Good For You, Anita!

Responding to a new memoir from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Anita, whose dramatic testimony regarding sexual harassment while she worked for him at the federal Equal Opportunity Commission almost derailed his nomination, spoke out forcefully in New York Times op ed this morning, terming Thomas' characterization of the event in question "The Smear This Time:"

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

In using the term "smear this time," Hill refers to the frantic effort that Republicans waged at the time of Thomas' confirmation to cast her as unbalanced and worse.

Read more...

Clinton Bests Obama in Money, Polls

With third quarter fundraising numbers released -- by at least some of the campaigns -- New York Senator Hillary Clinton has opened up an advantage in fundraising over Senator Barack Obama, though the Illinois Democrat continues to perform well, even if his poll numbers seem to have stalled everywhere except Iowa. Despite the summer doldrums -- the New York Times this morning said "well-heeled donors get out of their offices and off the fund-raising circuit to go on vacations and to their summer homes" -- Obama raised more than $20 million, bringing his 2007 take to nearly $80 million. He has raised money from 352,000 donors.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who in the first two quarters trailed Obama by a small margin, raised $27 million, according to a blog post today by Patrick Healy in the New York Times. Healy reports that Clinton has raised about $60 million for use in the primaries (money has to be identified either as primary or general election money, and Clinton has raised a higher percentage of her total for the general than Obama). Adding an additional $10 million from her 2006 Senate campaign fund, Clinton has amassed about $70 million for the primary season, versus $75 million for Obama, Healy reported.

The other Dems trailed the frontrunners significantly -- former North Carolina Senator John Edwards (who now say he will take public matching funds, restricting his primary spending flexibility state-by-state) raising $7 million and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, about $5.2 million.

The Republicans, as they have all year, trailed the Democrats by a significant spread. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney raised about $10 million, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, more than $8 million (but remember -- this is his premier quarter raising money, so he did not have the launch splash that others enjoyed), and Arizona Senator John McCain, just over $5 million.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has not disclosed his numbers, saying only he would "do as well as the other Republicans -- maybe we will do better than some"... whatever the heck that means.

Clinton, however, is strengthening her polling numbers, both nationwide and in New Hampshire, though Obama appears to have a slight lead right now in Iowa.



First the numbers in Iowa. In an October 1 story, the Boston Globe reported:

The survey -- conducted for Newsweek magazine and released in the current issue of the magazine that has Romney on the cover -- has Romney with the support of 24 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers, compared to 16 percent for Fred Thompson, 13 percent for Rudy Giuliani, 12 percent for Mike Huckabee, and 9 percent for John McCain.

Obama has 28 percent among likely Democratic caucus-goers, ahead of 24 percent for Hillary Clinton, 22 percent for John
Edwards, and 10 percent for Bill Richardson.

Besides the horserace numbers, the poll includes some other interesting findings:

• Two-thirds of both Democrats and Republicans said they think America is ready to elect an African-American president.
• 72 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats said they themselves would be willing to vote for a Mormon, but only 45 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they think America is ready to elect a Mormon as president.
• 78 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers had a favorable opinion of Romney, 77 percent said that he is able to get things done, 49 percent said he can bring needed change, and only 25 percent said that he flip-flops his positions too much on important issues.
• 77 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers said they had a favorable opinion of Clinton, 79 percent said it would be a good thing if former President Clinton were back in the White House, and a majority said that her position on the Iraq war does not affect their support.
  

The poll of 1,215 registered voters was conducted on Sept. 26 and 27 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. The margin of error for likely Democratic voters is plus or minus 7 percentage points and for likely Republican voters is plus or minus 9 percentage points.

And in New Hampshire, a press release from Newsmax/ Zogby reports that though Clinton leads overall by a comfortable margin, Obama has the edge among voters under 30. Clinton, however, leads in the critical category of independents who are allowed by state law to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary:

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has extended her lead in the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in New Hampshire, capturing 38% support as the contest enters the crucial fall phase, a new NewsMax/Zogby International telephone poll shows.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has slipped slightly but retains a strong grasp on second place with 23% support, while former senator John Edwards of North Carolina faded to 12%, the survey shows. Ten percent said they remain unsure about who to support in the race.

