JimEd Speaks Out

Sailors from the Norfolk-based destroyer James E. Williams boarded a North Korean merchant ship Tuesday that had been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, while two other Navy vessels tailed a pirated Japanese ship in the same region.

The Williams, which left Norfolk in July , was about 50 nautical miles from the ship Dai Hong Dan in the Arabian Sea when it received word of the pirate attack, said Lt. John Gay , a spokesman for the Navy’s Central Command in Manama, Bahrain.

The Williams dispatched a helicopter and ordered the pirates to give up their weapons via a bridge-to-bridge radio. The North Korean crew, which had retained control of the steering and engineering spaces, then confronted the
pirates and gained back control of the bridge, according to a Navy news release.

Believe it or not, tonight marks one of the final debates the Democrats will have before Iowa in only two months. And. the press is playing up tonight's

MSNBC encounter as the debut of the "new Obama" -- building expectations that he will finally go after Hillary.

But the question of whether Obama and Clinton clash is only a sideshow to the real question this debate and the next one in a little over two weeks will begin to decide for the Democrats. What these contests are really about is whether it's Obama or Edwards who becomes the candidate who survives the first two tests in Iowa and New Hampshire to take Clinton on in the later primaries as the "anti-Hillary."

Gerald Ford respected Bill Clinton’s prodigious political skills but thought he needed therapy for sex addiction, according to a new book of interviews the ex-president gave for posthumous publication. Ford also said Dick Cheney was a GOP liability in 2004 and recommended replacing him with Rudy Giuliani, though he refused to help oust his onetime protégé.

The author of Write It When I'm Gone—who acknowledges Ford may have been spinning history—said he thinks the comments about Clinton were heartfelt. Ford “didn't have a vengeful bone in his body,” says Thomas DeFrank. Ford called Hillary Clinton “tougher and stronger” than her husband and said Giuliani was the Republicans’ best bet to beat her in 2008.

A fake news conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency has produced, along with outrage and ridicule, its first personnel casualty.

John P. Philbin, until last week the agency’s public relations chief, was supposed to start work Monday as the new director of public affairs for the nation’s top intelligence official, Mike McConnell.

But he learned instead that he would not

ALLEGATIONS of misbehavior by employees of Blackwater USA in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis have brought the military’s use of private contractors into question. But whatever the possible sins of the Blackwater firm, the overall problem is not private contracting in itself; contractors do not set the tone but rather reflect the sins and virtues of their customers, namely their sponsoring governments.

It is easy to rail against contractors for holding money above loyalty to country; Halliburton, for instance, has been a target of this criticism. But money isn’t the real issue. Few Americans would join the armed services without pay, and most American weapons are made by the private sector for profit.

Furthermore, privateers, private ships licensed to carry out warfare, helped win the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In World War II, the Flying Tigers, American fighter pilots hired by the government of Chiang Kai-shek, helped defeat the Japanese. Today, many of our allies receive payment, either implicitly or explicitly, to support American efforts. War is, among other things, an economic undertaking, so the profit motive in military affairs isn’t always bad or ignoble.

The tangle between Central Arkansas Water and a developer who wants to build near its main water source plunged deeper Friday when the two sides became courtroom opponents.

The utility and Maumelle-based builder John “Jay” DeHaven for months have been negotiating over his roughly 965-acre project near the Maumelle River, from which nearly 400,000 central Arkansans get most of their water.

Water officials fear DeHaven’s plans will pollute the water. DeHaven disagrees and wants to profit off his 2005 land investment. Both sides have attorneys at the ready.

A journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is
accusing aides of John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, of
demanding that he remove from YouTube a student report critical of Mr. Edwards’s Democratic presidential campaign — and of threatening to block the university’s access to Mr. Edwards and the campaign headquarters near
campus.

Mr. Edwards’s campaign officials said they did not level any such threat during what were clearly heated discussions with the professor and the student over her approach and over the central question in her report: Why has a campaign focused on poverty based its headquarters in an affluent part of Chapel Hill?

The Senate on Thursday night approved a seven-year
extension of a moratorium on state and local taxes on Internet access.

