Is U.S. Safer Since 9/11? Clinton and Rivals Spar

John Edwards and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at a debate for Democratic presidential candidates on Sunday in New Hampshire.

Published: June 6, 2007

The Bush administration’s efforts to thwart terrorism at home have created a fissure among the three leading Democratic presidential candidates, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton coming under attack for saying that America is safer now than before 9/11 — contrary to a popular line of argument among some Democratic officials.

In a televised debate on Sunday night, Mrs. Clinton, who has tried to minimize her differences with her rivals on commander-in-chief issues, bluntly disagreed with a main rival, former Senator John Edwards, who had just said that the administration’s so-called war on terror was little more than a slogan.

“I believe we are safer than we were,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We are not yet safe enough, and I have proposed over the last year a number of policies that I think we should be following.” More...

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9 p.m.A revealing final question about each candidate’s priority as president: Mr. Edwards said the next president’s single greatest responsibility would be to re-establish our moral authority in the world. Mrs. Clinton: “Bring our troops home.” Mr. Obama agreed about bringing the troops home first, “then moving on health care.” Mr. Richardson said he would upgrade the schools, including setting a minimum wage of $40,000 for teachers. Mr. Biden would end the war in Iraq and defuse a possible war in Iran. As he said that the next president would be “left with no margin for error,” Mrs. Clinton was nodding in agreement. Most of these comments seemed to underscore the earlier consensus that Bill Clinton could be useful on the world stage. (Mr. Kucinich said that the war could be stopped right now by not providing funding. Mr. Gravel, pointing at his fellow Democrats, said they could end the war if they want to. Mr. Dodd, with just a few seconds, said he would restore the constitutional rights in our country on his very first day as president. The Caucus from The New York Times

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2008: The Changes in Giuliani

May 29, 2007, 8:50 am

By Sarah Wheaton

As he travels around the country seeking the G.O.P. nomination, Rudolph W. Giuliani has offered a calmer side to his personality than what he often displayed while mayor of New York. The Times’s Michael Powell looks back on his political journey:

Mr. Giuliani was a Kennedy Democrat who has allied himself with Bill Clinton on issues like banning assault weapons but has also proclaimed himself a Reagan Republican. Ideological consistency is not Mr. Giuliani’s groove; leadership and destiny are. So is self-assurance. Ask Mr. Giuliani how to impose fiscal discipline on Washington, and he notes: “I’m an expert at it.” Mention New York and he says: “The turnaround was massive, palpable; nobody can really deny it.” Quiz him about presidential qualifications, and he says that there is no way to prepare, but that “being mayor of New York” comes as close as it gets.

As for terror, “I understand terrorism in a way that is equal to or exceeds anyone else,” Mr. Giuliani says.

Mr. Giuliani will drop a self-deprecating joke. When annoyance tickles at the back of his spine, he has learned to smile rather than scowl. But he suffers no deficit of self-confidence.
The Boston Globe examines how Mitt Romney’s ground game and early advertising helped him pull ahead of the Republican field in Iowa—and the new pressures that come with “frontrunner” status.

Janet Hook of The Los Angeles Times reports that while John Edwards’s focus on poverty has helped him surpass better financed Democrats in Iowa, but “the strategy carries risks, in part because it speaks most directly to a slice of the electorate that has notably little political clout.”

One of those better financed candidates, Senator Barack Obama, plans to outline his health care proposal in Iowa City today. Mike Glover of The Associated Press offers a preview:

Under Obama’s proposal, every American would be required to carry health insurance, and the Illinois senator would create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies in offering the coverage. In essence, Obama’s plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money into the system to pay for the expanded coverage.

Those who can’t afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers. The plan that would be offered would be similar to the one covering members of Congress.

