election night

Palin in Nepotism and corruption?

Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes

The Wasilla City Council, with Sarah Palin, the future governor and vice-presidential nominee, at the center, in a 1998 photograph. Throughout her career, Ms. Palin has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and blurred the line between government and personal grievance.

WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.

When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.

And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor’s career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.

“You should be ashamed!” Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. “Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!”

Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.

But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the state’s economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering “our Sarah” and hissing at her critics.

“She is bright and has unfailing political instincts,” said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. “She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.”

“But,” he added, “her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.”

Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governor’s spokespeople, who did not respond.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the public’s interest. “Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska,” he said.

In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.

“Their secrecy is off the charts,” Mr. Steiner said.

State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.

Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palin’s voice. The governor’s husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.

“I understood from the call that Todd wasn’t happy with me hiring John and he’d like to see him not there,” Mr. Harris said.

“The Palin family gets upset at personal issues,” he added. “And at our level, they want to strike back.”

Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he “did not recall” referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.

Hometown Mayor

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin’s first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

“I said, ‘You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,’ ” Ms. Chase recalled. “She replied, ‘I want to be president.’ ”

Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur trader’s outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.

In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the “complacent” old guard.

After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.

And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. “She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently,” said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.

But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. “It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didn’t want that,” he said.

Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. “He said: ‘Gotcha, Cooper,’ ” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palin’s campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.

“She told me she’d like to see him fired,” Mr. Showers recalled. “But she couldn’t do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney.” Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.

Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. “She started the ball rolling,” said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Party’s general counsel.

“Professionals were either forced out or fired,” Mr. Deuser said.

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

“I’m still proud of Sarah,” she added, “but she scares the bejeebers out of me.”

Reform Crucible

Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.

Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.

Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

“She was fresh, and she was tomorrow,” said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. “She just floated along like Mary Poppins.”

Government

Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformer’s sword.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.

Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palin’s appointments. “The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people,” he said.

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

To her supporters — and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty — Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.

“Does anybody doubt that she’s a tough negotiator?” said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.

Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palin’s reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palin’s campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.

Another confidante of Ms. Palin’s is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palin’s campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palin’s children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as “the babysitter,” a title that Ms. Frye disavows.

Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.

“YOU ARE SO AWESOME!” Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.

Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives — and vetoes — from news releases.

Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.

Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.

At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

As Ms. Palin’s star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor’s office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

“I was thinking, I don’t remember giving up my First Amendment rights,” Ms. Woodruff said. “Just because you’re not going gaga over Sarah doesn’t mean you can’t speak your mind.”

--- The following article first appeared in the NYT

Convent Speeches

Senator Obama's Acceptance Speech



Senator McCain's Acceptance Speech



Senator Biden's Acceptance Speech



Governor Palin's Acceptance Speech

Obama in Berlin

Obama on Iraq

In this NYT op Ed , Senator Barack Obama, the democratic nominee for POTUS reiterated in unequivocal terms, his plans for Iraq. While it has been common refrain of the self-styled MSM lassies to make bogus and unfounded claims of flips, the senator has always remain steadfast in his views that the war in Iraq is a misadventure, but has always expressed the need for caution as we move forward.

While a withdrawal timetable in Iraq is a rational thing to do, afterall we are all made to believe that Iraq is a sovereign nation and occupying a sovereign nation is againts international norms. Plus Iraq never attacked us un unprovoked. They had no hands in 9/11. Yet many will dare equate this country to Japan or Germany. Japan attacked us at Pearle Harbour and Germany many attackes during second world war are well chronicled.

Since the begining of the Iraq misadventure, more than 4000 US soldiers (in uniform) have lost their lives, as have many more American civilians and contractors. More than 30,000 US soldiers have been critically injured and the Iraq casualty is still a subject of debate.

While the many initiatives launched since 2006, including efforts to bring in Sunnis into Iraqi political mainstream as well as the inherent purge in many Baghdadi neighbourhoods have led to a restoration of stability in Iraq, the continued stay of American soldiers on an open-ended commitment will by no means help stabilize the nation. We left Vietnam more than 30 years ago, and that country now counts as a success story in the commity of nations. Our presence in Japan and Germany, started out as conquorors and although have tappered off over the years as the two nations remain enmansculated and without an aggressive millitary, those presence are begining to have no value.