The Senate voice vote came a little over a week after the
House passed a bill calling for a four-year moratorium. The tax ban, first approved in 1998, is set to expire Nov. 1.

Attempts in both the House and Senate to make the ban permanent in recent weeks were unsuccessful despite strong support for the idea.

The commanding officer of the nuclear-powered submarine Hampton was relieved of his duty because of a loss of confidence in his leadership, the Navy said. The officer, Cmdr. Michael B. Portland, was relieved of duty after an investigation found the ship had failed to do daily safety checks on its nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission. Commander Portland will be reassigned, said Lt. Alli Myrick, a public affairs officer.

President Bush toured Southern California on Thursday as investigators
got down to the work of determining how one sunny fall day last weekend erupted into a 16-fire storm now in its fifth day.
Mr. Bush, joined by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, also a
Republican, visited the charred remains of neighborhoods, met distraught residents and exhausted fire crews and viewed fires that continue to burn throughout the region. By Thursday, the fires had destroyed 1,800 homes, injured 57 people and burned a half-million acres, a little more than twice the size of New York City.

House sponsors of a resolution that would label the 1915 killing of Armenians a genocide have asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a vote on the measure because they feared it would fail.

Voters are displeased with both the president and Congress, according to the latest FOX News poll. A 55 percent majority of Americans disapprove of President Bush’s job performance and the most frequently mentioned reason is the Iraq war; 45 percent of those unhappy with Bush blame the war.

After Iraq, the most common reason is that the president is generally “doing a bad job” (19 percent). A handful of voters say they disapprove because they disagree with Bush on the issues (7 percent), they don’t like him (6 percent) and that he doesn’t care about average people (5 percent).

Turning to Congress, the poll shows that even fewer Americans are satisfied with lawmakers than with the president. Some 25 percent say they approve of the job Congress is doing while more than twice as many — 54 percent
— disapprove.

Children as young as 2 can be given a nasal spray flu vaccine, a federal advisory panel said Wednesday.

Government advice now recommends only traditional shots for children younger than 5. But recent studies have
shown the vaccine FluMist to be safe and effective in children as young as 2.

FluMist — made by MedImmune Inc., a subsidiary of AstraZeneca based in Maryland — was approved in 2003 for use in healthy people ages 5 to 49.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved its use for children ages
2 to 5

Rudolph W. Giuliani’s approach to foreign policy shares with other Republican presidential candidates an aggressive posture toward terrorism, a commitment to strengthening the military and disdain for the United Nations.

But in developing his views, Mr. Giuliani is consulting with, among others, a particularly hawkish group of advisers and
neoconservative thinkers.

Their positions have been criticized by Democrats as irresponsible and applauded by some conservatives as appropriately tough, while raising questions about how closely aligned Mr. Giuliani’s thinking is with theirs.

Judge Leslie Southwick's nomination to a federal appeals
court in Mississippi cleared a key hurdle in the Senate Wednesday and headed toward confirmation, despite questions during debate about his racial sensitivity.

The Senate's 62-35 test tally cleared the 60-vote
threshold for ending debate and proceeding to a final roll call on confirmation.

The Senate rejected Wednesday an attempt to move ahead with a bill to allow illegal immigrants under age 30 to remain in the United States and gain
legal status if they attend college or join the military.

The vote to move ahead on the Dream Act (the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien
Minors Act), got 52 votes, eight short of the 60 needed.

Among those voting against moving ahead with the bill were eight Democrats, even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to his majority to back
him.

But this was yet another case when the Democratic majority was not a
true working majority. Senate rules require a supermajority of 60 to advance
most bills.

The vote was a significant leading indicator for 2008 of the potency of illegal immigration as an election issue.

Adm. Mike Mullen invited candor from the Army on Tuesday, and he got it: questions from young captains frustrated by what they described as disciplinary problems in the ranks, shoddy health care for their spouses and children, and depots emptied of combat gear needed for training.

With the conflict in Iraq now nearly a year longer than American involvement in World War II, Admiral Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also asked whether senior officers had considered putting a limit on how long any one soldier could be deployed in combat.

