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Detroit City Council Votes to Begin Removal Process of Mayor Kilpatrick. In a 5 to 4 vote, however one Council Women thinks the Mayor may be making overtures in regards to resigning

In the threadbare border towns of South Texas, one of the country’s poorest regions, enterprising locals like Candelaria Espinoza have long been paid to round up votes for candidates on Election Day. There is even a name for these electoral soldiers of fortune: politiqueras. So when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and...

WASHINGTON -- Now that the presidential contest is looking ever more like a two-man race, the country can't help but marvel: John McCain, once a longshot, wouldn't lie down. Barack Obama, the new kid, charmed voters. And Hillary Rodham Clinton, an early favorite, has yet to surrender. But Arlyn J. Imberman would say clues to the nomination fight were in plain sight, every time a candidate wrote a thank-you note, inscribed a memoir or autographed a pair of boxing gloves. "Obama is very much his writing -- fluid, graceful. McCain's is angular and intense; he's a pit bull. And look...

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss. I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet. I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty...

Such is the case when it comes to John McCain's general election strategy for defeating Barack Obama. For weeks now, the Arizona senator's campaign has been laying its cards on the table, spelling out a strategy for November. Here's a look at seven of their key strategies. 1. Paint Obama as a False MessiahThe big debut for this message came on the night of the Virginia and Maryland primaries. Mike Huckabee was still in the race, but the McCain campaign wanted to pivot towards the general election. So at an Alexandria Holiday Inn, McCain offered these words: "I do not...

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own. A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views. Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs,...

Many Americans were startled to learn that the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, whose campaign is built on an uplifting message of national unity and racial reconciliation, belongs to a church in Chicago where a very different view of America is preached by its longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Wright, who just retired after decades in the pulpit, has argued that the "United States of White America" is still sharply divided between an oppressive white power structure and oppressed African-Americans, that God should "damn America for treating our citizens as less than human," and that the 2001 terrorist...

INDIANAPOLIS — Thank you, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Love, Barack Obama. Obama ended the worst two weeks of his presidential run with a razor-thin loss to Hillary Clinton in Indiana. His salve came earlier in the evening in North Carolina where he trounced Clinton, and the result stands to open the superdelegate floodgates in coming days. The nomination fight is essentially over. But the fact remains that Rev. Wright couldn’t have picked a worse time to speak out and get some national media action. CNN reports that exit polling showed that 48 percent of Hoosier Democrats said the Rev. Wright controversy...

WHEN I am dead, the chance that my bones will become fossilized is very remote. Bones decay away like the rest of our bodies unless a lot of very unlikely things happen. First of all, a dead body will not leave any permanent remains in the form of a fossil unless it happens to be covered up and thus protected from decay. That is fairly easy in the case of animals in the sea. Rivers are always carrying sediment out and depositing it, and tides and currents shift the sediment and cover up the bodies of dead animals. But even...

Bill Clinton and Hillary "Huckabee" Clinton are determined to win the Democratic nomination. Of course, it is important to note the Clintons definition of the word "win." At this point, the only hope the Clintons have of keeping the dream alive will be the courts. A favorable outcome of counting the votes and seating the delegates of Florida and Michigan will go a long way in securing the victory they so desperately seek. Litigation is the middle name of Democrats. The DNC wants to stick to the rules; the Clintons want a win. Thus a lawsuit will emerge as the...

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a major political party is on the brink of choosing a black as its candidate for president, but when Democratic strategists and other analysts look ahead, they don't see race as Barack Obama's biggest challenge. They worry more, they say, about other issues: Will swing voters view him as too young? Too inexperienced? Or too liberal? "I am sure there are people in Missouri that won't vote for Barack Obama because he's black, but there are not that many of them," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a swing-state leader who endorsed Obama early. "I...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Barack Obama's victory in North Carolina and near-miss in Indiana last week remove much of the doubt about whether he will win the Democratic nomination for president. With Obama the likely Democratic nominee and Sen. John McCain long his party's presumptive nominee, the search for their vice presidential picks can now begin. Below, you'll find the five most logical veeps, assuming McCain and Obama are the candidates, ranked in the order of the likelihood of being chosen. No. 1 on each side is currently the likeliest to be named. REPUBLICANS 5. Mitt Romney: A few months ago,...