Afghanistan on the other hand needs to be stabilized and we need to do more in Pakistan to assure not just the stability of that country but also safeguard, and ultmately neutralize its Nuclear arsenal, as we should all Nuclear arsenals.

Iran posses dangers, but so does so many other nations including China and Russia, but if we tone down our rhetorics and replace our belicose attitude with a more accomodating positions that replaces our "lone super power" aura with one that shows nations like Iran they are also respcted (even without a Nuclear bomb), we may well restore our moral leadership and get the rest of the world, including Iran , to see the reason in our belief that no one needs to own weapons that could anihilate our world.

Senator Obama's reasoned position is a helpful step in the right direction and the fact that he has a retinue of experts (more than 300 according to some recent reports) at his dispossal is quit helpful. Some have tried to spin this fact in less favourable terms, but they seem to be more interested in belittling the man who has demostrated the most capacity to provide seasoned leadership for the nation, and indeed the world since the begining of our Union. No other political leader in this country's history has been called upon so frequently to provide visionary leadership while still on the trail, as Obama has been expected to do over and again on issues fron race relations to foreign policy to the issue of women and even religion.

As his recent Op Ed shows, he is indeed ready to lead us into a better day.

Right of reply : Obama is right on

Barack Obama in 2002 vehemently opposed the Iraq war. Not because he was opposed to all wars, but because he was opposed to a dumb war. A dumb war is one that is fought on false or ill conceived premises or lack of a reason at all, without a proper understanding of its consequences. That’s the kind of war no self respecting general will wage. And George Bush and his neo-con allies chose to wage such a war. With the backing of his republican allies and many dumb congressional democrats, George W. Bush marched the nation into one of its most costly wars in history. Currently estimated at more than 3 trillion dollars, more than 4000 US uniform men dead, maybe another 4000 US non-uniformed personnel dead. More than 50,000 US soldiers wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or maimed, and millions displaced, all coupled with a badly tarnished brand America in the world. The Iraq war was not just a grave mistake; it was a dumb and distracting war of choice.

But Obama never said he would precipitously withdraw US soldiers from Iraq. Rather he has said we should be as careful getting-out in as we were careless getting-in. That position has not wavered since he first espoused it in 2007. He has promised to start bringing US soldiers home after his inauguration in January of 2009 and has committed to a 16 month time-table for draw down. He has however consistently espoused the need for residual forces in the region and even in Iraq to continue training Iraq forces and maintain security of American interests. At no time did he ever suggest he will draw down to zero soldiers in Iraq.

Many in the press, who are just beginning to show their bias are wont to trivialize everything and reduce it all to quick sound-bites. They have a peccadillo for one liners in a multi-sentenced nuanced environment. Their favorites have included George Bush’s famous “Bring it on!” and John McCain’s famous “Bomb, bomb… bomb Iran!” Asinine statements that these are, they are the kind of sound bites that tickle the fancy of a lazy bunch who believe they somehow are the vetters for the presidential candidates. Rather than spend a few minutes to research and verify Obama’s or even McCain’s stance on issues, they have preferred to take whatever spin suites their personal prejudice at the time. Some even take their new attack role to mean they are doing the people’s work, when they are doing is trying to out-rush Rush Limbaugh; with the hope that they may become the next beneficiary of a hate-fueled $400 million multi-year contract renewal.

What Barack Obama has said and continues to say is that judgment matters, words matters and actions matters. What he has done so far in the senate and in the Illinois senate is to put his money where he mouths his. In 2004, he rallied the nation with his now famous “We are all Americans” speech in Boston. Time and again, he has espoused his belief that our religion should not be used to divide us. That religious people could be Democrats or Republicans. That we are after all Americans first, and everything else last. That we owe it to ourselves to find common purpose in our common destiny to achieve great things. He has always pledged to listen to reason and help find common solution that we can all support.


