email, I don't email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don't want to receive emails because, you know, there's no telling what somebody's email may -- it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn't be able to say, `Well, I didn't read the email.' `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn't?' So, in other words, I'm very cautious about emailing.'"

So Bush goes on " the Internets " to use "the Google."

Here , by the way, is the Google Maps satellite view of his place in Crawford.

The Bartiromo interview video is in three parts: one , two and three .

Demian McLean writes for Bloomberg News: "President Bush said he is 'astounded' by the size of some executive pay packages and urged companies to tie salaries to performance, while stopping short of advocating government action."

Said Bush: "I get astounded by the size of the pay packages. Consider me floored, when I see a guy making a billion dollars as the CEO of a company."

And, as Reuters reports, Bush "put Social Security reform on his list of 'big items' to deal with in the final two years of his presidency, possibly including indexing benefits for wealthier Americans."
Towel-Snapping the Press

In his pool report from Bush's visit to the Urban Trust Bank yesterday, Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers described Bush standing alongside bank owner Robert L. Johnson.

"'Most of these people here make more money than you and me combined,' Bush told his host. 'They're well paid. . . . The cameramen, they're very well paid.' He singled out NBC's Kelly O'Donnell as a particularly well-paid reporter."

Bush pulls down $400,000 a year; Johnson is a billionaire, and the 374th richest person in America , according to Forbes.
Snow and the Press

Greg Sargent blogs for the American Prospect: "White House press secretary Tony Snow has endorsed this view -- he has now accused CNN of being 'manipulated' by terrorists."

Sargent caught Snow's comments in a podcast conducted by right-wing Powerline blogger John Hinderaker.

And here are a few other exchanges from that interview:

Hinderaker: "How are you holding up after six months of battering by the White House press corps?"

Snow: "It doesn't feel like battering. I'm having a great time. . . . If this is battering, bring me more."

Here's Snow observing what keeps the press corps happy: "[I]f can give them something new that they can report, especially the TV and radio people, they're going to get on air. They're going to be rewarded in that way."

And here's Snow astutely noting the dramatic difference between NBC News reporter David Gregory's tough questions in the briefing room and his on-air reports:

"Part of my job is to communicate as effectively as I can what the policies are . . . so that people at least get it. So that they can do an effective job of laying out our point of view. And this may surprise you, but one of the guys who's actually best on air about doing that is David Gregory. David sometimes can make the press briefings kind of interesting, but on the other hand, he actually does work pretty hard to try to get it right."
53 and Falling

The United States has slipped further down the scale in a global press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

Nora Boustany writes for The Washington Post: "Although it ranked 17th on the first list, published in 2002, the United States now stands at 53, having fallen nine places since last year.

"'Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of "national security" to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his "war on terrorism," ' the group said.
Late Night Humor

On YouTube , via Wonkette: "Bush" on "Fox News."

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Congressman From Arizona Is the Focus of an Inquiry

The New York Times
Congressman From Arizona Is the Focus of an Inquiry
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — Federal authorities in Arizona have opened an inquiry into whether Representative Rick Renzi introduced legislation that benefited a military contractor that employs his father, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The officials said the inquiry was at an early stage and that no search warrants had been issued, suggesting that investigators had yet to determine whether there was a basis to open a formal investigation or empanel a grand jury.

Mr. Renzi, 48, a Republican who represents the First Congressional District, is a former insurance executive and real estate investor who was first elected in 2002. Almost from the start, he has been a target of citizen watchdog groups who have accused him of ethical laxity in office.

Law enforcement officials said that the most serious accusation involved Mr. Renzi’s sponsorship of legislation in 2003 that appeared to indirectly benefit the ManTech International Corporation, a communications company based in Virginia that employs Mr. Renzi’s father, Eugene, a retired Army general, as executive vice president.

Representative Renzi’s office did not return a reporter’s telephone calls on Tuesday to discuss the inquiry. In the past, Mr. Renzi has dismissed questions about whether his efforts aided ManTech, saying it did not need any assistance from him.

