Race and Medicine (2 Letters)

Abstract: To the Editor: Re “ From Bang to Whimper: A Heart Drug’s Story ” (Books, Dec. 25): Dr. Abigail Zuger’s review of Jonathan Kahn’s diatribe against BiDil appropriately criticizes the lack of clinical data in his book “Race in a Bottle.” In his zeal to discredit the process that led to the development and marketing of BiDil for black patients with heart failure, Mr. Kahn disregards the facts. BiDil prevented 43 percent of the deaths in A-HeFT, the key clinical trial in self-identified blacks. By railing against the idea that blacks were singled out for this study, which was designed based on compelling biological and preliminary clinical trial data, Mr. Kahn has contributed to a backlash that has impeded clinical use of the drug. It is unfortunate that we do not have a better criterion for selecting individuals whose biology makes them responsive to BiDil, but it is tragic that thousands of patients are dying because their doctors are not prescribing the drug despite the ease of their identification. Manuel Worcel, M.D. Paris Jay N. Cohn, M.D. Minneapolis Dr. Worcel is a former medical director of NitroMed, the company that developed BiDil; Dr. Cohn, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, is its inventor. To the Editor: Dr. Zuger discounts the grouping of patients by race for the purposes of diagnosis or treatment. But diagnostic tests and therapeutic interventions targeted at certain ethnic or racial categories have long been useful. In order to screen for a number of genetic diseases that occur predominantly in Jews of Ashkenazi, or Eastern European, extraction, for example, there is a group of genetic tests called the Ashkenazi Jewish Genetic Panel. Sickle cell anemia occurs primarily in blacks (in whom, therefore, tests for the condition should be focused), and a hereditary enzyme deficiency that causes sensitivity to fava beans and certain drugs is found primarily in Africans and persons of Mediterranean descent. We should not let political correctness divert us from where the data lead. Henry I. Miller, M.D. Stanford, Calif.

Bidil
Race and Ethnicity
Medicine and Health
Pharmaceuticals


Leaping-Room Only at Lambeau Field

Abstract: Ryan Verrier and Chris Drosner are hoping to catch another Green Bay Packer or two in Sunday’s National Football Conference championship game against the Giants . Verrier and Drosner, 30-year-old Packers fans who have been friends since high school, have seats in the third row of the south end zone at Lambeau Field. That is a good position to become part of a Lambeau Leap by a Packers player celebrating in the stands after a touchdown. “I’m predicting two or three Lambeau Leaps against the Giants,” Verrier said by telephone Wednesday. “I don’t think there’s a possibility that we will lose this game at home.” Verrier teaches fourth grade at Valley View Elementary School in Ashwaubenon, Wis., a few blocks from Lambeau Field, and his family owns four season tickets. He was with Drosner on Dec. 30, 2001, when Packers cornerback Mike McKenzie intercepted a fourth-quarter pass thrown by Minnesota quarterback Spergon Wynn. During his 38-yard return for a touchdown, McKenzie looked above the short wall in the south end zone. “From about the 20-yard line, McKenzie started pointing in our direction,” Drosner said. “Everybody in our section started screaming and waving him in.” McKenzie accepted their invitation, and put the high in high-five by leaping into the third row, where Verrier and Drosner were sitting. “We just started going nuts,” said Drosner, now an editor at The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison. “It was amazing. The first five rows just kind of collapsed all around us because everyone was reaching to get a piece of McKenzie.” On Nov. 12, 1995, Verrier was at Lambeau with his older brother, Jay, for a game against the Chicago Bears. In the third quarter, Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre connected with wide receiver Robert Brooks for a 44-yard touchdown. After crossing the goal line, Brooks vaulted over the grandstand wall. “He practically ended up in my lap,” Verrier said. “He just started yelling because he was so happy, and I just kept patting him on the back. Everyone was reaching over to congratulate him and beers were flying everywhere, but Brooks didn’t seem to mind. He was really loving it.” Brooks made many Lambeau Leaps, but defensive back LeRoy Butler originated the move. In a game against the Los Angeles Raiders on Dec. 26, 1993, Reggie White of the Packers picked up a fumble by running back Randy Jordan on the Raiders’ 35. White ran 10 yards, then lateraled the ball to Butler, who raced into the end zone and leapt into the south bleachers. “For Ryan and I to have played a part in this tradition is really special,” Drosner said. “I don’t think either of us, or any other Packers fan who has been part of a Lambeau Leap, will ever forget it.” Daniel Dennis, a 32-year-old Packers fan from Cato, N.Y., near Syracuse, will never forget the moment he became part of Packers history. He drove to Lambeau for the N.F.C. wild-card playoff game against Seattle on Jan. 4, 2004. "I had pneumonia at that time, and it was freezing in Green Bay," saidDennis, a pediatric emergency room nurse, who buys his tickets throughPacker Fan Tours. "But I wasn't missing that game." Dennis sat with his wife, Leann, and his brother, Greg, in prime Lambeau Leap territory: Section 105, Row 1, in the north end zone. In overtime, Green Bay cornerback Al Harris intercepted a pass thrown by Matt Hasselbeck and sped toward victory. After motoring 52 yards into the end zone, Harris approached the stands but did not leap into the frenzied crowd. “When Harris was heading toward the end zone, I started banging on the padding of the wall, hoping he would leap into my area,” Dennis said Tuesday. “Instead, he just kind of prances through a pack of photographers, reaches up and just hands me the ball. I was stunned.” Dennis, who has three young children, and a German shepherd named Lambeau, will probably hand the ball off one day to his only son, 7-month-old Nathan Brett, whose middle name is a tribute to Favre. “I wish I could be there on Sunday with the rest of those Packer fans, who are the greatest football fans in the world,” Dennis said. “Whenever I go, I always try and get tickets somewhere in Lambeau Leap territory because that’s where all the action is.”

Green Bay Packers
Football
New York Giants


Holder, in Brooklyn, Pushes for More Alternatives to Prison

Abstract: The men and women began speaking on Thursday about their experiences, many approaching tears. One woman talked about how she had walked in on her dead mother’s body, and from there had begun sneaking drugs behind her fiancé's back. Another woman, 60 and a grandmother, had been arrested on drug charges. “Who wants a junkie for a grandmother?” she said. The women were graduates of programs in Brooklyn offering federal defendants counseling and supervision, rather than prison terms. These sorts of programs, known as alternatives to incarceration, are widely used in state courts but have not caught on at the federal level, where only a small number of jurisdictions, like that of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, run such programs. The push for more alternatives to incarceration has become a top issue for the United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. , as he enters his final months in office; he has held several events urging different paths for those arrested than traditional prison terms. Mr. Holder, who visited the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Thursday, said the expansion of these programs nationally was “a no-brainer.” “We talk about cost savings, but you’re also reducing the crime rate if you give people like these folks the chance to live productive lives,” he said. “They’re not going to be recidivists.” He talked about his time as a Superior Court judge. “I watched as lines of young people, most often young men of color, streamed through my courtroom day after day,” he said, adding that he often saw the same ones coming back again and again. “People who are convicted of crimes too often get trapped” in a circle of incarceration and further crime, he said. “We will never, as a nation, be able to incarcerate our way to better outcomes, a stronger nation or a brighter future. Instead, we need to make smart choices” that will help people stay out of courts and prisons, he said. The 60-year-old grandmother said she was dubious about the program at first. However, she said, the supervision had worked well. The room was packed with legal powerhouses, including three United States attorneys : Loretta E. Lynch of Brooklyn, Preet Bharara of Manhattan and Paul J. Fishman of New Jersey. Rumors have been swirling that Ms. Lynch and Mr. Bharara would be contenders to succeed Mr. Holder. In September, he announced he would leave his job once a successor was confirmed. In introducing Mr. Holder, Carol Bagley Amon, the chief judge for Federal District Court in Brooklyn, said, “We all hope that the 83rd attorney general is also in this room,” as Mr. Holder, the 82nd person to hold the post, widened his eyes comically. Then, given that Ms. Lynch was seated next to Mr. Bharara, Ms. Amon made her choice clear. “Someone who may be wearing a little orange,” she said, referring to an accent color on Ms. Lynch’s jacket.

Brooklyn
Prison
Crime
Preet Bharara
Eric Holder
Justice Department
Loretta E Lynch


Jim Courier Named U.S. Davis Cup Captain

Abstract: Back when Jim Courier was playing Davis Cup matches in the 1990s, Patrick McEnroe remembered thinking that he would make a good captain one day. That is what happened Wednesday, when the United States Tennis Association named him to the job to replace McEnroe, who stepped down after 10 years. “No. 1 is his passion for tennis and his passion for Davis Cup in particular,” McEnroe said when he handed off the job at the announcement in Manhattan. “If he wasn’t the greatest Davis Cup player ever, he was definitely the most passionate. “He’s the perfect guy to do it.” Courier, 40, was so eager for the job that, when McEnroe announced his resignation during the United States Open , he expressed his interest almost immediately during a CBS broadcast. “Once I got a taste of playing Davis Cup, I thought, if I ever get the opportunity to be captain, I’d want to do it,” Courier said. “So I responded to a question from my colleague, Ian Eagle, and I hope I handled it O.K. I didn’t want to be seen as grandstanding or lobbying for the position.” Whatever he did worked. He was the U.S.T.A.’s choice over the other top contender, Todd Martin. Courier has a lengthy playing résumé in the Davis Cup. The United States won the title twice with Courier on the team, in 1992 and ’95, and he was 3-0 in deciding fifth matches. In a statement released by the U.S.T.A. , Andre Agassi called Courier “an inspired choice.” McEnroe agreed. “He was 13-1 as a player in Davis Cup matches,” McEnroe said. “If he continues that pace as captain, we’ll be in good shape.” Courier’s debut will come in March in the world group first round against Chile. He said that he had spoken to most of the top American players and that Andy Roddick was among those who had agreed to play next year. But Courier also knows his job will be to make the transition from the Roddick-James Blake-Mardy Fish era of Davis Cup teams to a new generation, led by players like Sam Querrey, John Isner and Ryan Harrison. “I’m hoping Andy and those guys participate for the next three or four years, but we will be moving from that great group of veterans to a younger group,” Courier said. “I see a lot of potential there.” Courier said he hoped his job would be eased by relief in the ATP Tour schedule. The tour is considering requests by many prominent players for a longer off-season and better spacing between tournaments. He would also like to see the International Tennis Federation change the Davis Cup format to make the finals more special, favoring a World Cup-style qualifying process and a two-week finale in one location. “It should be treated like the fifth major,” Courier said.