"May we live long and die out" is the unofficial motto of a new movement that seeks to improve the Earth's ecosystem by ensuring that the human species does not survive. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals. While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement. "We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by...

We are part of the many Democrats that will definitely vote for John McCain if Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination to run for president. We would love to have our economy and national image restored to at least what it was during the Clinton years of presidency, but Barack Obama is not the answer. Obama speaks politics and not what he believes. He only says what he must to win. Actions speak louder than words. He does not respect America -- won't wear a flag on his lapel, won't put his hand over his heart during the pledge of...

The head of U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign refused to concede Sunday that she has no chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Terry McCauliffe said it is still possible for Clinton to win the nomination, even though most pundits have concluded that she cannot overtake her rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, to become the Democratic Party nominee. "Look, tomorrow -- something new could happen," said McCauliffe. "Nothing's impossible. You are talking to Terry McAuliffe. I don't believe anything in life is impossible." McAuliffe argued that Clinton would be a stronger candidate than...

LINCOLN, Neb. — Former Colorado senator and two-time presidential candidate Gary Hart told Nebraska Democrats that Barack Obama will heal the national party, while John McCain's nomination may cause a rift among Republicans. "There's a real struggle for the soul of the Republican Party under way," Hart said Saturday before the state Democratic Party's annual Morrison-Exon Day Dinner. About 450 people attended the party's largest fundraising event. Hart, 71, sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, and was a U.S. senator from 1975 to 1987. Hart said the Republican Party is going to find its ties to religious...

Michael Dudley is the son of a preacher man. He's a born-again Christian with two family members in the military. He grew up in the Bible Belt, where almost everyone he knew was Republican. But this fall, he's breaking a handful of stereotypes: He plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama. "I think a lot of Christians are having trouble getting behind everything the Republicans stand for," said Dudley, 20, a sophomore at Seattle Pacific University. Dudley's disenchantment with the GOP isn't unique among young, devoutly Christian voters. According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion...

What are we going to do about Iran? When Hillary Clinton surreally promised to obliterate the Islamic Republic if the mullahs nuked Israel, she at least recognized that a nuclear-armed clerical regime is a serious menace, and that successful diplomacy with Tehran without the threat of force is fantasy. How to handle Iran may well be the decisive foreign-policy question of the 2008 presidential campaign--especially if Tehran continues to exploit the vacuum left by the collapse of the Bush administration's Iran policy and the general listlessness of the U.S. presence in the Middle East outside of Iraq. Tehran is on...

Browsing through an American bookshop does not lift the spirits. Books that chart the end of American supremacy, predict wars over finite natural resources, study the squeezed middle class or the catastrophic Bush presidency proliferate. The United States is going through a period of introspection and the Boston bookshelves, at which I spent part of last week, heave with the results. In one respect, it is hardly surprising. Iraq, Afghanistan and the rise of China. The credit crunch. The $124 a barrel oil price. The unbelievable unfairness of Bush's tax cuts. The racism and violence that still pockmark American life....

Ah, spring. Fresh flowers, fresh leaves, fresh leases on life...and, in step with a tradition dating back to around 2004--the year when Christian "values voters" reportedly seized our fragile nation's helm--there's also a fresh crop of new books unabashedly bashing evangelicals. Leading the pack is "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," which is yet another entry in the behind-the-scenes, just-like-Skull-and-Bones Christian conspiracy genre. Luckily for yawning readers, there's also a newer, cuter, echoes-of-Jon-Stewart form of Christian-bashing on the 2008 market, which involves shelving the drama, loading up on the irony, going undercover and making merciless...

