Climate change belief given same legal status as religion (Stephen Adams and Louise Gray, 03 Nov 2009, Daily Telegraph)
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations". [...]
John Bowers QC, representing Grainger, had argued that adherence to climate change theory was "a scientific view rather than a philosophical one", because "philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof."
Palestinians in statehood warning (BBC, 11/04/09)
Palestinians might have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements, the chief Palestinian negotiator said.At a news conference in the West Bank, Saeb Erekat said it was a "moment of truth" for President Mahmoud Abbas.
SC man gets 3 years in prison for sex with horse (AP, 11/04/09)
- A South Carolina man caught on video having sex with a horse was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty for the second time in two years to abusing the creature. [...][Rodell] Vereen was arrested in July after Barbara Kenley caught him entering the barn at Lazy B Stables in Longs, about 20 miles northeast of Myrtle Beach. She had been staking out the stable for more than a week after setting up a surveillance camera and videotaping Vereen's assault on her 21-year-old horse named Sugar.
Kenley said she became suspicious because her horse was acting strange and getting infections, and she noticed things were moved around the barn and dirt was piled up near the horse's stall.
It wasn't the first time she'd caught Vereen. In late 2007, Kenley found him asleep in the hay after assaulting her horse. For that offense, he also pleaded guilty to buggery, received probation and had to register as a sex offender.
Hobson’s Choice: The antigovernment protesters in Iran, who had been careful to distance themselves from America, have just asked the West not to sell them out. (Babak Dehghanpisheh, 11/04/09, Newsweek )
President Obama reacted standoffishly to this summer's contested election in Iran, implying that he didn't want to poison the cause of protesters by associating them too closely with the United States. As a result, he was flayed by democracy advocates who said his support was too tepid to inspire the Iranian protesters. Today, we learned that they may have a point.This afternoon Iran celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the American embassy takeover in Tehran. The custom is for annual official demonstrations to denounce the Great Satan, but this year was different. Although the government had warned reform-minded protesters (who still come out on major occasions since the election unrest subsided) to stay home, tens of thousands of them hit the streets again today—to protest against their own government. They chanted, "Death to dictator," as usual, to protest President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's contested election in June. But, for the first time anyone can remember, they also yelled, "Obama, Obama! Either with them or with us!" The "them" in the chant means Ahmadinejad and the regime writ large.
Lessons from the 2009 election results (Michael Barone, 11/04/09, Washington Examiner)
[H]ere I want to credit for this observations longtime Democratic pollster and political analyst Pat Caddell, affluent suburban voters moved sharply toward Republicans in 2009.Bergen County, New Jersey, a 56%-42% Corzine constituency in 2005, came within a point or two of voting for Christie, and in Virginia McDonnell carried 51%-49% Fairfax County—Republican for years but recently in cultural issues and with an increasing immigrant population Democratic (60%-39% Obama in 2008). I
n addition, Westchester County, New York, voted 58%-42% for a Republican county execctive after voting almost exactly the opposite way, in a race involving the same two candidates, four years before . The Philadelphia suburban counties, increasingly Democratic in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008, voted Republican in a partisan race for the Supreme Court in 2009.
From the 1996 election up through and including 2008., affluent counties in the East, Midwest and West have trended Democratic, largely through distaste for the religious and cultural conservatives whom voters there have seen (not without reason) as dominant in the Republican party. Now, with the specter of higher tax rates and a vastly expanded public sector, they may be—possibly—headed in the other direction. An interesting trend to watch.
Obama: Shutter failing schools and bring down the teacher 'firewall': In a tough talk on education, the president spells out criteria for winning $4.35 billion in federal grants. He challenges rules that say teachers should not be judged by how their students perform. (Christi Parsons, November 4, 2009, LA Times)
Declaring that there should be "no excuse for mediocrity" in public schools, President Obama this afternoon pledged to push for recruitment of better teachers, better pay for those who succeed and dismissal of those who let their students down.When principals are trying to determine which teachers are doing well, he said, they should be able to consider student performance as part of the evaluation.
And when schools are failing, "they should be shut down," Obama said. "But when innovative public schools are succeeding, they shouldn't be stifled, they should be supported."