Mr. Renzi’s legislation, which was signed into law in November 2003, exempted the Fort Huachuca Army base in Arizona from maintaining water levels in the nearby San Pedro River, as base officials had agreed in a 2002 deal with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Environmentalists criticized Mr. Renzi’s measure, saying it threatened water levels in one of the last undammed rivers in the West and would benefit private contractors like ManTech that operated at the base and relied on its continued operation.

ManTech has more than $450 million in military contracts at the base, which include classified military work, as well as options for more than $1.1 billion in additional contracts, according to news reports about Mr. Renzi’s legislation. Employees of the company were the largest contributors to Mr. Renzi’s campaign in 2002 and the second-largest in 2004.

Groups like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have raised additional questions about Mr. Renzi, like his employment of a top staff member in December 2005 who continued to operate a fund-raising consulting business while she worked for Mr. Renzi. House ethics rules limit outside earned income to less than $25,000 a year.

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Stubborn sellers could harm housing sector

Reuters
Stubborn sellers could harm housing sector
By Patrick Rucker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At a recent meeting with her Las Vegas real estate firm's 200 agents, Joanne Levy told them they needed to deliver a stark message to clients.

They would tell them that unsold homes are at a record level and sellers need to lower their prices.

In other words: the boom is over.

"They want the 2004, 2005 market," Levy said of today's clients. "We don't have that."

With stubborn sellers refusing to relent on asking prices, many prospective buyers have kept their hands in their pockets.

Some industry observers fear that bull-headed home sellers could worsen a downturn by driving up the inventory of homes for sale and running off would-be buyers.

The phenomenon is likely to touch "the bubble markets where you have a bigger investor share and big appreciation," said Ethan Harris, chief U.S. economist for Lehman Brothers.

"For the serious buyer and seller, there is a convergence over time," he said. But once-hot housing markets in states like Nevada, California and Florida have more homeowners who just do not want to yield on their asking prices.

Some are investors who bought at the height of the market with a small down payment and big hopes for gains. Others are homeowners who saw their neighbors cash out with a handsome return and will not accept anything below their asking price.

"Sellers have not caught up with the reality of the marketplace despite the proliferation of 'For Sale' signs," said Howard Glaser, a mortgage industry analyst with the Glaser Group in Washington, D.C.

"There is a lag period between sellers' expectations and the reality of the marketplace," he said, and shaking them out of their high-price fantasy "is more psychology than science."

But cold facts are staring some homeowners in the face.

Las Vegas had 20,800 single-family homes on the market in September -- a 57 percent jump from a year earlier. A year ago, more than half of the homes sold in under 30 days and now less than a third sell in that time.

It's the same story in once-booming regions like California, where home prices in eight major markets declined in September compared with a year earlier.

Despite these truths, real estate agents say, many sellers continue to overreach on their asking prices.

"I try not to list those properties," California Association of Realtors President Vince Malta said of the overpriced homes.

"You could do that last year and someone would still come in and make an offer," he said. "Back then, we were all marketing geniuses."

But those once-hot markets have changed -- even if the mentalities of some would-be sellers have not.

A homeowner's blind faith in the price of his or her home could be costly if it flies in the face of reality and prices continue to drop, said Stephanie Madon, a psychology professor at Iowa State University.

"If the homeowner believes the house is worth a lot and refuses to budge, it could become a self-defeating prophesy," she said.

In the end, stubborn sellers could lose more home value the longer they delay.

But Madon says they will accept reality eventually and yield to market pressures.

In the meantime, many agents say they are in a difficult state of flux.

The soft market is frustrating, Malta said, because prospective buyers have good reasons to make a deal now, with interest rates at relative lows and many sellers offering incentives to move their homes.

"They have a lot of properties to choose from now," Malta said of buyers. "But they're afraid prices will go down further and are just saying 'Let's wait and see.'"

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Bin Laden Is The GOP Spokesman Because President Bush Sucks Too Much

Huffington Post
Bob Cesca
Bin Laden Is The GOP Spokesman Because President Bush Sucks Too Much

We've all seen the ad. Bin Laden, Zawahiri, a ticking time bomb, explosions, a heartbeat and the ominous phrase: "These are the stakes." And it's probably the best ad of this midterm election cycle... for the Democratic Party. Strangely enough, it was an ad paid for and created by... the Republican Party.