Davis Cup
Tennis
United States Tennis Assn
Courier Jim
McEnroe Patrick


Gap Losing Chief Financial Officer to Visa

Abstract: SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 29 (AP) — Gap ’s chief financial officer, Byron H. Pollitt Jr., is leaving the slumping retailer on Sept. 14 to take the same job at the payment network operator Visa, the companies said Wednesday. Mr. Pollitt, 56, will be succeeded by one of his top deputies, Sabrina Simmons, who is being promoted from senior vice president for corporate finance to executive vice president and acting chief financial officer. Ms. Simmons, 44, joined Gap in 2001 as vice president and treasurer. The retailer, which operates Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores, has been struggling with weak sales and has been trying to make a turnaround, shedding executives and cutting costs. On Friday, the company reported that second-quarter net income rose 19 percent to meet analysts’ expectations, helped by aggressive cost cutting and reorganization. But revenue fell 1 percent, and same-store sales, a key gauge of retailer health, fell 5 percent. Gap shares fell 28 cents, to $18.39, in after-hours trading, after closing up 60 cents at $18.67.

Gap Inc
Appointments and Executive Changes
Retail Stores and Trade


Brought Up to Shop

Abstract: BY the time I was 10, my father and sister had died. My mother had to go to work, which was a big deal back then. The other mothers in the neighborhood said I was going to turn into a juvenile delinquent because my mother didn't stay home. I was determined to prove them wrong. I got my first taste of retail at the department store that my mother managed in Spokane. She took me to work with her after church on Sundays. While she did the payroll in the back, I'd do something like move an entire department from the back of the store to the front. Hours later, when my mother came out, the color must have drained from her face. But she'd just say, "Honey, it looks great." I feel bad for the sales associates who had to move everything back on Monday. Next she became a buyer at the Bon Marché. Other kids went to summer camp, but I went on buying trips with her to New York. I became a star salesperson working in her store in high school. I'd take a customer to a rack of Evan-Picone pants and say, "Mrs. Smith, let me tell you about this pant." I'd describe how it was made, from top to bottom. There was no way the woman was going to not buy it. I've played golf since I was very young. In college, I realized I could either be a golfer or go into retail apparel. I knew I'd be a better amateur than pro, so I chose merchandising. I completed the Bon Marché training program and quickly skipped two levels to become a buyer. After I was named buyer of the year my first year, the company president told me he was moving me. I asked why, when I was doing so well where I was. He answered that he wanted to teach me humility. Four years later, at Joske's in Dallas, I was promoted to merchandising manager of the dress division. This was the late 1970's. Even in those days, women were choosing sportswear over dresses. The job was not easy. I called the Bon Marché president and said thank you. I had just learned humility. In the late 1980's I took an executive job with Sears in Chicago. I was the only woman and the youngest executive by a decade, and it was rare for outsiders to be hired at that level. My first day there, the C.E.O. shook my hand and then brushed my back. He said he wanted to see if there were any knives in it. When I acted puzzled, he told me I'd find out why and offered his support. It was difficult in the beginning. If I walked into the lunchroom and asked if an empty seat was taken, someone would answer yes. As soon as my area did well and I proved myself, the other executives came around. Ten years ago, I took a risk by coming to Charming Shoppes. I spent the first three months trying to keep the company out of bankruptcy. That effort was actually a great experience. It was sheer chaos, but it allows you to make necessary changes quickly. I gathered a team together and said we were on a burning platform. If you make the right decisions, you can transform a company through these dark days. Your team will support you. We closed 400 stores and three factories, downsized staff by one-third and changed manufacturers. In the end, we got a company that was financially flexible, we got the financing we needed and we were rid of the people who weren't change agents. A lot of people don't believe it, but a crisis situation is truly the easiest time to lead. When I moved East, I kept my home in Chicago. My 21-year-old son still lives there while attending college. My 23-year-old son is with me in Philadelphia. I feel bad for the women who marry my sons. They've had a housekeeper since they were little. The moment a pair of jeans fell on the floor, someone was there to pick it up. DORRIT J. BERN Chairman, president and chief executive, Charming Shoppes, Bensalem, Pa. BIRTH DATE April 28, 1950 HOMETOWN Spokane, Wash. WEEKEND COMMUTE Philadelphia to Chicago NEVER PASSES UP M&M candy SUPERSTITION Chooses same airport security line every FAVORITE MORNING GYM ACTIVITY Socializing while biking OLDEST HOUSEHOLD POSSESSION 25-year-old couches LAST BOOK READ "The End of Work," by Jeremy Rifkin

CHARMING SHOPPES INC
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
RETAIL STORES AND TRADE


Picture Taken by Cellphone Leads to Sex-Crime Arrest

Abstract: One morning last month, a 28-year-old woman was struggling up the stairs at the Dyckman Street elevated station on her way to work. Normally, she would hold her skirt around her legs, but that day she was juggling a cup of coffee, a gym bag and her purse. She sensed the presence of someone too close to her on the stairs. She turned and saw a man peering into his cellphone. A passer-by confirmed her suspicion: The man had taken photographs under her skirt. “I said I had to do something,” the woman said on Thursday. “Since he is taking pictures of me, I am going to take pictures of him.” She said she followed the man onto the southbound No. 1 train, walked through several cars and found him on a seat. She prepared her cellphone camera. He looked at her and mumbled something. “And I told him ‘smile’ because I am going to the police,” she said. She took a picture, e-mailed it to the police and filed a report. On Tuesday, an officer at the 110th Street subway station at Central Park West approached a man matching the photograph, the police said. According to the police, the man, identified as Aaron Olivieri, 36, told the officer, “I hope I am not the person you are looking for.” Then he said he knew why he was being stopped: because a woman on a train had taken his picture and accused him of a crime. Mr. Olivieri was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday on misdemeanor charges of unlawful surveillance, attempted sexual abuse and harassment, a criminal complaint said. A man who answered the phone at his apartment referred calls to Mr. Olivieri’s lawyer, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday afternoon. On crowded subways and streets, women have long been targets of deliberate jostling, groping, obscene photography and indecent exposure. In 2006, a police sting netted 13 men charged with groping or flashing, and other men have been arrested in recent years after being identified by cellphone pictures. One Web site, hollabacknyc.com , encourages people to share their stories and cellphone photographs. “Send us pics of street harassers!” the Web site says. On Sept. 9, the police started tapping into the ubiquitous technology by inviting people who witness crimes to take pictures with their cellphone cameras, if safety permits, and to send them along when they make 911 calls.

Police
Subways
Sex Crimes
Cellular Telephones
Police Department (NYC)