The president's tough words -- fighting words, for some union officials -- came as Obama spoke to students and teachers at a charter middle school here.
President Obama: One Year After Winning it All (Rasmussen Reports, November 04, 2009)
The core promise made down the stretch to voters by candidate Obama was a pledge to cut taxes for 95% of all Americans. Now, more than 40% expect a tax hike and hardly anybody expects their taxes to go down. Not surprisingly, 74% of voters now view the president as politically liberal.Just 33% believe the stimulus package has helped, and most opposed other economic initiatives including the takeover of General Motors and the cash-for-clunkers program. Among the priorities established by the president, voters consistently see deficit reduction as the most important but least likely to be achieved.
The health care plan proposed by the president is struggling and is supported by just 42% of voters nationwide. Confidence in the War on Terror spiked during the first weeks of the Obama administration but has now fallen to the lowest level in nearly three years. On a related topic, one of the president’s earliest initiatives, his promise to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, initially received mixed reviews but is now opposed by most Americans.
Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters now expect politics in Washington to become more partisan over the coming year.
Is Obama an alien? ‘V’ and the age of hysteria (Bernie Quigley, 11/04/09, The Hill)
The appearance of “V,” a refried UFO show on ABC, suggests that President Barack Obama is a dangerous alien. What’s interesting is that this new series is by a major network that went unconscionably gaga over Obama last year.Such reportage — the gushing, idolatrous positivism issued by Katie Couric and Charles Gibson in the 2008 race, a perfect, present-day equivalent of Aldous Huxley’s “feelies” — is viewed here as it is with Huxley: as totalitarian. Elizabeth Mitchell, Earth Mother incarnate from the “Lost” series, back from True North to form an underground, is definitely worth the watch. Maybe they are cruising under the censors as they do in “Lost,” like the 19th-century Russians did, but the insurgents here very definitely view the federal government with its “sleeper cells” bringing “endless wars,” duplicitously “spreading hope,” pitching healthcare bribes to the clerks and proles and cultivating the blind devotion of the young in the Maoist and Leninist traditions as totalitarian. This could get interesting.
Obama's Honeymoon is Over: One year after Obama won the presidency, many are questioning him on the economy and Afghanistan (Kenneth T. Walsh, November 4, 2009, US News)
A year later, much of Obama's initial luster has faded. His job approval ratings now hover at just over 50 percent, polarization in Washington is as bad as ever, and much of his agenda has stalled on Capitol Hill. Unemployment is near 10 percent, provoking widespread anxiety in the middle class. Only 36 percent of Americans say the country is heading in the right direction, while 52 percent say things are "off on the wrong track," according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. All this indicates a more pessimistic attitude than Americans exhibited at the start of the Obama era.Just as important, the nation is deeply divided over Obama's pushing the government into more areas of national life. Forty-eight percent say government "is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals," while 46 percent say government should do more to solve problems, the NBC/Wall Street Journal survey found. Many say that Obama's spending programs, which were enacted by the Democratic majority in Congress and have created a $1.4 trillion budget deficit this year alone, are profligate. Most Americans still like their 48-year-old leader as an individual, considering him a good family man and role model, according to the polls, but charisma and good intentions are no longer enough.
Zelaya Stumbles in Bid to Lead Honduras Again (Reuters, 11/04/09)
Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya may have jeopardized his bid to return to power by agreeing to a U.S.-brokered pact to end a four-month political crisis because the pact contains no guarantees for him. [...]The United States, Honduras's top trading partner, has stopped pushing for Zelaya to be reinstated as part of ending Central America's worst political crisis in two decades.
"The accord favors the de facto government," said political consultant Thelma Mejia. "It's a straitjacket for Zelaya."
Even safe Democrats feeling at risk (JONATHAN ALLEN, 11/4/09, Politico)
Jim Costa’s path to reelection isn’t the toughest among House Democrats, but that doesn’t mean the California Democrat feels safe voting for a House health care overhaul bill that he says is too costly and does too little to help rural districts like his own.“I think we’re all vulnerable next year,” said Costa, who won with nearly three-quarters of the vote last year in a district that President Barack Obama carried with 60 percent.