Republican Party leaders recommended punishing five states for shifting their presidential nominating
contests earlier, moving to strip Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wyoming of half their delegates to next year’s Republican National Convention. At least one state, South Carolina, is considering legal action.
Iowa, which plans to hold caucuses on Jan. 3, would not be penalized because the caucuses are technically not binding on convention delegates. “It’s very important that our party uphold and enforce the rules that we unanimously voted into place at the Republican National Convention in 2004,” said Mike Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee. The rules ban holding votes before Feb. 5.

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

Defending his campaign work schedule, Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said Monday his strategy is working and "I'm going to do it the way I want to do it."

Thompson pointed out he comes in second among Republicans in most national polls and has more than 100,000 contributors, despite making decisions
that defy conventional wisdom.

Sailors on the submarine USS Hampton failed to do daily safety checks on the ship's nuclear reactor for a month and falsified records to cover up the omission, a Navy investigation shows.

The revelation is sure to raise new questions about the military's handling of the nation's nuclear assets
following an Air Force incident in which a B-52 bomber was accidentally loaded
with nuclear-tipped missiles and flown across the country without any one
realizing it for more than a day.

In the case of the Hampton, it appears from a preliminary investigation that sailors in Submarine Squadron 11 had skipped the required analysis of the chemical and radiological properties of the submarine's reactor for more than a month, even though a daily check is required.

"Some of the Hampton's operations and records fell short of high Navy standards," said Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a Navy spokesman at the Pentagon.

e Republican presidential candidates were fanning out across America on Monday after spending a lively evening failing to agree on who is the most conservative candidate in the White House race, but reaching consensus on the most liberal: Hillary Clinton.

Sunday night’s GOP presidential primary debate in Orlando, Fla., offered some of the sharpest jabs of the campaign season but much of the argument was good-natured and went for laughter over anger.

The first Medal of Honor awarded for combat in Afghanistan will be presented today to the family of a Navy SEAL from Long Island, who gave his life to make a radio call for help for his team

Murphy, Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist in the Afghan mountains on June 28, 2005, when their mission was compromised after
they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence.

An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs.

Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.

The two meetings House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended before a vote on a resolution labeling the massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey a genocide
foreshadowed the biggest political misstep of her speakership.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked a fellow San Francisco Bay-area liberal Friday for what she said were "inappropriate" comments about Iraq during a
congressional debate. During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Condemnations rolled in from Republican politicians, right-leaning bloggers had a field day, and a White House spokesman declined to "dignify those remarks" with a response.

Pelosi issued a statement Friday evening rapping Stark, who is in his 18th term representing the liberal East Bay. He's
California's longest-serving House members.

A letter from Democratic senators blasting conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh for using the phrase “phony soldiers” on his program was sold Friday on eBay for a record $2.1 million.

A private foundation made the winning bid, which eBay spokeswoman Catherine England said set a record for the most expensive item sold for charity by the online auctioneer.

Limbaugh’s comment during his radio show last month drew broad criticism from Democrats, who said he was smearing soldiers opposed to the Iraq war. Limbaugh and other conservatives responded with outrage of their own, saying Democrats were mischaracterizing comments aimed at one particular former soldier who lied about his service.

The Air Force is planning to fire at least five officers for violations of nuclear security rules that allowed armed missiles to be mistakenly loaded on a B-52 bomber and
flown over the central part of the United States, officials said Thursday.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, are to be briefed Friday on the disciplinary plan and other results of an Air Force investigation of the flight, which took place on Aug. 30.

The B-52 flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles mounted under one wing. A total of 36 hours passed before the missiles were properly secured, officials have said.

William Crowe, an Annapolis-trained submarine officer who rose to chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and served as ambassador to Great Britain, has died
at age 82.
The retired admiral died early Thursday at Bethesda Naval Hospital, the Navy announced. No cause of death was released immediately.

"We lost a true hero last night ... a distinguished naval officer, diplomat, leader, mentor (who) served both Presidents Reagan and Bush," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, said at a Pentagon press conference.

Huckabee's been doing right what Thompson's been doing wrong. He's working really hard. He's extremely personable. He likes to talk to people. And on paper, in terms of that core constituency among Republicans in Iowa, he ought to be doing well. He's caught in that classic vicious circle: he doesn't get a lot of campaign funding and media attention because people don't think he's electible. But people don't think he's electible because he's not getting much funding and media attention

President Bush on Tuesday proposed a series of changes intended to streamline a military disability system that he said had fallen behind the times and had left too many disabled soldiers falling through the cracks.