Ecological Shifts Spell Challenges for the Pecos River

Abstract: In the final 100 miles of the Pecos River, as it journeys south through far West Texas to empty into the Rio Grande, there is one public access point. A Val Verde County road crosses the river near Pandale, an abandoned pioneer settlement 55 miles from the closest population center. The next direct link to urban civilization on the river comes only after 50 more miles, at the United States Highway 90 bridge. In between, signs of modern human life are limited to the rare ranch house on a distant river bluff. Its rocky rapids — navigable only by canoe or kayak — and its long stretches of windy lakes keep all but the most dogged paddlers from its waters. “You are confronted with all this harsh desert beauty. It’s a very, very tough trip,” said Greg Williams, who has traveled to the Pecos region for 25 years through his work with the San Antonio-based Rock Art Foundation , which supports the preservation of archaeological remains on the river. “It’s remarkable, and it will change you. But it’s tough. It’s a very humbling experience.” Isolation has allowed the Pecos to avoid some of the challenges that increased development has brought to many of the state’s other waterways. But it has not been spared from another threat — the gradual ecological changes wrought by the man-made lakes bookending its passage through the state. Starting in the mountains of northern New Mexico, the river enters and leaves Texas through two reservoirs. Before joining the Rio Grande to fill Lake Amistad, it runs about 350 miles through Texas after hitting the Red Bluff Reservoir on the state’s border with New Mexico. About 100 miles west of Midland, the Red Bluff captures much of the water that flows from the river’s source in New Mexico, leaving the upper reaches of the river heavily dependent on rainfall for replenishment. The stored water that does flow downstream is salty after picking up the minerals left behind in the reservoir, contributing further to the river’s naturally occurring high salinity. Salt levels are also magnified by surface water withdrawals for agricultural purposes — the river is the sole source of irrigation for acres of arid farmland in the region. Drought makes all of it worse. The high-salt conditions are perfect for a species of coastal algae toxic to freshwater fish, said Tim Birdsong, the ecosystem and habitat chief of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s Inland Fisheries division. After first invading the upper Pecos in the mid-1980s, he said, the algae have spread to other rivers in the state, including the Trinity and the Brazos, triggering widespread fish kills. The algae blooms on the Pecos have imperiled its diverse aquatic life, including a kind of minnow known as the Pecos pupfish, whose primary habitat is found in specific reaches of the river and its tributaries. In the last decade, the state has invested about $4 million in an attempt to understand how to control the algae outbreaks, Mr. Birdsong said. Several universities have also picked up on that research, but it has not resulted in a successful method of curbing the algae’s growth in Texas waterways. “We have done just about all we can to get at this issue and we aren’t seeing any real cost-effective strategies at managing algae blooms in streams and rivers,” he said. Image Last year, low stream flow occurred through Dead Man’s Canyon, a quarter-mile from where it joins the Pecos River. Credit Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune As the river flows south, it is increasingly fed by groundwater springs, creating a healthier ecosystem, Mr. Birdsong said. The land it travels changes to deep limestone canyons, in some areas soaring 150 to 200 feet, making the water difficult to withdraw for agricultural purposes. “As far as access, it’s almost nonexistent,” said Missy Harrington, whose family has ranched in the area since the late 1800s. “We always laughed that my great-grandfather bought the land sight unseen because they told him there were rivers on three sides, but they didn’t tell him there were 200 foot bluffs.” Her family’s early ranching operation raised cattle, she said, but it discovered, as many in the area did, that cattle needed costly supplemental feed to stay alive on the sparse countryside that surrounded the river. Now, the only livestock they keep are sheep and goats, which are hardier and require less water than cattle. “I don’t think it’s changed much in the last hundred years, and I doubt that it’ll change much in the next hundred years,” Ms. Harrington said. “Maybe whenever places sell, and land gets chopped up — it’s a beautiful place to build a house, I guarantee it. But it’s kind of remote so you’re going to have to want to live in the country.” Ms. Harrington’s land is on what is known as the lower Pecos, which runs through the canyons that begin about 60 miles north of Lake Amistad. The freshwater springs that feed the lower Pecos, which is home to some of the continent’s oldest rock art, make it less susceptible to low flow and water quality issues that plague the river’s upper reaches. But the reservoir at its mouth has also left its mark. “What you see the Pecos now looking like as you cross Highway 90 is not what the Pecos River looked like at all. Really at that point it’s the reservoir,” said Carolyn Boyd, a Texas State University archaeologist. “Underneath that bridge there’s 80 feet of silt underneath the little water that’s actually there.” (The Texas State University System is a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune.) The paintings and rock carvings created by the nomadic hunters and gatherers who occupied the region 12,000 to 4,500 years ago are unusual both for their narrative composition and superior preservation, said Dr. Boyd, who directs the Shumla School, an organization dedicated to studying the region’s rock art. “Essentially what we are looking at are the oldest known books in North America that line the river,” Dr. Boyd said. The paintings are in dry rock shelters protected from water damage and were produced by combining animal fat with colors produced by chalk-like river rocks, a method Dr. Boyd said improved their longevity. The construction of Amistad in 1969 brought a new element to the climate that had kept the paintings preserved for so long. Surface evaporation from the lake has added more moisture to the arid desert air, Dr. Boyd said, which has led to increased mineral accretions and microbial growth on the cave walls that hold the art, accelerating its deterioration. The effects of the reservoir on the river, said Mr. Williams of the Rock Art Foundation, are only just now being seen. “There are deposits on the walls, there’s insect populations that weren’t there before,” he said. “The humidity has increased, and the full extent of that I don’t think we know.”

Texas
Algae
Pecos River NM
Water pollution


Governor Perry Backs Cheerleaders in Fight Over Religious Banners

Abstract: AUSTIN, Tex. — Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday lent his support to a group of East Texas cheerleaders who are fighting in court to keep using banners with Bible verses at public school football games. Last month, school district officials in Kountze, Tex., a town of 2,100 northeast of Houston, prohibited the cheerleaders from displaying the banners at the beginning of games. Fifteen middle school and high school cheerleaders and their parents sued the district, asserting that the ban violated their free speech rights. A state judge then issued a temporary restraining order against enforcing the ban, allowing the cheerleaders to continue using the banners at games. Mr. Perry was joined at the Capitol here on Wednesday by the attorney general, Greg Abbott, who said the district’s action against the students was improper. He argued that the banners were protected by a state law that requires school districts to treat student expression of religious views in the same manner as secular views. That law, signed by Mr. Perry in 2007, is called the Religious Viewpoint Antidiscrimination Act. “We’re a nation that’s built on the concept of free expression of ideas,” Mr. Perry said. “We’re also a culture built upon the concept that the original law is God’s law, outlined in the Ten Commandments. If you think about it, the Kountze cheerleaders simply wanted to call a little attention to their faith and to their Lord.” The governor and attorney general — seated before pictures of a banner reading, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” — made their remarks the day before the two sides were scheduled to appear in court in Kountze. An extension of the restraining order expires Thursday, and the judge who issued it will consider whether to grant a temporary injunction against the ban, which would most likely permit students to use the signs for the rest of the football season. The Lions’ next home game is Friday night. The support expressed by Mr. Perry and Mr. Abbott illustrated the degree to which the small-town case has become a statewide cause. The cheerleaders’ legal battle against the district has attracted widespread news media attention, stirred conservative Christians to action and inspired rallies, T-shirts and a 48,000-member Facebook page. The superintendent, Kevin Weldon, said that the lawyers he had consulted advised him to prohibit the signs. The advice was based on a Supreme Court ruling in 2000 in another Texas case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe , which established that prayers led by students at high school football games were unconstitutional. Mr. Abbott’s office said that ruling did not apply in the cheerleaders’ case, and it intervened in the lawsuit, in part, to defend the constitutionality of the 2007 state antidiscrimination law. A lawyer for Mr. Weldon, Thomas P. Brandt, said the superintendent would allow the students to use the banners if the judge said the signs were lawful. “To the extent that politicians want to take positions, they have the right to do that,” Mr. Brandt said. “Whether that’s helpful to resolving the situation, reasonable minds could differ.” When asked if he and reporters would be here talking about the issue if the phrases were from the Koran or Confucius, Mr. Perry replied: “I don’t know whether you’d be here, I would be. The point is, as I said in my remarks, this is about all religion.”

Cheerleaders
Texas
Religion-State Relations
Freedom of Speech and Expression
Perry Rick
Christians and Christianity
Education (K-12)


Reluctant Jeter Is Kept on the Bench With a Sore Ankle

Abstract: Derek Jeter tried to persuade Manager Joe Girardi that he could play shortstop with a sore left ankle Wednesday night, but Girardi decided that Jeter would benefit from resting for one day. “It didn’t work out,” Jeter said about lobbying to be in the lineup against the Washington Nationals. After a magnetic resonance imaging test on Jeter’s ankle was negative, he hoped he would start against the Nationals. But Girardi said he did not want Jeter to play on a sore ankle and risk reinjuring it. Jeter ran cautiously Tuesday and left the game after seven innings. “My thought process is he goes out there and irritates it again, then we’re back at square one,” Girardi said. So Jeter, who despises being out of the lineup and despises talking about it, was a reserve for a night. While Girardi theorized that Jeter might have hurt his ankle trying to dodge a sliding Gary Sheffield at second base Sunday, Jeter said he could not recall exactly how he injured himself. “It wasn’t a particular play where I felt something,” Jeter said. “I just think it just progressed. It’s not a big deal. I could play if they let me.” Ramiro Pena replaced Jeter at shortstop. If the Yankees needed Jeter, who played in 61 of the first 64 games, to pinch-hit Wednesday, he said he would be ready. (He was not called upon.) “That’s up to him,” Jeter said, referring to Girardi. “I was available to start. That’s his decision.” Because Jeter is insistent on playing through injuries, Girardi says he reads Jeter’s “facial expressions” to try to determine how much he is hurt. Girardi said he would watch how Jeter looks while running before deciding if he would start Thursday. But Girardi said it was possible Jeter would be rested then, too. NO REST FOR RODRIGUEZ Alex Rodriguez has not missed a game since he returned to the Yankees on May 8 after hip surgery, but he has sputtered lately. Rodriguez was 3 for 27 with one home run in his last nine games before Wednesday. Over all, he is batting .224 with 9 homers and 26 runs batted in. Still, when Girardi was asked about giving Rodriguez a day off, he noted that Rodriguez was off Monday because the Yankees did not play. It sounded as if Girardi had no plans to rest Rodriguez. “He feels good enough to play,” Girardi said. “And as long as he feels good enough to play, we’re going to continue to send him out there, because with one swing of the bat, he can change the complexion of the game.” NADY IN OUTFIELD TEST Xavier Nady will play the outfield in an extended spring training game in Tampa, Fla., on Friday. Nady, who has a ligament injury in his right elbow, called his elbow about 85 to 90 percent healed and said he had felt no pain while throwing from about 120 feet. He declined to speculate when he might play his next game in the major leagues. “I thought it would have been weeks ago,” Nady said. LISTENING TO TRADE TALKS Nick Johnson, who is batting .311 and has a .414 on-base percentage for the Nationals, said it was impossible to ignore the speculation that he will be traded to a contender. But Johnson, a first baseman, said that he tried not to focus on it. “Until they come in and tap you on the shoulder and tell you where to go, you keep playing,” Johnson said. It seems likely that Johnson will be traded. He is in the final year of a contract that pays him $5.5 million this season, so he would not be too expensive for a team that needs a reliable hitter who is still decent defensively. HOT HITTERS Before Wednesday’s game, Robinson Cano had hits in six straight at-bats. Cano had a .330 average, 22 runs batted in and 20 runs scored in his last 25 games. Mark Teixeira had 20 homers in his first 60 games with the Yankees this year. He had never hit more than 16 in the first 60 games of any season.