Costa is one of a handful of moderate House Democrats from relatively stable districts who aren’t yet on board with the health care bill and whose “no” votes could force colleagues in more marginal districts to cast offsetting — and potentially perilous — “yes” votes.
Top Iranian cleric: Taking over US Embassy in 1979 was wrong (JPOST.COM, 11/04/09)
"The occupation of the American embassy at the start had the start of Iranian revolutionaries and the late Imam Khomeini and I supported it too," [Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri] was quoted by Agence France Presse as saying."But considering the negative repercussions and the high sensitivity which was created among the American people and which still exists, it was not the right thing to do."
GOP moving ahead in Wash. statehouse contests (CURT WOODWARD, 11/04/09, Associated Press)
The only Democratic legislator from rural Eastern Washington lost to a Republican challenger Tuesday.With about 60 percent of the expected vote reported, Republican Terry Nealey defeated freshman Rep. Laura Grant, D-Walla Walla, about 57 percent to 43 percent. Grant was appointed to the seat early this year after the death of her father, Bill Grant, who held the job for more than 20 years.
In court races, it looks like the GOP cashed in on the low turnout (John Baer, 11/04/09, Philadelphia Daily News)
Pittsburgh Republican Joan Orie Melvin won the bitter if barely visible battle for state Supreme Court against Easton Democrat Jack Panella. With 93 percent of the state vote counted late last night, Orie Melvin held an insurmountable 53-47 lead.
It was a contest fueled by trial lawyers' money and partisan politics in which Orie Melvin was vastly outspent and faced a 1.2 million-voter registration deficit.
She gives the high court (currently 4-3 Democratic) a 4-3 Republican edge starting in January. That puts the GOP in the driver's seat in drawing legislative district lines after the 2010 census, which could impact state politics for a decade.
Q & A: Biologist Richard Dawkins on the evolution debate (Lori Kozlowski, November 4, 2009, LA Times)
Throughout the book, you seem to have a deep respect, almost a love, as if you are in awe of the process. Is evolution your religion?Well, I don't want to say that. [...]
In the preface, you explain that evidence for evolution grows by the day and has never been stronger. What recent evidence do you believe has been the strongest?
I think probably evidence from molecular genetics which is pretty recent. I describe the very excellent work of Richard Lenski at Michigan State on bacterial evolution.
[Lenski's long-term experiment, underway since 1988, has tracked the genetic changes that have evolved in 12 populations of originally identical E. coli bacteria.]
Focaccia: Recipe from Rima Barkett and Claudia Pruett
"Cooking Dinner: Simple Italian Family Recipes Everyone Can Make" (Contra Costa Times, 11/04/09)
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1¼ cups club soda or sparkling water
½ cup olive oil
1. The day before or two hours ahead, mix the flour, salt and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add club soda and beat for 3 minutes, starting on low speed and increasing to high. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise overnight at room temperature or in a warm place for 2 hours.
2. Pour olive oil into a rimmed 9x12 inch baking pan. Transfer dough to pan and gently spread to fill. Flip the dough over so both sides are bathed in olive oil. Make little dimples on the top of the focaccia with your fingers, then let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Make more dimples in the dough. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let stand for 10 minutes. Then cut into squares or long slices and serve the same day.
Variation: Add rosemary and thinly sliced tomatoes, zucchini and onions just before baking.
Insurance discounts for healthy habits spur debate in Washington: Safeway says it's a smart incentive: charging lower premiums for people who lose weight, quit smoking or start exercising. Some medical groups say it's a new way to exclude pre-existing conditions. (Janet Hook, November 4, 2009, LA Times)
Who could object to rewarding people who quit smoking, lose weight or start to exercise? The American Cancer Society and the American Heart Assn., for starters.Some companies are charging lower insurance premiums to workers who meet benchmarks for healthy living. The Senate's healthcare overhaul legislation would expand the trend.
But instead of cheering the proposal, some patient advocacy and health groups are worried that it could mean higher rates for less-fit Americans, possibly pricing them out of their employers' insurance plans.
"It is a way of cherry-picking," said Dick Woodruff, senior director of federal affairs for the American Cancer Society.
