December 2007 Monthly Archive

December 29, 2007

Iowa Could Make or Break Democrats

Iowa could make or break a Democratic candidate on Thursday. The question is, who?

While the state has long played a key role in choosing the Democratic presidential nominee, it has unparalleled influence this year, even after several larger states moved up their contests to try and muscle in.

Those efforts have done little more than compress the calendar into a five-week sprint that ends with the multistate primary Feb. 5 - strengthening Iowa's position as the leadoff caucus state rather than diminishing it.

Even New Hampshire, which holds the first primary of the season, has seen its once-mighty position diminished somewhat by Iowa's outsized role this time.

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Associated Press | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Topic: Breaking Story

 

Religion less of a factor in New Hampshire vote

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain brought his pitch to a New Hampshire church basement on Saturday, but religion was hardly on his agenda.

The Arizona Senator's sole mention of the topic was in an aside to a woman's question on immigration, when he assured her that while he opposed illegal immigration, he believed that, "We are all God's children, we are all created in God's image."

Unlike the two other early-voting states of Iowa and South Carolina, in New Hampshire religion -- particularly the evangelical Christianity reflected in thousand-seat megachurches sprouting up in other parts of the country -- is not a major element in how voters select candidates in the state's January 8 nominating primary.

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Reuters | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Bin Laden Issues Warning on Iraq, Israel

Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."

Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.

The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.

Bin Laden's comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaida's attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far.

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Associated Press | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

US presidential hopefuls exchange blows in Iowa TV ads

With less than one week to go before the first major event of the 2008 US electoral season, Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls are engaged in a bitter war for votes in Iowa via advertising in the electronic news media.

Party activists in Iowa are to gather on Thursday to pick their favorite candidates, an event that has historically influenced who will emerge as the presidential front-runners.

In the past few weeks candidates from both parties have been spending rivers of money on radio and television ads to sway potential voters.

The late Friday broadcast on the local ABC television network affiliate, for example, was awash with campaign ads during commercial breaks that hyped the merits of one or another of the 15 candidates seeking their party's nomination.

According to local media, New York Senator Hillary Clinton has reserved time through Wednesday for two-minute television ads that are scheduled to air every hour across Iowa during peak TV viewership hours on all major channels.

These ads could potentially reach more than 500,000 people of the less than 600,000 of voting age living in this rural midwestern state.

The race for the Democratic nomination in Iowa is a toss-up between the top three contenders, according to an average of three different polls compiled by the website RealClearPolitics and posted on Friday.

Clinton has 29.3 percent support, followed by former North Carolina senator John Edwards with 27.3 and Illinois Senator Barack Obama with 27 percent, according to the RCP average -- all within the polling margin of error.

Campaign ads for the trio on Friday focused on domestic US economic and social issues.

Dueling Clinton and Obama ads questioned each other's proposed health care plan, while both claimed they were best equipped to fight the 'special interests' in Washington.

Edwards has campaigned heavily on fighting corporate interests, and claims in ads that he will "stand up for people whose voices are ignored."

Two Democrats -- New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- ran ads focusing on foreign affairs.

According to the RCP average of polls, Richardson has 5.3 percent support and Biden 4.7 percent.

On the Republican side, the RCP poll average has former governor of Arkansas and ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee ahead with 33 percent, followed closely by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with 27.3 percent.

Trailing behind are former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson with 12 percent, Arizona Senator John McCain with 10 percent, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- ahead in national polls but who chose to ignore Iowa -- with 6.7 percent.

Romney's new spot criticizes Huckabee for being "soft on government spending," weak on immigration policies, and having little foreign policy experience.

At a meeting with voters Friday in the town of Ottumwa, south-east of the capital Des Moines, Huckabee brushed off the attacks.

"After watching some of Mitt Romney's ads about me, I'm not sure I would vote for myself," Huckabee said. "If all we're going to do in the Republican Party is attack each other, maybe we're just making it that much easier for the other party."

Huckabee, who is running a bare-bones campaign compared to Romney's well-financed juggernaut, said that winning in Iowa would be a "seismic event."

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AFP | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Benazir Bhutto's Niece: "My father was Benazir's younger brother, to this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered"

We Pakistanis live in uncertain times. Emergency rule has been imposed for the 13th time in our short 60-year history. Thousands of lawyers have been arrested, some charged with sedition and treason; the chief justice has been deposed; and a draconian media law -- shutting down all private news channels -- has been drafted.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this circus has been the hijacking of the democratic cause by my aunt, the twice-disgraced former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto. While she was hashing out a deal to share power with Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month, she repeatedly insisted that without her, democracy in Pakistan would be a lost cause. Now that the situation has changed, she's saying that she wants Musharraf to step down and that she'd like to make a deal with his opponents -- but still, she says, she's the savior of democracy.