Republicans in the U.S. Congress are petrified about a November debacle, a fear stoked on May 3, when they lost their second straight special election in a district held by Republicans. The party's fundamental situation is terrible: Republicans are saddled with an enormously unpopular president, a war, a troubled economy and a Democratic opposition that's being energized by important constituent groups. "The generics are as bad as anytime since I have been here," said Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and one of the most politically astute members of Congress in either party. Davis, a 14-year veteran, is retiring this...

The 1st Congressional District, the northernmost in the most culturally Southern state, has given the nation William Faulkner and Elvis Presley, and next Tuesday will have a special congressional election that will test the Republican hope that Barack Obama and his former pastor can be the basis of a Republican strategy to nationalize congressional races to the disadvantage of Democrats. A Senate seat also could be affected by the cascading consequences of Republican Sen. Trent Lott's December resignation. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour replaced him with 1st District Rep. Roger Wicker, who this November will be on the ballot seeking election...

Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who,...

So, now that it might finally be over (or maybe close to it, possibly, perhaps), does Senator Barack Obama come out a bloody mess, or a battle-tested warrior? In recent weeks, a wiseguy consensus seems to have settled on the former: the idea that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has so weakened Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination — so diminished him, distracted him, exhausted him — that he could be a grievously damaged nominee. The wiseguys invoke the Republican race of 1976 and Democratic contest of 1980 as examples of what happens when candidates — Gerald Ford...

The last couple of months have been springtime in paradise for Republicans: the loveliest of all possible seasons. They have been watching two Democratic presidential candidates in an endless battle to destroy each other -- a process that does not appear to enhance the chance that the eventual nominee will win in November. A recent Gallup poll shows John McCain leading both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup. All this before Republicans even begin publicizing the worst that can be said about either of two candidates whose alleged defects provide a supremely target-rich environment. But it's easy...

Hillary Clinton, down to her last straw, is making the case that she is the better candidate to run against the Republicans because, unlike Barack Obama, she can win white Democrats. She is right. But because she is daring to touch the hot button of racial politics, she is being told to shut up or risk being charged with exploiting racial tensions for political advantage. The facts are stubborn, however. Since his phenomenal win with 33% of the white vote in nearly all-white Iowa, Obama has been unable to get a firm grip on white Democrats. He has won a...

Here we go again. After being subjected to eight years of the collegial presidency of Bill and Hillary, when we were told that when we got Bill we got Hillary as a bonus, it looks as if we are facing another twofer: Barack and Michelle. Effete liberal Democrats are all but canonizing Barack Obama, who they see as one of their own — cool, detached, impressively intellectual — all in all what Pat Buchanan described as something fresh out of the faculty lounge, where lofty thoughts abound and contempt for the great unwashed is hardly concealed. That may be an...

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center. As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.

Do leaders of the Democrat National Committee (DNC) actually expect the American people to believe that their party has the wherewithal to manage the most powerful nation of earth, when that same party is apparently unable to manage a simple system of pre-election primaries? After nearly two years of plotting and scheming to recapture the White House, just months before election day the Democrat Party remains bitterly divided and may have to spend an additional $30 million dollars just to rerun primary elections in Florida and Michigan. Is that any way to run a party, Howard Dean? And yet despite...

You know, one of the funny things about watching the Democrats is their alternation between fear and bravado about whether Republicans will "Swift Boat" their candidate this time around. Orwell once said that "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable.'" This is roughly the way the Democrats use the term "Swiftboating" to suggest a political attack of thoroughgoing fraudulence and impropriety concocted out of whole cloth. Never mind that each and every one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a combat veteran, including a number of highly decorated...

Refusing to go gently into that good night, Clinton supporter Jerome Armstrong stubbornly sticks to the message that Hillary Clinton can win the Democratic Presidential nomination. He points to West Virginia as a state that serves as a good indicator of what Armstrong believes to be Barack Obama's general election problems. Sensitive to charges that fretting about Obama's general election appeal in West Virginia could be tantamount to giving credence to the views of racists, Armstrong spends a goodly amount of time denouncing anyone who would dismiss as racists anti-Obama voters in West Virginia. This isn't particularly interesting save for...

