Bali bombers' execution date set

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

should we turn as muslim haters, sorry, i can´t, i did not skip the school,
so i remember what has been done in name of (pick your god) blah blah blah.

Video: Bush endorses McCain and Palin

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me@rescam.org

McCain for President

Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post

October 24, 2008

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain. I'm not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it's over before it's over. I'm talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they're left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe -- neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) -- yelling "Stop!" I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I'd rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I'll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The "erratic" temperament issue, for example. As if McCain's risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the "erratic" is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the "dirty campaign" pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports "cutting Social Security benefits in half." And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain's critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What's astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama's most egregious association -- with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the past year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There's just no comparison. Obama's own running mate warned this week that Obama's youth and inexperience will invite a crisis -- indeed a crisis "generated" precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he's been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

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me@rescam.org

McCain for President

Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post

October 24, 2008

Contrarian that I am, I'm voting for John McCain.

"I'm shocked!" he said, sarcastically.

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Media bias? Some journalists have already voted.

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

October 25, 2008

We usually don't put much stock in claims of media bias, since political candidates and campaigns in both parties have a knack for blaming the messenger for their inability to get out the message.

But there are times when the partisanship and favoritism are so apparent that they cannot be denied. This presidential election is such an occasion.

According to a survey released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, American voters overwhelmingly believe the media want Barack Obama to win the election. By a margin of 70 percent to 9 percent, voters say most journalists are hoping for an Obama victory. Eight percent of voters believe journalists don't favor either candidate, and 13 percent say they don't know which candidate has journalists' support.

And where would voters get such an idea? A separate study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism looks at the campaign coverage in recent weeks and finds what you might expect if you consume a lot of news: McCain's press has been more negative than positive, and Obama has received more positive coverage than negative.

In the case of the presidential race, the media aren't fooling anyone with their pretense of objectivity. Little wonder that Americans have such a low opinion of the journalism profession when they perceive reporters and editors as something less than honest brokers. Those of us in the opinion business are supposed to take sides. You might even say that we're supposed to be biased. But that isn't the case for our colleagues in the reporting ranks. Too often, journalists covering the presidential campaign have blurred this distinction.

In this election, too many supposedly objective journalists have made their first choice perfectly clear.

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McCain-Obama Dance-Off

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"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

And now for something different... (a Misfit WTF moment)

Negotiating a truce with the Taliban

DAVID IGNATIUS
THE WASHINGTON POST

October 27, 2008

As U.S. and European officials ponder what to do about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, they are coming to a perhaps surprising conclusion: The simplest way to stabilize the country may be to negotiate a truce with the Taliban fundamentalists who were driven from power by the United States in 2001.

The question policymakers are pondering, in fact, isn't whether to negotiate with the Taliban, but when. There's a widespread view among Bush administration officials and U.S. military commanders that it's too soon for serious talks, because any negotiation now would be from a position of weakness. Some argue for a U.S. troop buildup and an aggressive military campaign next year to secure Afghan population centers, followed by negotiations.

How the worm turns: A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that the United States would consider any rapprochement with the Taliban militants who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden as he planned the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the painful experience of Iraq and Afghanistan has convinced many U.S. commanders that if you can take an enemy off the battlefield through negotiations, that's better than getting pinned down in protracted combat.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the argument for negotiations with the Taliban bluntly on Oct. 9, during a meeting in Budapest with NATO allies who are wearying of the conflict. “There has to be ultimately – and I'll underscore ultimately – reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this,” Gates told reporters. “That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us.”

Gen. David Petraeus, the new CENTCOM commander who has overall responsibility for the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has made similar arguments. He believes that the United States must work to separate the “reconcilables” among the Taliban from those who are allied with al-Qaeda, and draw the moderates into the government. Petraeus successfully pursued that strategy with Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq – encouraging them to break with al-Qaeda, and then forming alliances with them.

Petraeus believes that an effort to co-opt the Afghan insurgency should probably be accompanied by a stronger U.S. troop presence, just as it was in Iraq. But he argues that it's a mistake to think that there's a purely military solution in either country. “You can't kill or capture your way out of this,” he explains.