A referendum Mr Cameron COULD give the people (David Davis, 04th November 2009, Daily Mail)
What we should do is, in my view, clear. We should have a referendum, not on the treaty, but on the negotiating mandate that the British Government takes to the European Union.This has many virtues. It allows the British people to express their view on the future of their nation. Most of all, it gives the Government a formidable negotiating weapon.
Referendums terrify the European Commission and the political elites who run Europe. They are clear statements of the popular will. They force issues to be stated in clear and unambiguous terms. They are impossible to ignore.
That is why the European reaction to referendums is to make concessions. Look at the history. After Ireland's first rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council conceded legally binding protocols pledging to keep the treaty out of taxation policy, family and social issues (such as the right to life, abortion and euthanasia), and Ireland's traditional military neutrality.
Denmark has obtained similar opt-outs after a referendum, and the defeat in the French and Dutch referendums led to the rewrite of the original European Constitution.
So referendums are incredibly powerful weapons. What is more, they are necessary if a single nation is going to achieve any material change.
The Europeans are past masters at the permanent negotiation that makes up the federal project. They know all the tricks of isolation, pressure, delay, coalition, vague language, and institutional and judicial expansion.
They are entirely capable of repackaging rejected ideas over and over until they get them accepted. Lisbon is a good example of this. Indeed they are capable of retabling a rejected proposal five or ten years later, after the relevant national governments have changed.
So if we are to be able to manage our relationship with the European Union, let alone change it, we need to have a powerful weapon like a referendum.
Democrats See Health-Care Timetable Slipping (JANET ADAMY and PATRICK YOEST, 11/04/09, WSJ)
Time is running short for Congress to deliver a health bill to President Barack Obama before the end of the year, prompting lawmakers to prepare for the debate to carry into 2010.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated Tuesday that the chamber may not meet its goal of passing a bill in the next several weeks. "We're not going to be bound by any timelines," the Nevada Democrat said.
Gas Supplies Growing Even as Prices Fall (BEN CASSELMAN, 11/03/09, WSJ)
Energy companies started predicting a sharp cutback in the amount of natural gas pumped in the U.S. more than a year ago.
But even though gas prices now hover 30% below a year earlier, the promised reduction never came. And this week, two major natural-gas companies reported big increases in production, while a third, Devon Energy Corp., announced that its new East Texas well was yielding 31 million cubic feet of gas a day, one of the most prolific U.S. wells this year.
As a result, storage facilities are brimming with record gas supplies, and prices are likely to remain soft.
Obama's world outreach teetering (Jim Lobe, 11/05/09, Asia Times)
[D]isappointment is clearly on the rise among those here and in the region who believed that Obama's realist foreign policy strategy of "engaging" foes, and his oft-repeated determination to achieve a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict "from day one" of his presidency promised rapid improvement in Washington's standing after eight years of decline under former president George W Bush."There is a general concern now, especially in the Arab world, that the administration is not delivering with respect to any issues in the region," said Chas Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who withdrew his appointment to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC) this year in the face of a media campaign by neo-conservative critics close to Israel's Likud Party.
"I think there's been quite a difference between how Obama as a person is perceived and how the US government as an institution is perceived," he added. "I think what may be happening is that Obama is sinking into the generally negative view of the US government in the region rather than transcending it as he once did.""He started really well, particularly in his speeches in Istanbul [in April] and in Cairo [in June], in changing how the region perceives America and in setting forth a vision of the kinds of relationships he wanted," said Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Project at the New America Foundation.
"But those words have not been followed up by the kind of deep restructuring of policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians that [former President Richard] Nixon implemented toward China," he added.
'Change has come' ... or has it? (JOHN F. HARRIS, 11/4/09, Politico)
Obama may not have promised change would be easy. But he did convey what now looks like a too-glib impression that he could unite opposites and reconcile contradictions by the power of personality — hard to do when his own personality has competing strands.Obama has the soul of an ideologue. He wants to be a transformational president — unconfined by the limitations of conventional politics and determined to put a lasting mark on his era.
In his first year, he has presided over more new domestic spending than Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, did in eight years. The “big bang” agenda he laid out earlier this year on health care, energy and financial regulation unmistakably signaled his ambition to vastly expand the role of government in American life.