The telephone survey included 505 voters likely to participate in the New Hampshire Democratic primary election. It was conducted Sept. 26–28, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/– 4.5 percentage points.

Clinton jumped a full 10% since Zogby polling this spring, solidifying an edge she has built nationally heading into the fall campaign. She enjoys a dominant 44% to 22% lead over Obama among women, and holds a healthy 31% to 22% lead over him among men. Edwards is mired in third place among women with 11% support, and is fourth behind New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson among men. Richardson wins support from 14% among men, while Edwards gets backing from just 13%.

Democrats in New Hampshire – 2007	Sept. 28	May 16	Apr. 3	Feb. 7	Jan. 17
Clinton	38%	28%	29%	27%	19%
Obama	23%	26%	23%	23%	23%
Edwards	12%	15%	23%	13%	19%
Richardson	8%	10%	2%	3%	1%
Kucinich	3%	4%	1%	1%	1%
Biden	2%	1%	2%	2%	3%
Dodd	2%	<1%	<1%	1%	<1%
Gravel	<1%	<1%	<1%	<1%	<1%
Someone else	4%	-	-	-	-
Not sure	10%	15%	17%	23%	22%

Obama leads among likely Democratic primary voters under age 30 with 38%, compared to 30% for Clinton. The two are closely matched among those age 30–49, but Clinton holds a strong advantage among those over 50. Among those age 50–64, she holds a 45% to 18% edge over Obama, with Edwards at 17%, and she wins among those age 65 and older, 45% to 14% for Obama. Edwards wins just 10% among those age 65 and older, typically one of the strongest voting demographics in primary elections.

Clinton has solidified her leads across the ideological spectrum in the Democratic Party, leading Obama by a 33% to 21% edge among progressives, 42% to 23% among liberals, and 36% to 25% among moderates. Edwards finishes a distant third in all of those categories.

Among independent voters who said they plan to participate in the Democratic primary election in New Hampshire, Clinton also leads, winning 33% support, compared to 25% for Obama and 13% for Edwards. Richardson wins 8% support among independents.

Among Democrats, Clinton’s lead is larger – she wins support from 41%, compared to 21% for Obama and 11% for Edwards.

As news begins to break on how the candidates did at fund–raising for the third quarter of the year, the latest NewsMax/Zogby survey shows that Hillary Clinton’s fund–raising connection to indicted contribution bundler Norman Hsu has had little effect on her overall standing. Hsu raised more than $850,000 for the Clinton campaign and is now under investigation for allegedly violating federal campaign finance laws, but just 11% said that information makes them less likely to support Ms. Clinton. Further, 11% said that association with Hsu makes them more likely to support her. The vast majority – 78% – said it makes no difference to them in their support of a candidate for President.

Moderates and younger voters appeared to be slightly more concerned about the matter than others, but only marginally so.

For a complete methodological statement on this survey, visit:
http://www.zogby.com/methodology/readmeth.dbm?ID=1215

Click the link below to view the full news release:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1364

Congress Retreats in the Face of Unified LGBT Voice

After five days of feverish organizing, leading LGBT organizations have delayed, at least for the moment, a proposal by gay Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank to rush a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) through the House of Representatives, stripped of protections for transgendered Americans.

With less than 24 hours to go before a House committee was due to take up the amended version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, stripped of transgender protections, Democratic leaders in the House have put off the hearing in the face of a storm of criticism from LGBT leaders nationwide.... Read more

This followed developments last week that seemed to divide the Human Rights Campaign from many other leading LGBT rights groups and also split Frank from Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin lesbian Democrat who is the House's only other out LGBT representative.

The offices of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and out gay Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank have confirmed that the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, will be taken up by the Labor and Education Committee without protections for transgendered Americans that were part of the bill as originally introduced this year. ...