The reality, however, is that there is no one better placed to benefit from emergency rule than she is. Along with the leaders of prominent Islamic parties, she has been spared the violent retributions of emergency law. Yes, she now appears to be facing seven days of house arrest, but what does that really mean? While she was supposedly under house arrest at her Islamabad residence last week, 50 or so of her party members were comfortably allowed to join her. She addressed the media twice from her garden, protected by police given to her by the state, and was not reprimanded for holding a news conference. (By contrast, the very suggestion that they might hold a news conference has placed hundreds of other political activists under real arrest, in real jails.)

Ms. Bhutto's political posturing is sheer pantomime. Her negotiations with the military and her unseemly willingness until just a few days ago to take part in Musharraf's regime have signaled once and for all to the growing legions of fundamentalists across South Asia that democracy is just a guise for dictatorship.

It is widely believed that Ms. Bhutto lost both her governments on grounds of massive corruption. She and her husband, a man who came to be known in Pakistan as "Mr. 10%," have been accused of stealing more than $1 billion from Pakistan's treasury. She is appealing a money-laundering conviction by the Swiss courts involving about $11 million. Corruption cases in Britain and Spain are ongoing.

It was particularly unappealing of Ms. Bhutto to ask Musharraf to bypass the courts and drop the many corruption cases that still face her in Pakistan. He agreed, creating the odiously titled National Reconciliation Ordinance in order to do so. Her collaboration with him was so unsubtle that people on the streets are now calling her party, the Pakistan People's Party, the Pervez People's Party. Now she might like to distance herself, but it's too late.

Why did Ms. Bhutto and her party cronies demand that her corruption cases be dropped, but not demand that the cases of activists jailed during the brutal regime of dictator Zia ul-Haq (from 1977 to 1988) not be quashed? What about the sanctity of the law? When her brother Mir Murtaza Bhutto -- my father -- returned to Pakistan in 1993, he faced 99 cases against him that had been brought by Zia's military government. The cases all carried the death penalty. Yet even though his sister was serving as prime minister, he did not ask her to drop the cases. He returned, was arrested at the airport and spent the remaining years of his life clearing his name, legally and with confidence, in the courts of Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so.

And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets.

My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered, although the tribunal convened after his death under the leadership of three respected judges concluded that it could not have taken place without approval from a "much higher" political authority.

I have personal reasons to fear the danger that Ms. Bhutto's presence in Pakistan brings, but I am not alone. The Islamists are waiting at the gate. They have been waiting for confirmation that the reforms for which the Pakistani people have been struggling have been a farce, propped up by the White House. Since Musharraf seized power in 1999, there has been an earnest grass-roots movement for democratic reform. The last thing we need is to be tied to a neocon agenda through a puppet "democrat" like Ms. Bhutto.

By supporting Ms. Bhutto, who talks of democracy while asking to be brought to power by a military dictator, the only thing that will be accomplished is the death of the nascent secular democratic movement in my country. Democratization will forever be de-legitimized, and our progress in enacting true reforms will be quashed. We Pakistanis are certain of this.

Fatima Bhutto is a Pakistani poet and writer. She is the daughter of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in 1996 in Karachi when his sister, Benazir, was prime minister.

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Fatima Bhutto - Los Angeles Times | Saturday, December 29, 2007 | Topic: World News

 

December 27, 2007

`Gospel of wealth' facing scrutiny

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

All six ministries under investigation preach the prosperity gospel to varying degrees.

Proponents call it a biblically sound message of hope. Others say it is a distortion that makes evangelists rich and preys on the vulnerable. They say it has evolved from "it's all right to make money" to it's all right for the pastor to drive a Bentley, live in an oceanside home and travel by private jet.

"More and more people are desperate and grasping at straws and want something that will alleviate their pain or financial crisis," said Michael Palmer, dean of the divinity school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson. "It's a growing problem."

The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts' teachings. Roberts' disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary (Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors "partners.") And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.

Grassley is asking the ministries for financial records on salaries, spending practices, private jets and other perks. The investigation, coupled with a financial scandal at ORU that forced out Roberts' son and heir, Richard, has some wondering whether the prosperity gospel is facing a day of reckoning.

