JimEd Speaks Out

Ten months ago, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton went to East High School here on her first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate and laid out a case for her candidacy to a cheering crowd in a packed gymnasium.

Mrs. Clinton returned to East High School late last week. But the crowd was much smaller and more sedate. And rather than discussing her candidacy, Mrs. Clinton explained the caucus process and showed a video titled “Caucusing Is Easy.”
The video was directed at voters who might be intimidated by the complicated Iowa caucus process. But the reassuring message might as well have been intended for the candidate herself. Though she maintains a solid lead
among Democrats in most national polls, Mrs. Clinton is showing signs of
vulnerability, with her margins narrowing in the early voting states and her main rival for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama, taking her on more aggressively.

Yep. She's a mess -- as usual.

Hundreds of thousands of holiday cards and letters thanking wounded
American troops for their sacrifice and wishing them well never reach their
destination. They are returned to sender or thrown away unopened.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax scare, the Pentagon and the Postal Service have refused to deliver mail addressed simply to "Any Wounded Soldier" for fear terrorists or opponents of the war might send toxic substances or demoralizing messages. Mail must be addressed to a specific member of the Armed forces -- a rule that pains some well-meaning Americans this Christmas season."Are we going to forget our soldiers because we are running in fear?" Fena D'Ottavio asked. The suburban Chicago woman was using her blog to encourage friends to send mail to unspecified soldiers until she learned of the ban, which she called a sad commentary on society.

Stan Turner awoke Tuesday to find not only was his home without power but an
ice-coated tree limb had crashed into his classic Mustang. The only heat available for the house came from a fireplace, a wood-burning chimenea on the porch and a gas stove.

"I've been scrounging all the wood I can," he said. "I'm going to get out there and get the bigger limbs down, but the wet weather is what's making it so bad."
Turner was among a million utility customers who were struggling without electricity in the nation's midsection after a massive storm dropped sleet and freezing rain across much of Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Iowa. The system has been blamed for at least 24 deaths since it developed last weekend.
Glistening, ice-covered roads contributed to many of the deaths. Downed power lines caused dozens of fires in Oklahoma. And then there was the problem of staying warm because officials cautioned that electricity may not be restored for days, if not weeks.

The Diocese of San Joaquin voted on Saturday to cut ties with the Episcopal Church, the first time in the church’s history a diocese has done so over theological issues and the biggest leap so far by dissident Episcopalians hoping to form a rival national church in the United States.

Fissures have moved through the Episcopal Church, the American arm of the
worldwide Anglican Communion, which has 77 million members, and through the
Communion itself since the church ordained V. Gene Robinson, a gay man in a
long-term relationship, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
Traditionalists at home and abroad assert that the Bible describes homosexuality as an bomination, and they consider the Episcopal Church’s ordination of Bishop
Robinson as the latest and most galling proof of its rejection of biblical authority.

Mitt Romney took his Mormon faith directly to the public Thursday, defining the relationship between religion and public office in a speech in Texas — and many Christian conservatives said they came away impressed with the
Republican presidential candidate.
The 20-minute address titled "Faith in
America" was in large part an attempt by Romney to dispel concerns of evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists who have been skeptical of his
religion. Afterward, conservative Christian leaders responded favorably.
"He will get a second hearing or a second look from a lot of Southern Baptists," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "There are an unusually high number of votes this late in the campaign season which are not locked into cement."

This was REALLY not kosher. A grocery store in Manhattan made a food faux pas, advertising hams as "Delicious for Chanukah." Chanukah -- an alternate
spelling for Hanukkah -- is the eight-day Jewish holiday that began Tuesday evening, and hams -- as well as pork and other products from pigs -- can't be eaten under Jewish dietary laws.

A woman who saw the mistake over the weekend at the Balducci's store in Greenwich Village took pictures of the signs and posted them on her blog.

As Don Imus ended his exile from the airwaves Monday, presidential candidates rushed to welcome him back — contenders Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, both called in to his first show. Tuesday morning, Republican
Mike Huckabee and Democrat Bill Richardson will both be guests by phone. Earlier this year, McCain and Huckabee both called for forgiveness in the wake of the Imus scandal."He's continued to have me on his show when I said stupid things," the former Arkansas governor told USA Today. "What Imus said was wrong, but he seems genuinely sorry. He's certainly not the first celebrity to put his foot in his mouth — and he won't be the last."

On Monday, presidential contenders seemed ready to forgive and forget. McCain ended his interview by telling Imus, “Welcome back, old friend.” Later, Dodd echoed the sentiment: “Welcome home.”