But Obama also has the soul of an operative. He and his West Wing team — dominated at the top by people whose expertise is in the world of campaigns and Washington maneuvers — have proved to be far more familiar political types than they admit to themselves or than was forecast by his insurgent campaign and the expansive, at times almost messianic, rhetoric that powered it.
“What surprises me most is the loss of Barack Obama as movement leader,” Malika Saada Saar, a human rights organizer, said on POLITICO’s Arena forum.
The Story of 'Operation Orchard': How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Nuclear Reactor: In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike? (Erich Follath and Holger Stark, 11/02/09, Der Spiegel))
The Israelis took a pinprick approach to dealing with the "little" Assad. In 2003, the air force conducted multiple air strikes against positions on the Syrian border, and in October Israeli fighter jets flew a low-altitude mission over Assad's residence in Damascus. It was an arrogant show of power that even had many at the Mossad shaking their heads, wondering how Assad would respond to such humiliating treatment.At that time, the nuclear plant on Euphrates had likely entered its first key phase. In the spring of 2004, the American National Security Agency (NSA) detected a suspiciously high number of telephone calls between Syria and North Korea, with a noticeably busy line of communication between the North Korean capital Pyongyang and a place in the northern Syrian desert called Al Kibar. The NSA dossier was sent to the Israeli military's "8200" unit, which is responsible for radio reconnaissance and has its antennas set up in the hills near Tel Aviv. Al-Kibar was "flagged," as they say in intelligence jargon.
In late 2006, Israeli military intelligence decided to ask the British for their opinion. But almost at the same time as the delegation from Tel Aviv was arriving in London, a senior Syrian government official checked into a hotel in the exclusive London neighborhood of Kensington. He was under Mossad surveillance and turned out to be incredibly careless, leaving his computer in his hotel room when he went out. Israeli agents took the opportunity to install a so-called "Trojan horse" program, which can be used to secretly steal data, onto the Syrian's laptop.
The hard drive contained construction plans, letters and hundreds of photos. The photos, which were particularly revealing, showed the Al Kibar complex at various stages in its development. At the beginning -- probably in 2002, although the material was undated -- the construction site looked like a treehouse on stilts, complete with suspicious-looking pipes leading to a pumping station at the Euphrates. Later photos show concrete piers and roofs, which apparently had only one function: to modify the building so that it would look unsuspicious from above. In the end, the whole thing looked as if a shoebox had been placed over something in an attempt to conceal it. But photos from the interior revealed that what was going on at the site was in fact probably work on fissile material.
One of the photos showed an Asian in blue tracksuit trousers, standing next to an Arab. The Mossad quickly identified the two men as Chon Chibu and Ibrahim Othman. Chon is one of the leading members of the North Korean nuclear program, and experts believe that he is the chief engineer behind the Yongbyon plutonium reactor. Othman is the director of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.
By now, both Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad were on high alert. After being briefed, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked: "Will the reactor be up and running soon, and is there is a need to take action?" Hard to say, the experts said. The prime minister asked for more detailed information, preferably from first hand.
The CIA Catches a Big Fish
Istanbul , a CIA safe house for high-profile defectors, February 2007. An Iranian general had decided to switch sides. He was a big fish, of the sort rarely caught in the nets of the CIA and the Mossad.
Ali-Reza Asgari, 63, a handsome man with a moustache, was the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon in the 1980s and became Iran's deputy defense minister in the mid-1990s. Though well-liked under the relatively liberal then-President Mohammad Khatami, Asgari fell out of favor after the election victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. Because he had branded several men close to Ahmadinejad as corrupt, there was suddenly more at stake for Asgari than his career: His life was in danger.
Sources in the intelligence community claim that Asgari's defection to the West was meticulously planned over a period of months. However Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former Iranian media attaché in Beirut who fled to Berlin in 2003 and who had known Asgari personally for many years, told SPIEGEL that the general contacted him twice to ask for help in his escape -- first from Iran in the second half of 2006 and later from Damascus. In Ebrahimi's version of events, Asgari succeeded in crossing the border into Turkey at night with the help of a smuggler. Ebrahimi says he only notified the CIA and turned his friend over to the Americans after Asgari had reached Istanbul.