Were I Ken Mehlman, Karl Rove or George W. Bush, I don't think I'd spend millions of dollars thrusting Bin Laden up the collective poop-chutes of the nation. Sure, their goal was noble. That is, if you define "noble" as "using al-Qaeda propaganda with the deliberate goal of terrorizing American voters."

But what this advertisement says to me, and hopefully many others, is that the Republican government has utterly failed to capture these murderers and thus the King of All Jihadists remains a threat to America five-plus years after 9/11. This ad tells me that Bin Laden and his chief deputy are still at large due to the incompetent Bush administration and the congressional Republicans who have allowed them to get away with this colossal failure.

What are the stakes? The Republicans have failed to capture the demons featured in the commercial, so... what? Oh right. Of course. We're supposed to re-elect the Republicans who let them go. As the Toronto Star reported Monday, "The Republicans still can't find Osama bin Laden, but they know how to showcase him." Five years simply hasn't been enough time for these tough-talking cowboys -- the shock and awesome messiahs -- the resolute, crisp, lapel flag commandos -- to capture a 6'5" man who's on kidney dialysis and probably hiding within the borders of a so-called allied nation.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have stated across the board that they intend to continue the fight against terrorists by such "weakling" means as implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations within their first 100 hours. Not days -- and certainly not within five years -- 100 hours after they take their oaths in January. They want to increase funding for first responders and stop the White House from cutting $1.1 billion in funding for state and local law enforcement. They want to increase Special Forces numbers to track and kill terrorists and involve the world community in an all-out global manhunt.

And all of that (and the many other programs proposed by the Democrats) make them somehow less capable than the incompetent Bush Republicans who have allowed Bin Laden, their leading spokesman, to run free all this time? The Republicans who, via their misguided Iraq War, have actually increased the threat of terrorism worldwide. The Republicans who would rather shatter the Geneva Conventions, leaving our fighting men and women increasingly vulnerable to being tortured at the hands of our enemies, than unite the world around a common goal -- a goal even the Iranians would've supported after 9/11.

Or maybe, all things being equal the simplest answer is the right one. Bin Laden is a better spokesman for the GOP than is President Bush. Casting Bin Laden in a national GOP commercial is ultimately more effective and LESS damaging for the Republicans than casting the president. In fact, have you seen a single NRCC, NRSC or RNC commercial featuring George W. Bush? Maybe it's not because he's electoral poison right now. Perhaps he's too busy stumping for racists and guys who (allegedly) strangle their mistresses. Or maybe he's too busy betraying his followers by suddenly flip-flopping on his "stay the course in Iraq" pledge. Or maybe George W. Bush has been quoted too often saying he doesn't spend too much time on Bin Laden and hence has let him go. The president not spending time on the Bin Laden issue is a pretty damn big stake, if you ask me or anyone else with an intact brain stem.

And yet the Republicans think their voters are idiots.

They believe their voters are naive special needs children who will see Bin Laden with a spooky tick-tock sound and, rather than questioning why he hasn't been captured under the Bush Republicans, will kneejerk into saying, "YNUCK! Mmm-doy -- hey that tick-tock is scaring me and that Bin Laden! IEEEE! The Democrats won't capture him [even though George W. Bush will still be the president after November 7] and we'll all die down dead! These ARE them there stakes! Doy!"

But even though I don't share many of the values of the president's supporters, I don't think they're as stupid as Karl Rove thinks they are. With this commercial, the RNC and the White House are counting on the stupidity of the electorate. They're counting wrong.

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U.S. troop deaths in Iraq reach 87 for October

McClatchy Newspapers
U.S. troop deaths in Iraq reach 87 for October
By Jay Price and Huda Ahmed

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military on Monday announced the deaths of two more American soldiers and a Marine on Saturday and Sunday, bringing the total of U.S. troops killed over the weekend to 12.

It also announced the death of a civilian contractor who had been training Iraqi police.

The deaths raised the toll of American military dead in Iraq so far this month to 87, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks coalition casualties in Iraq. All but four were killed in action, making October the worst month for U.S. combat deaths since November 2004.

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have said the high toll is partly due to an expected uptick in violence linked to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is just ending. Traditionally, attacks have risen about 20 percent during Ramadan, the top American military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said earlier this month.