A move to negotiate with the Taliban is already under way, perhaps prematurely, thanks to a quiet diplomatic push by Saudi Arabia. Late last month, at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Saudi King Abdullah met in Mecca with representatives of the Taliban and other Afghan insurgent groups headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, who was represented in Mecca by his brother Qayoum Karzai, supported the Saudi mediation. “We're at the very early stages now, but we do have hope for the future,” Qayoum Karzai told Agence France-Presse after the talks ended.

President Karzai is said to have demanded that the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, publicly renounce bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as a condition for further talks. A Taliban representative took this demand to Mullah Omar in his hideout in Afghanistan and returned to Mecca with a positive answer, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Mullah Omar has sent the Saudis a list of seven demands of his own, according to this source. Among the items on the Taliban agenda are: a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan; a role for Taliban representatives in provincial and national government; assimilation of Taliban fighters into the Afghan army; and amnesty for guerrillas who fought against the United States.

The Saudis have proposed a second round of discussions in Mecca in early December, when the Hajj pilgrimage season begins. U.S. officials are said to be skeptical that anything useful would come from the exercise, but France and Britain – increasingly worried about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan – appear to be encouraging the Saudi effort. Some Pakistani government and army leaders are also supportive.

It would be political suicide for Barack Obama or John McCain to suggest that America reach an accommodation with Taliban fighters who once aided al-Qaeda. But Gates notes that we reached just such an accord in Iraq with Sunni insurgents who had the blood of Americans on their hands. “At the end of the day, that's how most wars end,” he said.

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Reconstructing the global economy

JIM HOAGLAND
THE WASHINGTON POST

October 27, 2008

It is the global economy this time, stupid.

Even the Bush administration now accepts that serious international economic coordination is needed to overcome the shattering financial crisis that has reduced the final days of the U.S. election season to slogan-mongering irrelevance.

The campaign promises of Barack Obama and John McCain – to revitalize the national economy single-handedly while painlessly providing expensive new benefits to the electorate – are the political equivalent of collateralized debt obligations or junk bonds. This crisis is international in nature and can only be resolved by sustained international reform and greater interdependence.

That will be true whether it is Obama or McCain who takes office on Jan. 20. The victor will necessarily share global leadership as no American president has since World War II. The first vital question is: Share with whom? A quiet struggle to determine which countries will decide the shape of a new international financial architecture is already under way among the world's presidents, prime ministers, kings and emirs.

There is some good news on this front. Led by Britain and France, other nations are providing creative ideas and fresh energy in the hunt for solutions to the worldwide credit crash. A non-ideological, action-oriented common approach is being forged by the immense dangers the system faces. President-elect Obama or McCain will find capable partners ready for a new pattern of global leadership that must be rooted in pragmatism.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown (and Mervyn King, the adept head of Britain's central bank) usefully galvanized thinking in Washington on partially nationalizing banks at a crucial moment earlier this nerve-wracking month. The principles that Brown has laid out to guide government action in rescuing the private sector strip away old ideologies of the left and the right. He has converted New Labor's romantic Third Way philosophy into a desperate Only Way (to prevent disaster) imperative.

And French President Nicolas Sarkozy has constructively hammered away for months at the need for a new Bretton Woods agreement – that is, for an overhaul of the international financial institutions and rules that have prevailed for six decades. He finds ways to represent all points on the political spectrum, at different times, or at the same time, as need demands.

When the two met at Camp David on Oct. 18, President Bush reluctantly agreed to host the first in the series of meetings among global leaders to redesign the global financial architecture. It was one last bitter pill to be swallowed by Bush, who has had to toss, piecemeal, his unfettered free-market ideology into history's junkyard in his eight years in office. This time Bush acted to keep his successor's options open.

Sarkozy wanted to anchor the opening round of talks in the Group of 8 industrial powers that unites North America, Europe, Japan and Russia, and then go on an expanded 14-nation session that would have brought in developing countries led by China, India and Egypt, according to U.S. and French sources. He also suggested that the opening talks be held in New York.