Friends and close associates of both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now convinced that, assuming she loses the race for the presidential nomination, she is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket. Clinton "is trying to figure out how to land the plane without looking like surrender," a prominent figure in the Obama camp said Friday. This means, in all likelihood, bringing her campaign to a close in the next few weeks and trying to leverage her way onto an Obama ticket from a position of maximum strength, said several knowledgeable...

Barack Obama's aides charged Wednesday that their candidate would have done even better Tuesday were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: longtime Clinton family nemesis Rush Limbaugh. The impact of the popular conservative radio commentator's "Operation Chaos" emerged as an intriguing point of debate, particularly in Indiana, where registered voters could participate in either party's primary, and where Clinton won by a mere 14,000 votes. As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and prolong the Democratic fight. Limbaugh crowed about the success...

Contemporary marriage leads to fewer connections in the community, say sociologists Naomi Gerstel of UMass Amherst and Natalia Sarkisian of Boston College. In their paper “Marriage: the Good, the Bad, and the Greedy,” they present evidence that married couples spend less time socializing with friends, neighbors, and families than do singles. The married couples studied were also less likely to provide emotional support and offer help with chores outside of their own households. Critics of the paper say raising children, not marriage in and of itself, cuts into time for community-oriented events.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Politicians are eyeing oil profits like a fat juicy glazed ham. With all the money Big Oil is making - the top five publicly traded firms pocketed over $120 billion in 2007 alone - and with an election on the horizon, it's easy to see why. The leading Democratic presidential candidates want a windfall profits tax to do various things, and although their plans differ slightly they generally want to use the money to give Americans a break from skyrocketing energy prices and jumpstart research into renewable energy. House Democrats have also warned of punitive measures...

WASHINGTON - The amazement was on their faces. Hundreds waited for Barack Obama on that evening in South Carolina, 15 weeks ago, to claim victory — a surprising victory, surprisingly large. And amazing it was. It made it possible for him to stand today on the verge of being the first black person ever nominated for president by a major party. One could guess the thoughts of the blacks and whites in that crowd: Can you believe that our state — South Carolina, first to secede and first to open fire in the Civil War — is now catapulting a...

The long, fascinating spectacle of the presidential primaries has all but obscured their potential impact on American politics: Campaign 2008 may break Washington's gridlock by reviving the long-dormant political center. The public's hunger for a change in Washington's ways has formed the backdrop of this year's presidential race from its outset. When the Wall Street Journal and NBC News surveyed voters in December, as the campaign began, almost half agreed that America needed "major reforms and a brand new and different approach" to handling problems. In the wake of Tuesday's primary elections in North Carolina and Indiana, it appears more...

'WHY don't we just vote to strike tonight - and we'll decide to morrow what we're striking for?" Those were the words of a student protester thoughtfully deliberating at Yale University, as recounted by Roger Kimball in his book on the left, "The Long March." It was a question that captured much of the heedless spirit of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, for which "May 1968" is shorthand. That spring 40 years ago saw a radical takeover of Columbia University - eventually duplicated at other elite campuses - and student protests around the world. In France, the government was...

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn't have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too. The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive, the business world turned against the war, because they thought it was too costly, even though there were proposals within the government - and we know this now...

Ben Stein has a dangerous idea. His idea is that professors and teachers who express skepticism about Darwinism are likely to find themselves not granted tenure, castigated and ridiculed, and disqualified from the opportunity to have research papers published. Stein documents this in his new movie "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed." As you would expect, it is drawing highly critical reviews from the usual suspects. One agitated reviewer on a blog said the movie was filled with half-truths and outright lies. It would be interesting to see what this same source had to say about the latest documentary movies promoted by...