The proposals, outlined in a document that Mr. Bush sent to Congress, would pull apart a convoluted system that gave both the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs authority over determining the level of benefits and care provided to injured soldiers, often pitting the two bureaucracies against each other and holding up services.

While many conservative commentators and editorialists have mocked concerns
about climate change, a different reality is emerging among Republican
presidential contenders. It is a near-unanimous recognition among the leaders of the threat posed by global warming.

Retired school teacher Kathleen Casey-Kirschling on Monday became the first ripple in a "silver tsunami" of retiring baby boomers applying for pension benefits that threatens to overwhelm U.S. government finances.

Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, and will receive her first Social Security check in February 2008 as the first wave of baby boomers turns 62 next year and becomes eligible for early retirement benefits.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said the agency is bracing for some 80 million Americans to apply for retirement benefits over the next two decades.

This Saturday, a military jet with the code name “Bright Star” will take off from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, bound for a diplomatic mission in the Middle East. It will carry an increasingly outspoken and quietly powerful White House emissary: Laura Bush, the first lady of the United States.

A letter sent to Rush Limbaugh's boss demanding he be chastised for comments he made on the air about "phony soldiers" is now on the auction block, and the latest
bid is a cool $41,400.

One hundred percent of the money raised from the eBay auction will go to educate the children of Marines and law enforcement officers who died while on duty, the auction says.

Bids will continue until Friday for the letter signed by 41 Democratic senators and sent on Oct. 2 to Mark P. Mays, president of Clear Channel, the parent company of the conservative talk show host's radio broadcast. The winning bidder will get the
letter, the "Halliburton briefcase in which this letter is secured 24 hours a day;" a letter of thanks from Limbaugh and a picture of the talkmeister announcing the auction at a speech in Philadelphia delivered last Thursday.

Conservative author Ann Coulter finds herself in the middle of a firestorm once again after remarks on a CNBC television show in which she said Jews need "to be perfected" and suggested the nation would be better off if it were all-Christian.

Appearing on "The Big Idea" with host Donny Deutsch on Monday, she said Christians were tolerant of racial diversity but that it "would be a lot easier" for Jews if they were to become Christians.

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

With talk of a Nobel Peace Prize in the air and election deadlines looming, supporters of Al Gore have been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for petition drives and advertising campaigns in a last-ditch effort to draft him into the Democratic presidential primaries.

Draft Gore, a national group that for several years has been trying to pull Mr. Gore into a presidential race, ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on Wednesday, as well as commercials on liberal radio talk shows, saying he had an obligation to seek the presidency again and address from the White House a variety of moral issues facing the country.

The first debate with Fred Thompson was expected to reveal whether the lanky
actor had what it takes to make a national run for the office. Instead, it
revealed Chris Matthews as a hack of the first order, one who tried his best to
torpedo Thompson -- and failed utterly.

...That was the game behind the debate, and Thompson stomped Matthews into a laughingstock. In the rest of the debate, Thompson showed that he was comfortable and prepared, even for the silly attacks from other candidates.

...Fred's in now, and he will find new momentum after this performance. Matthews will become more of a joke, if such a thing is possible at a network that employs Keith Olbermann." -- Captain's Quarters

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee says he believes he will win the Iowa Caucus.

Huckabee say he expects to continue to build momentum that
has been reflected in recent polls. In an interview today on MSNBC, Huckabee was asked if he would win Iowa. He responded -- "I think we will."

Huckabee repeated his message that he has been a consistent conservative and does not have to spend his time explaining how he has changed positions on key issues. He says he will benefit from what he calls a "rising wave" among social conservatives who want to rally behind one candidate.

A poll released Sunday by The Des Moines Register shows Mitt Romney with 29 percent support among Iowa Republicans, Fred Thompson with 18 percent and Huckabee with 12 percent.

The former Arkansas governor says his level of support is notable considering the shoestring budget of his campaign.

Fred Thompson stayed on script.