HRC, referring to the likelihood that the employment bill would be altered, on Thursday told the Advocate.com that the organization "is deeply disappointed and did not assent to this position." However, the group did not sign on to a letter circulated the same day by other leading LGBT organizations that came in response to a story about the bill's prospective changes published in the Washington Blade.

Significantly, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, a lesbian who represents Madison, Wisconsin, and is the only other out LGBT member of Congress, did not put her name on the new bill. Her spokeswoman Jerilyn Goodman said Baldwin has not yet done any interviews on the topic... Read more

Frank Rich Discovers the Sex Panic

''I DID nothing wrong,'' said Larry Craig at the start of his long national nightmare as America's favorite running, or perhaps sitting, gag. That's the truth. Justice lovers of all sexual persuasions must rally to save the Idaho senator before he is forced to prematurely evacuate his seat.

That was the opening graph in Frank Rich's September 23 column in the Sunday Times. The columnist, surely a bright spot for many New Yorkers come Sunday mornings, continued:

Not only did the senator do nothing wrong, but in scandal he has proved the national treasure that he never was in his salad days as a pork-seeking party hack. In the past month he has served as an invaluable human Geiger counter for hypocrisy on the left and right alike. He has been an unexpected boon not just to the nation's double-entendre comedy industry but to the imploding Republican Party....

What Mr. Craig did in that men's room isn't an offense either. He didn't have sex in a public place. He didn't expose himself. His toe tapping, hand signals and ''wide stance'' were at most a form of flirtation. As George Will has rightly argued, if deviancy can be defined down to ''signaling an interest in sex,'' then deviancy is what ''goes on in 10,000 bars every Saturday night in our country.'' It's free speech even if the toes and fingers do the talking.

The Minnesota sting operation may well be unconstitutional, as the A.C.L.U. says. Yet gay civil rights organizations, eager to see a family-values phony like Mr. Craig brought down, have been often muted or silent on this point. They stood idly by while Republicans gathered their lynching party, thereby short-circuiting public debate about the legitimacy of the brand of police entrapment that took place in Minnesota. Surely that airport could have hired a uniformed guard to police a public restroom rather than train a cop to enact a punitive ''Cage aux Folles'' pantomime.

Rich's observations were an important corrective to so much of the coverage of the Craig matter. At Gay City News, we can say that because nearly three weeks before, we made some of these same points.

First Duncan Osborne, in "Troubling Questions In Craig's Fall:"

For David K. Johnson, the flood of publicity that followed a report on the arrest of US Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, resembled the era he wrote about in "The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government," a 2004 book.

"I guess it called to mind a long history of Washington sex scandals, particularly gay sex scandals," said the history professor at the University of South Florida.

Martin Duberman, an emeritus professor of history at CUNY and the author of several books including "Stonewall," a 1994 history of the 1969 riots seen as marking the start of the modern gay rights movement, had a similar view.

"I guess one was what the hell are the cops still doing in bathrooms?" Duberman said when asked for any reactions to the stories. "That sent me back 50 years."

Andrew Miller, in a strongly argued op ed, "Larry Craig's Raw Deal," added his voice:

...Despite the schadenfreude we're probably all feeling, our movement does not have the luxury of picking and choosing whom it wants among its ranks. That Craig is not gay but just likes to hoover some dick whenever he's on layover is not a distinction that America is making at a gut level, despite protestations to the contrary. Whatever Craig believes about himself, he is being treated as a gay man.

The men whom Craig had sex with in tearooms are the same ones whose oppression he has enforced. Ironically, he is driven into tearooms by the society he helps to create and perpetuate. It is Larry Craig's right to sexual freedom we're fighting for, too.

In my own Letter from the Editor, "Sex Panic," I explored the deeply disturbing signs of anxiety I noted in the popular reaction to the scandal:

The issue began to emerge clearer for me when we posted my editor's letter last week online. Touching broadly on the Larry Craig matter, the letter specifically mocked an absurd question a CNN reporter posed to an undercover Atlanta airport cop about whether pedophilia was involved in any arrests he made... Before long, vituperative postings poured in. None was more disturbing than the following: "I know a toddler who was surrounded by gay perverts in a public bathroom who licked their lips and said they wanted to help him with his pants. But I guess that's alright too, because they're gay, right?" The contention is clearly apocryphal. In fact, I would argue, it's delusional. But it is also of a piece - even if in very extreme form - of much of what emerged in the public discourse in the past week...