Bush ruled out New York, wanting to eliminate any suggestion that the new effort would be overseen by the U.N. But he did make a bow to developing countries by agreeing to host a meeting of the G-20, a forum of affluent and emerging nations that, not so coincidentally, will be headed next year by Britain's Brown.

Bush's G-20 stratagem brings into the talks one much-needed participant – Saudi Arabia, which was not on Sarkozy's list – and dilutes the potentially unhelpful influence of G-8 member Russia.

The Saudis are not just U.S. friends; they hold the key to world energy prices. According to U.S. officials, the Saudis put extra oil onto world markets earlier this year to restrain price spikes. They also possess enormous cash reserves, and have lately been willing to exert constructive leadership on Middle East political issues. So Bush is right to host Saudi King Abdullah with 18 other leaders at a White House dinner on Nov. 14, according to current plans.

The only important decision to come out of the Nov. 15 talks is likely to be when and where to meet again, and perhaps to link a conclusion of the current round of World Trade Organization negotiations to this new process.

But this gathering will be important as a symbol of the launching of a new era, in which new balances between consumers and producers should be established, and past financial wrongdoing is vigorously exposed and punished. If Bretton Woods II leads to those two results, we should all support it.

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me@rescam.org

2001 OBAMA: TRAGEDY THAT 'REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH' NOT PURSUED BY SUPREME COURT

McCain Labels Obama 'The Redistributor'...

Boehner Hits 'Redistributive Change'...

BIDEN GRILLED BY NEWS ANCHOR: IS OBAMA MARXIST?

YOU'RE PUNISHED: OBAMA CAMPAIGN CUTS OFF TV STATION...

ANOTHER: Biden riled by Philly CBS affiliate anchors' questioning...

McCain warns against Dem takeover...

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Noxious analogy - Comparing GOP, Nazi rallies reflects on media

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

October 28, 2008

Decades from now, when The Lifetime Channel does a special on “Great Love Affairs of the 21st Century,” the first entry is sure to be the Barack Obama-national media coupling of 2008. What's going on now is simply stunning.

Consider the readiness of journalists to liken McCain-Palin rallies to Nazi rallies in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. It's not just angry bloggers. In the Oct. 28 New Yorker, Steve Coll – the admired former managing editor of The Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize winner for both reporting and a nonfiction book on terrorism – became the latest.

These people have lost their minds. The history books are full of revolting accounts of what actually happened at Nazi rallies – the ritual denunciations and calls for the deaths of Jews, Gypsies, Czechs, Russians, etc.; the harassment of nearby onlookers and storekeepers who “looked” Jewish or who had “Jewish” hairstyles; the waving of the Nazis' quasi-sacred “blood banner”; Adolph Hitler's pronouncements that Nazism was nothing less than a holy order that would endure 1,000 years; the processions of Germans in traditional clothing declaring Hitler the embodiment of Germany's greatness and its renaissance from the humiliation of World War I.

Oh, yeah, that sure sounds like a McCain-Palin rally.

Steve Coll should be ashamed. But, then, so should many others in the national media. Now John McCain's fans finally realize why Hillary Clinton's backers were so upset.


Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

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It's still possible for McCain to win

WILLIAM KRISTOL
THE NEW YORK TIMES

October 28, 2008

“My center is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I attack!”

That's the message supposedly sent by Gen. Ferdinand Foch of France to his commanding general, Joseph Joffre, during the crucial First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. The French and British counterattacks succeeded. The German army, after advancing for a month, was forced back.

Here in the United States, after more than a month of Democratic advances, it's the Republican center that's giving way, and some on the political right who are in retreat. Barack Obama's campaign is marching toward the biggest nonincumbent Democratic presidential victory since 1932, and the Democratic Party is fighting its way toward its best overall presidential and congressional year since 1964.

Situation not-so-excellent. Time for John McCain to attack – or, rather, finally to make his case.

The heart of that case has to be this: reminding voters that when they elect a president, they're not just electing a super-Treasury secretary or a higher-level head of Health and Human Services. They're electing a commander in chief in time of war.

