In style and temperament, Mitt Romney may have been influenced as much by his mother Lenore as his father George.Produced by Ben Werschkul
Thứ Sáu, 24 tháng 2, 2012
Salvadoran May Be Deported From U.S. for ’80 Murders of Americans
The decision by Judge James Grim of immigration court in Orlando is the first time that federal immigration prosecutors have established that a top-ranking foreign military commander can be deported based on human rights violations under a law passed in 2004, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, intended to bar human rights violators from coming to or living in the United States. Judge Grim found that General Vides assisted in the killings of four American churchwomen on a rural road in El Salvador in 1980, a crime that caused shock there and in Washington and presaged the bloody violence that would engulf the Central American nation for the next decade. The immigration judge’s ruling is the first time General Vides has been held responsible for those deaths in a court of law. Five soldiers from the Salvadoran National Guard were eventually convicted of the killings and served long prison sentences. General Vides was the commander of the National Guard at the time of the murders. The effort by Department of Homeland Security officials to seek the deportation of General Vides, who was El Salvador’s defense minister from 1983 to 1989, is a turnabout in American foreign policy. He was a close ally of Washington throughout the war against leftist guerrillas in the 1980s, and was embraced as a reformer despite rampant rights violations by the armed forces under his command. Judge Grim also determined that General Vides had assisted in the torture of two Salvadorans, Juan Romagoza and Daniel Alvarado, who testified against him in hearings last spring in the immigration court in Orlando. “This is the first case where the Department of Homeland Security has taken this relatively new law and applied it to the highest military commander of their country to seek their removal,” said Carolyn Patty Blum, senior legal adviser for the Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit legal group in San Francisco that represented several torture victims in the case. She called the decision “hugely significant” for future efforts to bring immigration cases for human rights abuses against the highest-level military commanders and government officials. Many details of the judge’s decision were not available on Thursday, since in keeping with general practice in immigration courts, the ruling was not published. His main findings were described by lawyers familiar with the case. Diego Handel, General Vides’s lawyer, said he had not had a chance to read the lengthy decision and could not comment on it. The deportation case against General Vides was brought by prosecutors from the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, a unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement created in 2003 to focus on preventing rights violators from entering this country and deporting those already here. General Vides contested the charges, saying he did not have any direct responsibility for, or even knowledge of, the murders and torture signaled by the government. In the hearings, witnesses, including former American diplomats, said that the general had been working to stop rights abuses by Salvadoran soldiers and to change the culture of a military known for brutality. Judge Grim’s decision confirmed that General Vides can be deported based on the rights charges brought by the government. Federal officials and immigration lawyers cautioned that there are still several steps to go before the judge will decide whether to issue a final order for the general’s deportation. But lawyers said it would be considerably more difficult now for General Vides to avoid such an order. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Nicole Navas, said, “As a matter of policy, I am precluded from commenting on matters still pending before the immigration court.” General Vides retired as defense minister in 1989, amid praise from United States officials for his performance, and came to settle in Florida as a legal permanent resident. But the family members of the four churchwomen, as well as some Salvadorans who barely survived prolonged torture during the war, have been tenacious in seeking to hold General Vides responsible for crimes of that era. In 2000, a Florida jury acquitted General Vides and José Guillermo García, another former Salvadoran defense minister who retired to Florida, of responsibility for the churchwomen’s murders. But in 2002, in a case brought by the Center for Justice and Accountability, another Florida jury found the two officers civilly liable for the torture of three Salvadorans and ordered them to pay $54 million. The deportation proceedings against General Vides stem from that decision. The four churchwomen killed were Sister Dorothy Kazel of the Ursuline Order; Jean Donovan, a lay missionary; Sister Maura Clarke and Sister Ita Ford, both of the Maryknoll Order. Sister Ita’s brother Bill Ford fought vigorously for the prosecution of General Vides. Mr. Ford died in 2008. “Since the women were killed my father made this the single purpose of his life,” his son, Bill Ford Jr., said Thursday. Mr. Ford, who is the principal of Cristo Rey New York High School in Manhattan, said, “I’m sure he knows and is well pleased that one of the men responsible for ordering the death of the women or for the cover-up may no longer be able to live in this country to enjoy the fruits of his brutality.”
