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The oldest tradion of the people of Acoma and Laguna indicates that they lived on some island; that their homes were destroyed by tidal waves, earthquakes, and red-hot stones from the sky. They fled and landed on a low, swampy coast. From here they migrated to the northwest, and wherever they made a long stay they built a "White City" (Kush-kut-ret).
The fifth White City was built somewhere in southern Colorado or northern New Mexico. The people were obliged to leave it on account of cold, drought and famine.
The first governor of Acoma had a daughter named Co-chin-ne-na-ko; she was the wife of Shakok, the spirit of Winter. After he came to live with them the seasons grew colder, colder; the snow and ice stayed longer; the corn would no longer mature; and the people were compelled to live on cactus leaves (E-mash-chu) and other wild plants.
One day Co-chin-ne-na-ko went out to gather cactus leaves and burn off the thorns so that she could take them home for food. She had a leaf singed and was eating it, when upon looking up she saw a young man coming towards her. He had on a yellow shirt, woven of corn silk, a belt, and tall pointed hat; green leggings made of the green moss which grows in the springs and ponds, and moccasins beautifully embroidered with flowers and butterflies. In his hand he carried an ear of green corn. He came up and saluted her. She replied. Then he asked her what she was eating. She told him that the people were almost starved; that no corn would grow; and that they were all compelled to live on cactus leaves.
"Here," he said, "take this ear of corn and eat it, and I will go and bring you an armful to take home with you." He started and soon out of sight, going towards the south. In a very short time, however, he returned, bringing a large bundle of green corn (ken-utch), which he laid at her feet. Co-chin-ne-na-ko asked him where he had found the corn, and if it grew near by. He replied that he had brought it from his home, far to the south, where the corn grows and the flowers bloom all the year. "Oh, how I would like to see your country; will you not take me with you to your home?" she said. "Your husband, Shakok, the Spirit of Winter, would be angry if I should take you away," he said. She said, he is cold; ever since he came here no corn will grow, no flowers will bloom, and the people are compelled to live on prickly-pear leaves."
"Well", said he, "take the bundle of corn home with you and do not throw any of the the husks outside the door; then come tomorrow and I will bring you more. I will meet you here." Then, bidding her farewell, he left again for his home in the south. Co-chin-ne-na-ko took the bundle of corn he had given her and started to go home to the town. She had not gone far when she met her sisters, for becoming alarmed at her long stay they had come out to look for her. They were very much surprised on seeing her with an armful of green corn instead of cactus leaves.
Co-chin-ne-na-ko told them how the young man had come to her and brought her the corn. So they helped her carry it home. When they arrived their father and mother were wonderfully surprised, but pleased to see them bringing big ears of green corn instead of cactus leaves. They asked Co-chin-ne-na-ko where she had found it, and she told them, as she had already told her sisters, that a young man, whom she minutely described, had brought her the corn, and had asked her to meet him at the same place on the following day, and that he would accompany her home. "It is Miochin," said her father, "it is Miochin." "It is surely Miochin", said her mother. "Bring him home with you by all means." The next day Co-chin-ne-na-ko went to the place she had met Miochin, for he really was Miochin, the Spirit of Summer. He was already there waiting for her. He had big bundles of corn.
Between them they carried it to the town, and there was enough to feed all the people of Acoma, and Miochin was welcomed at the house of the governor. In the evening, as was his custom, Shakok, the Sprit of Winter, and husband of Co-chin-ne-na-ko, returned from the north where he spent the days playing with the north wind, and with the snow and sleet and hail. He came in a blinding storm of snow, sleet and hail.
On reaching the town he knew that Miochin was there, and called out to him, "Ha, Miochin, are you here?" Miochin advanced to meet him. "Ha, Miochin, now I will destroy you." "Ha, Shakok, I will destroy you," answered Miochin. Shakok stopped, and as Miochin advanced towards him the snow and hail melted and the fierce wind turned into a summer breeze. Shakok was covered with frost, icicles hung all about him, but as Miochin advanced towards him the frost melted, the icicles dropped off, and his clothing was revealed. It was made of dry bleached rushes (Ska-ra-ska-ru-ka). Shakok said, "I will not fight you now, but will meet you here four days from now and fight you till one or the other is beaten. The winner shall have Co-chin-ne-na-ko." With that Shakok left in a rage.
The wind again roared and shook the very walls, but the people were warm in their houses. Miochin was there. Next day he left for his home in the south. Arriving there he made preparations for the meeting with Shakok. He first sent an eagle to his friend Yat-chum-me Moot, who lived in the west, asking him to help him in his fight with Shakok. Then he called all the birds, insects, and four-legged animals that live in summer lands. All these he called to help him. The bat (Pick-le-ke) was his advance guard and his shield, as the tough skin of the bat could best withstand the sleet and hail that Shakok would throw at him. On the third day Yat-chum-me kindled his fires, and heated the thin flat stones that he was names after. Then big black clouds of smoke rolled up from the south and covered the sky. When Shakok left he went to the north and called to him all the bird and the four-legged animals of the winter lands. He called these all to come and help him in the coming battle. The magpie (Shro-ak-ah) was his shield and advance guard. On the morning of the fourth day the two enemies could be seen coming. In the north the black storm clouds of winter, with snow, sleet, and hail were bringing Shakok to the battle. In the south, Yatchum-me piled more wood on his fires and great puffs of steam and smoke arose and formed into clouds. These were coming fast towards Acoma, and the place where the fight was to take place, and were bringing Miochin, the Spirit of Summer. The thick smoke of Yat-chum-me's fires blackened all the animals Miochin had with him, and that is why the animals of the south are black and brown. Forked blazes of lightning shot out of the clouds that were bringing Miochin. Each came fast. Shakok from the north; Miochin form the south. At last they reached the town, and the flashes from the clouds singed the feathers and hair on the birds and animals that came with Shakok, turning them white; that is the reason why all the animals and birds that live in the north are white, or have some white about them. Shakok and Miochin were now close together. From the north Shakok threw snow-flakes, sleet, and hail that hissed through the air a blinding storm. In the south the big black clouds rolled along, and from Yat-chum-me's fires still rose up great puffs of smoke and steam that heated the air and melted Shakok's snow and sleet and hail, and compelled him to fall back. At last Shakok called for a truce. Miochin agreed, and the winds stopped and the snow and rain ceased falling.
They met at the wall of Acoma, and Shakok said, "I am defeated; you are the winner; Co-chin-ne-na-ko is yours." Then they agreed that Shakok should rule during half of the year, and Miochin during the other half, and that neither should trouble the other thereafter.
Ever since then one half of the year has been cold and the other half warm.
(Acoma tribe)


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Newswise — A new study has found that babies delivered by elective Caesarean section before 39 weeks of pregnancy, to mothers who previously had an elective C-section, are much more likely to have serious health problems than newborns delivered under the same circumstances at 39 weeks.
The study, conducted in part at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, also found that babies delivered at 41 and 42 weeks faced a similarly elevated risk as those delivered before 39 weeks. However, only a very small percentage of newborns in the study were delivered this late.
"What we found is there's a very tiny window between 39 and 40 weeks where baby outcomes are optimal, and any deviation before or after that 39th week results in increased risk," said John Thorp, M.D., study co-author and McAllister Distinguished Professor and division director for women's primary healthcare in the obstetrics and gynecology department at UNC.
Results of the study are published in the Jan. 8, 2009, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The lead author is Alan T.N. Tita, M.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The study was conducted for and funded by the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. It took place at 19 academic medical centers across the United States, including UNC Hospitals.
These results are important, Thorp said, because all of the health problems associated with delivery before 39 weeks exact a heavy toll on families, both emotionally and financially. This in turn leads to increased health care costs for society at large.
"Babies born prior to 39 weeks have more feeding difficulties, more breathing difficulties and need more medical support, whether it be artificial ventilation or oxygen support or some form of tube feeding," he said.
"So it seems like there is a critical window to do these repeat Caesarean sections in the absence of labor," Thorp said. "You would take somebody's due date and subtract seven days, and sometime in that seven days would be the optimal time for Caesarean delivery."
The number of women giving birth by Caesarean section has increased dramatically in the United States in recent years, rising from almost 21 percent of births in 1996 to 31 percent in 2006. At the same time, more C-section deliveries are taking place before the 39th week of pregnancy. Thorp said the earlier deliveries are being driven, at least in part, by the desire for scheduling convenience, both by mothers and physicians.
In the study, researchers analyzed records from more than 28,000 Caesarean sections performed on women who previously had one or more C-sections. Of these, 13,258 were performed electively " that is, without a specific medical indication that a C-section was required. Nearly 36 percent of the elective repeat C-sections were performed prior to 39 weeks while 49 percent were performed at 39 weeks.