The McCain campaign intends, I gather, to return to the commander in chief theme with an event in Florida tomorrow showcasing former secretaries of state and retired senior military officers. But why not instead showcase young Iraq vets? These young soldiers and Marines can testify eloquently to the success of the “surge” that John McCain championed, and to the disaster and dishonor that would have followed Obama's preferred path of withdrawal.

As for the future in Iraq, the respected foreign policy analyst Michael O'Hanlon, a Democrat, endorsed Obama this past weekend. But O'Hanlon also wrote on Politico that Obama's Iraq position is “extremely risky,” and that “getting all American combat forces out of Iraq by April 2010, a position he has held while we were losing the war, during the comeback phase, and now while we are winning, is very imprudent and I continue to hope and pray that he rethinks it.”

McCain could point out that hope is nice and prayer is good. But, he could ask: With respect to our national security, do we really want to elect a president on a hope and a prayer?

That has to be the substantive core of his closing argument. But style and tone matter, too. Last week's New York Times/CBS News poll showed 64 percent of voters saying McCain is spending more time attacking the other candidate than explaining what he would do as president. Just 22 percent say the same of Obama.

When you're in a hole, stop digging. McCain could order his campaign to pull all negative ads, mailers and robocalls.

For that matter, he might as well muzzle the campaign. McCain campaign senior staff members now seem to be spending more time criticizing one another than Obama, and more time defending their own reputations than pursuing a McCain-Palin victory. McCain should simply say that for the last week of the campaign, no staff member is authorized to speak to the media about anything beyond logistical and scheduling matters.

Then McCain and Sarah Palin can spend the final week speaking for themselves. They should throw themselves open full time to the media. Could the press coverage get worse? Next Sunday, McCain and Palin could divide up the talk shows. Sarah Palin live! Lots of people would tune in.

There could be one other big moment this week. Obama has bought a half-hour of television in prime time tomorrow. McCain and Palin could buy time Thursday night – giving voters some incentive to keep an open mind at least until McCain and Palin get to make their case.

Palin could speak first, reprising her fine recent speeches on women's issues and special needs kids – speeches that got almost no press coverage. She could then introduce her running mate, reminding people of his heroism, and pointing out, as she does on the stump, that he is the only candidate “who has truly fought for America.”

As for McCain, he needs to speak about America's greatness and its future; about how the ingenuity and toughness of the American people will turn around this financial crisis just as the ingenuity of Gen. David Petraeus and the toughness of his fighting men and women turned around Iraq; about how America's spirit was not undone by a terrorist attack, and will not be undone by a financial mess; about how the naysayers will once again be proved wrong; about how America will emerge from its troubles stronger than ever and will win its battles at home and abroad.

McCain has a chance to close this election in a big and positive way. He has a chance to get voters to rise above the distractions and to set aside the petty aspects of the campaign. He has a chance to remind them why they have admired him, and perhaps to persuade them to vote for him on Nov. 4.

Would this turn things around? Unlikely. But why not take a shot?

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This was in this afternoon's online edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education

76 Nobel Scientists Throw Support to Obama

Forget about the “Washington elite.” Barack Obama has wracked up endorsements from one of the most exclusive clubs of all—living Nobel laureates. Seventy six of those medal-toting scientists have signed onto a letter supporting the Democratic candidate, apparently more than have come out in favor of any other candidate in the past.

These intellectuals, including all three American winners from 2008, criticized the Bush administration for lowering federal research expenditures (which is largely controlled by Congress) and for injecting politics into the federal government’s scientific advisory process. According to the letter: “During the administration of George W. Bush, vital parts of our country’s scientific enterprise have been damaged by stagnant or declining federal support. The government’s scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations.”

The letter does not mention the McCain/Palin ticket, but recent critical comments about scientific research by the Republican candidates would certainly not be likely to win over many top researchers.

Richard Monastersky | Posted on Wednesday October 29, 2008

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Forget about the “Washington elite.” Barack Obama has wracked up endorsements from one of the most exclusive clubs of all

THIS 'election' is gonna be a real 'eye opener' to those among us who still 'believe' that we live in a democratic society... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

One-way political discourse

RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.
THE UNION-TRIBUNE

October 29, 2008

Joe Biden and I agree on something: This has become one mean and ugly campaign – although we'd cite different examples to make the point.