New York Yankees
Jeter Derek
Girardi Joe
Baseball


No. 17 Syracuse Holds Off Rutgers in Overtime

Abstract: Kris Joseph scored 6 of his 21 points in overtime, and No. 17 Syracuse held off Rutgers, 84-80, on Saturday. The game was tied at 70-70 after regulation, and Joseph gave the host Orange (22-6, 9-6 Big East) a 75-71 lead when he curled off a screen at the top of the key and made a shot off a pass from Brandon Triche. Jonathan Mitchell responded 16 seconds later with a 3-pointer from the right wing, and after Scoop Jardine’s baseline drive and floater made it 77-75 with 2 minutes 7 seconds left, the Scarlet Knights missed three straight shots. Syracuse hit 7 of 10 free throws in the final 1:03 to hold on. Rick Jackson, who had 18 points and 12 rebounds, had a chance to win it in regulation, but missed one of two free throws with 9.9 seconds left. James Beatty missed a long 3 at the buzzer as the game went to overtime. Rutgers (13-13, 4-10) has lost five of six and fell to 1-22 in games played at Syracuse, including 15 straight losses. The lone victory was a 76-75 win on Feb. 6, 1975 — the season before Jim Boeheim took over as the coach of the Orange. HARVARD 61, COLUMBIA 42 Keith Wright had 16 points and 12 rebounds as visiting Harvard took sole possession of first place in the Ivy League. The Crimson (20-4, 9-1) shot 20 for 39 from the field (51.3 percent) and 18 for 18 from the free-throw line, and also had a 36-18 edge in rebounding. Harvard scored the first 9 points of the game and led by as many as 22. Columbia (14-10, 5-5) shot 34 percent and never led. BROWN 75, PRINCETON 65 Peter Sullivan scored 26 points and host Brown (10-14, 3-7 Ivy League) ended a 10-game winning streak by Princeton (20-5, 8-1). MARQUETTE 73, SETON HALL 64 Jimmy Butler scored 16 points to lead Marquette past visiting Seton Hall as the Golden Eagles (16-11, 7-7 Big East) kept their N.C.A.A. tournament hopes alive. Jeremy Hazell had four 3-pointers for Seton Hall (11-16, 5-10), becoming the career leader in Big East play with 192. ST. PETER’S 71, LOYOLA 67 Wesley Jenkins and Nick Leon scored 17 points apiece as visiting St. Peter’s (17-11) held off Loyola of Chicago in a BracketBuster game. Geoff McCammon made four 3-pointers, giving him 78 to set the single-season 3-point record for Loyola (15-13). JAMES MADISON 70, MIAMI (OHIO) 69 Devon Moore made the second of two free throws with 2.9 seconds left to lift host James Madison (20-9). The victory gave the Dukes 20 wins for the first time since the 1981-82 season. RIDER 95, DELAWARE 86 Justin Robinson scored a career-high 31 points and Rider defeated visiting Delaware. Robinson, who made 13 of 14 free-throw attempts, is part of a senior class for the Broncs (20-9) that has more wins (79) than any other in university history. DAYTON 64, DUQUESNE 63 Devin Searcy had 14 points and 11 rebounds, and Juwan Staten’s late scoring helped host Dayton (19-9, 7-6 Atlantic 10) rally to beat Duquesne (17-8, 9-3). IN OTHER GAMES Errick Peck scored a career-high 22 points and Chris Wroblewski added 19 points and 9 assists to lead host Cornell (7-17, 3-7 Ivy) to a 96-76 rout of Dartmouth. ... Zack Rosen’s jump shot with two seconds left gave Pennsylvania (11-12, 5-4 Ivy) a 60-58 win at Yale (12-12, 5-5). ... Kidani Brutus scored 25 points to lead Manhattan (6-22) to a 64-63 overtime win at Stony Brook (11-16). ... Ricky Cadell scored 24 points to help St. Francis of New York (13-14, 8-8) overcome a late deficit and defeat host Wagner (13-14, 9-7) in the Northeast Conference, 77-73. ... Vaughn Duggins scored a career-high 31 points to lead Wright State (18-12) to a 82-56 rout of visiting Hofstra (18-10). ... Julian Boyd had 15 points, 11 rebounds and led six players for Long Island (22-5, 14-2 Northeast Conference) in double figures in an 84-64 win over host Mount St. Mary’s (Md).

Rutgers The State University of New Jersey


Protesters in France Take to Streets Over Proposed Changes to Labor Law

Abstract: PARIS — Firing an employee in France often means a court date, months of hearings and hefty payouts under the country’s 3,400-page labor code. Employers hate the thick book. But workers — those lucky enough to have jobs — love it. On Wednesday, thousands went into the streets across France to protect it, demonstrating against a new government plan to make firings slightly easier and France’s trademark shortened workweek slightly longer. Nothing for years has so revived labor tensions — or divided the Socialist Party — as the government’s plan to overhaul the voluminous labor code, removing, ever so slightly, a few layers of worker protection. Desperate to reduce a nearly permanent unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, the Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, has risked taking a delicate paring knife to the labor code, a step that members of his party consider a heresy. In doing so, Mr. Valls and his tiny reform faction have revived a conflict over labor overhauls that has already played out elsewhere in Europe’s left, but that has tormented the French Socialists ever since they took power in 2012. Mr. Valls says he is determined to fix a “broken” French system that has left employers so fearful of long-term hires that 90 percent of jobs created in France last year were unstable, poorly paid and short term. “You engage yourself practically for life when you sign a contract,” said François Asselin, a businessman who heads the confederation of small and medium-size companies in France. “When you want to lay off an employee, there is considerable legal and financial risk,” he said. “In France, to lay someone off, you’ve got to be totally documented, so you won’t be accused of an ‘abusive firing.’ ” Mr. Valls’s departures from leftist orthodoxy, however, run the risk of breaking his own Socialist Party. “Why are they doing this one year away” from the election, lamented Catherine Lemorton, a Socialist parliamentary deputy, in an interview on Wednesday. “This law which offends so much of our electorate, or what’s left of it?” Mr. Valls, pugnacious and combative, boxes in his spare time, and the law was introduced with characteristic brusqueness and little explanation. The reaction has been explosive. For weeks the Socialist Party’s rank and file has cried betrayal. Hundreds of thousands have signed an online petition demanding that the government scrap its plan. Deputies in Parliament have revolted. The unions — “it’s a return to the 19th century,” grumbled one leader — have vowed to kill the plan. One of the leading Socialist lights, the mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, who wrote France’s 35-hour workweek as a government minister, wrote a furious editorial in Le Monde, declaring, “Not this, not us, not the Left!” On Wednesday, as the government hunkered down to ponder its dwindling options, thousands of demonstrators — workers, union officials, students — poured into the streets of the country’s cities. The student mobilization against the plan was especially strong. “That kind of society, we don’t want anything to do it!” read one of the student demonstration banners at the Place de la République in Paris. This baffled government officials, who said the plan had been developed with students in mind, to open up more long-term employment and diminish exploitative short-term jobs. “They want to make us Kleenex employees, throwaway employees!” said Patricia Deschamp, an Air France worker handing out leaflets at the big demonstration near the employers’ federation here on the Left Bank. “We have minimal security now, and we will have even less after,” she said. Yet the agitated crowds were in the streets for a level of protection far higher than in many developed countries and against a change that even its defenders characterized as no more than mild. The main provision puts a cap on payouts to laid-off employees, based on seniority. Labor court judges would not have nearly limitless discretion to award huge payouts. Equally infuriating to the unions, the law defines more precisely when a company can invoke “economic” reasons to justify layoffs. Workers who refuse to go along with temporary workload increases in the event of increased business could be laid off, too. “It will simplify the procedures to layoffs,” said Philippe Aghion, a Harvard economist who is French and who lectures at the prestigious Collège de France. “You won’t have to go through endless judicial procedures. There will be less discretion for the judges. Now, there is enormous discretion on the amount.” The uncertainty factor is a killer for hiring, the business owners say. “All we are asking for is a limit on the ceiling,” said Mr. Asselin, whose company is a leader in the restoration of France’s historic buildings. “Now, there are no limits,” he said. “Sometimes the fines are so big they endanger the employer. So today, it is risky to hire people.” The unions here, keen to protect their already-employed members, speak relatively little about the ranks of the unemployed. Yet many economists contend that the French level of protection for workers is poisonous to the job market. “There is a large body of evidence that increasing levels of protection for existing workers is detrimental to the labor market, particularly on weaker categories of workers, the young and women,” said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, a French economist who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. “If we want to address the fact that it’s a labor market that excludes many, many people from a decent level of job protection by forcing them into short-term jobs, we have to address these conditions,” he said. “The current administration has accepted this perspective.” France, however, is a difficult country to reform, as Mr. Aghion and others pointed out. Cultural shifts like those proposed by the current government always bring people into the streets. “We are a country of revolutionaries and conservatives at the same time,” said Marc Lazar, a historian at the Institut d’Études Politiques. Playing into this is the French left’s deep attachment to “advances acquired in the past,” Mr. Lazar said. The prevailing sentiment is that “you shouldn’t touch the labor code, because we prefer equality to liberty, protection to adventure.”