Babies delivered at 37 weeks were up to four times more likely than babies delivered at 39 weeks to have breathing problems, require mechanical ventilation, have newborn sepsis (a severe bacterial infection) or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), to require admission to a neonatal intensive care unit or to spend five or more days in the hospital after birth. Babies delivered at 38 weeks were twice as likely to have one or more of these problems than babies delivered at 39 weeks.
"These early deliveries are associated with a preventable increase in neonatal morbidity and admissions to the neonatal ICU, which carry a high economic cost," the study concluded. "These findings support recommendations to delay elective delivery until 39 weeks gestation, and should be helpful in counseling."
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The New England Journal of Medicine (8-Jan-2009)

subset: commoncrawl


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The full House on July 27 voted 218-189 to add language to EPA's FY2002 spending bill (H.R.2620) that would stop EPA from spending funds to delay the arsenic rule as promulgated in January or from proposing or finalizing a rule that would "increase the levels of arsenic in drinking water permitted under that regulation."
The amendment from Democratic Whip David Bonior (D-Mich.) passed with 19 Republicans joining 198 Democrats and one Independent. If also approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate, which is expected to consider its version of the bill (S.1216) next week, and sent to the White House, such language would throw the future of EPA's ongoing review into doubt. It could trigger a showdown with President Bush, who ordered the review of the Clinton-era regulation.
Also Friday, the House rejected an amendment from Rep. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., that would have reversed a provision that diverts $25 million for EPA enforcement activities to the states.
Source: American Water Works Association


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Put just under 10,000 librarians in a convention center and you've got yourself some highly classified and neatly-arranged pandemonium. That was the case last week in Minneapolis at the Public Library Association convention.
It's an opportunity to learn techniques from professionals who fight the good fight in larger operations and different states. We attended meetings such as "Working with Difficult Patrons" and (for our upcoming Eastern Avenue branch) "Libraries as Greenbuildings".
There are hundreds of vendors (like the party people from Bowker above) vying for the library's attention, specializing in the items we check out to you folks, as well as the technology we use behind the scenes. One of these vendors brought in renowned mystery novelist C.J. Box to talk in their booth (in the picture on the right).
In addition to learning about the awesome reverse discrimination in men's restroom lines at a library convention, I learned these folks aren't too shy with the free snacks and tschotkes.
Next time, some cool Minneapolis Public Library hardware and views of the Twin Cities.


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Barack Obama on Principles & ValuesDemocratic nomine for President; Junior Senator (IL) |
McCAIN: On Mr. Ayers: I don�t care about an old washed-up terrorist. But as Sen. Clinton said in her debates with you, we need to know the full extent of that relationship.
OBAMA: Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Sen. McCain�s campaign over the last 2 or 3 weeks. So let�s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago. Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board. Other members on that board were University presidents who happen to be a Republican. Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House. So that�s Mr. Ayers.
The Facts:ACORN, a grass-roots community organizing group, faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in several states. Sen. John McCain, reflecting rising Republican concerns about ACORN, said at the debate �we need to know the full extent of Sen. Obama�s relationship with ACORN.�
While ACORN said Obama �never organized with or worked for ACORN,� it does mention other ties. Obama �accepted two invitations to be an unpaid guest speaker at training for volunteer community leaders organized by Chicago ACORN� in the early 1990s.
The Verdict:False. Obama�s legal work was his only professional tie to the group, but he also spoke at group events, and his campaign had a contract with a group that worked with ACORN.
OBAMA: Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I�m interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or wit Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO. Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Sen. McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.
OBAMA: Joe Biden is one of the finest public servants that has served in this country. It�s not just that he has some of the best foreign policy credentials of anybody. It�s also that he has never forgotten where he came from, fighting on behalf of working families, remembering what it�s like to see his father lose his job and go through a downward spiral economically.
McCAIN: Sarah Palin took on a governor who was a member of her own party when she ran for governor. When she was the head of their energy and natural resources board, she saw corruption, she resigned. She�s given money back to the taxpayers. She�s cut the size of government. She negotiated with the oil companies and faced them down.
A: I revere the American flag, and I would not be running for president if I did not revere this country. There�s no other country in which my story is even possible; somebody who was born to a teenage mom, raised by a single mother and grandparents from small towns in Kansas; who was able to get an education and rise to the point where I can run for the highest office in the land. I could not help but love this country for all that it�s given me. I did wear a flag pin yesertday when a veteran handed it to me, on behalf of disabled veterans. I have never said that I don�t wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and distracts us from figuring out how we get our troops out of Iraq and how we make our economy better for the American people.
Actually, in Oct. 2007, he said, �I decided I won�t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I�m gonna try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.� In another interview, Obama said, �The truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we�re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.�
Conservative critics have attacked Obama repeatedly for these remarks and his lack of a flag pin. Recently, Obama accepted a lapel pin given to him a disabled Vietnam veteran. �It means a lot coming from you,� Obama said.
Obama�s answer could mislead voters. Although we agree that rankings and labels sometimes don�t have much substance behind them, Obama cited just one of 99 Senate votes selected by National Journal�s reporters and editors for the study. The nonpartisan public policy magazine�s analysis was done according to a rigorous process the publication has been using since 1981. Most of the votes chosen had to do with the minimum wage, renewable energy, health insurance for children, immigration, embryonic stem cell research, and other issues on which it�s not too surprising to see a divide between liberals and conservatives. Clinton ranked 16th most liberal in the Senate
A: There�s no doubt that there were good things that happened during those eight years of the Clinton administration. That�s undeniable. Particularly, when looked through the lens of the last eight years with Bush, they look even better. So I don�t want to diminish some of the accomplishments that occurred during those eight years.
Obama has given all the Rezko money currently in his larder to charity, and he has called the land deal [he made with Rezko for Obama�s personal home] �boneheaded,� putting it down to anxieties about purchasing a first home (though his family had previously lived in a Hyde Park condo). No one has alleged that Obama did anything illegal, but his slip-sliding response to questions about Rezko suggests that, should he succeed, he will not drive every pig from the trough.
Obama does give a youthful impression. Every time Obama advances a conciliatory idea it conspires with his juvenile appearance, and his deliberative streak can seem like indecisiveness.
The idea of Obama as inexperienced was not merely unproven but the opposite of truth. Since the details of Obama�s life have already been extensively covered in his own books, journalists have little new to do except trying to find holes in Obama�s story.
As Obama noted, �I�ve written two very detailed books that give people a pretty good window into my heart and soul. I�ve given policy speeches on just about every important issue.� It was the media that didn�t want to talk about policies, not Obama. Yet in the media spotlight, the horse race always prevails over policy debates.
According to Obama, �With such cynicism, government doesn�t become a force of good, a means of giving people the opportunity to lead better lives; it just becomes an obstacle for people to get rid of. Too often, this cynicism makes us afraid to say what we believe.�
Since Obama�s election to the US Senate, Kenyans had adopted him as one of their own, and his rapid ascent to political power in the US had made him a living folk hero in the East African nation, especially among his father�s native tribe, the Luo. A beer named for Obama had gone on the Kenyan market (Senator Beer); a school in rural Kenya was named in his honor; and a play based on his Dreams Memoir had been staged at the Kenyan National Theater.
It is JFK�s younger brother who was a witty, eloquent, dashing, and politically progressive, 40-something freshman junior senator from a large northern industrial state when he ran for president in 1968, to whom Barack is most frequently compared. Bobby Kennedy, who sat at the same desk Obama was assigned when he first sat in the Senate chamber and who was sworn in on January 4, 1965, 40 years to the day before his political descendant, launched his quest as the electorate was despairing under the rising death count of a badly conceived and ill-defined, no-end-in-sight war.
When Obama invokes Kennedy, he sounds as if he could be reading a passage from his own book. �In a nation torn by war and divided against itself, he was able to look us in the eye and tell us that no matter... how persistent the poverty or the racism, no matter how far adrift America strayed, hope would come again.�
Pro: He was inspiring.
There is not a liberal America and a conservative America--there is the United States of America. There�s not a black America and white America: there�s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I�ve got news for them. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don�t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who oppose the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes.Words that will be long remembered. It is hard to imagine writing a history of this period without referring to this speech because Obama did such a find job of capturing the spirit of national unity.
I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. For it is the predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face. It is what keeps us locked in �either/or� thinking: the notion that we can only have big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate 46 million uninsured or embrace �socialized medicine.�
It is such partisanship that have turned Americans off. What is needed is a broad majority who are re-engaged and who see their own self-interest as inextricably linked to the interest of others.
But I can�t do this on my own. I need your help. This election could well come down to how many Latinos turn out to vote. And I�m proud that my campaign is working hard to register more Latinos, and bring them into the political process. Because I truly believe that if we work together and fight together and stand together this fall, then you and I--together--will change this county and change this world.