A phenomenon documented repeatedly through history, a Sex Panic is a popular and hysterical reaction to perceived transgressions against public morality out of proportion to any underlying reality. Bound by rigid codes of sexual propriety, people simultaneously demonize those whose behavior they fear and exaggerate or perhaps completely misperceive the reality of that behavior... Anyone following the Craig story online has undoubtedly run across the sort of hysteria I found posted to my editor's letter last week. But, let's face it - most of the reaction was over the top... The real issue forming the indictment against Larry Craig's public service - his consistently anti-gay voting record, especially in the hypocritical light of his private conduct - goes largely unexamined by the media. Those who sought to spotlight the issue pre-Minneapolis are widely dismissed, even condemned, as gay activists with an outing agenda. A society traditionally hostile to the sexual rights of gay men thus suddenly adopts the conceit that privacy above all is sacrosanct.

The Times' Trifecta on Iraq

This past Sunday's New York Times op ed pages offered a brilliant triad of analyses of where the US Iraqi policy is in the wake of congressional testimony by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week.

First, Frank Rich in a tough-minded column, "Will the Democrats Betray Us?," got to the heart of the matter:

SIR, I don't know, actually": The fact that America's surrogate commander in chief, David Petraeus, could not say whether the war in Iraq is making America safer was all you needed to take away from last week's festivities in Washington. Everything else was a verbal quagmire, as administration spin and senatorial preening fought to a numbing standoff.... General Petraeus couldn't say we are safer because he knows we are not.

Rich then turned to President George W. Bush's repackaging of the limited 2008 troop withdrawals:

The only troops coming home alive or with their limbs intact in President Bush's troop "reduction" are those who were scheduled to be withdrawn by April anyway. Otherwise the president would have had to extend combat tours yet again, mobilize more reserves or bring back the draft.

Finally, Rich, understanding that there is NOTHING more that can be expected from the Bush administration, challenges the 2008 contenders to offer more and to offer specifics:

New bin Laden tapes and the latest 9/11 memorial rites notwithstanding, we're back in a 9/10 mind-set. Bin Laden, said Frances Townsend, the top White House homeland security official, "is virtually impotent." Karen Hughes, the Bush crony in charge of America's P.R. in the jihadists' world, recently held a press conference anointing Cal Ripken Jr. our international "special sports envoy." We are once more sleepwalking through history, fiddling while the Qaeda not in Iraq prepares to burn.... Mr. Bush, confident that he got away with repackaging the same bankrupt policies with a nonsensical new slogan ("Return on Success") Thursday night, is counting on the public's continued apathy as he kicks the can down the road and bides his time until Jan. 20, 2009; he, after all, has nothing more to lose. The job for real leaders is to wake up America to the urgent reality.

Paul Krugman in "A Surge, and Then a Stab," focuses on Iraq's economic bloodline to diagnosis the surge's failure:

To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed... Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources. Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed. What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.... Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Having failed, Krugman writes, Bush has only one option -- to write that failure into the next president's history, not his own:

Here’s how I see it: At this point, Mr. Bush is looking forward to replaying the political aftermath of Vietnam, in which the right wing eventually achieved a rewriting of history that would have made George Orwell proud, convincing millions of Americans that our soldiers had victory in their grasp but were stabbed in the back by the peaceniks back home.

And finally, Thomas L. Friedman, the pundit who of these three has been most credulous about what Bush has attempted in Iraq, in "Somebody Else's Mess," offers the most damning assessment, echoing Rich's view, but going further:

George W. Bush delivered his farewell address on Thursday evening — handing the baton, and probably the next election, to the Democrats. Why do I say that? Because in his speech to the nation the president basically said that on the most important, indeed only, legacy issue left in his presidency, Iraq, there would be no change in policy — that a substantial number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq “beyond my presidency.” Therefore, it will be up to his successor to end the war he started.