Is a man who consistently fails to put the butter away after breakfast fit to be president? Michelle Obama evidently thinks so. Mr. Obama’s daughters also accompanied him on the campaign trail last weekend.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile, plans a policy address while in New Hampshire today. Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor and Democratic contender-turned-supporter of

Senator Clinton is taking an especially active role in her campaign. “Aides acknowledge privately that Vilsack’s work for the campaign has the look of a rehearsal for the role of running mate, should Clinton win the nomination,” writes Thomas Beaumont in The Des Moines Register. “But while he embarks on a busy summer for Clinton, no prospective No. 2 on a hypothetical Clinton ticket has a higher bar than Vilsack, whose first task is to ensure the senator’s success in Iowa’s leadoff caucuses.”

The A.P. also reports on Democratic candidates’ pursuit of “superdelegates,” a top group of the party’s elected officials who can vote for whomever they please at the nominating convention and who comprise of 14 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

Reporters aren’t the only ones feeling a bit overtaxed by the huge field of presidential candidates. “Burdened by the White House’s wartime security needs, the persistent threat of terrorism and a field of at least 20 presidential contenders, the Secret Service was showing signs of strain even before the Department of Homeland Security ordered protection for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as of May 3, the earliest a candidate has ever been assigned protection in an election season,” reports The Washington Post.

Networking for Change

BO, U R So Gr8

How a young tech entrepreneur translated Barack Obama into the idiom of Facebook

By AMY SCHATZ for The Wall Street Journal

CHICAGO -- In a corner of a spacious, spare, window-lined office overlooking Michigan Ave., Chris Hughes is surfing the future of political campaigning. Tapping on his laptop, the sandy-haired 23-year-old scans emails, helps moderate disputes among on-line backers and consults outside bloggers on how to bolster presidential candidate Barack Obama's Internet site. More than 65,000 people have now registered on the site (dubbed MyBO by campaign staff) and Mr. Hughes is part of a team that's trying to figure out how to get them more deeply involved in the Illinois senator's presidential campaign.

About 5,000 groups of Obama supporters now use online tools to create their own events and fundraisers around the country. Two weeks ago, 700 people in New York registered for a walk-a-thon that raised at least $5,000 for Mr. Obama's campaign; a much larger national "walk for change" is now being organized online. No concern is too small. In April, Mr. Hughes helped arrange the logistics for bulk T-shirt sales for several Internet groups hoping to sell them at their informal fundraisers.

Three years ago Mr. Hughes was a Harvard sophomore, sitting in a dorm room helping develop what would become Facebook Inc. the popular social-networking site, with two roommates. After he graduated last June, he moved to Silicon Valley to work on Facebook full-time. But five months ago he put his career on hold to move to Chicago, in the dead of winter, for a "significant" pay cut, in favor of a 14-hour-a-day job with Mr. Obama's campaign. His goal: to transfer the same magic that transformed the way college students interact to a presidential campaign.

Facebook, MySpace and other social-networking sites allow people to create home-page hangouts and use them to connect with their friends online. People create pages for themselves on these sites that show their name, photos of themselves, contact information and other personal details. They can also message each other, meet friends of friends, chat on message boards and discover new bands. The sites are among the fastest growing corners of the Internet -- social-networking sites drew more than 111 million unique visitors in April, according to research firm comScore Inc.

Now social networking is shaping up as a potent new force in the 2008 presidential campaign. Candidates are betting that the sites -- existing commercial ones or their own newly created ones, like Mr. Hughes's My.BarackObama.com -- will expand their power to find and mobilize supporters, particularly elusive young voters who go to the polls at much lower rates than their elders. Leia mais aqui

Suit Sheds Light on Clintons’ Ties to a Benefactor

When former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton took a family vacation in January 2002 to Acapulco, Mexico, one of their longtime supporters, Vinod Gupta, provided his company’s private jet to fly them there.

The company, infoUSA, one of the nation’s largest brokers of information on consumers, paid $146,866 to ferry the Clintons, Mr. Gupta and others to Acapulco and back, court records show. During the next four years, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton more than $2 million for consulting services, and spent almost $900,000 to fly him around the world for his presidential foundation work and to fly Mrs. Clinton to campaign events.

Those expenses are cited in a lawsuit filed late last year in a Delaware court by angry shareholders of infoUSA, who assert that Mr. Gupta wasted the company’s money trying “to ingratiate himself” with his high-profile guests. Leia mais aqui no The New York Times