But from that point on, the versions of the story coincide again. The Americans and Israelis soon discovered that the Tehran insider was an intelligence goldmine. For the Israelis, the most alarming part of Asgari's story was what he had to say about Iran's nuclear program. According to Asgari, Tehran was building a second, secret plant in addition to the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, which was already known to the West. Besides, he said, Iran was apparently funding a top-secret nuclear project in Syria, launched in cooperation with the North Koreans. But Asgari claimed he did not know any further details about the plan.
After a few days, the general's handlers flew him from Istanbul, considered relatively unsafe, to the highly secure Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt. "I brought my computer along. My entire life is in there," Asgari told his friend Ebrahimi, who identified him for the Americans. Asgari contacted Ebrahimi another two times, once from Washington and then from "somewhere in Texas." The defector wanted his friend to let his wife know that he was safe and in good hands. The Iranian authorities had announced that Asgari had been "kidnapped by the Mossad and probably killed." But then nothing further was heard from Asgari. The American authorities had apparently created a new identity for their high-level Iranian source. Ali-Reza Asgari had ceased to exist.
Maine voters reject gay-marriage law (>David Crary and Glenn Adams, 11/04/09, ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Voters in the northeastern state of Maine repealed a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed, dealing the gay rights movement a heartbreaking defeat in the corner of the country most supportive of gay marriage.Gay marriage has now lost in every single state -- 31 in all -- in which it has been put to a popular vote.
But, as Camille Paglia has said:
Homosexuality is not 'normal.' On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm; therein rests its eternally revolutionary character. Note I do not call it a challenge to the idea of the norm. Queer theorists - that wizened crew of flimflamming free-loaders - have tried to take the poststructuralist tack of claiming that there is no norm, since everything is relative and contingent. This is the kind of silly bind that word-obsessed people get into when they are deaf, dumb, and blind to the outside world. Nature exists, whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single, relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction. Penis fits vagina: no fancy linguistic game - playing can change that basic fact. However, my libertarian view, here as in regard to abortion, is that we have not only the right, but the obligation to defy nature's tyranny. The highest human identity consists precisely in such assertions of freedom again!
No one has much interest in pursuing gays into their bedrooms to punish their transgressions, but neither do we have much interest in letting them destroy one of the central institutions of our civilization.
Scozzafava Spoils Doug Hoffman's Run? (John McCormack, November 4, 2009, Weekly Standard)
With 92 percent of precincts reporting, Democrat Bill Owens claimed victory over conservative Doug Hoffman by a 49 percent to 45 percent margin. Republican Dede Scozzafava got six percent of the vote. Her name remained on the ballot though she dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat over the weekend--a move that may have been the decisive event that denied Hoffman a stunning upset Tuesday night. [...]Another factor that contributed to Hoffman's loss was that his name was buried on the ballot (see here). Watertown's Mayor Graham says that "coming off line D, it became increasingly difficult to get out of the 40s"--i.e. in the forty-percent range. "When you think about it, when you go from nothing--a guy on the street--to 46 on a minor party line is pretty good in a way, but making a statement doesn't really compare to winning."
In Iran, From Heroes to State Enemies (MICHAEL SLACKMAN, November 3, 2009, NY Times)
As Iran marks the anniversary of an event that helped define its political identity, many former hostage-takers and their allies are committed to the political opposition, and therefore pose a credible threat to the leadership’s legitimacy, analysts said.“The fact that so many of the students of ’79 eventually came to a reformist position in Iranian politics is not such a mystery when you remember that the reformist position in Iranian politics is not necessarily a pro-Western position,” said Michael Axworthy, a former British diplomat and Iran expert who lectures at the University of Exeter.
The perception that the hostage siege — once the signature event in the founding of the Islamic republic — has developed into a domestic liability is especially true this year, Iran experts said. Ever since the protests and crackdown after the disputed presidential election last summer, opposition supporters have seized on public anniversaries as a chance to take to the streets, as they are expected to on Wednesday.
Most telling, and perhaps most damning, said the Iran expert Rasool Nafisi, is the reformists’ increasingly popular slogan. It is, simply, “Iranian republic.”
Not “Islamic republic.”