Friedman is clearly prepared to go long on Democratic stock, but also issues a warning to them:

While Mr. Bush’s tacit resignation last week greatly increases the odds of a Democratic victory in 2008, there are several wild cards that could change things: a miraculous turnaround in Iraq (unlikely, but you can always hope), a terrorist attack in America, a coup in Pakistan that puts loose nukes in the hands of Islamist radicals, or a recession induced by the meltdown in the U.S. mortgage market, which forces a stark choice between bailing out Baghdad or Chicago.

And Friedman too argues that the Democrats will have to have a proactive stance on national security, not one based solely on being the un-Bush:

Be careful: despite the mess Mr. Bush has made in the world, or maybe because of it, Americans will not hand the keys to a Democrat who does not convey a “gut” credibility on national security.

That argument is much the same as a warning Rich issues regarding the obsessively cautious signals coming from the Democratic presidential camps not only in their criticisms of Bush, but also in their unwillingness to take on those allies on the left -- specifically MoveOn.org -- who are muddying up the debate and throwing fuel on the fire of political divisiveness (though probably gathering a fair amount of cash in the process) rather than contributing to a national dialogue of clarity and purpose:

Americans are looking for leadership, somewhere, anywhere. At least one of the Democratic presidential contenders might have shown the guts to soundly slap the "General Betray-Us" headline on the ad placed by MoveOn.org in The Times, if only to deflate a counterproductive distraction. This left-wing brand of juvenile name-calling is as witless as the "Defeatocrats" and "cut and run" McCarthyism from the right; it at once undermined the serious charges against the data in the Petraeus progress report (including those charges in the same MoveOn ad) and allowed the war's cheerleaders to hyperventilate about a sideshow. "General Betray-Us" gave Republicans a furlough to avoid ownership of an Iraq policy that now has us supporting both sides of the Shiite-vs.-Sunni blood bath while simultaneously shutting America's doors on the millions of Iraqi refugees the blood bath has so far created.

Read these three pieces.

Intriguing 411 RE Condi Rice

In a new book about the US secretary of state, "The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy," Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler gingerly broaches the issue of her personal life in writing about her "closest female friend," Randy Kessler, a "liberal progressive" documentary filmmaker who once worked for Bill Moyers. The two women own a home together and have a joint line of credit. Kessler wrote that he was told that Rice offered Bean financial assistance after medical problems put her friend into financial straits. The home was originally purchased by Bean, Rice, and Coit D. Blacker, a gay man who teaches at Stanford, where Rice served as provost prior to joining the Bush administration, and previously worked worked for both Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Rice, Bean, and Blacker are described as a "second family."

Kessler in his book looks at the rumors that have circulated about Rice's sexuality, while noting "she has built a wall of privacy around her that is never breached unfairly," and arguing that single professional women often "unfairly" face speculation they are lesbian.

On his Sirius Q radio program on September 13, Michelangelo Signorile spoke to Kessler, and said he pressed the author/reporter on what he thought all this meant, but to no avail. Signorile notes that Rice has been silent about the Bush administration's hostile policies toward the LGBT community.

Last fall, however, Rice oversaw the swearing-in of Dr. Mark Dybul, the administration's global AIDS coordinator (attended by Laura Bush), and raised Christianist right eyebrows by referring to the mother of Dybul's gay partner as his mother-in-law.

John Byrne looked at the Rice matter on Raw Story.

Be Careful Who You're Calling Dear

When the Brooklyn Democratic machine and the often-gay friendly borough president Marty Markowitz got behind the candidacy of Noach Dear -- a harsh foe of gay rights in his years on the City Council who was handed a post on the City Taxi and Limousine Commission by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani just as the pair were leaving office due to term limits -- critics sprang into action.

Tom Robbins in the Village Voice took a look at Dear's history of corruption, his collusion with the former apartheid government of South Africa, and his use of his influence on the Taxi and Limo Commish to raise $$$ for his judicial run (thank you, Mr. Giuliani).

Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an LGBT group, did a nutrition content send-up of Dear's career, at the same time ripping into Markowitz for his two-faced embrace of the homophobic judicial hopeful, and Brooklyn's Lambda Independent Dems, also a gay club, ripped into Dear as well.

And then WCBS' Andrew Kirtzman, one of the fraternity of out gay reporters in town, tried to talk to Dear, only to find the candidate backing his car down a one-way street to avoid having to meet the press. Kirtzman's report focused largely on Dear's failure as well to appear before the judicial screening committees of the New York and the Brooklyn Bar Associations.

Finally, in a September 14 story in the newspaper City Hall, John DeSio writes that Democrats in Brooklyn support Dear in this race to keep him from an expected primary contest between State Senator Kevin Parker, an African American who will likely be challenged next year by City Councilman Kendall Stewart, who is also black. The thinking, at least in the analysis of Rock Hackshaw, a blogger at Room Eight, on whose reporting DeSio relies in part, is that Dear could enter the race and win if the African-American vote is split.

The most remarkable revelation from DeSio's story, however, is a comment from Matt Carlin, president of the gay Stonewall Independent Democrats, who seems willing to give Markowitz a pass for the most part: "Markowitz has a great record on LGBT issues. This is definitely a smudge on that record, but it's still a great record."

Question for Markowitz: How do you justify co-signing Dear's homophobia -- especially for a civil court seat -- when you have spent so much time in years past courting gay voters? Do you think it's okay to have a different set of principles depending on the community you are addressing? Would you possibly even think of pulling a stunt like this with a candidate with a racist or anti-Semitic history?

Por Favor, Habla Ingles Solamente!

Seven of the eight Democratic White House hopefuls gathered at the University of Miami last night for the first of its kind Spanish-language debate sponsored by Univision. That is, the questions were in Spanish, and were translated into English, for English-only responses.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who is Hispanic, complained that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama prevented him from answering in the language that he learned as a child and is spoken by the 43 million voters the debate was intended to court. He charged that the format amounted to an English-only policy. (A Clinton spokesperson said the candidates did not set the rules, and in fact it was the Univision moderator who appeared irritated that Richardson and Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd managed to sneak a few palabras into their answers.)

"A lot of Hispanics don't even know I'm Hispanic," Richardson told reporters, perhaps getting to the real source of his pique. "Hey, my name's Richardson."

According to Newsday, both Clinton and Obama "sidestepped" a question about why they voted to construct a border fence between the US and Mexico.

Delaware Senator Joe Biden was the no-show, begging off he said to prepare for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker today. It is unclear how much Biden, already struggling in the polls, might be punished for doing the business voters elected him to do.

Fred Hurts Rudy

A new CBS News/ New York Times poll holds bad news for Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor. In the past month, his support among GOP primary voters has fallen from 38 percent to 27, while numbers for Fred Thompson, an ex-Tennessee senator and thoroughly unconvincing Manhattan DA on "Law and Order" virtually untested on the campaign trail or in anything approaching a policy platform, rose from 18 to 22. John McCain has regained some ground, rising six points to 18 percent (ALERT: expect a spate of McCain on the mend stories, first because of his showing in the New Hampshire debate last week and second because that's all that can be written about the Arizona senator at this point). Mitt Romney, the former one-term governor of Massachusetts, is steady at 14 percent, despite persistent reports that he has comfortable leads in Iowa and New Hampshire.

One finding the poll touts is that respondents don't look at being a big city mayor as providing the same level of experience that serving as a governor or US senator does. Likely GOP primary voters also appear fuzzy on Rudy's views on abortion, his record on crime, and his relations with New York's people of color communities (though that last measure, if better known, seems doubtful to hurt Giuliani in a big way in the primaries). With uncharacteristic pragmatism, respondents by a two to one margin said they would support a less conservative candidate if that helped the Republicans hold onto the White House, a feeling Rudy is likely to do his best to exploit.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's nearly 20-point lead over Illinois Senator Barack Obama (and more versus North Carolina's John Edwards) remained steady from last month. What factors, if any, might shake up the Democratic contest remain unclear.

