Percentage of Americans who believe the country is on the wrong track, according to a new TIME Magazine poll.
An article in today’s NYT is an effort to help assassins
target Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to right-wing bloggers.
UPDATE: One of the photos at issue was taken with Rumsfeld’s permission.
Opposition to Stem Cell Research Hurting Missouri Senator
Missouri is generally a conservative state. In 2004, President Bush won by seven points (up from three in 2000), while Sen. Kit Bond (R) topped his opponent by 13.
But last week, President Bush flew into St. Louis to help raise funds for Missouri Sen. Jim Talent (R), one of Bush’s “most reliable allies on Capitol Hill,” but also “one of the most endangered” incumbents to Senate. Why is Talent in such dire straights?
Partly, Missourians are upset with President Bush and his rubber-stamp supporters in the Senate. (Bush’s approval rating in Missouri is down to 36 percent.) But more tellingly, “analysts believe Talent is being hurt by his opposition to a ballot measure to protect stem cell research from state restrictions,” called the Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.
Consider this St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll on the stem cell ballot initiative released this week:
Even in Missouri, opposing research into the potentially live-saving benefits of stem cell research is a political albatross.
“If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy,
it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.” — New York Times Editor Bill Keller and Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet
American Press Fearmonger Against Mexicos Progressive Candidate
(Our guest blogger, Keith Hernandez, is an intern at the Center for American Progress)
Mexico will elect a new President on Sunday, and polls suggest the winner will be former Mayor of Mexico City Andr©s Manuel L³pez Obrador (a.k.a. “AMLO”) or former Energy Secretary Felipe Calder³n.
Judging from coverage of the race in the American press, U.S. journalists have already decided who should win. The New York Times calls the race between Calder³n and AMLO a choice between “promise and fear.” The Wall Street Journal mentions AMLO in the same vein as the incompetent president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Editorial pieces in The New Republic, Foreign Affairs and The New York Times portray AMLO a threat to Mexican democracy.
After reading these stories, readers could conclude that Mexico’s election is about to be stolen by a homicidal strong man. The opposite is true.
AMLO’s candidacy gives new vibrancy to the debate in Mexico as he brings the poor, a sector of the population often forgotten, into the democratic process. In a country where democratic institutions are weak, voting participation is on the decline, civil society has effectively been dissolved, and continued narco-corruption and crime serve to undermine the legitimacy of government, it is imperative that Mexico work to include all parts of the polity to consolidate and strengthen its democracy.
The future of Mexico will be determined tommorow, and if AMLO has done anything, he has brought to light a disaffected public whose concerns, whichever man wins, will need to be addressed.
– Keith Hernandez
UPDATE: Seven questions about the Mexican elections answered by Foreign Policy magazine.
New investigation.
“The U.S. Army is investigating allegations that American soldiers raped and killed a woman and killed three of her family members in a town south of Baghdad, then reported the incident as an insurgent attack, a military official said Friday.”