France
Jobs
Socialist Party
Unemployment
Manuel Valls
Seniority
Civil Unrest
Labor Unions


A Chance for Track to Regain Its Past With Wider Appeal

Abstract: Beijing Back in the States, every New Year’s Day, decades of listeners enjoyed hearing Keith Jackson describe the Rose Bowl game of college football as “the granddaddy of them all.” In the Summer Games, track and field is the granddaddy of them all. It roars to life every four years, filling stadiums as gymnastics and swimming shut down. The people in the stands might not follow this sport from one Olympiad to another, but they know drama and athleticism when they see it. On Tuesday night, they roared for Usain Bolt of Jamaica even though he virtually jogged to a victory in a 200-meter semifinal, and they cheered for Roqaya al-Gassra of Bahrain, wearing the form-fitting hood and overshirt of hijab, the cover of Muslim piety, as she won her semifinal heat in the 200. But track and field tends to vanish between Olympic Games, except for hard-core fans. Now two progressive thinkers are wondering if the world could be attracted to phenomenons like Bolt if they were presented in some rational pattern over four years, without the current blight of drugs. “I’ve got family who want to know that what they are watching is legitimate,” said Sebastian Coe, who won the gold medal in the 1,500 in 1980 and ’84, and is now the chairman of the organizing committee for the 2012 London Games. Coe recently dropped into Beijing to deliver a cheery update on London’s progress (to worrywarts who fretted about England’s rain, he promised to erect a dome over the entire island). Also a vice president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Coe is urging his sport to embrace testing, saying the Balco scandals in the United States “will not be the last scandal, but we are better to face short-term embarrassment.” In the broader view, Coe said, “Forty-somethings are loyal fans, but it’s different for younger fans.” He said his sport must “start attracting great athletes like Beckham and Federer.” “Football gets 90 percent of the talent,” he said, using the world’s name for soccer , “but then it gets rid of 90 percent of that talent between 14 and 18. The kid who hoped would make it, you realize he’s not going to be a national-level midfielder, but he’s got a great first five steps, he could be a great sprinter.”  The father of four children, Coe said young people were attracted to the X Games on skateboards and other new devices, and he recognized the advance of other sports. “Go to the West Indies and ask cricket people what basketball has done to their sport,” he said. He said major track and field meets were too long, too disjointed, to attract the short-twitch minds of young people. “The formula of our world championship is 9-10 days, five events in three hours,” Coe said. “We’ve got to present our sport better, in one-day meets.” As it happens, Coe has found a kindred soul in Doug Logan, the new head of USA Track & Field. Logan, the first commissioner of Major League Soccer, has called on President Bush to not commute the six-month sentence of Marion Jones, who is jailed for lying in connection with the Balco scandal and who has lost her Olympic medals because she used performance-enhancing drugs. “Nobody will succeed if drugs continue to be the first or second or third question,” Logan said, referring to track’s news conferences. Then he lamented the marginal state of the sport. “Track and field kept ambling down the road while all those Ferraris passed them,” he said. “The N.F.L.; what David Stern did with basketball; Mark McCormack, a genius, built golf on a new business model; Donald Dell and others in tennis ; the France family with Nascar.” Born in Cuba, Logan attended Manhattan College and fell in love with big-time track of the 1960s, particularly the Millrose Games. He said, “I can still hear the footsteps on those wooden boards, with all those splinters — Ron Delany, Eamonn Coghlan in the Wanamaker Mile.” Now, he said, “We’ve got to blow it up and start all over.” He lamented the Balkanized calendar that had American athletes qualifying in the trials in June but then there was “a five-week hiatus, with four or five European meets, with our kids flying all over the place.” As a result, he said, many performances are down from their peak in June.  The sport could be “a marketer’s dream,” Logan said, adding: “The rules are simple — get there first. Everybody has tried to race his older brother.” He also criticized the cost and elapsed time of the world championships, noting that the Prefontaine meet in Oregon every spring “gets it all done in 2 ½ hours.” He concluded: “U.S.A.T.F. has to be the promoter of the last resort. We have to cajole people out of their narrow point of view.” As a former rock promoter, Logan predicted that Usain Bolt could “fill Icahn Stadium single-handedly any time he wants,” referring to the modest stadium under the Triborough Bridge. On May 31, Bolt set a world record of 9.72 at that stadium, and the other night he dropped it to 9.69 while thumping his chest. Bolt has galvanized the Bird’s Nest. With new leadership, maybe Bolt and his Jamaican running mates could make the “granddaddy of them all” relevant more than once every four years.

Track and Field
Olympic Games (2008)
Bolt Usain


A Test of Wills Over a Patch of Desert

Abstract: AL ARAQIB, Israel — The two women crouched on the floor of a tent in this windblown Bedouin encampment in the Negev Desert, hurriedly preparing the evening meal as dusk approached. They had been fasting since sunrise in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Now they were cooking furiously, spicing okra in tomato sauce and stuffing hollowed-out zucchini, against a backdrop of piles of rubble, the remains of their homes recently demolished by the Israeli authorities. For years, the women — Naifa and Aali, the wives of the village elder, Sheik Sayah Abu Mudegem al-Tori — and about 300 other residents of Al Araqib, many of them children, lived in relative obscurity on these beige slopes, situated between the Bedouin town of Rahat and the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. Then the bulldozers arrived at dawn on July 27, accompanied by more than 1,000 armed police officers carrying out a court order. They tore down about 40 unlicensed concrete-block homes, shacks and other structures and uprooted hundreds of trees. Within hours, the villagers and volunteers put up flimsy tents and a few shacks, for shelter from the scorching sun and to stake the Bedouins’ claim to the land. In a test of wills, the Israelis have already been back to destroy the structures three more times. The tug of war has suddenly turned Al Araqib into a symbol of a much larger land dispute between the Bedouins and the Israeli authorities that has been simmering since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. “With God’s help, we will stay on our land,” said Sheik Sayah, wearing a tweed jacket over his cotton thobe, a white headdress and aviator sunglasses. “Anyone who thinks of throwing us out will first have to throw the dead out of the cemetery,” he said, referring to the old Tori tribe graveyard next door to the encampment. The sheik was living in the cemetery because the courts had ordered him to stay away from Al Araqib for two weeks. Sheik Sayah is well aware of the Israeli court rulings stating that his people are trespassers on what the authorities claim as state land. But, he argues, “there was negligence in the case.” The contest over this small patch of desert reflects a clash of cultures, of modern and traditional lifestyles and laws of ownership and increasingly, for many Bedouin, of loyalties and faith. Part of Israel’s Arab minority, the southern Bedouin, who now number more than 170,000 and make up a quarter of the population of the Negev, established good relations with the young Israeli state. Unlike most Arab and Muslim citizens of Israel, many have volunteered to serve in the Israeli military. But none of that has eased the tensions over the land in the Negev. The area lies in Israel proper, not in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians want as part of a separate state. Originally nomads, the Negev Bedouin had settled into a largely sedentary lifestyle by the time the Israeli state was founded. Israel did not recognize their land claims, and about a third to half the Bedouin of the Negev now live in dozens of unrecognized villages, mostly filled with shanties like those in Al Araqib, without basic services like running water or electricity. The villagers of Al Araqib say that after Israelis took over the area in the 1948 war with Arab states, the Israelis told them that they needed to use their territory for military training and asked them to leave temporarily. The villagers moved a short distance away, to a valley just beyond the boundary of their village, they said. Graves in the cemetery suggest that the Tori tribe has been living in the area since the 19th century. In the early 1950s the state declared the area of the village to be state land, giving title to the Israel Land Administration. The residents say they were never officially notified. They describe various attempts to move back, and they insist that even when they lived elsewhere — some moved to the government-established Bedouin town of Rahat — they continued to farm and graze their herds on their ancestral land. Then in the late 1990s, the villagers built homes in Al Araqib when it became clear that the Jewish National Fund was about to plant a forest there. Ortal Tzabar, the spokeswoman for the Israel Land Administration, contends that there is no question about the ownership. The villagers, Ms. Tzabar said, have lost repeatedly in the Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, and have no right to build anything in Al Araqib. Some of the villagers are now pursuing cases in the Beersheba district court to prove their original ownership. Prof. Oren Yiftachel, a member of the geography department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, has appeared as an expert witness in another Bedouin land case. He said that the Bedouin had traditional documents of purchase showing that the Toris bought land here from the Ukbi tribe in 1907 and 1926. “In pure legal terms, the state has a point,” said Professor Yiftachel, an advocate for Bedouin rights. “But it is a very technical point, brushing aside tradition and the legal occupation of the land until the 1950s.” Government officials say that they cannot provide services to every far-flung group of shacks and tents. They add that housing solutions for the people of Al Araqib lie in Rahat, one of seven government-established towns where the state has encouraged the Bedouin to relocate. Some villagers have houses there. But the towns have become centers of poverty and hopelessness, with high unemployment and a population alienated from its roots. “They took our freedom, our culture, our life,” said Khalil al-Amour, a Bedouin high school teacher from a nearby unrecognized village, Al Sira, which is also scheduled for demolition. “They put us within four walls with a washing machine and a microwave and said, ‘Now you are civilized.’ ” “We want to progress,” Mr. Amour continued, “but not in the way the state wants.” The villagers may have satellite television and cellphones, but they also want to farm and raise their livestock, and to sleep under the stars. The destruction of Al Araqib has brought together a strange coalition of supporters, including left-wing Jewish activists from the Negev and politicians and volunteers from the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a social and political organization that also has religious aims. As the sheik’s wives ate with the other women and children in their tent one recent evening, the Bedouin men were at the cemetery, breaking their fast with local leaders of the Islamic Movement. Early the next morning, the police came and pulled down the tents for the fourth time, the villagers said. Amos Oz, the celebrated Israeli author who lives in the Negev town of Arad, also came by. The state, he said, was treating the Bedouin like “stepchildren.” The next night, another feast was held at the cemetery, attended by several Arab and leftist dignitaries, senior Muslim and Christian clergymen from Jerusalem and activists from Rabbis for Human Rights and other coexistence advocacy groups. And on Saturday, Jewish and Arab poets from around Israel gathered for a joint reading in Al Araqib in solidarity with the villagers’ battle against the authorities. “When a neighbor is in trouble,” Mr. Oz said of his visit, “I come to express my sympathy and see what can be done.”