Poll: Giuliani Tumbles; GOP Race Tightens

A Decidedly Half-Hearted Deeper Look Into Rudy

On the sixth anniversary of the eve of 9/11, Jeff Greenfield, writing on CBS.com in a piece called "The Giuliani of September 10th," joins the growing chorus of pundits acknowledging that Rudy's highly visible response to the attack on the World Trade Center salvaged a political reputation well past its prime:

If you ask a lot of New Yorkers, "What did you guys think of Rudy Giuliani the day before September 11th," you may well get an answer along these lines: "We were ready to say goodbye; we liked the job he'd done in making the city safer, cleaner, more confident, but we'd had enough." If you pursue the idea a little further, and ask those who cover politics about the Mayor's approval rating, they're likely to guess that it was somewhere in the mid-30s or low-40s.

But after touching on that that point, Greenfield goes on to assert that the situation was "more complex" than that. The only evidence he is able to point to on that score, however, is that the former mayor's approval rate was back above 50 percent by early September 2001. On that basis, he concludes Giuliani could have been re-elected in November 2001 had it not been for term limits.

Curiously, Greenfield goes on to quote three New York observers who know Giuliani well -- longtime critic Wayne Barrett from the Village Voice, WCBS' Andrew Kirtzman, and Fred Siegel, a Rudy cheerleader from Cooper Union. All three, who share precious little common ground in their view of Giuliani, essentially substantiate the simpler explanation -- New York's romance with Rudy was pretty much spent by mid-2001.

Crises, the three said, are when Giuliani is able to shine, and if he needs to create enemies to go after to rally his base he can and will do so. Osama Bin Laden, of course, he did not need to conjure.

Having promised a complex analysis, Greenfield brings his musings to a rather abrupt close by making only glancing reference to the most commonplace of chinks in Giuliani's 9/11 armor -- the placement of the city's emergency command post in the World Trade Center complex, despite the first attack in 1993, and the mayor's negligence in protecting the health of recovery workers at Ground Zero, and then rushing to restore Rudy's bona fides:

But for most New Yorkers, the doubts that had grown up around Rudy Giuliani by September 10th, were overwhelmed by their reaction to what he said and did the next day.

We are still in the first half of a presidential contest that will have gone on, when it's all over, for 23 months. The nation deserves serious pundits who will dig a whole lot deeper in examining the credentials and claims of the leading hopefuls.


Jeff Greenfield's "The Giuliani of September 10th," on cbs.com.

Answering Petreus and Crocker

In Manhattan today, the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice issued the following release:

With General Petraeus claiming significant progress in Iraq, United for Peace and Justice, the largest national coalition of peace organizations with some 1,400 member groups, deplores his misleading and cynical report to Congress. The "surge" of U.S. forces in Iraq has not led to security, stability or peace. In fact, this past summer was the deadliest since the war began in 2003. General Petraeus' recommendation to withdraw one Marine unit this month and a bridge combat team sometime in December comes nowhere near ending the U.S. military engagement in Iraq.

United for Peace and Justice has produced an assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq that contrasts sharply with the comments from General Petraeus, which barely mention the impact the U.S. war and occupation has on the lives of the people of Iraq.

Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator of UFPJ, says, "We feel it is essential to provide a true picture of what the shattered lives of the 25 million Iraqis look like today. For four years now we have been hearing the same false claims that the U.S. is making important gains, but they have never been true. Prepared by Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver, researchers at the Institute for Policy Studies, Iraq: The People's Report, takes an honest look at what this war has cost the people in Iraq and our communities here in the U.S."

Iraq: The People's Report notes that:

Two million Iraqis have fled the war to seek hard-to-find refuge in neighboring countries, and an additional two million Iraqis have been forced by war fueled violence to flee their homes and remain displaced and homeless inside Iraq.

Most Iraqis have electricity for only about five hours a day, clean water remains scarce for most and unobtainable for many, and Iraq's oil production remains a fraction of what it was before war.

Occupation, war and violence have so decimated the Iraqi economy that unemployment has reached up to 40% and higher, and underemployment an additional 10% or more.