Also, many of the troops were killed in Baghdad, where a major neighborhood-by-neighborhood operation aimed at reducing sectarian killing has exposed more service members to attack. The military appears to be reconsidering that offensive. Last week Caldwell said it hadn't been as effective as American officials had hoped.

One soldier was killed about 5 p.m. Sunday in western Baghdad when a homemade bomb detonated near his vehicle, according to a Department of Defense news release. His name and those of others killed over the weekend haven't been released.

Another soldier was killed southwest of Baghdad when his patrol came under small-arms fire. The Marine was killed Saturday during combat operations in Anbar province, west of the capital.

The police liaison officer was killed and four American soldiers were wounded just before noon Sunday when an improvised bomb struck their vehicle on the eastern side of the city.

Virginia-based Dyncorp, which is under U.S. contracts to provide police training in Iraq and Afghanistan, had lost four trainers earlier this year to attacks in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, according to its Web site.

In Baghdad, the violence against civilians and Iraqi security forces continued Monday. Seven Iraqi police officers and two civilians were killed in three homemade-bomb attacks across the city, police said. At least 12 officers and two civilians were injured.

A hairdresser was killed when gunmen stormed into her shop in the Zayonah district around 10 a.m. Hairdressers long have been a target of Muslim extremists in Iraq.

A Ministry of Defense spokesman announced a curfew Monday morning in the southern city of Amarah after the beheaded body of a leader of the powerful Mahdi Army militia was discovered.

The man had been abducted Thursday, apparently in retaliation for the killing of a police intelligence official.

A resident of the city, though, said a local council had canceled the curfew and people were moving around on the streets. Still, two police officers were killed in the city Monday and security forces there were tense, Amarah resident Faeq Abu Forat said.

A police spokesman in Diyala said that 10 people, including seven police officers in civilian clothes, were assassinated in a grove of trees close to Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad.

The spokesman also said a policeman was killed in west Baqouba as terrorist groups burned down 10 stores before the dawn prayer.

The U.S. military reported killing five insurgents Monday morning south of the troubled town of Balad, north of the capital, one of them as American troops approached a suspected terrorist hideout and four more when a bomb destroyed the building.

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Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections

[Editor's Note: This is probably why Rove and Cheney and Bush are so confident that the Republicans won't lose control of Congress.]

ABC News
Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections
Researchers, Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections Easier to Call
By JAKE TAPPER, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and EDUARDO SUNOL

Oct. 22, 2006 — - Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.

Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines.

"My understanding is that with these disks a malicious person could skew the outcome of an election," Kagan said.

Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords.

But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.

The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.

The report further states that one of the high risks to the system comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized parties -- precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source code is not that difficult to obtain.

"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she said.

Worry That Elections Could Be Hacked

Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked.

Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS -- a touch screen version of the Diebold machine -- showed how easy it would be to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any election.

"We're taking the vote-counting process and we're handing it over to these companies -- and we don't know what happens inside these machines," said Edward Felten, a professor and a researcher at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, which ran the study.

Diebold called the Princeton study "unrealistic and inaccurate."

But many computer scientists, including cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore, disagree, pointing out that the Accuvote TS was used in the 2004 presidential election and is still used in at least four states -- including all machines in Georgia and Maryland. Spoonamore said the hack attacked the operating system layer of software and would affect any touch screen machine built by Diebold.

Diebold argues that the software from the 2004 elections has been updated to fix any possible security problems. But Spoonamore is not convinced, saying Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."

There is also the matter of computer glitches. In primary elections and test runs this year, there were glitches with electronic voting machines from Diebold and other companies.

Machines malfunctioned in Texas, where 100,000 votes were added.

In California, directions for voters with vision problems came out in Vietnamese.

And in Maryland, screens froze and memory cards went missing.

Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican running for reelection, advised residents to vote by absentee ballot because he had no confidence in the machines.

"I don't care if we paid half a billion dollars or $1 billion," Ehrlich said. "If it's going to put the election at risk, there's no price tag for a phony election or a fraudulent election."

Many are concerned about how the confusing technical issues will be handled by poll workers, who tend to be senior citizens and who are not necessarily tech-savvy.