In Nod to Rising Gas Prices, Obama Discusses Energy Policy
Speaking to students at the University of Miami, in a swing state where gas averages $3.69 a gallon, Mr. Obama said: “Just like last year, gas prices are climbing across the country; this time, it’s happening even earlier. And when gas prices go up, it hurts everybody.” The president offered what he called an “all-of-the-above” response, based on more domestic oil production, development of alternative energy sources and stricter fuel-efficiency standards. Drawing a sharp contrast with Republicans and anticipating potential attacks on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama ridiculed his opponents for recycling a “three-point plan for $2 gas.” “Step one is to drill, and step two is to drill, and then step three is to keep drilling,” he said. This was the president’s first major effort to tackle an issue that has surfaced in the last few weeks as oil prices have been driven up by tensions in the Middle East, where Iran has threatened to retaliate against the West because of sanctions over its nuclear program. Mr. Obama seemed keenly aware of the risk posed by oil prices. A previous cycle of price increases played briefly to the benefit of Senator John McCain during the 2008 campaign, when his running mate, Sarah Palin, revved up crowds with the chant, “drill, baby, drill.” The president said that the United States is producing more oil now than at any time during the last eight years, with a record number of rigs pumping. The White House, he said, was prepared to open new areas in the Arctic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico to exploration. But Mr. Obama warned that no amount of domestic production could offset the broader forces driving up gas prices, chief among them Middle East instability and the ravenous energy appetite of China, which he said added 10 million cars in 2010. “Anybody who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth,” he said to whoops from the crowd of nearly 1,500. Mr. Obama’s remarks, tinged with humor and sarcasm, were bluntly political, on a trip that included fund-raising events in Miami and Orlando. But his message was sober: neither he nor anyone else can do much about oil prices, which he said were likely to keep rising. The White House contends that the public has grown accustomed to these periodic spikes and will credit him for speaking honestly about the underlying economic realities rather than offering “gimmicky” fixes — something he eschewed in 2008. Still, with gasoline prices nationally about 12 percent higher than a year ago, Democratic political analysts believe Mr. Obama needs to get ahead of the issue quickly. Newt Gingrich, for example promised this week to bring gas down to $2.50 a gallon. “Four dollars per gallon has typically been the tipping point when people go from complacency to exasperation,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, who notes that people have begun mentioning gas prices with increasing urgency in his focus groups. Gas prices did not figure prominently in the Republican debate on Wednesday in Arizona, where the candidates trained most of their fire on one another. But Republicans in Congress criticized Mr. Obama for not opening more federal land to exploration, and for not approving the Keystone XL pipeline. “The president would like everyone to forget that gas prices have doubled over the past three years while he consistently blocked and slowed the production of American-made energy,” a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Brendan Buck, said in a statement. Even Mr. Obama, they noted, once referred to his “all-of-the-above” policy as a “hodgepodge.” Among Mr. Obama’s proposals are opening 75 percent of the nation’s offshore oil and natural gas resources by 2017; fuel-economy and emissions standards for trucks, vans and buses; and an administration effort to prevent bottlenecks in the oil market. Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Any effective energy policy is almost inevitably going to be a hodgepodge.” He credited the president with stimulating production, though he said the rejection of Keystone sent a weak signal. The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s lobbying group, said Mr. Obama had restricted opportunities to produce more oil by shortening leases and slowing permit approvals. The president fired back, repeating his demand that Congress end subsidies for the oil and gas industries. “It’s outrageous,” he said. “Every politician who’s been fighting to keep these subsidies in place should explain to the American people why the oil industry needs more of their money.” None of Mr. Obama’s proposals were new, and some were aspirational. He said gasoline and diesel produced from algae could replace up to 17 percent of imported oil. But experts say such fuel is a long way from being commercially viable on that scale. Joking that he once bought a car for $500, Mr. Obama said that because of new fuel-economy standards, new cars will average nearly 55 miles per gallon by the middle of the next decade. Mr. Obama struck his own inadvertent blow for fuel economy, by flying to Florida on a Boeing 757 rather than a 747. The bigger 747, which usually serves as Air Force One, was in the shop.
5 Essential Mobile Apps for Keeping Up With U.S. Politics
In this corner: the elephant. And in this corner: the donkey. Let's get ready to rumble! Now you can join in the fight with Political Fury, a fun and informative way to access the latest political news.
Once you've chosen sides, you go head-to-head with users from the other team in an epic political trivia contest. The more answers you get right, the more points your political party scores, all while learning fascinating facts about U.S. political history, political parties and current candidates.