In spite of the appalling conditions that most Iraqis now find themselves living in, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are trying to convince Congress that the situation is improving. "We hope that Congress will remember that these small improvements in a horrific situation have cost U.S. taxpayers over $480 billion so far, with no end in sight," remarked Sue Udry, Legislative Coordinator of United for Peace and Justice. "That is $480 billion that we could not spend here at home to rebuild the Gulf Coast, improve education or healthcare and more."

The People's Report also notes that:

The failure of the Iraq War has also meant a huge cost to our democracy at home. We have paid an enormous price: in the deaths and shattered minds and bodies of our young soldiers; in the threats to an economy ravaged by billion-dollar bills to pay for an illegal war; in the destruction of so much of our infrastructure, security and social fabric because of human and financial resources diverted to Iraq; and in the shredding of our Constitution and civil rights as fear becomes a weapon in the hands of the Bush administration aimed at Congress, the courts and the people of this country.

United for Peace and Justice has been working throughout the summer to pressure members of Congress to take a firm stand against the White House. "General Petraeus' testimony today illustrates once again the urgency of congressional action," observed Leslie Cagan, UFPJ's National Coordinator. "Congress has the constitutional right and moral obligation to use the power of the purse to force a complete withdrawal from Iraq. The people of this country are looking to them to take leadership in this effort."

Sue Udry, UFPJ's Legislative Coordinator, said, "In the weeks ahead, the pressure on Congress to rein in the White House will accelerate. The public knows this policy is a failure and wants a rapid change of course."

The full report from United for Peace and Justice is available for download:

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/downloads/peoplesreport.pdf

Corzine: Jersey Gay Marriage Inevitable -- After 2008

In a one-hour session that included brief remarks to gay journalists as well as answers to questions they posed, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine made clear that he sees full marriage equality for same-sex couples as inevitable in the Garden State, but also believes that, from a strategic political perspective, achieving that milestone is best left to a time after the 2008 presidential election.

“I think we’re in the process of evolution,” he said at the September 9 event. “I don’t know whether it’s three years or five years, but in some time frame in the not so distant future I suspect that New Jersey will embrace the moniker of gay marriage or same-sex marriage.”

The issue was the key focus of Corzine’s informal gathering with roughly two-dozen members of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

Read Paul Schindler's full story.

Frank Rich on the Return of the Whigs

In his September 9 New York Times op ed, Frank Rich, looking at this week's reports to Congress from General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, warns that what he calls a "24/7 Pentagon information ' war room'" will do work to do for the surge what the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, did for the new product launch of a war on Saddam five years ago this month.

White House "facts" about the surge's triumph are turning up unsubstantiated in newspapers and on TV. Instead of being bombarded with dire cherry-picked intelligence about W.M.D., this time we're being serenaded with feel-good cherry-picked statistics offering hope. Once again the fix is in. Mr. Bush's pretense that he has been waiting for the Petraeus-Crocker report before setting his policy is as bogus as his U.N. charade before the war. And once again a narrowly Democratic Senate lacks the votes to stop him.

And Rich points fingers at those responsible for the credulity with which the new Bush PR initiative is being received:

But this has not impeded them from posing as quasi-journalistic independent observers elsewhere ever since, whether on CNN, CBS, Fox or in these pages, identifying themselves as experts rather than Pentagon junketeers.... Katie Couric seemed to be drinking the same Kool-Aid (or eating the same lobster tortellini) as Mr. O'Hanlon. As "a snapshot of what's going right," she cited Falluja, a bombed-out city with 80 percent unemployment, and she repeatedly spoke of American victories against "Al Qaeda." Channeling the president's bait-and-switch, she never differentiated between that local group he calls "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and the Qaeda that attacked America on 9/11. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which didn't even exist on 9/11, may represent as little as 2 to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency, according to a new investigation in The Washington Monthly by Andrew Tilghman, a former Iraq correspondent for Stars and Stripes.

"As the Iraqis Stand Down, We'll Stand Up," by Frank Rich, September 9.