Israel
Bedouins
Negev Desert
Al Araqib (Israel)
Land Use Policies
Politics and Government
Freedom and Human Rights


Republican Front-Runner Has Yet to Emerge for 2012

Abstract: WASHINGTON — The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, the start of the 2012 U.S. presidential race, are only a little more than a year away. For more than four decades, at this stage, Republicans had either an incumbent president or an established front-runner who wins the nomination. There is no such figure today, making the race more wide open. Many of the events that will shape this contest have yet to occur: who actually runs, how the economy and the war in Afghanistan fare, the performance of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. There is no candidate like a Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or Bob Dole, waiting his turn as the nominee. “We’re not going to do what we normally do, nominate the steady beau,” said Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the Republicans’ most influential social conservatives. As the grass-roots Tea Party movement showed in state after state in the 2010 congressional elections, this is no longer a hierarchical party. And the field of contenders doesn’t overwhelm anyone. “All the major candidates have significant problems,” Mr. Land said. This prompts increasing chatter among party strategists about non-candidates like Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and the brother of President George W. Bush, or Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, in office only a year. Both have said they would not be running. Of those who are more likely to run, here is how experts size up their strengths, and weaknesses. • Mitt Romney: The closest thing to a front-runner, the 63-year-old former Massachusetts governor has business and economic expertise, is solid in New Hampshire, where he finished second in 2008, and can raise plenty of money. The downside: Some Christian conservatives remain skeptical of his Mormon faith; Iowa, the first test, isn’t friendly, though Tom Rath, the longtime national committeeman from New Hampshire, dismisses the impact of a loss there: “No Republican ever wins Iowa and New Hampshire.” Most of all, the Massachusetts health care measure, enacted when Mr. Romney was governor, looks like a state version of the national plan enacted by President Barack Obama. “It’s hard to distinguish the two,” says one of his likely rival candidates. “Most Americans don’t like Obamacare, almost all Republicans don’t.” • Sarah Palin: No candidate arouses the passions and intensity engendered by the 46-year-old, 2008 vice-presidential candidate. She is setting the agenda on issues ranging from the proposed mosque near ground zero in New York City to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program; she opposed both, others in her party followed. Many voters, and privately, many Republican politicians, question whether she could win a general election or has the capacity to govern. An abbreviated single term as Alaska governor doesn’t reassure. • Mike Huckabee: The 55-year-old former Arkansas governor won the Iowa caucuses in 2008 and grasps popular culture. Had he won the South Carolina primary — he finished a close second to John McCain — he might have been the nominee. If he runs, he would have more competition for the religious right vote, particularly from a Palin candidacy. He isn’t trusted by economic conservatives, who view him as a closet populist. As governor, he handed down more than 1,000 clemencies, including one for a man who went on to kill four police officers in Seattle. • Newt Gingrich: The 67-year-old former House speaker is the most policy-versed figure in the field. He is comfortable and conversant on any subject. Yet in a party that stresses personal virtues, his two messy divorces and ethical transgressions may be disqualifications. “His personal life probably is an insurmountable liability,” Mr. Land said. • Tim Pawlenty: The 50-year-old Minnesota governor could be the strongest of the long shots. He meets the conservative litmus tests on most issues and has moved to the right on matters like immigration . He is devoid of hard edges and his working-class roots are an alluring asset. He is spending a lot of time in neighboring Iowa, and David Yepsen, the former political reporter for The Des Moines Register, believes, “He has a style very appealing to Iowa; he could take off.” Still, even his supporters say the likeable Mr. Pawlenty lacks charisma. There are serious doubts that he can raise the $100 million that may be necessary for the nomination. Mike Pence: No president has come directly from the House since James Garfield in 1881. The 51-year-old Indiana lawmaker, a favorite of evangelical conservatives, would be one of the stronger candidates to try. Some political observers believe that Mr. Pence, aware of this 130-year drought, is more likely to run for governor of Indiana in 2012. • Mitch Daniels: The current Indiana governor would bring the most comprehensive and cogent policy prescriptions. A former budget director under President George W. Bush, he has won wide praise from other Republicans and business executives for his six-year stewardship of his state. More interested in policy than politics, it’s an open question whether the 61-year-old Mr. Daniels would be willing to put in the thousands of hours a nominee is required to devote to fund-raising and campaigning in small hamlets. Haley Barbour: There is no one more connected to the Republican political and moneyed establishment than the Mississippi governor and former party chairman. The convivial, portly 63-year-old looks very much like the part of the big-time special-interest lobbyist he used to be, not a winning credential or look. A recent magazine article, in which he praises an old segregationist Citizens Council in the South, doesn’t help. • John Thune: The 49-year-old tall, athletic, one-term South Dakota senator looks like the ideal presidential candidate. Yet he has no experience in national politics, and the Senate, where his record is very thin, isn’t a much better launching pad for Republicans than the House. • Rick Santorum: Defeated in a bid for re-election to his Pennsylvania Senate seat four years ago, the 52-year-old stresses his conservative Catholic credentials, assailing John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech on the separation of church and religion from state. Even in the conservative Republican Party of today, it seems unlikely than an anti-Kennedy message would be a game changer.

Republican Party
United States Politics and Government
Primaries and Caucuses


Homes Sales Aided by Tax Credit

Abstract: Sales of existing homes rose sharply in March, an indication that a government tax credit was luring buyers to the market. Sales were up 6.8 percent from February to an annual rate of 5.35 million, according to a report by the National Association of Realtors. Analysts had expected a 5.3 percent increase. The association said the results suggested the beginning of a spring surge as buyers moved to take advantage of a tax credit of up to $8,000 that expires April 30. “The home buyer tax credit has been a resounding success as these underlying trends point to a broad stabilization in home prices,” the chief economist for the association, Lawrence Yun, said. Sales have been propped up recently by the appeal of the tax credit, low mortgage rates and perceptions of a slowly improving economy. But analysts expect home buying to slow in the months ahead. “The tax credit is compressing the purchasing into a narrow time span,” said Steven Blitz, a senior economist for Majestic Research. “The big question is what happens after April. We know sales will go back down again.” But prices have remained steady in recent months, kept lower by weak demand and an influx of bargain-priced foreclosures. A report released Thursday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed that home prices fell 0.2 percent in February from January. A third report on Thursday showed wholesale prices climbed 0.7 percent in March, largely because of a jump in food prices . But a closely watched gauge of inflation remained unchanged, signaling interest rates may remain low for some time. The Labor Department said food prices rose for a sixth month, increasing 2.4 percent, primarily because of a 49.3 percent surge in vegetable prices. Those prices tend to be volatile, and a separate measure that excludes food and energy prices climbed 0.1 percent. Economists said the jump in food prices was probably a one-month aberration. “It is hard to believe that this type of gain in food prices will repeat,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Company, an investment firm, who characterized the overall report as “benign.” Mr. Greenhaus said the increase in food prices was the largest since 1984. Despite the rise in food prices, which analysts attributed to a cold weather snap in agricultural regions, the year-over-year core index remained steady — in line with expectations — and analysts said prices would probably remain steady. “In a blink of an eye it will be gone,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR, a consulting firm. “It is not going to leak into core inflation. You are seeing other prices going down. ” While food prices have steadily increased, the March data was not expected to reverse the Federal Reserve’s outlook for relatively low levels of inflation for the foreseeable future. The Fed’s policy-setting committee will meet next week but it is not expected to raise interest rates until the second half of this year at the earliest. The Fed has kept interest rates low to stimulate growth amid widespread unemployment and an unsteady recovery. Wholesale prices had been increasing since October until they dipped 0.6 percent in February. In March, food prices contributed to more than 70 percent of the index’s rise but it was also bolstered by a 0.7 percent increase in prices for energy, the index showed.

Unemployment
Prices (Fares Fees and Rates)
Producer Price Index


Letters to the Editor

Abstract: Another Football and Track Standout To The Sports Editor: Re “These Crossings Aren’t Pedestrian,” July 11: The article failed to mention Bo Roberson. Tabbed by Dick Schaap as the best natural athlete he’d ever seen, Roberson played seven seasons in the N.F.L. after finishing second (by a centimeter) in the 1960 Olympic long jump. In addition to being a football and track star at Cornell, the 6-foot-1 Roberson, in his only season as a basketball player, was third in the country in rebounds. Maybe he never won a gold or got a Super Bowl ring, but he is the only person ever to have graduated from an Ivy League university, played in the N.F.L., won an Olympic medal and later received a doctorate. He also introduced Schaap to a promising Olympic teammate then known as Cassius Clay. Harry Petchesky New York ‘Injury Points’ To the Sports Editor: Re “Hall of Famer Paul Hornung Sues Helmet Maker,” July 8: Physics in physics. No equipment can cheat accelerations of the brain in today’s tackle football. But tomorrow’s game could be just as exciting if we make concussion-inducing hits against the self-interest of players and coaches. Accelerometers inside helmets could measure the extent of moment-to-moment trauma, tracked as “injury points.” A very severe hit would trigger expulsion from the game. Moderate hits would accrue injury points that, once reaching a specific game total, trigger expulsion. This system would reduce “exciting” high-powered direct hits but would add an element of self-policing and creativity similar to how players and coaches manage personal fouls. Players would learn how to tackle differently, artfully, possibly using principles of martial arts. “Injury points” would add an interesting and suspenseful element for fans to watch. Stuart Montaldo Chesterfield, Mo. Enough Violence To the Sports Editor: Re “Battling a Bull,” July 14: This is the second time in two months that The New York Times has shown a photo of bullfighting in the Sports section. Is The Times supporting a “sport” that is outlawed in many countries? I am also shocked that “Battling a Bull,” as it is quoted, is seen as appropriate. We have more and more violence in our lives every day. We as a culture are finally coming to terms with the barbarism of football and the detrimental consequences of boxing. Why are you taking a step backward and depicting the slaughter of a participant who has zero choice but to play in this antiquated “sport”? Adam Weprin New York


‘President Hillary Clinton?’ She Wants Progress on Immigration and to Drink With G.O.P.