While Barack believes we should stop the bleeding in Iraq by dramatically cutting our now $12 billion a month tab, reduce our foot print in the country; complete the mission in Afghanistan rationally, build a strong military, invest in our future and take our rightful position as a genuine world leader, he has never encouraged any irrational and precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. He is not just espousing hundred years in Iraq as McCain has eloquently stated as his vision.

Again, Obama got it right

The Nation ....The world is suddenly paying a measure of the attention that is necessary to the democratic crisis in Zimbabwe, where strongman President Robert Mugabe has used violence and intimidation to prevent the competitive election that would surely have forced him from office.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela is leading a chorus of condemnation for what Mandela describes as the "tragic failure" of Mugabe as a leader of his country and as an advocate for Africa.

Even President Bush, who has not exactly been a leader when it comes to addressing the concerns of southern Africa or promoting democracy (in Africa or the U.S.), has denounced Mugabe's use of military, police and paramilitary thugs to impose a result that could not have been secured by the electorate.

Bush is right to be making noise now. And he may even be right to propose sanctions against the Mugabe government, although sanctions always seem to fall harder on innocent citizens than upon the dictators they are supposed to target.

But, as usual, even when Bush gets a foreign-policy issue, he does so after he might have been able to avert murder and mayhem.

The same goes for Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who can barely be bothered to pay attention to African affairs.

And what of Barack Obama, who critics, including McCain, suggest is inexperienced and inept when it comes to scanning the globe for trouble-spots and responding to their challenges?

The likely Democratic nominee, far from having to play catch-up, is in the forefront.

Having rallied fellow Senators Joe Biden, D-Delaware; Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut; Dick Durbin, D-Illinois; Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin; Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska; John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, as co-sponsors -- and working in conjunction with the late Tom Lantos, the California congressman who made human rights in Africa a priority during his tenure as chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs -- the senator from Illinois moved last spring to get the Congress to pay attention to what was unfolding in Zimbabwe.

On June 26, 2007, Obama won unanimous Senate support for a resolution condemning Mugabe's disregard for democratic processes and calling for U.S. action to prevent the degeneration of circumstances on the ground in Zimbabwe.

Obama's resolution condemning violent acts by the Zimbabwe government, serves as a powerful reminder that some officials get it while others get lost.

Here's the Obama resolution on Zimbabwe:

Whereas in 2005 the Government of Zimbabwe launched Operation Murambatsvina (``Operation Throw Out the Trash'') against citizens in major cities and suburbs throughout Zimbabwe, depriving over 700,000 people of their homes, businesses, and livelihoods;

Whereas on March 11, 2007, opposition party activists and members of civil society attempted to hold a peaceful prayer meeting to protest the economic and political crisis engulfing Zimbabwe, where inflation is running over 1,700 percent and unemployment stands at 80 percent and in response to President Robert Mugabe's announcement that he intends to seek reelection in 2008 if nominated;

Whereas opposition activist Gift Tandare died on March 11, 2007, as a result of being shot by police while attempting to attend the prayer meeting and Itai Manyeruke died on March 12, 2007, as a result of police beatings and was found in a morgue by his family on March 20, 2007;

Whereas under the direction of President Robert Mugabe and the ZANU-PF government, police officers, security forces, and youth militia brutally assaulted the peaceful demonstrators and arrested opposition leaders and hundreds of civilians;

Whereas Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangarai was brutally assaulted and suffered a fractured skull, lacerations, and major bruising; MDC member Sekai Holland, a 64-year old grandmother, suffered ruthless attacks at Highfield Police Station, which resulted in the breaking of her leg, knee, arm, and three ribs; fellow activist Grace Kwinje, age 33, also was brutally beaten, while part of one ear was ripped off; and Nelson Chamisa was badly injured by suspected state agents at Harare airport on March 18, 2007, when trying to board a plane for a meeting of European Union and Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States lawmakers in Brussels, Belgium; Whereas Zimbabwe's foreign minister warned Western diplomats that the Government of Zimbabwe would expel them if they gave support to the opposition, and said Western diplomats had gone too far by offering food and water to jailed opposition activists;

Whereas victims of physical assault by the Government of Zimbabwe have been denied emergency medical transfer to hospitals in neighboring South Africa, where their wounds can be properly treated;