A: Issue #1, how we�re going to keep America safe. John McCain has a vision that is very similar to George Bush�s. He wants to continue in Iraq on the current course. I believe that we need to begin a process of withdrawal, initiate tougher diplomacy and refocus our attention on Afghanistan. That�s going to be a set of issues.
On the economy. John McCain�s main economic platform is to continue the Bush tax cuts and then to add $300 billion worth of corporate tax breaks that aren�t paid for. And then, you know, I think that the American people are going to have to make some decisions about our personal qualities. Obviously, the presidency is more than just a set of talking points. It has to do with the American people lifting the hood and kicking the tires and seeing who do they trust, who do they think can lead us at this moment in history. And those are more intangible qualities, but, you know, those�ll play into this race as well.
A: What I look at is the trajectory of my life because I was raised by a single mom. My father left when I was two, and I was raised by my mother and my grandparents. There were rocky periods during my youth, when I made mistakes & was off course. And what was most important, in my life, was learning to take responsibility for not only my own actions but how I can bring people together to actually have a impact on the world. Working as a community organizer with ordinary people, bringing them together and organizing them to provide jobs and health care, economic security to people who didn�t have it, then working as a civil rights attorney to fight for those who were being discriminated against on the job. It�s the reason that I have the capacity to bring people together, and why I am determined to make sure that the American people get a government that is worthy of their decency and their generosity.
A: Well, an example of why I was rated the most liberal was because I wanted an impartial office of public integrity. Now, I didn�t know that it was a Democratic issue. I thought that was a good government issue that a lot of Republicans would like to see. So that�s the problem with some of these ratings--how they score things. It uses categories that I think don�t make sense to a lot of Americans.
Q: Are you proud of that designation? To be known as the most liberal voting senator?
A: I don�t think you heard what I just said, which is that the designations don�t make sense. This is what I would call old politics. This is the stuff we�re trying to get rid of. Because the problem is, when we start breaking down into conservative & liberal, [that creates nothing but partisanship]. Those old categories don�t work, and they�re preventing us from solving them problems.
I believe a new kind of politics is possible, and I believe it is necessary. Because the American people can�t afford another four years without health care, decent wages, or an end to this war.
Imagine if next year, the entire nation had a president they could believe in. A president who rallied all Americans around a common purpose. That�s the kind of President we need in this country. And that�s the kind of President I will be.
You said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that�s consumed Washington, to end the political strategy that�s been all about division, and instead make it about addition, to build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states. Because that�s how we�ll win in November, and that�s how we�ll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation.
We�re choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America.
The time has come for a president who will be honest about the choices and the challenges we face, who will listen to you and learn from you even when we disagree, who won�t just tell you what you want to hear but what you need to know.
For many months we�ve been teased, even derided, for talking about hope. But we always knew that hope is not blind optimism. It�s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It�s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.
Hope is what led me here today, with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas, and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation, the belief that our destiny will not be written for us but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.
Obama�s vision of leadership is a merger between political activism and the community organizing. One might call it �community politics.� Community politics differs from community service, in which the more privileged members of society volunteer to help the poorer. As noble as that may be, it doesn�t create the kind of political empowerment sought by Obama. Instead, community politics aims to transform politics using the techniques of community organizing. Obama�s community organizing approach is to communicate with voters, listen to their suggestions, and convince them to buy in to a set of proposals.
Conservatives and liberals have learned different lessons from losing. In 1964, when Barry Goldwater was trounced by Johnson, it actually launched today�s conservative movement that culminated in the election of Reagan In 1972, when McGovern was trounced by Nixon, the progressive movement was dead. Democrats always avoided a progressive agenda. After the miserable failures of Gore and Kerry, progressives have argued that Democrats need to follow the conservative approach post-Goldwater and win by standing for something. Obama is trying to bridge these two approaches, to have integrity and progressive values, while simultaneously presenting a more centrist face that appeals across political boundaries.
Obama�s campaign is improbable, but not because he is black and so little known nationally It seems improbable because it defies the political establishment. Obama is a candidate who urges bipartisanship, who calls for ethics reform and changes in the campaign finance systems, and who speaks in grand terms about transforming American politics.
Obama�s biggest flaw may be that he�s not audacious enough, that he holds his tongue to spare feelings. Obama thinks we need to restore faith in government and hope in the better nature of our fellow citizens. But sometimes he seems unwilling to trust the people enough to tell them what he really thinks. Or perhaps he just doesn�t trust the media to let him engage in honesty without destroying his campaign. Instead, Obama�s first instinct too often is to compromise to reach common ground.
For a long time, progressive have been forced in the Democratic primary to choose between pragmatism and idealism, between delectability and values. In 2004, many Democrats made the unfortunate choic of John Kerry over Howard Dean precisely because they though Dean couldn�t be elected. Obama offers an easy resolution to this program, by being both the most electable and the most progressive candidate among the leaders in the Democratic Party.
A: What I�m talking about is ending the divisive politics that we have in this country. I think it is important for us as Democrats to be clear about what we stand for. But I think we also have to invite Republicans and independents to join us in a progressive agenda for universal health care, to make sure that they are included in conversations about improving our education system and properly funding our public schools. I think turning the page means that we�ve got to get over the special interest-driven politics that we�ve become accustomed to. And most importantly it�s important for us to make sure that we�re telling the truth to the American people about the choices we face.
Movements to draft him to run for the presidency in 2008 would take hold on the Internet Not since the days of Jack & Bobby Kennedy had a politician captured so quickly the imagination of such a broad array of Americans. And even the Kennedy comparison would not characterize Obama�s fame properly. Not since Ronald Reagan had a politician bee so adept at sharing his own unwavering optimism with a disheartened electorate. Using the broad power of the modern media as his launching pad, Obama would plot a course that catapulted him from little-known state lawmaker to best-selling author to US Senator to national celebrity. A mixture of idealistic and pragmatist, Obama would move almost overnight from a critic of the established political system inside the Beltway to a player within that system. He would represent both outsider and insider.
A: As I travel around the country, people have an urgent desire for change in Washington. We are not going to fix anything unless we change how business is done in Washington. Part of that is bringing people together. But part of it is also overcoming special interests & lobbyists who are writing legislation that�s critical to the American people. And one of the things I bring is a perspective that says: Washington has to change.
When I got to the Illinois State Senate, people said it was too hard to take on the issue of money in politics, our state had too long a history, too many entrenched interests. But I knew then that we had the people of Illinois on our side. I even found a few folks on the other side of the aisle who were willing to listen. And we passed the first major ethics reform legislation in 25 years.
I know that change is possible. I know where hope leads us. The only reason I�m standing here before you is because of hope. I know what�s possible in America. When I talk about hope, it isn�t just the rhetoric of a campaign; it�s been the cause of my life, a cause I will work for and fight for every single day as your president.
When they say that we can�t finally buy the radios [first responders] need to talk to one another in case of an emergency, we say, Yes we can.
When they say that we can�t bring [our troops] home from Iraq so they can do the job they love back home, we say, Yes we can.
This neologism was coined by Robert McElvaine of the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger: �What America needs is a leader who practices the politics of multiplication rather than division. The person who has the greatest potential to be the Multiplier has just returned from a successful visit to Africa and will be speaking Sunday in Iowa: Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.�
Pro: America wants a president who will bring us together. The current partisan atmosphere is tiresome. McElvaine is right, we need a unifier.
Con: America voted for President who divided us. In 2004, the majority of us voted for arguably the most divisive president in history.
Pro: A multiplier is electable.
Con: An African-American Multiplier is not electable. McElvaine concedes that a significant fraction of the American electorate would vote against any black candidate.
I am not suggesting that every progressive suddenly latch on to religious terminology. I am suggesting that perhaps if we progressives shed some of our own biases, we might recognize the values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We need to take faith seriously not simply to block the religious right but to engage all persons of faith in the larger project of American renewal.
I told them that government couldn�t solve all their problems. But with a slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life and meet the challenges we faced as a nation.
This book grows directly out of those conversations on the campaign trail. The ideals at the core of the American experience, and the values that bind us together despite our differences, remain alive in the hearts and minds of most Americans. The topic of this book is how we might begin the process of changing our politics and our civic life. I don�t know exactly how to do it. But I offer personal reflections on those values and ideals that have led me to public life, and myown best assessment of the ways we can ground our politics in the notion of a common good.