Electronic voting machines were supposed to be the solution to the paper ballot problems from the 2000 presidential election. But to many critics, America's voting system has gone out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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Disposable Heroes: The GOP's Contempt for Wounded Soldiers

Huffington Post
RJ Eskow
Disposable Heroes: The GOP's Contempt for Wounded Soldiers

Any American who honors our military heroes - and I hope that's all Americans - should be outraged at the GOP's mistreatment of them. The practice of forcing psychologically scarred soldiers back into battle is yet another example of Republicans treating our fighting men and women like used parts. Oh, and one other thing - it's a lousy way to run a war, too.

Let's make one thing clear from the start: There's a word for soldiers who return from battle with post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychological problems. That word is - hero.

The stigma associated with mental disorders should become a thing of the past. Even the strongest body may react to intense stress and shock by changing biochemically, and the bravest personality may react to trauma in unexpected ways.

These soldiers, just like those who have suffered physical injury, have made a sacrifice on behalf of their country. They should be honored and respected, not denigrated. They deserve all the medical care they require, and should receive a hero's welcome when they come home.

Here's what happens instead when soldiers like Bryce Syverson fall victim to PTSD.

"It ended up they just took his weapon away from him and said he was non-deployable and couldn't have a weapon," says his father, Larry Syverson. "He was on suicide watch in a lockdown."

The CBS report continues:

That was last August. This August, he was deployed to Ramadi, in the heart of the Sunni triangle -- and he had a weapon.

Under pressure to maintain troop levels, military doctors tell CBS News it's become a "common practice" to recycle soldiers with mental disorders back into combat. The military's actions were first reported by the Hartford Courant newspaper.

"It's flat-out not a good idea," says Dr. John Wilson, an expert in combat trauma.

Dr. Wilson is undoubtedly a good man to have in your corner if you're experiencing a wave of panic, given his gift for understatement.

These soldiers risk being scarred for life by this re-exposure to the trauma that wounded them in the first place. They're also a danger to their fellow soldiers, and to innocent civilians.

They're only there because the Republicans failed to plan adequately for this war. Rather than admit their failure, the Administration recycles these casualties to conceal their own mistakes.

Here's an email Sgt. Syverson sent his family after his redeployment:

"Head about to explode from the blood swelling inside, the lightning storm that happened inside my head."

The Sergeant is being destroyed slowly in pursuit of a foolish policy.

There's no question we're putting other lives at risk with this strategy, too. Drug or alcohol abuse is a common symptom of PTSD. Another is the sensation that the world around you is "strange and unreal," to quote the Defense Department's own website. Numbness, strange physical sensations, and a sense of disconnectedness from people and places around you are also part of the package.

Here are some other potential PTSD symptoms, taken from the DSM manual used for diagnosing mental illness:

1. difficulty falling or staying asleep
2. irritability or outbursts of anger
3. difficulty concentrating
4. hyper-vigilance
5. exaggerated startle response

The overall profile isn't what you'd want to find in the person riding point or covering your back, if you're a soldier ... or doing a door-to-door search of your neighborhood if you're a civilian. In fact, the only person who benefits from having troops on the ground with this disorder is the insurgent. He's facing an enemy who's exhausted, jumpy, and unfocused.

Oh, there's one other party who benefits: the Republican. He's the guy who doesn't want you to know that his party started a war on false pretenses and failed to plan adequately. He doesn't want you to know that his party has broken down the combat readiness of our military, to the point that we're incapable of adequately securing Afghanistan or confronting threats in other parts of the world. He benefits, too, just like the insurgent.

It should come as no surprise that the Administration that kept hiding our fallen heroes' flag-draped coffins is sending already-wounded soldiers out to suffer, creating extra risk to their lives and others in the bargain.

And for those who object to my characterizing this abuse as "GOP contempt," and not just "Rumsfeld" or "Bush" mismanagement, an observation: John McCain and Chuck Hagel worked hard to re-elect this Administration. They bear responsibility. As for Lindsay Graham, he's taken to pretending that he doesn't know who's in charge (hint: it's where "the buck stops," and with the people who put that guy there).

When it comes to protecting our troops, these men have been AWOL. Why? Because politics and Republican partisanship are more important to them than fair treatment for our fighting men and women. Shame on them. Shame on all of them. Shame on their entire political party.