While few expect the movement to disappear, the scrutiny could force greater financial transparency and oversight in a movement known for secrecy.

Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.

But it wasn't until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Okla. — that "health and wealth" theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.

"What Oral did was develop a theology that made it OK to prosper," Harrell said. "He let Pentecostals be faithful to the old-time truths their grandparents embraced and be part of the modern world, where they could have good jobs and make money."

The teachings took on various names — "Name It and Claim It," "Word of Faith," the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity preachers say that it isn't all about money — that God's blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.

They have Bible verses at the ready to make their case. One oft-cited verse, in Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reads: "Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich."

Critics acknowledge the idea that God wants to bless his followers has a Biblical basis, but say prosperity preachers take verses out of context. The prosperity crowd also fails to acknowledge Biblical accounts that show God doesn't always reward faithful believers, Palmer said.

The Book of Job is a case study in piety unrewarded, and a chapter in the Book of Hebrews includes a litany of believers who were tortured and martyred, Palmer said.

Yet the prosperity gospel continues to draw crowds, particularly lower- and middle-income people who, critics say, have the greatest motivation and the most to lose. The prosperity message is spreading to black churches, attracting elderly people with disposable incomes, and reaching huge churches in Africa and other developing parts of the world.

One of the teaching's attractions is that it doesn't dwell on traditional Christian themes of heaven and hell but on answering pressing concerns of the here and now, said Brian McLaren, a liberal evangelical author and pastor.

But the prosperity gospel, McLaren said, not only preys on the hope of the vulnerable, it puts too much emphasis on individual success and happiness.

"We've pretty much ignored what the Bible says about systemic injustice," he said.

The checks and balances central to Christian denominations are largely lacking in prosperity churches. One of the pastors in the Grassley probe, Bishop Eddie Long of suburban Atlanta, has written that God told him to get rid of the "ungodly governmental structure" of a deacon board.

Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting Grassley's inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.

In a letter to Grassley, Dollar's attorney calls the prosperity gospel a "deeply held religious belief" grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.

But even some prosperity gospel critics — like the Rev. Adam Hamilton of 15,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, Mo. — say that the investigation is entering a minefield.

"How do you determine how much money a minister like this is able to make when the basic theology is that wealth is OK?" said Hamilton, an Oral Roberts graduate who later left the charismatic movement. "That gets into theological questions."

There is evidence of change. Joyce Meyer Ministries, for one, enacted financial reforms in recent years, including making audited financial statements public.

Meyer, who has promised to cooperate fully with Grassley, issued a statement emphasizing that a prosperity gospel "that solely equates blessing with financial gain is out of balance and could damage a person's walk with God."

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Associated Press | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Topic: Faith and State

 

McCain vs. Romney: The Sequel

For months last spring, the campaigns of what were then the two leading GOP presidential candidates -- John McCain and Mitt Romney -- traded charges and counter-charges over who was the true conservative in the race. What became apparent almost immediately was that McCain had little personal affection for Romney and was willing to do what it took to expose the former Massachusetts governor as a liberal-turned-conservative flip-flopper.

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Chris Cilizza - Washington Post | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Al Qaeda leads suspect list in Bhutto killing

Al Qaeda is the chief suspect in the murder of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, standing to gain by preserving its remote stronghold, undermining President Pervez Musharraf and destabilizing the country, U.S. government and private analysts said.

The militant group, which has rebuilt its command structure on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, was blamed for a previous attempt on Bhutto and it has denounced her as an instrument of U.S. policy in Pakistan.

Bush administration officials said it was too early to identify a clear suspect in Thursday's assassination.

But one U.S. official said: "There are a number of extremist groups within Pakistan that could have carried out the attack ... Al Qaeda has got to be one of the groups at the top of this list."

Al Qaeda's Taliban ally, which has publicly threatened Bhutto, was another potential suspect, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

One analyst said al Qaeda supporters in Pakistan's security services may have also played a role, but it was unlikely Musharraf himself was involved.

Killing Bhutto undermines Musharraf, viewed by the United States as an essential ally against terrorism, by eliminating the prospect of a power-sharing agreement between the two that could shore up his deteriorating political standing and stabilize the country, the analysts said.

That in turn reduces chances that Musharraf can revive efforts to drive al Qaeda and the Taliban out of the remote Waziristan tribal areas. It also fans popular suspicions against Musharraf and sows general confusion.