[More from Mashable: 5 Hilarious Parodies of the ‘Facebook Parenting’ Viral Video]
After you've tested your mettle, head over to the forums to talk politics with people on both sides of the aisle. You'll also have the opportunity to read informed editorials, and to voice your opinion by taking polls about the positions and the personalities involved in election 2012.
Cost: $1.99, iOS only
[More from Mashable: Microsoft Takes on iPhone, Android with ‘Windows Phone Challenge’ [VIDEO]]
Click here to view this gallery.
As the U.S. presidential election 2012 ramps up, one of the best things you can do is to become informed about the candidates and the issues.
That’s not always as easy as it sounds, so use these five politically-minded apps for your smartphone or tablet to stay on top of the latest U.S. election and government news. They may even help inform your ballot decision come November.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, chriskocek
This story originally published on Mashable here.
The Caucus: Obama Goes After Republicans in New Michigan Ad
Tracking and analyzing campaign advertising.
DETROIT — President Obama is highlighting his support for the federal assistance plan that helped rescue Detroit automakers in a new television commercial that accuses Republican presidential candidates of abandoning the industry in its darkest hour.
The 30-second commercial, called “Made in America,” also mentions Mitt Romney’s now well-known opinion article that carried the headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
Over images of factory employees hard at work and smiling families, an announcer says, “when a million jobs were on the line, every Republican candidate turned their back, even said, ‘Let Detroit go Bankrupt.’”
Then the commercial pivots to the president. “Not him,” says the announcer as a sound bite of the president plays. “Don’t bet against the American auto industry,” Mr. Obama is shown saying.
The ad is certain to draw even more of a focus on the sensitive and complex politics of the auto industry bailout, which all the Republican candidates have said they opposed. Mr. Obama and Democrats have sought to draw attention to that opposition now that Detroit car makers are adding jobs and the economy in Michigan is showing signs of progress.
In a Detroit Free Press poll released today, there were signs that Mr. Romney’s opposition to the bailout were complicating his prospects here in his home state. Asked what they disliked most about Mr. Romney, 12 percent of likely Republican primary voters cited his opposition to the rescue plan.
The Long Run: Political Lessons, From a Mother’s Losing Run
The Bentley Historical Library|The Associated Press|Getty Images|Romney Family|ReutersThe Caucus | The Other Romney Parent: In style and temperament, Mitt Romney may have been influenced as much by his mother Lenore as his father George.
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney was 22 when his father came to him and his siblings in search of political advice in December 1969. George Romney, the former Michigan governor, was mulling the electoral prospects of another Romney: his wife, Lenore. The Inspiration
Articles in this series are exploring the lives and careers of the candidates for president in 2012.
A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video.
George and Lenore Romney, in an undated photograph with their children, from left, Mitt, G. Scott, Jane and Margo Lynn. A onetime Hollywood starlet who quit acting to get married, Lenore Romney had few political credentials. But she had been a popular first lady, and her husband was tied up in Washington as President Richard M. Nixon’s new housing secretary. Top Michigan Republicans were wooing her to run for a United States Senate seat. “The children laughed about it,” Elly Peterson, a Romney confidante and party strategist, later wrote in a private memoir. “Then Mitt, first, and gradually the others, began to change their minds. They finally decided she should go with it.” Today Mitt Romney is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, facing a tough primary battle here in the state where he grew up. His Michigan campaign brochures and commercials are studded with black-and-white images of him with his father, a businessman-turned-politician he once called “the real deal.” But a look at the lesser-known Romney, Lenore, suggests that in style, temperament and outlook, Mitt Romney is very much his mother’s son. A faithful Mormon and stay-at-home mother who eventually emerged as an advocate of women’s involvement in business and politics, Lenore Romney, who died at 89 in 1998, had a “steely will,” in the words of Phillip Maxwell, a childhood friend of Mitt’s. Her larger-than-life husband was blunt and candid, a fiery campaigner who burst into a room. Lenore was controlled and self-contained, traits that friends say they see in Mitt, her youngest child. “George was very unlike Mitt — he was kind of a bull in the china shop, and he would speak his mind regardless,” said Mr. Maxwell, a classmate of Mitt Romney’s at the Cranbrook School, an elite private academy here. “Lenore was much more measured. Everyone is focusing on the father, but he is really much more like his mother in that he is much more private than his father was.” Just two years after Mr. Romney learned