And to those who will argue that I'm "politicizing" the suffering and sacrifice of these heroes, my answer is: Damn right I am. That's what we do in America. When a political party is so cynical and corrupt that it will even mistreat soldiers in harm's way to pursue its selfish interest, you do your best to make sure they get voted out of power. That's what you do in this country. You do it out of a sense of justice. You do it to right a wrong.

You do it for the heroes.

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Officials wanted more searching at WTC

Yahoo! News
Officials wanted more searching at WTC
By SARA KUGLER, Associated Press Writer

As the city agency overseeing the removal of the World Trade Center rubble was wrapping up its work in 2002, several officials handling the painstaking recovery of human remains warned that things were moving too fast.

They believed that more pieces of the 2,749 dead could be found, and that the city shouldn't be rushing such an important task. But they were overruled, two of those officials told The Associated Press this week.

Over the past few days, dozens of bones have been discovered in underground passages at ground zero, more than five years after the tragedy.

"I knew that this was going to happen — they really just wanted us out of there," said retired Lt. John McArdle, the Police Department's ground zero commander. "There was not a good exit strategy for some of these places, and if there was, it was poorly done."

A utility crew stumbled upon body parts last week in an abandoned manhole along the edge of the site, and forensic experts have since dug down and found more than 100 bones and fragments from skulls, ribs, arms, legs, feet and hands.

The discoveries have angered and saddened relatives of the Sept. 11 victims. Of the 2,749 people who were killed that day, the remains of some 1,150 have not been found. That means that families of 40 percent of the victims have nothing — not a sliver of a bone — left of their loved ones.

The notion that rescue workers were rebuffed by a city eager to finish the job could help shed light on why the remains are being discovered only now. The area where bones are being found is one where officials had raised objections.

The officials said they repeatedly aired their concerns to the agency in charge, the Department of Design and Construction, which was later praised for its speedy, under-budget cleanup of 1.5 million tons of trade center debris.

"The desire was driven by one thing, and that was, 'Get it done,'" said another official who protested, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the work publicly. "Many a time the issue was raised about how fast it was going and things were being missed."

Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, who is overseeing the renewed search, said a review of such issues would be premature, but noted that the Fire Department was designated as the lead agency for finding remains, and that the design department proceeded with its work only when the FDNY gave the go-ahead.

According to the two officials, FDNY rescue workers were among those who resisted the Department of Design and Construction. However, Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon said Monday that reports of objections were exaggerated. Chief of Department Sal Cassano said in a statement that the FDNY "had final sign-off on areas where the recovery effort was deemed complete, and at no time was pressured to say otherwise."

Memos obtained by the AP show that the design department acknowledged at least some of the objections in the spring of 2002, but was concerned about "delaying the sign-off."

After the twin 110-story towers collapsed, police and fire officials led the backbreaking search for bodies while the Department of Design and Construction was assigned to excavate the debris, which stood 10 stories high at the start. The agency, staffed by engineers, architects and construction professionals, specializes in engineering and construction projects, including emergency debris removal.

Each day, the design department convened planning meetings with all the parties involved, including engineers, emergency responders and a range of other city agencies.

The project finished months ahead of city officials' yearlong prediction, and cost about $750 million — just a fraction of the initial multibillion-dollar estimate. But the design department was sometimes at odds with the rescue workers, who frequently needed to shut down or pause the operation as they recovered bodies.

"It went from a rescue to a recovery to a construction project," McArdle said. "There came a point in time when they said, `We gotta try to wrap this up,' and they tried to expedite it as much as possible, and they jumped the gun, and now you have all of these families hurt and they're finding all these body parts."

Kurt Horning, who lost his son Matthew in the attack, said Monday he was glad to hear others saying what families believed for years.

"The foot soldiers did everything they could, we know that — we have always felt this was a rush job by the administration and the suits," he said.

Particular disagreements arose as the design department was preparing to turn over the site — which belongs to the bistate agency known as the Port Authority. According to people involved in the process, the design department had created a grid map and asked those leading the remains recovery to walk through each area, and sign off, square by square.