Abstract: Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party. In her first 100 days, she would also tap women to make up half of her cabinet in hopes of bringing a new tone and collaborative sensibility to Washington, while also looking past Wall Street to places like Silicon Valley for talent — perhaps wooing Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, and maybe asking Tim Cook from Apple to become the first openly gay cabinet secretary. Former President Bill Clinton would keep a low public profile, granting few interviews and avoiding any moves that could create headaches for his wife, like his recent meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email practices. Mrs. Clinton would even schmooze differently than the past few presidents have. Not one to do business over golf or basketball, she would bring back the intimate style of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Lyndon B. Johnson, negotiating over adult beverages. Picture a steady stream of senators, congressmen and other leaders raising a glass and talking policy in the Oval Office with her and her likely chief of staff, John D. Podesta, as her husband pops in with a quick thought or a disarming compliment. Deeply confident that she would perform better as the president than as a political candidate, Mrs. Clinton wants to pursue a whole new approach at the White House to try to break through years of partisan gridlock, according to a dozen campaign advisers and allies who described her goals and outlook. From policy goals and personnel to her instinct for patiently cultivating the enemy, Mrs. Clinton thinks she would be a better dealmaker than President Obama if she finds willing partners on the other side. Image John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, would probably have the right of first refusal on becoming her chief of staff, a job he held under President Bill Clinton. Credit Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times Her opening might be a narrow one. She faces skepticism on the right about her willingness to compromise and her potential use of executive actions, and there is outright suspicion on the left that she might sell out progressive goals for the sake of bipartisan action with Republicans. Still, Democrats close to her say she has a real touch with power brokers in both parties that could yield surprising results. “Her greatest strength is that she really listens to people, she understands what their political and policy needs are, and she tries to find that space where you can compromise,” said Neera Tanden, a former top domestic policy adviser to Mrs. Clinton who is now the president of the Center for American Progress , a left-leaning policy institute. “To be crystal clear: She has led many battles where you can’t compromise on principle,” Ms. Tanden added. “But she also loves socializing, loves having people and spouses over, and really loves talking over drinks.” Working With G.O.P. In May, The New York Times examined Donald J. Trump’s plans for his first 100 days , during which he said he would focus on divisive campaign promises like building a border wall with Mexico. By contrast, The Times found in its reporting on plans for Mrs. Clinton’s 100 days that she would look to push issues that might be broadly popular, like infrastructure jobs and a breakthrough on immigration. Her calculation is that she will be dealing with a Republican Party that is deeply fractured and demoralized after the defeat of Mr. Trump, whose leaders will be searching for ways to show they can govern and to court Hispanics if Mr. Trump loses badly with them. Mrs. Clinton also thinks a huge Democratic turnout this fall would put the Senate back in her party’s hands, while Speaker Paul D. Ryan and the Republicans would have a reduced majority in the House. What Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton do not know — but regularly explore in conversations, according to friends — is whether Republican leaders, even if their power is diminished, would be in a mood to cooperate. Mrs. Clinton has been a lightning rod for their base for two decades. Much of her budget plan — about $1.4 trillion in new spending over the next decade and $1.2 trillion in tax increases aimed mostly at the wealthy, according to a recent independent report — is noxious to House and Senate Republicans. Yet some of them are open to her two early priorities: $275 billion in infrastructure spending, and an immigration bill with a path to citizenship like the one already passed by the Senate. Given how deeply immigration has divided the Republican Party, no other issue would probably reveal more about the ability of a President Hillary Clinton and a Republican-led House to work together. “Pro-amnesty Republicans may use Hillary’s election as a pretext to do a deal,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies , which advocates a tough stance on illegal immigration. “Or maybe Republicans will grow a spine because she is so repellent and they’ll want to show that the Republican Party is still alive and willing to be a line of defense against Hillary.” Latest Election Polls 2016 Get the latest national and state polls on the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Allies of Mrs. Clinton’s say they could imagine her, as president-elect, going to Mr. Ryan’s office this year to start talking about immigration. She believes in gestures: When Mrs. Clinton was working on the health care overhaul bill during President Bill Clinton’s first term, John Kasich, then a ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee , asked one of her aides if Mrs. Clinton would ever consider coming over to Capitol Hill to talk to Republicans about her ideas. “I said I’d ask her, and she was eager to go, which I think shows a willingness to get things done,” said the aide, Melanne Verveer, who became Mrs. Clinton’s White House chief of staff. But many Republicans are not sure how she would use power, given that they think she abused her authority and was overly secretive by using a private email server as secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has already indicated that she is willing to take executive action on issues if Republicans do not work with her, like expanding background checks for gun sales and ending corporate inversions aimed at avoiding taxes. Executive actions were a flash point between Mr. Obama and Republicans; several said Mrs. Clinton would have a hard time getting them over for cocktails if she shoved executive actions down their throats. “She can be extremely charming, and she can be the opposite,” said Tom Davis, a former senior House Republican from Virginia. “But I think she’ll want to build some bridges right away and get back some of the trust that’s been missing between the parties for the last 15 years.” Allies of the House and Senate Republican leaders said they would be more inclined to work with a President Hillary Clinton if she showed a willingness to compromise on priorities for many fiscal conservatives like overhauling Social Security. Yet Mrs. Clinton, like many in her party, opposes Republican proposals to cut benefits and raise the retirement age, and she has said she is open to raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes. Should she deviate from those positions, leaders of liberal groups — not to mention her primary race opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and his full-throated supporters — would pounce on her. “She’s campaigning on expanding Social Security, not cutting it,” said Ilya Sheyman, the executive director of MoveOn.org , a progressive organizing group that endorsed Mr. Sanders in the primaries. “It will be incumbent on a President Clinton very early in 2017 to force Republicans to accept big, bold ideas or else have them pay the consequences.” Liberal Pressure Some liberals think Mr. Trump will be so destructive to the Republican Party that it will be severely weakened after the November election — and that Mrs. Clinton, as the Democratic leader, should keep her boot on its neck rather than try to play nice and find compromises. Mr. Sanders remains worried that she would abandon progressive ideals to do business with Republicans and has yet to endorse her. Mrs. Clinton has spoken intensely about progressive policies, but she has long wanted to erase the caricature of herself as a partisan warrior — a “ feminazi ,” as one 1990s phrase went. She hopes to reassure progressives with her executive actions, which would also include new protections for undocumented immigrant parents, as well as her personnel appointments. Having women make up half of her cabinet would be historic (in recent years, a quarter to a third of cabinet positions have been held by women), and Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton say she may decide to retain Ms. Lynch, the nation’s first black woman to be attorney general, who took office in April 2015 . These Democrats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations with Mrs. Clinton and her advisers, said that Mr. Podesta, her campaign chairman, would have the right of first refusal on becoming her chief of staff, a job he held under Mr. Clinton. If he turns it down, Mrs. Clinton would look at appointing a woman to that job, which has been held only by men. “There’s that old saying, ‘Nothing about us without us,’” said Jennifer Granholm, a former Democratic governor of Michigan who supports Mrs. Clinton . “I mean, a woman as chief of staff, Treasury secretary, a woman at Defense — it would be incredible.” (Ms. Granholm is often mentioned as a possible cabinet pick for the Energy Department or another post, but she waved off a question about her interest.) Mrs. Clinton has assigned three top aides — Ann O’Leary, Ed Meier and Sara Latham — to oversee transition planning, reporting to Mr. Podesta. Clinton advisers say they do not expect Mr. Clinton to be constantly visible in the early months beyond whatever duties Mrs. Clinton gives him on economic policy and foreign affairs. The Clintons’ priority is that he does not do anything that distracts from her agenda or overshadows her as the country gets used to having a former president (and a man) in the role of first spouse. One role he will be welcome to play is as an icebreaker at the Oval Office happy hour. Mrs. Clinton’s ability to use alcohol as a political lubricant came up repeatedly when allies and advisers were asked how she might work with Republicans. Her tale about a drinking contest with Senator John McCain of Arizona is now a Washington legend. (She said they called it quits before things got out of hand.) She believes that a relaxed, frank discussion is more authentic than trying to bond awkwardly with adversaries over sports — and more productive than keeping them at arm’s length, as Mr. Obama has often done. “She likes to cajole, she likes to make deals, and she likes to make friends,” said Richard Socarides, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton and a longtime supporter of Mrs. Clinton. “And she knows it’s much harder to go after someone who you basically like, who you’ve had a drink with.”