"Their (al Qaeda's) motivation for doing this is entirely clear," said David Gartenstein-Ross of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "They have the most to gain."

Bhutto was assassinated by a suicide bomber after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, a two weeks before national elections meant to return Pakistan to a civilian-led democracy.

Her death follows a failed assassination attempt in October as she returned from exile to Pakistan. She blamed that attempt on four groups including al Qaeda and the Taliban.

AL QAEDA DENOUNCES

Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, this month denounced Bhutto's return as a U.S.-orchestrated maneuver.

"Everything that is going on in Pakistan, from the arrangement for the return of Benazir to the declaration of the state of emergency ... to repressive measures, is a desperate American attempt to remedy the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan," Zawahri said in an interview with al Qaeda's media arm.

Shortly before Bhutto's return in October, Taliban commander Haji Omar had pledged to attack her.

Pakistan's investigation of the killing will be a major test of Musharraf's credibility, said P.J. Crowley, a former National Security Council official.

In particular, he said, the probe must make a thorough effort to identify any elements in the government who may be complicit in the attack.

The United States offered FBI assistance in investigating Bhutto's assassination, but Pakistan has not yet made a request, FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak said.

Bhutto, in an October letter to an acquaintance read on CNN on Wednesday, said she would hold Musharraf responsible if she were killed, for a failure to authorize adequate security.

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said: "We don't know who is responsible for this attack. ... But it is clear that whoever is responsible is someone who opposes peaceful, democratic development and change in Pakistan."

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Reuters | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Bhutto A Hero for Democracy?

There is a sense that anything can happen in Pakistan now. With the assassination today of Benazir Bhutto—who had increasingly come to symbolize the nation's painful return to democracy—Pakistan is a country that could easily slip into chaos, even civil war. This is no local or regional matter: Pakistan is also a country that, as a harbor for both Islamic extremism and nuclear arms knowhow, today more than ever poses one of the most dangerous threats to America and the West.

Washington's strategy for stabilizing Pakistan had depended in great part on Bhutto, the exiled former prime minister whose pleas for democracy were once ignored by the Bush administration, but who in recent months was seen as a key to legitimizing the presidency of autocrat Pervez Musharraf by forming a political coalition with him.

Bhutto was considering the idea, but she had grown increasingly leery of Musharraf, accusing him in recent weeks of failing to stop the spread of Islamic militancy. Now all those hopes are gone. "This is the darkest, gloomiest day in the history of Pakistan," Bhutto's onetime rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, said at the hospital in Rawalpindi today, as he visited her body and asked her supporters for calm. "The unthinkable has happened."

Tragically, however, the assassination of the 54-year-old Bhutto was all too thinkable—indeed, it was expected by the victim herself. Upon her return to Pakistan last October after eight years in exile, Bhutto had written a letter to Musharraf—and saw to it that it was hand-delivered—warning him that if she were killed he should investigate certain officials in his government.

Bhutto and her top security officials had complained repeatedly about the lax security provided by Musharraf's government. In recent days, as she stepped out for political rallies more and more ahead of the scheduled Jan. 8 national elections, her aides had warned that the jammers supplied to them by the government—intended to stop remote-controlled bomb devices—weren't working properly.

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Michael Hirsh - Newsweek | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News

 

Obama runs even with Clinton in two key states

Barack Obama has wiped out Hillary Clinton's once-commanding lead in New Hampshire and the two remain virtually tied in Iowa, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg News poll has found, as more and more voters get off the fence and decide whom to support.

Obama drew backing from 32% of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters to Clinton's 30% -- a dramatic shift from September, when a similar poll found him trailing 35% to 16% in the state, which will hold its presidential primary Jan. 8.

In Iowa, which opens the 2008 presidential voting with its Jan. 3 caucuses, the poll found that Obama and Clinton remain in a three-way dead heat with former Sen. John Edwards.

But other poll findings suggest Clinton might gain stature in both states if Democrats' concern about world affairs increases in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The poll shows that Democrats in both Iowa and New Hampshire -- as they do elsewhere around the country -- consider Clinton far-better equipped than her rivals to safeguard national security.

Such a shift in focus away from domestic policy could also affect the Republican presidential contest and benefit Sen. John McCain, whose campaign has rebounded in New Hampshire to put him in second place behind front-runner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

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Los Angeles Times | Thursday, December 27, 2007 | Topic: Today's Top News