Some refused to OK the sign-off, and at least one official recommended a widespread powerwashing on parts of the seven-story pit, so that the water could wash down into the nooks and crannies, catching the smallest pieces of remains. Workers would then spread out the sludge, let it dry, and comb for bone and tissue fragments.

According to a memo from Design and Construction Department official Bruce Rottner, extra requests "would hamper the work of the ... transition team, potentially delaying the sign-off by two weeks."

Matthew Monahan, department spokesman, said the intent of that correspondence did not deal with human remains specifically, but rather the agency's overall effort to clean up the site and eliminate safety hazards in preparation for turning it over the Port Authority.

A powerwashing would not necessarily have reached the 12 subterranean cavities now being opened and picked through this week by teams of forensic anthropologists. But Skyler said there may be many more underground areas to examine.

All involved agencies have also been asked to go back and recall how and when they inspected the buildings on the site's outskirts. Hundreds of bone fragments were recently found on the roof of a skyscraper that had been closed since the attack.

None of the newly unearthed bones has been identified, but the medical examiner's office has DNA profiles of the victims on file and is working to match the remains. Thousands of the 20,000 pieces recovered during the main excavation still have not yielded matches.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday that the cleanup was "a heroic job ... by people who really dedicated themselves — firefighters who had lost sons and brothers, construction workers who worked in difficult conditions where they had lots of heavy machinery and there was a lot of pressure to do things quickly."

He added: "And I think, on balance, they did a magnificent job."

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Halloween Scoop: Lieberman Tries on Jack Murtha Mask in Effort to Trick Voters

Huffington Post
Arianna Huffington
Halloween Scoop: Lieberman Tries on Jack Murtha Mask in Effort to Trick Voters

Have you decided what you are going to be for Halloween? Joe Lieberman has: he's going to dress up as Jack Murtha.

Lieberman has been trying out his costume on the campaign trail in Connecticut, desperately trying to trick voters into thinking that he's against the war in Iraq so he can treat himself to their support.

"No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do," said Lieberman last week. "I have been very critical of a lot of the mistakes the Bush administration has made in Iraq."

Lieberman clearly hopes that by paying lip service to being against the war he can confuse voters into forgetting that he was a lead sponsor of the resolution authorizing the war, has been a bellicose backer of the president's failed policy ever since -- repeatedly voting against efforts to change course in Iraq -- and continues to attack Ned Lamont for working to end the war.

And here's the really scary part: Lieberman's masquerade is working. After losing the Democratic primary, he dumped his war hawk outfit in the trash, slipped on his Murtha mask, and began to steadily increase his lead in the polls.

Of course, Joe Lieberman isn't the first politician to disguise himself with "I want to help end the war" rhetoric while continuing to subvert all genuine efforts to bring the war to an end.

Back in 1969, Richard Nixon attempted the same charade, talking like a man committed to bringing our troops home from Vietnam while aggressively working to expand the war. Indeed, the rhetorical parallels between Nixon in '69 and Lieberman in '06 are striking.

Here are a few examples. The Nixon quotes are all from a speech he gave on November 3, 1969 -- 3 years and 9,000 dead American soldiers before U.S. involvement in Vietnam actually ended. Lieberman's words are from this year's Senate campaign.

"I want to end the war." - Richard Nixon, 11/3/69
"I want to help end the war in Iraq." - Joe Lieberman, 8/11/06

"Many others -- I among them -- have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted." -- Richard Nixon, 11/3/69
"I have been very critical of a lot of the mistakes the Bush administration has made in Iraq." -- Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06

"It is a plan that will end the war and serve the cause of peace." -- Richard Nixon, 11/3/69
"I recently, again, issued a 10-point plan to get the job done [in Iraq]." -- Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06

"I want peace as much as you do." -- Richard Nixon, 11/3/69
"No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do." -- Joe Lieberman, 10/18/06

The Lamont campaign is planning to release a video tomorrow that will juxtapose clips of Nixon and Lieberman making these claims. The effect is spooky and unsettling. The ghosts of Nixon and his want-to-end-the-war lies (as well as of those 9,000 dead U.S. soldiers) should haunt the final two weeks of the Lieberman-Lamont race.

Don't let the masquerade fool you. A vote for Ned Lamont is a vote to end the war in Iraq; a vote for Joe Lieberman is a vote to stay the course.

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