A: I don�t think Dr. King would endorse any of us. What he would call upon the American people to do is to hold us accountable, and this goes to the core differences in this campaign Change does not happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. Dr. King understood that. It was those women who were willing to walk instead of ride the bus, union workers who are willing to take on violence and intimidation to get the right to organize. It was women who decided, �I�m as smart as my husband. I�d better get the right to vote.� arguing, mobilizing, agitating, and ultimately forcing elected officials to be accountable, that�s the key. That has been a hallmark of my career, transparency and accountability, getting the American people involved. That�s how we�re going to bring about change. That�s why I want to be president of the US, to respect the power of the American people to bring about change.
As a US senator, he supported tort reform, voted against filibustering the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and backed the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorizatio Act. He favors capital punishment (though only in cases of �heinous� crime). He calls himself a strong supporter of reproductive rights, but in the Illinois legislature he voted present instead of yea on a number of bills concerning parental notification and late-term abortion.
On the stump now, he shies away from �social issues� unless he is speaking to a crowd that expects him to comment.
The top job held little appeal for Obama. In 1990 the Review�s staff of about 75 students was riven by intense partisan feuding--large factions of liberals and small bands of conservatives. Obama was one of 19 editors who ran for presidency--after the last conservative was voted out of the competition, that faction threw its support behind Obama, tilting the election in his favor, and bestowing on him the honor of being the first African American to hold the presidency. Obama used some of his appointment power to place conservatives in key editorial positions.
Palmer lost the congressional primary contest in Nov. 2005 to Jesse Jackson Jr., and then quickly filed to run for her old seat in the March 2006 Democratic primary against Obama--even though she had publicly supported him for the seat.
Obama challenged the legality of her petitions, as well as the legality of petitions from several other candidates in the race. Palmer realized that Obama had called her hand, and she acknowledged that she had not properly acquired the necessary number of signatures. She had no choice but to withdraw from the race. The other opponents were also knocked off the ballot, leaving Obama running unopposed in the primary.
Rather than winning a position in the Illinois General Assembly by ousting an incumbent or taking an open seat, he appeared to have slipped in the back door on a technicality.
�Now they say we can�t change Washington?� Obama asked in an earnest voice while stepping forward to fill the camera frame. �I�m Barack Obama and I am running for the US Senate to say, �Yes, we can.� �
Other commercials used the same �Yes, we can� mantra to appeal to different constituencies. Pollsters have consistently found that urban voters lean toward candidates who are change agents.
�What could I say? That a literal reading of the Bible was folly?� Obama wrote. �I answered with the usual liberal response in such debates--that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can�t impose my religious views on another, that I was running to be the US Senator from Illinois and not the minister of Illinois. But even as I answered, I was mindful of Keyes� implicit accusation--that I remain steeped in doubt, that my faith was adulterated, that I was not a true Christian.�
The rest of the way, Obama kept his head in the game and his hands off the porcupine. That November, in perhaps the most anticlimactic moment of Obama�s political ascension, he won the general election by the largest margin of victory in the history of Senate races in Illinois, defeating Keyes by a final tally of 70% to 29%.
A: Obama: Oh, I think it would have to be �The Godfather.� One and Two. Three not so much. That saga--I love that movie.
Q: Do you have a favorite scene?
A: I think my favorite has to be, the opening scene of the first �Godfather� where, where the caretaker comes in and, you know, Marlon Brando is sitting there and he�s saying �you disrespected me.� You know �and now you want a favor.� It sets the tone for the whole movie.
Q: And all hell breaks lose, right?
A: Yeah, right. I mean there�s this combination of old world gentility and ritual, with this savagery underneath. It�s all about family. So it�s a great movie. �Lawrence of Arabia.� Great film. One of my favorites--and then �Casablanca.� Who doesn�t like �Casablanca?�
Q: I asked for one!
A: I�m a movie guy. I can rattle off a bunch of movies. But that �Casablanca,� you know.
The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama�s book �Dreams from My Father� having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked a campaign spokesman if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, �He had the two jobs I told you about.� Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it�s a real stretch to claim he �worked his way� through school.
It�s a story that hasn�t made me the most conventional of candidates. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts; that out of many, we are truly one.
According to an investigation last year, Antoin Rezko was involved in developing at least 30 low-income housing buildings. A number of the buildings fell into disrepair, collecting housing code violations, and Rezko was sued on many occasions. Obama was associated with a law firm that represented the community groups working with Rezko on several deals. There�s no evidence that Obama spent much time on them, and he never represented Rezko directly. So it was wrong for Clinton to say he was �representing Rezko.�
Obama has known Rezko, however, for many years, and Rezko has been a major contributor and campaign fundraiser for him since Obama�s first campaign for the Illinois state Senate.
Archetypal themes, if only metaphorically, point to eternal truths. Obama�s book �Dreams From My Father� chronicles his search for his father [who was mostly absent]. He necessarily becomes an obsession in ways that real and present fathers never do.
What gave Obama the idea that he could run for president? Was it that he had evolved a compelling vision for the nation grounded in deeply held personal convictions? Or was it that he had simply become aware of his power to enthrall whites?
Obama is not a conviction politician. His supporters do not look to him to do something; they loo to him to be something, to represent something.
Obama emerged into a political culture that needed him more as an icon than as a man. But this easy appeal has also been his downfall. It is a seduction away from character and conviction.
The challenge is to achieve visibility an individual, to become an individual rather than a cipher. Unless we get to know who he is--what beliefs he would risk his life for--he could become a cautionary tale, an iconic figure who neglected to become himself.
As an image-building tool, �Dreams from My Father� has been remarkably effective. But it is too unorthodox to serve as a press release. Not only are there damning references to coke sniffing and dope smoking, but the book also offers a detailed account of his gnawing ambivalence as a young man growing up in a double bind.
When he embarks for Kenya to meet his African family he sees himself as �a Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers... I felt as if I were living out someone else�s romance.�
[After accusations of an unethical deal, press investigations showed that], Obama paid fair market value for his portion of the land [as did Rezko]. Rezko was indicted for fraud [unrelated to real estate], but at the time Obama bought his house, there was no public indication of Rezko�s problems.
Obama declared, �I am the first to acknowledge that it was a boneheaded move for me to purchase from Rezko.� Despite all the rumors about Obama and Rezko, none of the evidence indicated any wrongdoing. The mistake Obama made was to have any dealings at all that would give the appearance of impropriety.
Obama suggested he may have �a particular ability to bring the country together around a pragmatic, commonsense agenda for change that probably has a generational element to it as well. America is ready for new challenges. This is our time. A new generation is prepared to lead.� He promised a new kind of politics instead of the �24-hour, slash-and-burn, negative-ad bickering, small-minded politics that doesn�t move us forward.�
As the first major politician of the post-baby boomer era, Obama appeals to Gen-Xers who have lived in the shadow of baby boomers and have faced the accusation that those who grew up in the 1970s & early 1980s were self-centered and indifferent to social causes
A: A decisive moment in my life was the transition from high school to college, because I had gone through a difficult time, not knowing my father, and was, at times, an angry young man. And partly because of the values my mother had instilled in me, those were reawakened in college. And it made me serious about, not just what I could do for myself, but what I could do for other people. It�s what led me to become a community organizer. It�s what led me to go into public service. And ultimately, it�s what led me to this stage.
As a high school freshman, he played defensive line on the football team and was described as a strong lineman, �a real people mover.�
Even with his mother gone, [his grandmother] Madelyn said, Barry was essentially a well-behaved teen who spent most of his time involved in sports. �He was a jock,� she said.
Obama, without argument, is imbued with an abiding sense of social and economic justice. He is an earnest, thoughtful, occasionally naive man who has a strong sense of moral purpose, a trait driven into him by his ardently progressive mother.
But Obama is far more complex than just a crusading dreamer aiming to �give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless,� in his own oft-spoken words. He is an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people o
In just a couple of years, he rose from obscure state lawmaker to national celebrity pursued by paparazzi on his family vacation. He struggled through a self-described �painful year� of just 3 or 4 hours of sleep per night in order to write a best-selling book that would assure his family�s financial security & nurture his burgeoning political career. He would be discussed endlessly in the mainstream and alternative media as potentially the first African American to hold the Oval Office. He became a prideful and iconic symbol for millions of black Americans; and he would secure his role as a major national voice for Democrats.
This wasn�t the book Obama originally sold to his publisher. He had pitched them a work about his experience as the first African-American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. After all, at the time, Obama was a modest 33 years old, and his Law Review presidency was his only claim to any modicum of fame.
When Obama began writing, an autobiographical memoir poured forth. Upon its release in 1995, the book sold a few thousand copies, generated mostly positive reviews, and then it faded into obscurity.
That changed dramatically when Obama shot to national fame in 2004. The publisher quickly ran off several new printings, promoted it vigorously, and the book landed on the best-seller lists, giving Obama the first shot of financial wealth in his life.