Hillary Clinton
Republicans
Democrats
2016 Presidential Election
US Politics


In Brooklyn, Councilman Charles Barron Surges in a Primary Race for Congress

Abstract: Suddenly, Charles Barron has regained the ability to shock. The New York political world had long ago become accustomed to the incendiary words of Mr. Barron, a confrontational onetime Black Panther turned three-term City Councilman. His more outrageous remarks over the years, from calling Thomas Jefferson a pedophile to likening Gaza to a “concentration death camp” to expressing his desire to slap “the closest white person,” have given way to a reputation as a showboat and provocateur on the political fringe. Considered an afterthought when he announced his candidacy for the United States Congress last November — in a speech in which he called Muammar el-Qaddafi “my hero” and pledged to never salute the American flag — Democratic leaders are now fretfully talking about a prospect they once considered unthinkable: a Congressman Barron. His opponent, Hakeem S. Jeffries, a state assemblyman and self-styled conciliator who has raised far more money and received far more support from the political establishment, was expected to coast to victory. So there was surprise when Mr. Barron picked up the endorsement of the city’s largest public employees union and the blessing of the man he wants to replace, Representative Edolphus Towns , who will retire. With 10 days to go before the Democratic primary, it has became clear that Mr. Barron is gaining traction, with the help of a passionate voter base in the historically black Brooklyn neighborhoods where his roots run deep. There are signs of panic among members of the Democratic establishment, who worry Mr. Barron could prove to be a headache in their ranks and an alienating figure on the national stage. Popular Democrats abruptly emerged this week to denounce him as a dangerous, anti-Israel radical. Edward I. Koch, the former mayor, called him a viper; other community leaders pointed reporters to the Anti-Defamation League’s list of his more provocative quotes; and in an e-mail to supporters this week, a local group of Russian Jews announced a hastily planned rally on Monday to denounce Mr. Barron as “a fringe radical and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist.” The first word of the subject line said it all: EMERGENCY. In an interview, Mr. Barron would not comment on past statements, calling them “a distraction” from the issues, raised by people who are frightened by his campaign’s “building momentum.” “Sometimes my being assertive and speaking truth to power become reduced to controversial and defiant,” he said, adding later, “I raise contradictions when I feel people who have suffered cause suffering to other people.” The sudden rise in Mr. Barron’s fortunes has overshadowed Mr. Jeffries, who has been viewed as a rising star in New York politics with his ability to bring together white and black, rich and poor, the gentrifiers and the gentrified. Mr. Jeffries’s campaign chest is many times the size of Mr. Barron’s, having collected by this week $769,544 from 2,447 donors. Mr. Barron missed a deadline to report his contributions, but said he had almost $70,000, most of it his own money. In some ways, the race offers a contrast between two different eras. Mr. Barron, 61, represents a throwback to the 1970s and 1980s, when black nationalists seemed to control the city’s racial conversation, while Mr. Jeffries, 41, represents the more recent model of black leaders like President Obama; Newark’s mayor, Cory A. Booker; and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, who have earned establishment credentials and thrived by building coalitions with white liberals. That difference was suggested by Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke as she campaigned with Mr. Jeffries at the Abe Stark Senior Center in Canarsie. She said that Mr. Barron had a “style of politics that appeals to some groups” but that Mr. Jeffries represented “the future of Brooklyn.” Mr. Barron leavens his belligerent streak with humor, and has an engaging manner when it comes to the kind of small talk required while shaking hands with prospective voters at senior centers and subway stops. Even some of his opponents call him charming. And he has won deep support within his district for showing up at the scene whenever a young black person is wounded by the police. The district, newly configured and renamed as a result of the 2010 Census, stretches through the spine of Brooklyn and spills over into Queens. It takes in the poor and working-class housing projects of Brownsville, East New York, Canarsie and Coney Island but also middle-class and increasingly affluent brownstone areas like Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, as well as the stouter homes of Manhattan Beach, Marine Park and Howard Beach. Both candidates are African-American in a district that is 53 percent black, but the outcome of the primary may hinge on the reality that the recent redistricting has introduced large pockets of white voters (22.4 percent) and Hispanic voters (18 percent). The district also includes large Jewish enclaves. Because relatively few voters turn up in primaries — particularly a primary held in June for the first time in 40 years — the unions’ ability to pull their members and other residents to the polls is regarded as crucial, according to Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant. Mr. Jeffries has received a slew of union endorsements like those of the Transport Workers Union and 1199 SEIU, which represents health care workers. Mr. Barron surprised many in the political world when he snagged the support of DC 37, the city’s largest public employees union. Both candidates claim records for addressing the district’s perennial complaints: rundown housing, ineffective schools, wide unemployment and what many residents see as overly harsh police tactics. But in contrast to many of the Democratic primary battles throughout the city, this one includes sharp policy differences between candidates. Mr. Barron opposes gay marriage; Mr. Jeffries co-sponsored the legislation that legalized it. Mr. Barron is an outspoken critic of Israeli policies; Mr. Jeffries visited Israel in 2008 with the Jewish Community Relations Council. Locally, Mr. Barron opposed the building of a basketball arena and the rest of the Atlantic Yards project near downtown Brooklyn; Mr. Jeffries has sought to mitigate its impact and criticized the developer for not delivering on promised housing. And while Mr. Jeffries takes pride in his crossover appeal, Mr. Barron has made little effort to broaden his base. Instead, he continues to use loaded language, upsetting his white and Jewish colleagues with phrases emblematic of the Holocaust; he might, for example, accuse Israel of genocide. David Greenfield, a City Council member and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said Mr. Barron, if elected, would become “the most prominent anti-Semite in Congress.” Mr. Barron, who has been married for 29 years to Inez D. Barron, currently a state assemblywoman, and has two grown children, Jelani and Jawanza, was raised in a housing project on the Lower East Side and graduated from Hunter College as a sociology major. He was chief of staff for a community activist, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry of Brooklyn’s House of the Lord Church before running for the council in 2001. Privately, lawmakers say that Mr. Barron is a warm and earnest presence in the City Council, but say they have little patience for his antics. In 2010 Christine C. Quinn, the speaker, stripped him of his chairmanship of the Higher Education Committee. Mr. Jeffries grew up in Crown Heights, the son of a social worker and a case worker, graduated from Binghamton University and received a law degree from New York University. He clerked for a federal judge, practiced law at the prestigious Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison firm for four years and won an Assembly seat in 2006. He lives in Prospect Heights with his wife, Kennisandra, and two sons, Jeremiah, 10, and Joshua, 8. “Charles Barron has adopted a confrontational style,” he said in an interview. “I work hard to bring people together to get things accomplished. People will ultimately decide which approach is more effective.”

Barron Charles
Towns Edolphus
House of Representatives
Race and Ethnicity
Brooklyn (NYC)
New York State
Jeffries Hakeem
Polls and Public Opinion


Quarterback Tom Savage Sticks to Game Plan and Signs With Rutgers

Abstract: SPRINGFIELD, Pa. — The nine-month wait was finally over, and Tom Savage took a seat at a table in the Cardinal O’Hara High School lobby Wednesday afternoon. With an unwavering hand, Savage took a ballpoint pen and signed a letter of intent with Rutgers. Eight inches of snow fell Tuesday night, canceling classes and scrubbing the O’Hara football coach Dan Algeo’s plan for a national signing-day ceremony that students could watch at the end of the day. Only Savage’s friends and relatives showed up. Savage, a 6-foot-5, 225-pound quarterback, was unfazed. He arrived wearing a black jacket with a scarlet R and carrying a white Rutgers baseball cap. He told Rutgers Coach Greg Schiano last April that he planned to go to Rutgers, and he was sticking to it. “I love Coach Schiano, and I was going to stay loyal to the program no matter what happened,” Savage said after the 20-minute ceremony. A lot happened at Rutgers last season, bad and good. The Scarlet Knights lost five of their first six games, and Schiano and the senior quarterback Mike Teel were heavily criticized. A planned $102 million stadium expansion project was seen by some as folly. Rutgers won its last seven games, but Thomas Savage, the quarterback’s father, said other college coaches continued to inquire to see if his son would change his mind. Lane Kiffin, the new coach at Tennessee, called Algeo about two weeks ago. Linda Savage, Tom’s mother, said, “You’ve got to give it to them — they do it to the bitter end.” At least a half-dozen players backed out of their oral commitments to Rutgers, but Savage said he never came close. He said Wednesday that his father and his coach reminded him that a handshake deal was as good as a contract. “Rutgers wins with kids who want to be at Rutgers,” Tom Savage said. Schiano was not talking much Wednesday about the players who got away. The 23 signees included a surprise. On Wednesday morning, Ka’Lial Glaud, a linebacker from Sicklerville, N.J., decided to sign with Rutgers after flipping a coin that landed on tails. Heads was West Virginia. Already, Schiano has been asked to compare Savage to Teel, who came to Rutgers from Don Bosco Prep, a powerful parochial football program in Ramsey, N.J. Savage, like Teel, is big, and he has many of the same qualities. “Tommy is a guy who just loves the game, loves studying it, loves playing it,” Schiano said at a news conference in Piscataway, N.J. “And my experience is when you meet guys like that, they’re just not distracted by a lot of things — and at that age, kids are distracted by a lot of things.” Savage, like Teel, has also had to handle adversity. His junior season was cut short because of a foot injury. He passed for 1,355 yards and 10 touchdowns as a senior at O’Hara, which won its first seven games but lost its last four after several top players besides Savage were injured. “He is as tough mentally as he is physically,” Algeo said. “He’ll be fine.” About 25 major colleges offered Savage full scholarships — a number that probably would have doubled, Algeo said, had Savage not committed so early. His mother said, “He followed his heart and went to where he knew he was going to be happy.” Although Savage will not be able to join the team for practice until he enrolls this summer, he will sit in on team meetings and receive a copy of the playbook. The faster he learns, the more he has a chance to contend for the position vacated by Teel. Savage does not sound as if he is monitoring the stadium-expansion project. “He said, ‘Dad, if I’d want to play at a 115,000-seat stadium, I would have gone to Penn State,’ ” Thomas Savage said. “But Penn State doesn’t produce quarterbacks — not the style that Tom plays.” Schiano called him a big, strong quarterback, a player with the potential to be a great leader. Two national scouting publications have ranked him among the top 10 scholastic quarterbacks running pro-style offenses. “I can’t wait to get him up here and start coaching him,” Schiano said. Savage seemed to be glad that the long wait to sign with Rutgers was over. Another wait to join the team begins. As of now, he has no regrets. And if he, too, is booed, as Teel was, he will let it roll off his shoulders and keep playing. “That’s college football,” he said. “Fans are fans. It’s definitely a serious game. And everybody likes a winner.”


$223 Million Loss for NBC is Better Than Expected

Abstract: The bad news for NBC was slightly better than originally thought: the network lost $223 million on the Winter Olympics in the first quarter. That was slightly better than the most recent estimate of $250 million. Advertising sales have improved a bit since NBC’s parent, General Electric, made that projection in late January. The Olympics did bring about $800 million in extra revenue to G.E. But NBC had a lot of production and other expenses, including $820 million to acquire the rights to carry the Vancouver Games on television and online. Still, G.E. executives said the event’s ratings were 14 percent better than those of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for which NBC paid $613 million.

National Broadcasting Co
Olympic Games (2010)