Whereas those incarcerated by the Government of Zimbabwe were denied access to legal representatives and lawyers appearing at the jails to meet with detained clients were themselves threatened and intimidated; Whereas at the time of Zimbabwe's independence, President Robert Mugabe was hailed as a liberator and Zimbabwe showed bright prospects for democracy, economic development, domestic reconciliation, and prosperity;

Whereas President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF government continue to turn away from the promises of liberation and use state power to deny the people of Zimbabwe the freedom and prosperity they fought for and deserve;

Whereas the staggering suffering brought about by the misrule of Zimbabwe has created a large-scale humanitarian crisis in which 3,500 people die each week from a combination of disease, hunger, neglect, and despair;

Whereas the Chairman of the African Union, President Alpha Oumar Konare, expressed ``great concern'' about Zimbabwe's crisis and called for the need for the scrupulous respect for human rights and democratic principles in Zimbabwe;

Whereas the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Council of Non-governmental Organizations stated that ``We believe that the crisis has reached a point where Zimbabweans need to be strongly persuaded and directly assisted to find an urgent solution to the crisis that affects the entire region.'';

Whereas Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, has urged southern Africa to take a new approach to Zimbabwe instead of the failed ``quiet diplomacy'', which he likened to a ``sinking Titanic,'' and stated that ``quiet diplomacy has failed to help solve the political chaos and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe'';

Whereas European Union and African, Caribbean, and Pacific lawmakers strongly condemned the latest attack on an opposition official in Zimbabwe and urged the government in Harare to cooperate with the political opposition to restore the rule of law; and

Whereas United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, warned that opposition to President Robert Mugabe had reached a tipping point because the people no longer feared the regime and believed they had nothing left to lose:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That-- (1) it is the sense of Congress that--

(A) the state-sponsored violence taking place in Zimbabwe represents a serious violation of fundamental human rights and the rule of law and should be condemned by all responsible governments, civic organizations, religious leaders, and international bodies; and

(B) the Government of Zimbabwe has not lived up to its commitments as a signatory to the Constitutive Act of the African Union and African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights which enshrine commitment to human rights and good governance as foundational principles of African states; and

(2) Congress--

(A) condemns the Government of Zimbabwe's violent suppression of political and human rights through its police force, security forces, and youth militia that deliberately inflict gross physical harm, intimidation, and abuse on those legitimately protesting the failing policies of the government;

(B) holds those individual police, security force members, and militia involved in abuse and torture responsible for the acts that they have committed;

(C) condemns the harassment and intimidation of lawyers attempting to carry out their professional obligations to their clients and repeated failure by police to comply promptly with court decisions;

(D) condemns the harassment of foreign officials, journalists, human rights workers, and others, including threatening their expulsion from the country if they continue to provide food and water to victims detained in prison and in police custody while in the hospital;

(E) commends United States Ambassador Christopher Dell and other United States Government officials and foreign officials for their support to political detainees and victims of torture and abuse while in police custody or in medical care centers and encourages them to continue providing such support;

(F) calls on the Government of Zimbabwe to cease immediately its violent campaign against fundamental human rights, to respect the courts and members of the legal profession, and to restore the rule of law while adhering to the principles embodied in an accountable democracy, including freedom of association and freedom of expression;

(G) calls on the Government of Zimbabwe to cease illegitimate interference in travel abroad by its citizens, especially for humanitarian purposes; and

(H) calls on the leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the African Union to consult urgently with all Zimbabwe stakeholders to intervene with the Government of Zimbabwe while applying appropriate pressures to resolve the economic and political crisis.

As a first-term senator with little more than his conscience and his understanding of the world to guide him, Obama read the circumstance in Zimbabwe right -- and he did so before the crisis spun out of control.

Imagine what might have been if George Bush and Condoleezza Rice had taken the situation in southern Africa as seriously as did Obama -- and responded in so savvy and responsible a manner as the Illinoisan.

Imagine what someone who actually paid attention to the world -- and recognized the responsible role that the United States can and should play in rallying world opinion to stand on the side of human rights -- could accomplish as president.

A deal of a lifetime

The Blue Whale

The Blue Whale...

America Unite for CHANGE