Almost everywhere I went last week — TV, radio, speeches — I was asked about the 60th anniversary of the Israeli state. I don’t recall being asked about Israel quite so much on its 50th anniversary, which as a general rule is a much bigger deal than the 60th. But these days friends and enemies alike smell weakness at the heart of the Zionist Entity. Assuming President Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic fancies don’t come to pass, Israel will surely make it to its 70th birthday. But a lot of folks don’t fancy its prospects for its 80th and beyond. See the Atlantic...

Senior staff at the Guardian and Observer newspapers are facing the prospect of job losses after unveiling the integration of their reporting teams. The publisher of the Guardian and the Observer newspapers finally revealed details of a far reaching restructuring plan yesterday which involves the integration of all editorial staff, creating a single team serving the two newspapers and the guardian.co.uk website. Senior staff will have to compete for the head of department jobs. A number are expected to leave under a voluntary redundancy scheme which has so far seen over 20 journalists depart the group since last April. The...

WASHINGTON -- With the racially tinged Democratic race drawing to an awkward close, Barack Obama and John McCain face the challenge of winning over "Hillary Democrats" _ the white, working-class voters who favored the former first lady over Obama's historic candidacy. Obama and McCain clearly have set their sights on each other, a recognition of the long odds Clinton faces in trying to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. The McCain campaign figures some of her supporters might be up for grabs and won't necessarily vote Democratic in the general election in November. "I've been saying for a year that you...

The best models scientists have reveal very close correlations of carbon dioxide with temperature increases over the last several decades. The models project disastrous effects from increasing temperatures if carbon dioxide concentrations continue to increase. The 90 percent probability statements of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are weighty scientific statements that should not be ignored. The question is whether we can afford to gamble with the future of Earth's life-support systems. Everything we do to develop alternate energy sources to combat possible global warming, we should be doing anyway because of other very serious negative effects of...

I still remember the day the “Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was released; I was the first in line, with my adult son. It was a marvelous masterpiece of a movie. I know that Prince Caspian will be even better. I told Doug during our interview, that I am so excited about seeing this film that I feel like a child again. He laughed and told me I will be thrilled. He continued “...the enemy has tried to steal the film industry, but he has not succeeded. Many in our day seem to think that it is political leaders...

Empire building isn't for sissies. Just ask the Spanish conquistadors of the 16th century. Before attacking Indian settlements, they were required to read a summons called the Requerimiento, which spelled out the consequences of resistance: "I assure you that, with the help of God, I will attack you mightily. I will make war against you everywhere and in every way ... I will take your wives and children, and I will make them slaves ... I will take their property. I will do all the harm and damage to you that I can ... I declare that the deaths and...

IN November, I was found guilty of "racial harassment" for reading a public-li brary book on a university campus. The book was Todd Tucker's "Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library. Tucker recounts events of 1924, when the loathsome Klan was a dominant force in Indiana - until it went to South Bend to taunt the Irish Catholic students at the University of Notre Dame. When the KKK tried to rally, the...

When President Bush visits Israel next week, he should offer to bring that ally fully into the U.S. missile defense network - a step that might forestall an Israeli attack on Iran this year. Two of the most strategically minded Members of Congress I know - Reps. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.) - have enlisted 63 colleagues to urge the move as Bush prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. Specifically, the bipartisan group is calling on Bush to give Israel the advanced X-band radar system that would enable Israel to knock down Iranian missiles early...

The phrase “generation gap” came into vogue in the 1960s as a way of describing the wide gulf in values, beliefs and lifestyles that emerged between baby boomers and their parents and grandparents. Indeed, this difference between younger and older people played out sometimes turbulently in the ’60s in virtually all aspects of life, including the ballot box. Unlike in previous elections, from 1968 to 1980 young voters gave much stronger support to Democratic presidential candidates than did their elders. But by 1984 those baby boomers were not so young and their ideas were not so different. And until very...

Well, here you are at your college graduation. And I know what you're thinking: "Gimme the sheepskin and get me outta here!" But not so fast. First you have to listen to a commencement speech. Don't moan. I'm not going to "pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next." I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.