Recently in Greenville, N.C., Biden complained about the tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign, the inference by some that Barack Obama is a risky choice, and the pointed questions the Democratic vice presidential candidate had fielded the week before from a TV anchor in Orlando, Fla., including one about whether Obama's thoughts on redistribution of income amounted to Marxism.

“This has been a pretty mean campaign,” Biden said. “You know, folks ... some of the innuendo is pretty ugly.”

When I think about mean and ugly, I think about the racism that has come from both those who oppose Obama and those who support him.

There is a Republican women's group in San Bernardino County that sent out a newsletter this month joking that Obama, if elected, would appear on food stamps instead of dollar bills. The mailer included an illustration of “Obama Bucks” – a picture of the Democratic candidate surrounded by watermelon and fried chicken.

But there's another kind of unpleasantness we don't hear enough about: liberal racism.

When Milwaukee radio talk-show host James T. Harris, a black conservative, stood up at a town hall meeting and pleaded with John McCain to step up his attacks against Obama, Harris was inundated with hate mail and death threats and called a “Sambo,” “Uncle Tom” and a “sellout.” Harris said he believes many of the e-mails came from whites.

It takes nerve for someone who isn't black to accuse a black person of not being black enough.

I'm familiar with the concept. After defending Sarah Palin, I heard from a member of the angry left who wrote: “Your (sic) from a Third World country, or your family is, stop trying to be white.” I also heard from baby boomer activists who regret – as they see it – yanking me off that landscaping crew and sending me to the Ivy League. Or as one put it: “Unbelievable that you can sit there and defend Sarah Palin. I broke down doors for you to have a foot into the society you now participate in.”

When I praised McCain, a liberal asked: “What are you, the Uncle Tom of Latinos?” She advised, “Make your people proud because you are shaming them.”

When trying to assert control over freethinking Latinos and African-Americans, the liberal catchword is “disappointed.” Lately, I've received dozens of e-mails from readers who use that word to describe how they feel about me. In the liberal tradition, most of the missives are condescending. Like this: “At one time, your articles were interesting to read but ... it seems you have lost your way.” Or this: “You are feeding the ignorant and twisting truths so badly they become lies ...One day my words will resonate, sorry you lost your way in the meantime.”

To read their complaints, it seems the last time I had my bearings was – coincidentally – the last time I wrote something with which they agreed. It's part of how broken our political discourse has become. We're not allowed to say that we think either Obama or McCain would make a fine president. We can't agree to disagree; we have to destroy the other side. We're trapped in an all-or-nothing paradigm where partisans demand complete agreement and undying allegiance. We don't allow for nuance, complexity or unpredictability. And we have no interest in being challenged, so we only take in the media sources that reinforce what we already believe and tune out the rest.

That is where we have arrived, and many Americans know it. One reader who sees the good and the bad in each camp wrote: “I used to love politics and having good round-table discussions with friends and family on various subjects, but no more. The anger ... has just flat worn me out. I've decided to no longer waste precious energy and calories on a subject that just brings negative emotions and turmoil.”

With too much acrimony and too little tolerance, our politics have become petty and poisonous. That has to change. We're not going to agree on everything. But we're a better country than this. Let's start acting like it.

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me@rescam.org

Boringly sensible - Palin's nonextremist immigration stand

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

October 29, 2008

Since Sarah Palin arrived on the national stage, her views on immigration reform have been under wraps and the subject of intense speculation from across the political spectrum.

Now, in a recent interview with Univision, the Spanish-language television network, Palin has staked out a perfectly reasonable position. We know that her position is reasonable not because she agrees with our point of view, though she does, but because she immediately came under fire from the extremes at the right and the left.

You remember our friends at the extremes. They're the folks who complain about everyone and everything, who refuse to say anything positive about anyone else's view, and who have nothing to offer but absolutism and acrimony. They claim to be holding onto their principles, but they're really holding up immigration reform by refusing to compromise.