The newcomer to the Republican presidential field didn’t stand out in his first debate of the 2008 race, but he didn’t blow it either.

“He had a fine performance,” said Sara Taylor, a former political adviser to President Bush who is neutral in the 2008 race. “He certainly passed the test of can he stand on the stage with these guys and articulate his views.”

From the high altitude of national polls, the race for the Democratic
nomination may seem a potential runaway for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).
From ground level in the state with the nation's first presidential caucuses, a far different reality exists. Here Clinton's path remains strewn with obstacles.

Iowa has become ground zero in the Democratic race. The results here could instantly change the dynamic of what has been a campaign marked elsewhere by Clinton's relentless march forward. Here the Democratic front-runner faces stiff challenges not only from Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) but also from former senator John Edwards (N.C.).

Clinton's Iowa problem has been evident from the day she entered the race in January, and it is the result of a confluence of factors that appear to exist nowhere else in the country right now. They include support for Edwards that far outpaces his backing elsewhere, the spillover effect of Obama's next-door-neighbor status as a senator from Illinois and strong organizational efforts by both her rivals.

"I think it's a function of the others running so strong here, it's difficult [for her] to break away," said Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Scott Brennan.

Part of the problem rests with Clinton herself. "When she became a candidate, she attracted the largest percentage of negatives among Democrats of any of the candidates," said J. Ann Selzer, who conducts the Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register. "She's got people who just don't like her."

Today, she [Liz Belden] supports Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), impressed by his intellect and what she believes is his capacity to unite the country. "I want a woman president who is the right person. I'm not convinced this one is," Belden said. "My problem with her is, too many times I feel she says things for political expediency."

As Belden spoke, others around the table in a coffee shop here nodded in agreement. Their reactions to the candidate who leads the race for the Democratic presidential nomination nationally offered some insight into why Clinton is in a competitive race in Iowa, whose first-in-the-nation caucuses will begin the nominating contest next year.

Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining
atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a
generation ago.

But on Thursday, a senior military investigator recommended dropping murder charges against the ranking enlisted marine accused in the 2005 killings, just as he had done earlier in the cases of two other marines charged in the case. The recommendation may well have ended prosecutors’ chances of winning any murder convictions in the killings of the apparently unarmed men, women and children.

In the recent case, against Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, the investigator
recommended that he be charged with negligent homicide if the case moved ahead to court-martial. In the other two cases, the investigator recommended dropping
all charges.

Experts in military justice say the Haditha prosecutions were compromised by several factors having to do with the quality of the evidence, including a delayed investigation and the decision to conduct hearings in the United States, far from the scene of the killings and possible Iraqi witnesses.

The cases also reflect the particular views of Lt. Col. Paul J. Ware, who presided over the hearings and concluded that all three cases lacked sufficient evidence. He made clear in his recommendations to the commander who ultimately decides the cases that he felt that the killings should be considered in context — that of a war zone where the enemy ruthlessly employed civilians as cover.

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig lost a bid Thursday to withdraw his guilty plea in a men’s room sex sting but defiantly vowed to finish his Senate term, prolonging a headache for Republican leaders already facing a tough political climate.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has decided not to assail Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton for her stance on the Iraq War in a speech Wednesday at a military prep school.

Republican White House hopeful John McCain said Wednesday that President Bush made a mistake after the Sept. 11 terror attacks by encouraging people to shop rather than urging citizens to join the military or volunteer.

"I believe that the big mistake that our leadership of our nation made after 9-11 is we told people to go shopping and we told them to take a trip," McCain told students at a military prep school in this early voting state.

Mayors along the Texas-Mexico border have begun a quiet protest of the federal government’s plans to build a fence along the border: They are refusing to give access to their land.

Mayors in Brownsville, Del Rio and El Paso have denied access to some parts of their city property, turning away federal employees assigned to begin surveys or conduct other preliminary work on the fence meant to keep out illegal immigrants.

One contentious topic missing from the Supreme Court’s docket as the new term opened on Monday was religion. The justices evidently plan to keep it that way, at least for now.

Among the hundreds of appeals the court turned down on Monday, in a list that printed out at 83 pages, were two cases on the relationship between church and state that might have brought even more visibility to the term.