When I asked Obama to name his favorite author, he cited E. L. Doctorow, the critically acclaimed novelist and outspoken political liberal. The next day, during a phone conversation on a different matter, he made it a point to say that he wanted to change his answer--to William Shakespeare.
Some politicians are infamous for casually mentioning high-minded work that is currently on their nightstand in order to give the impression of being a deep thinker. It is difficult to imagine most politicians digesting Shakespeare before extinguishing the bedroom light. Yet Obama�s erudite nature and his own ambitious writings made that answer seem quite plausible.
Hawaii�s has grown considerably since Obama�s youth, but the essence of the islands� mix of various Asian, Polynesian and Western cultures has persevered. Meeting Obama�s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, and grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, in Hawaii, opened my eyes to Obama�s formative years. The atmosphere of [Obama�s school] campus gave me a sense of the unflappable Hawaiian nature at Obama�s core.
The night of his Senate primary victory, for example, reporters marveled curiously at Obama�s exceptionally cool exterior as others around him exhibited jubilation. One of Obama�s greatest talents is that, even in the midst of chaos, he has the ability to project serenity. Hawaii, if not fully responsible, most certainly contributed heavily to this trait.
Obama�s father was the son of Hussein Onyango Obama, a prominent farmer in Kenya�s Luo tribe. As a boy, Barack Sr. herded goats on the family farm near a poor village called Kolego near Kenya�s Lake Victoria. He stood out academically in a local school established by the British colonizers and won a scholarship & then a sponsorship for study at the University of Hawaii.
But when he came to America, his father left a pregnant wife and child back in Kenya. When he returne to Africa, he took another American woman with him, eventually marrying her and having two additional children. An atheist with an analytical mind, he worked for a petroleum company, and for a time he was a chief economist for the Kenyan government.
She thought it would be improper to date an employee she was assigned to train. In addition, they were the only two African Americans at the law firm. �I thought, �Now how would that look?� � Michelle said. �Here we are, the only two black people here, and we are dating. I�m thinking that looks pretty tacky.�
Michelle tried to set up Obama with a friend, but he showed no interest in anyone but her. Eventually, she relented and agreed to a date. When Obama married Michelle in 1990, he also married into her budding network among Chicago�s community of successful white-collar African Americans.
Ann Dunham was the Kansas-born daughter of a furniture store manager who harbored a bohemian streak. Ann�s mother traced a branch of her family lineage to a famous ancestor-- Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
The Dunhams moved to the islands in 1960. The two began dating and after a brief courtship, wed--an act that in 1960 was a crime in most states. Newly admitted to the Union, however, Hawaii was young and relatively tolerant, and the family history includes no accounts of Obama�s parents suffering abuse on the streets of Honolulu.
His father later earned his PhD from Harvard, but separated from Ann. He returned, alone, to Kenya, where he became an economist in the administration of the new nation.
Obama and his family flew to Kisumu where 1000s lined the route, many climbing trees for a better view of the motorcade carrying the American that the local Luo tribespeople loudly claimed as their own.
In Kogelo, the tiny village where Obama�s father and grandfather are buried side by side and where the octogenarian Luo he calls �Granny� still lives, crowds chanted his name, a tribal singer sang his praises, and children sang songs they had composed in his honor.
�Even though I had grown up on the other side of the world, I felt the spirit among the people who told me that I belonged.�
The way she told the story, he saw the depth of her enduring love for his father. Even though he had left her with a baby to raise, she loved him. �She saw my father as everyone hopes at least one other person might see them.�
Any hope of that appeared to end just a few months later when he received a telephone call from Nairobi. His father had been killed in a car crash. He was 46. His son did not shed a tear.
[Years later, when visiting Kenya], Obama stood before his father�s unmarked grave. He felt he knew and understood and forgave his father for the first time. His father had not succumbed to despair. He had had the audacity to hope. And for the first time, his son wept for him.
My work took me to some of Chicago�s poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren�t simply local in nature--that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; or that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away.
It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education I ever had, and where I learned the true meaning of my Christian faith.
Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
Con: let�s face it, having a name that rhymes with �Iraq� is not a plus.
Pro: �Barack� is a cool name. Parents all over the US spend hours and days searching for distinctive names for their little princes. �Barack� is a less annoying than �LaTreyell.�
Con: The guy shares a name with Saddam Hussein. This is not helpful. Inspired by his Muslim grandfather.
Pro: This should help him with Arab-American voters.
Con: �Obama� is a weird name.
Pro: �Obama� is a cool Kenyan name..
Pro: His family calls him �Barry.� �Barry� sounds reassuringly normal. �Barry� sounds like he is �one of us�: it sounds like he belongs to America, not Kenya
When Obama was 2, his father left the family, returning to Kenya, where he eventually became a senior economist in the Ministry of Finance. Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School. He became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
He worked as a community organizer in New York and Chicago on job-training programs and other projects, and as a civil rights lawyer. He is now a senior instructor in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.
A: Well, Michelle had a conversation with Malia, who�s our 9-year-old. Michelle said, �You know, Daddy�s about to be nominated for the presidency, and he�ll be the first African American ever to have that happen.� And Malia said, �Well, that doesn�t surprise me. I�ve read these histories about how blacks were discriminated against with slavery and Jim Crow,� and she sort of ticked it off. But you could tell that there wasn�t that emotional impact on her because she has grown up in this environment where she can take it for granted. And the fact that they�re taking it for granted is a measure of progress in our country. It says something really good about America. It�s a testament to this country�s urge to live up to its ideals, as imperfectly as that is sometimes.
A: Absolutely. And so the question becomes, how do voters draw conclusions about my values? Do they look at the 20 years in which I have devoted my life to community service? Do they look at how I�ve raised my children? That�s a reflection of my values. I don�t think that the issue of Rev. Wright is illegitimate. I just think that the way it was reported was not a reflection of both that church that I attend and who I am. On flag pins, you know, I�ve worn flag pins in the past. I will wear flag pins in the future. The fact that I said that some politicians use flag pins and then aren�t acting in a particularly patriotic way, for that to somehow be translated into me being antipatriotic or antiflag--I think that is a distraction
In fact, nobody died as a result of bombings in which Ayers said he participated as part of the Weather Underground. Other members were associated with 5 deaths, but none in which Ayres was present.
Ayers did say �I don�t regret setting bombs� and �I feel we didn�t do enough� regarding the group�s violent protests against the Vietnam War. That was in a NY Times interview that was published the morning of September 11, 2001. Ayers is now a professor of education in Chicago. Obama and Ayers served together for a time on the board of an antipoverty charity, the Woods Fund of Chicago, from 1999 to 2002.
On one end of the spectrum, we�ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it�s based solely o the desire of wild and wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we�ve heard my former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation, and that rightly offend white and black alike.
I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy and, in some cases, pain. For some, nagging questions remain.
Rev. Wright�s comments were not only wrong, but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity, racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve problems that confront us all.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we�ve never really worked through--a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.
But I have asserted a firm conviction, a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people, that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.
For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life.
He was �rooted,� he said, in the African- American community, but he was also �more than that.� This is the formulation of a man with a complex identity trying to make himself more recognizable to a society not used to pondering his like. Yet, this is also a formulation that reduces Obama�s identity to a banality. What could �rooted� or �more than that� mean? For that matter, what could �African-American community� really mean? A culture? A politics?
To become recognizable, he processes himself through the same dumb racial math-- he is one thing plus something else--that has been the source of his vulnerability. He collaborates with the racial conventions that made him an odd man out. Yet a great part of Obama�s appeal in broader America can be chalked up to his complex identity.
It doesn�t matter that he sometimes goes along with race-based policies, or that he made his own Faustian bargain with affirmative action. No one is excited because Obama nods to identity politics; people are excited because he represents an idealism that opposes such politics. Any black who takes on the near-absolute visibility that goes with seeking such high office will function as both a man and a symbol, and sometimes the two will be at odds. So it is not surprising that Obama the man may vary a bit from Obama the symbol.
But Obama is not such a person. His books show a man driven by a determination to be black, as if blackness were more an achievement than a birthright. And this need within him puts Obama at odds with himself. His plausibility as a candidate comes, in part, from the perception that he is not driven to be black, that he is rather lightly tethered to his race. But the very arc of his life has been greatly influenced by an often conscious resolve to belong irrefutably to the black identity.
Joyce opposes blackness out of the same determination to claim an identity that drives Obama to embrace blackness. Obama is determined to distance himself from her & his own mainstream American past. Joyce represents a remarkable new option in American life. Joyce says that whites are �willing to treat me like a person.� Blacks are �the ones who are telling me I can�t be who I am.�
Joyce is Obama�s troublesome doppelganger as he grinds through the self-betrayals that help him belong to blackness. What you want, she murmurs--the chance to be yourself, self-acceptance--is not with blackness; it is in the same mainstream you came from.