"I am just not going to go into evaluating other people's doctrines and faiths. I think that is absolutely not a role for a president," the former
Arkansas governor said. Huckabee said that if he were running to be a president
of a theological school," then his views on ormonism would be relevant — "but
to be the president of the United States I don't know that that is going to be the most important issue that I will be facing when I am sworn in."

While he said he respects "anybody who practices his faith," Huckabee said what other people believe — he named Republican rivals Romney, John McCain , Rudy Giuliani and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton — "is theirs to explain, not mine, and I'm not going
to."

It started in earnest a couple of weeks ago when Hillary Clinton questioned how much Barack Obama's time spent living in Indonesia as a child could actually help him make foreign policy decisions as a commander-in-chief. "Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face," Clinton said November 20 in Shenandoah, Iowa. "I think we need a President with more experience than that."

Then Clinton announced in an interview with CBS that she was sick of being a punching bag for Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and that she intended to fight back. "After you have been attacked as often as I
have from several of my opponents, you cannot just absorb it. You have to respond," she said.

"The attack will backfire in two

ways: it will reinforce the negative stereotype of Mrs. Clinton as a cold and calculating person who will do whatever it takes to win," said Stephen J. Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University and author of The Road to the White House. "And two, it will make Mr. Obama seem to be the less shrill and more emotionally mature candidate."

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's surge in Iowa, from single digits in the polls to a virtual tie for the lead among Republicans, has captivated the political world and prompted speculation about just how he did it.

The Fix may have found the answer: a physician from Montgomery, Ala., named Randy Brinson.

Brinson is the keeper of a massive e-mail list of much-coveted
Christian voters that Huckabee is using to reach and organize people in early-voting states such as Iowa.

Brinson's list numbers about 71 million contacts, with 25 million identified as belonging to "25 and 45 years old, upwardly mobile, right-of-center, conservative households," he said. In other words, a target-rich environment for a candidate such as Huckabee, who is preaching a compassionate conservative message heavily infused with religious sentiment.

"You can't win an election with this narrow focus of social conservatives, economic conservatives and foreign policy conservatives," Brinson said. "That has fallen on deaf ears with [James] Dobson and those guys."

Observers at the Supreme Court on Wednesday should probably be excused
in advance for concluding that they have wandered into a time warp.

The question before the court will be whether federal judges have
jurisdiction to hear cases brought by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer for a group of detainees will argue that they do; the Bush administration’s solicitor general will argue that they do not.

But did not the court already decide that question? Did not the justices rule in Rasul v. Bush in 2004 that federal judges could review the legality of the Guantánamo detentions, rejecting the administration’s position that the detainees’ fate was a question for the executive branch alone? No, history will not just be repeating itself at the court Wednesday. It has moved on, and the four years since the court shocked the administration by agreeing to hear the Rasul case have been busy ones.

In the intensifying battle for the votes of Democratic women, Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is trying to turn years of feminist thinking on its head and argue that the best candidate for women may, in fact, be a man.

The pitch for Mr. Obama, in a new video, speeches and talking points aimed at women, presents him as deeply sensitized to the needs and aspirations of women, raised by a single mother, “a man comfortable with strong women in his life,” as his wife, Michelle Obama, puts it, and a man committed to the issues they care about.

Whatever public sympathy Hillary Clinton had built up during the tense
hostage situation at her New Hampshire campaign office appeared to dissipate
Saturday, as she was met with a round of boos during an address over the phone
to an Iowa political event.

At the Heartland Presidential Candidates Forum in Des Moines,
community activists lustily booed the Democratic frontrunner after she declined to commit to passing comprehensive immigration reform in her first 100 days in
office.

Clinton said reform would be a "high priority" for her, but that didn't satisfy a crowd looking for legislation that would move illegal immigrants swiftly on a path to legalization.

One of two teens facing murder charges in the brutal burning and beheading of a sex offender told police he helped the other suspect with the slaying in order to clear a $100 debt, the Detroit News reports.
Alexander James Letkemann, 18, told police that fellow suspect Jean Pierre "JP" Orlewicz, 17, told him that he would erase the debt if he helped him dispose of the body, according to a statement read in court by Canton Township Police Det. Michael Sekel during a preliminary examination held Friday.
Following the hearing, a judge ruled there is enough evidence to hold both teens for trial on charges of first-degree premeditated murder and mutilation of a corpse in the death of Daniel Sorensen, 26, but he tossed a separate felony murder charge following the preliminary examination. Their circuit court arraignment will be held Dec. 14.