the brutality of politics through his father’s failed 1968 presidential bid, he witnessed his mother’s bruising 1970 defeat. Then 23, and already married, he had taken a summer break from his studies at Brigham Young University to campaign for her, appearing on college campuses and county fairs — an experience that he later said “taught me how to get out and see people and listen to what people are saying.” She was ill-equipped for the rigors of politics — “Lenore was no George as a political candidate,” says Bill Ballenger, the editor of a political newsletter here — and lost badly to a popular Democratic incumbent, Phil Hart, much as Mitt Romney would later lose his 1994 Senate race in Massachusetts to another entrenched Democrat, Edward M. Kennedy. And though Lenore Romney expected a glide path to the Republican nomination on the strength of her family name, she faced a difficult primary challenge from her party’s right wing, just as her son faces in his race today. “There’s been a lot of conversation about whether Mitt Romney can excite the Republican base, the Tea Party-type people,” said Sara Fitzgerald, whose biography of Elly Peterson recounts Lenore Romney’s uphill struggle as a candidate. “One of the things his mother went through was being sniped at by the conservative right wing of the Michigan Republican Party. People commented that she got more opposition from the conservatives than she got from Phil Hart.” Mitt Romney declined to be interviewed for this article, as did other Romney relatives. On the campaign trail, if he mentions his mother, he casts her in a supporting role to his father. But while Lenore Romney was a traditionalist — she had little use for the “strident voices” of the women’s liberation movement, and believed “a wife is a vital part of a husband’s development” — she also had a strong message about the influential role women could play in business and government.
Thứ Năm, 23 tháng 2, 2012
FiveThirtyEight: Mormon Voters Raise Romney's Advantage in Arizona
Arizona might have less symbolic importance than Michigan, but it is probably of more practical significance. That is because it’s one of the few Republican states to award its delegates on a truly winner-take-all basis, without any qualifications or complication. Get one more vote than your rivals in Arizona, and you take all 29 of its delegates.
The most tangible advantage in Arizona belongs to Mitt Romney, and it is because the state has a reasonably high Mormon population. In the 2008 primary there, Mormon voters constituted 11 percent of the electorate — and Mr. Romney won 88 percent of their votes, versus 8 percent for John McCain.
If Mr. Romney posts similar numbers among Mormon voters this year in Tuesday’s primary — and there’s no reason to think that he won’t — that works out a nine-point built-in advantage in the state.
Without that Mormon edge, in fact, the state would essentially be a toss-up. Mr. Romney is now projected to win the state by 11 points over all, according to a FiveThirtyEight forecast model, which works out to an 89 percent chance of winning given the uncertainty inherent in the forecast.
The 11-point advantage that the FiveThirtyEight model gives Mr. Romney is larger than his lead in all but one recent poll of the state. But the model is designed to be aggressive about identifying a trend, and there is perhaps the slightest hint of one toward Mr. Romney in Arizona. The two polls that have been in the field most recently — from NBC/Marist and We Ask America — gave him his largest advantage there.
With that said, there has been quite a bit of variance between different polls of the state, with Mr. Romney’s lead varying by margins of 3 to 16 points. I don’t know that there is anything special about Arizona that is causing this; we are also seeing a fairly wide spread in the polls in Michigan, as well as in national surveys. As there now seem to be differences in the level of voter enthusiasm for the candidates — more for Rick Santorum, less for Mr. Romney — the assumptions that pollsters make about turnout will tend to be more important.
Mr. Santorum’s deficit in Arizona is just large enough, however, that it would qualify as something of a surprise if he won the state. It might require either that he performs strongly at Wednesday’s debate in Mesa, Ariz., or that he simply beats the pollsters’ expectations on primary night itself, something he has done in several states so far.
Because there is no delegate value in merely keeping things close in Arizona, however, it is also worth watching to see whether Mr. Santorum essentially abandons the state and downplays expectations there, instead concentrating his efforts on Michigan, which also votes on Tuesday.
If Mr. Santorum wins Michigan narrowly but loses Arizona by a clear margin, he will probably fall further behind Mr. Romney in the delegate count given Michigan’s complex delegate-selection rules. Such an outcome, however, would very probably allow him to put a strong spin on the outcome — and a credible enough one, since if Mr. Romney loses Michigan, his native state, it is hard to know where he might win elsewhere in the Midwest.
But if Mr. Santorum loses both Arizona and Michigan, however narrowly, he would fall behind, according to both math and momentum.
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