�White folks� is a term that shames Obama. It is bigotry because it paints all whites with the same brush. He has to give whites their innocence until they prove unworthy of it. That is what white Americans sense in Barack Obama. On pain of his own integrity, he cannot be challenger.
Challengers, like Obama�s black friend Ray, deprive whites of their racial innocence until they do something to earn it.
Challengers [like Al Sharpton] have come to play an unexpected role in the Obama saga. It is precisely against the specter of an Al Sharpton that a Barack Obama looks so �fresh� and �appealing.� Sharpton makes the point--better than Obama�s most savvy speechwriter could--that Obama is a black man for all people, a black man who gives whites �the benefit of the doubt.
Obama is bound to the antiresponsibility political left because his fate depends on his ability to offer innocence to whites--this despite the fact that he clearly seems to accept the importance of individual responsibility in social reform. Yet he offers no thinking on how to build incentives to responsibility into actual social policy.
Is the Bradley effect history? A 1958 poll found that 53% of Americans admitted they would not vote for a black presidential candidate. In 2003, only 6% said they would not vote for a black president. The people who voted against Bradley, Wilder, and Dinkins despite telling pollsters the opposite were those who, in the abstract, were racist toward black candidates. But in generational terms, openly racist voters have mostly died off.
One pundit wrote: �There is nothing he can do to address his major shortcoming: the absence on his resume of the kind of major achievement that qualifies a person for the White House.� Of course, Obama has many achievements, and it is hard to find a major achievement of most senators running for president.
Obama�s experiences challenge the conventional wisdom of the establishment. Obama is a different kind of outsider. He is an outsider accustomed to working with legislators from the other party, and an outsider committed to pragmatic solutions.
A: You know, when I�m catching a cab in Manhattan--in the past, I think I�ve given my credentials. But let me go to the broader issue here. And that is that race permeates our society. It is still a critical problem. But I do believe in the core decency of the American people, and I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions. Unfortunately, we�ve had a White House that hasn�t invested in the kinds of steps that have to be done to overcome the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in this country. And as president, my commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care is to close the disparities and the gaps, because that�s what�s really going to solve the race problem in this country.
The announcement from the Kerry campaign came on the same day that the Democrat launched $2 million worth of ads for television, radio and newspapers targeting black voters. Democrats handily won the black vote in 2000 by a 9-to-1 margin, and the party and Kerry campaign want to boost that turnout this November.
Obama�s Republican opponent Jack Ryan dropped out last month over embarrassing allegations in his divorce papers. The GOP�s top choices have refused to run, sending Republicans scrambling to line up opposition.
Origins: These cherry-picked statements are presented devoid of context, and some are reworded from the original.
�I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.�
This statement is a rewording of a passage from page 261 of The Audacity of Hope. The original contains no specific mention of �Muslims�:
�In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a mor urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.
The ad is based on a seemingly solid fact, that Obama was �enrolled as a Muslim� in a Catholic school in Indonesia in 1967, when Obama was six years old. The ad misses out key facts: Obama was required to participate in the school�s Catholic rituals and pray four times a day. Teachers said that he was probably registered as a Muslim because this was the religion of his then-Indonesian step-father. More importantly, the same school ledger that listed Obama as �Muslim� also listed Obama as an Indonesian; gave an inaccurate name for his previous school; and made no mention of his mother. The campaign concludes that Obama �is not, and was never, a Muslim.� [We agree].
A: Well, obviously it�s distracted us. I mean, we ended up spending a lot of time talking about Reverend Wright instead of talking about the issues. And so it wasn�t welcome. But, you know, I think that the American people understand that when I joined Trinity United Church of Christ, I was committing not to Pastor Wright, I was committing to a church and I was committing to Christ. And it is a wonderful church. It�s a member of the United Church of Christ, a denomination that dates back to the battles around abolition. And, as a consequence, when Rev. Wright, who married me and baptized our children, when I learned of his statements that I found so objectionable, I felt that they didn�t define him. I don�t think Rev. Wright�s [more recent comments] represented well the church. And I had to make a clear statement [against Wright]. Hopefully we�ve been able to put it behind us.
OBAMA: I think there�s no doubt that I can see how people were offended. It�s not the first time that I�ve made a statement that was mangled up. It�s not going to be the last. But let me be very clear about what I meant: People are going through very difficult times right now. When people feel like Washington�s not listening to them, then politically they end up focusing on those things that are constant, like religion. They end up feeling �This is a place where I can find some refuge. This is something that I can count on.� They end up being much more concerned about votes around things like guns, where traditions have been passed on.
OBAMA: Hillary has been saying I�m elitist, out of touch, condescending. Let me be absolutel clear. It would be pretty hard for me to be condescending towards people of faith, since I�m a person of faith and have done more than most other campaigns in reaching out specifically to people of faith, and have written about how Democrats make an erro when they don�t show up and speak directly to people�s faith. The same is true with respect to gun owners. I have large numbers of sportsmen and gun owners in my home state, and they have supported me precisely because I have listened to them.
OBAMA: Rev Wright is somebody who made controversial statements, & I specifically said that those comments were objectionable; they�re not comments that I believe in. And I disassociated myself with them. But the body of Reverend Wright�s work, over the course of 30 years, were not represented in those snippets that were shown on television: the church has done outstanding work in ministries on HIV/AIDS, and prison ministries. So I�ve tried to speak to a broader context, which is that there is anger in the Africa American community that sometimes gets expressed, whether in the barbershop or in the church. That�s true not just in the African American community, but in other communities as well. My candidacy represents the opportunity to move beyond it.
A: Scripture talks about clinging to what�s good. My words may have been clumsy, but [I meant] religion is a foundation when other things aren�t going well. That�s true in my own life, through trials and tribulations.
Q: Hillary Clinton says you�re being elitist.
A: My entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do. The notion that somehow I am standing above that when that essentially describes much of what I�ve been doing over the last 20 years doesn�t make much sense.
A: Well, I actually wrote about this in my second book �Audacity of Hope.� I had worked as an organizer on the South Side. The community was in difficult straits. I had been raised in a spiritual but nonreligious home. But as I�m doing this organizing, I started visiting some churches. Trinity United Church of Christ was one. I visited that church and found the ministries that they were doing on HIV/AIDS, and on prison ministries, and Rev. Wright�s sermons spoke directly to the social gospel, the need to act and not just to sit in the pews. I found that very attractive and ended up joining the church. Now, there�s been this notion that he was my spiritual adviser. You know, he�s been just my pastor--there are areas where we�ve disagreed. [But the recent uproar has been] both a distortion of who he is and what the church has been about.
A: Well, I lived in Indonesia for 4-1/2 years when I was a child. The first school I went to in Indonesia was a Catholic school I then attended a public school, but the majority of the country was Muslim. And the brand of Islam that was being practiced in Indonesia at the time was a very tolerant Islam. The country itself was explicitly secular in its constitution. So what it taught me, and what it still teaches me, as I think about foreign policy now, is that Islam can be compatible with the modern world. It can be a partner with the Christian & Jewish & Hindu & Buddhist faiths in trying to create a better world. And so I am always suspicious of attempts to paint Islam with a broad brush because the overwhelming majority of the people of the Islamic faith are people of good will, as opposed to the overheated political rhetoric of assuming a clash of civilizations
A: First of all, let�s make clear what the facts are. I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the US Senate, when I�m presiding. But you know, in the Internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. Fortunately the American people are smarter than folks give them credit for. My job is to tell the truth, to be straight with the American people about my vision for where the country needs to go. If I�m doing that effectively, then I place my trust in the American people that they will sort out the lies from the truth and they will make a good decision.
His attendance at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City, Iowa, with the news media in tow, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the US. Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer. �I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in,� he told the congregation.
Obama regularly attends church, but seldom with reporters watching. He is known to invoke religious references in his speeches and has said he has a �personal relationship� with Jesus Christ. He often has said that religion has a place in public life and that faith and politics are not exclusively the domain of conservatives.
How can Obama sit every week in a church preaching blackness & not object that he was raised quite well, thank you, by three white Midwesterners? Obama is the kind of man who can close down the best part of himself to belong to this black church and, more broadly, to the black identity.
[The story was based on an] April 2005 anti-Obama email entitled �The Enemy Within,� which circulated among right-wing circles. CNN sent a correspondent to Indonesia the check on the story. CNN reported that the madrassa �was an ordinary public school Kids ran around in short pants and learned math and science and participated in the Boy Scouts.� One reason the madrassa lie was so convincing can be attributed to the blind hatred of Muslims found on the Far Right.