On the right, that means clinging to the fairy tale that we can round up and deport 12 million illegal immigrants, and that they would stay deported. On the left, it means refusing to accept that the United States has the right to protect its borders. In between these two positions lies the sensible center.

And that is where you find Palin. When Univision anchor Jorge Ramos asked the Alaska governor how she would deal with illegal immigrants and whether they should all be deported, Palin said there was “no way” that the United States would round up 12 million illegal immigrants – for reasons both economic and humane. When Ramos asked if she supported amnesty for illegal immigrants, Palin responded that, no, she did not and that people need to follow the rules and take their place behind those who are migrating legally.

And when Ramos pressed on and asked her if she supported giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, Palin said yes, she did, because she understands “why people would want to be in America ... to seek the safety and prosperity, the opportunities, the health that is here.” Finally, she said she wanted people to “be treated equally and fairly in this country.”

That makes perfect sense. If there are fines, conditions and rules to follow, that is not an amnesty. It is earned legalization. Yet, no one is happy with Palin's comments. Those on the nativist right are blasting Palin and accusing her of supporting amnesty, despite her denials. And those on the open-border left are upset over the part about following the rules and having to get in line behind those migrating legally.

The problem isn't Palin. Her position is so sensible as to be almost boring. Moreover, it is a position shared by not only John McCain but Barack Obama and Joe Biden. There is no daylight between the two sides on this issue. The problem is with the debate, and with those who would rather fight than find solutions. There is no way that Palin could have pleased those at the extremes. But as far as many other Americans are concerned, she did fine and doesn't deserve the criticism she's getting.

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Presidential Endorsement Scorecard for student newspapers

UWIRE's Presidential Endorsement Scorecard tracks university student newspapers' editorial board endorsements for the 2008 presidential race.

Click Here for a complete list of what your school's student newspaper did.

Total editorial boards endorsing so far: 50, according to UWIRE's count as of 10/30.

Barack Obama - 49
John McCain - 1

(The one endorsement for McCain came from the Daily Mississippian, University of Mississippi.)

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The Stevens lesson - Conviction, reaction telling about Washington

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

October 30, 2008

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' conviction on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts he received from an oil services executive and others was not a surprise. During his trial, the brusque Republican lawmaker - the king of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" politics - all but admitted his crimes and didn't bother to mask his contempt for federal prosecutors.

But jurors couldn't ignore the overwhelming evidence. Consider this court back-and-forth over a $2,695 massage chair that a businessman provided to Stevens seven years ago:

“The chair is still at your house?”

“Yes.”

“How is that not a gift?”

“He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift. He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift.”

“Where is that chair now?”

“In our house. We have lots of things in our house that don't belong to us, ma'am.”

What was also unsurprising was Stevens' utter lack of contrition and his depiction of himself as being the victim of unscrupulous prosecutors. As with disgraced former San Diego Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Stevens became so used to slimy practices that he actually saw them as part of his job.

What is surprising, however, is that the Washington establishment – at least in the form of The Washington Post – also has become so accustomed to these practices that it could barely bring itself to denounce Stevens. In an editorial, the newspaper opined that it was “difficult not to feel some sadness” over the guilty verdict, given Stevens' years of service to his home state, and the newspaper dismissed Stevens' crimes as “petty.”

Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees. Stevens' crimes against democracy go far beyond lying about gifts. He has been a prime player in the emergence of an institutionalized pay-for-play culture in Washington – an unapologetic, aggressive advocate of politics as a game of spoils.

Stevens' fall from grace isn't what's sad. What's sad is his rise to power – and the rise to power of so many senators and representatives who are similarly ethically bereft.

Now, Alaska voters will deliver their own verdict on Stevens. The 84-year-old is up for re-election on Tuesday, and at least some state political analysts believe voters will buy Stevens' argument that he is being persecuted.

We find it hard to believe a convicted felon could be re-elected. But the sad fact is, if he does return to Washington, the felon will fit right in. In Congress, Ted Stevens' attitudes about ethics are disturbingly common.

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Iraq veteran's message to Obama

US election: If Iraqis could vote it would be for McCain

Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities

Obama's half-hour self-promotion infomercial was a flop.

McCain could still win — if everything broke his way

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