Obama�s secular upbringing has shaped his approach to religion today: �My faith is complicated by the fact that I didn�t grow up in a particular religious tradition. When you come at it as an adult, your brain mediates a lot, and you ask a lot of questions.�
When Obama prays, he says, he is engaged in an �ongoing conversation with God.� But this conversation is not a delusional belief that a supernatural being is talking directly to him. Instead, Obama uses God as a way to check his own ego. He uses prayer to �take stock� of himself and maintain his �moral compass.� He has a conversation with God in order to ask himself, �Am I doing this because it�s advantageous to me politically or because I think it�s the right thing to do.�
A: Yes, there are some inconsistencies and hypocrisy of people who mix religion and politics sometimes. I have said it�s important for Democrats to reach out to the faith community, and the reason is because 90% of Americans believe in God. It�s a source of values. It�s a source of their moral compass. And I know it�s a source of strength for me and my family. I think it�s important for us not to presume that faith has no part in the public square. Look at Martin Luther King, the abolitionists, the suffragettes. We have a long history of reform movements being grounded in that sense often religiously expressed that we have to extend beyond ourselves and our individual immediate self-interests to think about something larger.
Obama�s faith shapes his values, as it does for millions of Americans. As he said in a recent speech on faith and politics:
Our values should express themselves not just through our churches or synagogues, temples or mosques; they should express themselves through our government. Because whether it�s poverty or racism, the uninsured or the unemployed, war or peace, the challenges we face today are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten-point plan. They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness--in the imperfections of man. And so long as we�re not doing everything in our personal and collective power to solve them, we know the conscience of our nation cannot rest.
But in speaking to a reporter, it seemed that he referred to his Bible [less often]. �It�s a great book and contains a lot of wisdom,� he said simply. He said he was drawn to Christianity because its main tenet of altruism and selflessness coincided with his own philosophies. His Christianity would be well received among blacks and some rural whites.
This spirit of hers guided me on the path I would ultimately take. It was in search of confirmation of her values that I studied political philosophy.
It was because of these newfound understandings-that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world-that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be ba
Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square. To say that men and women should not inject their personal morality into public policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, mush of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
What our pluralistic democracy does demand is that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. Those opposed to abortion cannot simply invoke God�s will--they have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths.
A: Well, my wife may have a longer list. But professionally the biggest mistake that I made was when I first arrived in the Senate. There was a debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn�t have. I should have fought more for making sure that families make those decisions and not bureaucrats and politicians.
On January 2, 1969, [three newly elected and six previously elected] African-American Members of Congress met as the Democratic Select Committee. On February 2, 1971 the group agreed to be known as the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
The goals of the CBC are to positively influence the course of events pertinent to African-Americans and others of similar experience and situation, and to achieve greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programs and services. The Caucus has not only been at the forefont of issues affecting African-Americans, but has garnered international acclaim for advancing agendas aimed at protecting human rights and civil rights for all people. Today, the Congressional Black Caucus stands 38 members strong.
Upon her election as Chair of the CBC for the 107th Congress, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson expounded: �Whether the issue is popular or unpopular, simple or complex, the CBC has fought for thirty years to protect the fundamentals of democracy. The Caucus is committed to ensuring that the standard of living for minorities in America does not retrogress, but instead rises to meet the expectations of both our ancestors and our children. The Congressional Black Caucus is probably the closest group of legislators on the Hill. We work together almost incessantly, we are friends and, more importantly, a family of freedom fighters. Our diversity makes us stronger, and the expertise of all of our members has helped us be effective beyond our numbers.�
There is overwhelming evidence of official misconduct, deliberate fraud and an attempt to suppress voter turnout by unlawful means that were used to produce George W. Bush�s false victory. The preponderance of the available evidence points to Vice President Al Gore as the actual winner of the most votes in Florida and he should have been awarded the state�s electoral votes.
Vice President Al Gore may have conceded his judicial contest, but that is irrelevant. There is not provision for the concession of candidates in the Constitution. There is, however, a process set out in law for Congress to consider challenges to electoral votes. The Congress, on behalf of all Americans, is the final judge of how much election fraud to accept.
The hearings held by the NAACP clearly showed that there were massive violations of the Voting Rights Act, and that tens of thousands of Floridians were denied due process when they were removed from the voter rolls without notice. Still others were intimidated by police checkpoints set up near polling places. In Miami-Dade and Broward, investigations by independent news organizations have found hundreds of ineligible persons who were allowed to vote. There clearly were significant inequities in assigning what turned out to be non-working voting machines to precincts that were heavily African-American in Miami-Dade. We would not tolerate any of these errors if they took place in some other country. Is our duty to our own country any less?
Millions of Americans have already expressed their public outrage at the myriad injustices which occurred in the making of George W. Bush�s mistaken victory. But public outrage is not enough. The laws of this country provide for the objection which we herein make on behalf of freedom, justice and democracy. We, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, therefore wholeheartedly object to the acceptance of the presidential electors from Florida.
OnTheIssues.org interprets the 2006 AU scores as follows:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. AU is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all Americans.
Americans United is a national organization with members in all 50 states. We are headquartered in Washington, D.C., and led by the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director. AU has more than 75,000 members from all over the country. They include people from all walks of life and from various faith communities, as well as those who profess no particular faith. We are funded by donations from our members and others who support church-state separation. We do not seek, nor would we accept, government funding.


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Brock's Mudkip evolves into Marshtomp while training with Grovyle, but when it shows off its Mud Shot attack, it accidentally hit s a nearby Flaaffy! Luckily, Flaaffy's owner, Mariah, works at a pharmacy that makes Pokémon medicine. Soon Flaaffy is well, but Marshtomp has developed a crush on it! Mariah and her friend McCauley are helping the pharmacy's doctor, using Electric Pokémon to help make medicine. It's not easy, and McCauley is really starting to doubt his abilities.
A disguised Team Rocket tries to clean out the pharmacy using Meowth in a Snorlax suit, but McCauley and Brock drive them off. Team Rocket doesn't give up: later that night, they return with a rocket-powered balloon and steal the entire building while Mariah and Flaaffy are still inside! McCauley and his Ampharos leap into the building as it's carried off. Back on the ground, Ash and his friends try to stop Team Rocket, but Pikachu and the doctor's Mareep are hurt when Marshtomp's attack is deflected by Team Rocket's latest device.
Up in the flyaway pharmacy, McCauley and Mariah mix up a Pokémon medicine, then toss it to the doctor. The hurt Pokémon are restored to full health, and the Electric Pokémon pool their power to defeat Team Rocket. McCauley now has confidence in himself, but poor Brock and Marshtomp realize that romance with Mariah and Flaaffy will never pass! Yes, everything's definitely back to normal as our friends head towards the next stop on the Battle Frontier!


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Solo Bella
Solo Bella
426 Chandler Road
Jackson, NJ 08527
Directions | Website
Phone: (732) 961-0951
Our story
Located in Jackson, Solo Bella brings classic Italian-American eats with a contemporary flare to Ocean County with winning results.
The restaurant's menu includes standouts such as linguini with fresh clams, eggplant rollatini and veal Milanese.
Signature 12-inch wood-fired thin crust pizza
No discussion of Solo Bella would be complete without mentioning their signature 12-inch wood-fired thin crust pizza — you simply owe it to yourself to try one at your earliest convenience. For more information on Solo Bella, including a look at the restaurant's full lunch, dinner and take-out menus
This very popular Southern Italian bistro is the best restaurant in Jackson.
– www.new-jersey-leisure-guide.com
We are located in an attractive stand alone building that invites you to enter into the lobby area where seating and deli cases are filled with gourmet italian food products and fresh baked desserts.
There are two dining rooms and the decor in the main dining room is pleasant and soft, with earth toned walls and burgundy drapes, soft lighting and candlelit tables.
The real reason you come to Solo Bella is the fresh home style prepared southern Italian food — at a very attractive price.. We serve up gargantuan portions of food with the freshest ingredients, seafood, meats, and pastas.
The menu caters to Italian family traditions and if you are 1st or 2nd generation Italian you will enjoy the Sunday special where for $18/person, everyone at the table eats and shares the same antipasti, salad, pastas, entrees and desserts and coffee preparations from what "Mama Cooks". You will leave with "doggie bags" of food!
Each night there is also a daily special with unbeatable prices and portions.
Some of the popular favorites include; Sea food Fra Diavlo, Penne & Broccoli with either shrimp or chicken, Linguine with clams, Shrimp Oregenata, strip steaks, Lasagna, spaghetti, and veal parmigiano, and a variety of broccoli rabe, sausage, and fried calamari combinations. They also serve up outstanding brick oven pizza.
In the warmer summer months, there is out door dining on the deck
Come early! They don't accept reservations for small parties and there can be a long wait on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.
We are family and child friendly.


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Fix $G$, a finitely generated presented group.
It is known that for every $k > 3$ there is a closed $k$-manifold whose fundamental group is $G$. Similarly, there is a topological space with fundamental group $G$ and all higher homotopy groups trivial.
However, even for simple examples such as when $G \cong \mathbf{Z}_2$, such a topological space is not a manifold. It seems like the problem with these spaces really lies in the infinite constructions process adding in cells of arbitrarily high dimension. So instead if we only require the first $n$ homotopy groups to be trivial can we still work with manifolds. That is,
Is it true that for each $n > 1$ there is a closed manifold $M$ such that $\pi_1(M) \cong G$ and for $1 < i \leq n$, $\pi_i(M)$ is trivial?
Note that if we allow $M$ to be a non-compact manifold / a manifold with boundary then the answer is yes. This follows as we can always find a finite simplicial complex $X$ whose fundamental group is $G$. By correctly adding $i$-cells (for $1 < i \leq n$) we obtain a simplical complex $X'$ with $\pi_1(X') \cong G$ and for $1 < i \leq n$, $\pi_i(M)$ trivial. By embedding $X'$ in a suitably high dimensional Euclidean space and taking an closed / open regular neighbourhood we obtain $M$, a non-compact manifold / manifold with boundary with the required properties.
Assuming that the answer to the first question is yes, can we also get manifolds of almost any dimension that we like?


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Margaret Fuller
Our editors will review what you've submitted and determine whether to revise the article.
- In full:
- Sarah Margaret Fuller
- Married name:
- Marchesa Ossoli
- Born:
- May 23, 1810, Cambridgeport [now part of Cambridge], Mass., U.S.
- Died:
- July 19, 1850, at sea off Fire Island, N.Y. (aged 40)
- Notable Works:
- "Woman in the Nineteenth Century"
- Movement / Style:
- American Renaissance
- Transcendentalism
- Subjects Of Study:
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Margaret Fuller, (born May 23, 1810, Cambridgeport [now part of Cambridge], Mass., U.S.—died July 19, 1850, at sea off Fire Island, N.Y.), American critic, teacher, and woman of letters whose efforts to civilize the taste and enrich the lives of her contemporaries make her significant in the history of American culture. She is particularly remembered for her landmark book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), which examined the place of women within society.
Fuller was an extremely precocious child. Under the severe tutelage of her father she more than compensated for the inaccessibility of formal education to females of the time; but, while she acquired wide learning at a very early age, the strain permanently impaired her health.
Plagued by financial difficulties after her father's death in 1835, she taught in Bronson Alcott's Temple School in Boston, 1836–37, and in Providence, Rhode Island, 1837–39. In 1839 she published a translation of Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe; her most cherished project, never completed, was a biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Fuller formed many important friendships during this period, including those with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Elizabeth Peabody, William Ellery Channing, and Orestes Brownson. From 1840 to 1842 she was editor of The Dial, a magazine launched by the Transcendentalists. She wrote poetry, reviews, and critiques for the quarterly.
In Boston, for five winters (1839–44), she conducted classes of "conversations" for women on literature, education, mythology, and philosophy, in which venture she was reputed to be a dazzling leader of discussion. Her professed purpose was "to systematize thought"; more generally, she attempted to enrich the lives of women and to dignify their place in society. The same purpose guided her in writing Woman in the Nineteenth Century, a tract on feminism that was both a demand for political equality and an ardent plea for the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual fulfillment of women. It was published in 1845 by Horace Greeley, who had admired her Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), a perceptive study of frontier life in Illinois and Wisconsin.
In Woman in the Nineteenth Century, Fuller urges young women to seek greater independence from the home and family and to obtain such independence through education. She disdains the notion that women should be satisfied with domesticity, suggesting instead that women should be allowed to fulfill their personal potential by doing whatever work appeals to them: "Let them be sea-captains, if they will." Woman in the Nineteenth Century further advocated the reform of property laws that were unfair to women—a controversial and unpopular idea in many quarters. The book's unprecedented and frank discussions of marriage and relations between men and women also scandalized many. The first edition of the book sold out in a week and sparked a heated debate, bringing issues of women's rights to the nation's attention.
In 1844 Fuller became literary critic on Greeley's newspaper, the New York Tribune. She encouraged American writers and crusaded for social reforms but made her greatest contribution, she thought, as an interpreter of modern European literature.
Before she sailed for Europe in 1846, some of her essays appeared as Papers on Literature and Art, which assured the cordial welcome she received in English and French circles. America's first woman foreign correspondent, she reported on her travels for the Tribune; the "letters" were later published in At Home and Abroad (1856). Settling in Italy in 1847, she was caught up in the cause of the Italian revolutionists, led by Giuseppe Mazzini, whom she had met earlier in England. She also met an impoverished Italian nobleman and ardent republican, Giovanni Angelo, Marchese Ossoli. They were married secretly, apparently in 1849. Following the suppression of the republic the couple fled to Rieti and then to Florence, where Fuller wrote a history of the revolution. In mid-1850 she sailed for the United States with her husband and infant son, Angelo. They all perished in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, and with them was lost her manuscript history of the revolution.


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"The music is as much a part of the narrative as the dialogue," according to creator Callie Khouri.
The official soundtrack for ABC's Nashville was released this week, and in case you haven't been keeping up with the series, we've put together a playlist to help you catch up before it returns in January.
"The music is as much a part of the narrative as the dialogue," according to creator Callie Khouri, whose husband, renowned producer T-Bone Burnett, is the series' musical director. (Check out ABC's accompanying On the Record web series for additional insights into the music from the actors and producers.)
And not to worry -- though Nashville takes place in the titular country music capital of the world, its songs have mass appeal, even for viewers who aren't fans of twang. With the character of Juliette Barnes (Hayden Panettiere) in particular, the show has jumped on the Taylor Swift bandwagon and is riding it all over the blurry pop-country landscape. And though the actors perform all the songs on the soundtrack themselves, Burnett, Khouri and the behind-the-scenes team have tapped songwriters including Elvis Costello, Kate York, and local Nashville-ites to pen the music.
Fall TV Scorecard: What's renewed/canceled?
Here are our Top 5 tracks from the soundtrack:
"Love Like Mine" - Written by Kelly Archer, Justin Weaver and Emily Shackelton, performed by Juliette (Panettiere)
Juliette's hit single, which she performs in front of a screaming stadium audience in the pilot episode, made it clear from the start that Nashville's music was going to be as engaging as its story lines.Good luck getting this one out of your head.
"I Will Fall" - Written by Kate York and Tyler James, performed by Scarlett and Gunnar (Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio)
"The songs are always the subtext for what they're actually experiencing," says Khouri about the songwriting duo Scarlett and Gunnar. "They're always singing songs about people falling in love with each other, or unrequited love." This tearjerker of a ballad is the track they're working on when Scarlett's boyfriend Avery (Jonathan Jackson) walks in on them. Awkward!
Nashville: Good guys vs. bad guys
"Buried Under" - Written by Natalie Hemby and Chris DeStefano, performed by Rayna (Connie Britton)
When Rayna tells her husband Teddy (Eric Close) she's writing a song about herself "for once," the end result is "Buried Under," which we learn will be the first track recorded for her new album and the one that will mark the debut of her new, edgier sound. "It's about her dad and then all the stuff that kind of unfolds with Teddy," says Britton, "and it's sort of about this world that she's been intertwined in for her whole life."
"Undermine" - Written by Trent Dabbs and Kacey Musgraves, performed by Juliette and Deacon (Panettiere and Charles Esten)
The song that Juliette and Deacon write together is a real eye-opener for him. "It's the first time that you really see her talent and the heart behind her, being able to write it right off the top of her head," explains Panettiere. "It's a really great moment." No wonder they end up in bed together after the session!
"Twist of Barbwire" - Written by Elvis Costello, performed by Avery (Jackson)
Struggling musician Avery is resentful of his girlfriend Scarlett's musical success, so he writes songs like the sharply self-pitying "Twist of Barbwire" to deal with his frustration. (Fun fact: Jackson is an accomplished songwriter in his own right, and has been playing in the indie rock band Enation since 2002.)
Nashville returns Wednesday, Jan. 9 at 10/9c on ABC.


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Protecting children seeking asylum from being detained based on appearance (BF (Eritrea) v Secretary of State for the Home Department)
A person seeking asylum arrived in the UK at the age of 16. Officials thought he looked over 18 and he was held in immigration detention. He was later found to have told the truth about his age. The Home Office's own rules say that unaccompanied children should not be detained. The person seeking asylum unsuccessfully challenged this in the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), and again in the Upper Tribunal. He then appealed the UT's decision in the Court of Appeal. We intervened in the Court of Appeal to challenge guidance from the Home Secretary which said that people seeking asylum who look over 18 can be treated as adults.