2008 U.S. Presidential Campaign Discussion Thread 13: Victory Lap

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has offered to allow ethics reviews of future business and charitable activities should his wife be picked by President-elect Barack Obama as secretary of state, Democrats familiar with the issue said on Wednesday.

The former president is working to address questions about whether his philanthropic and business work would create the appearance of a conflict of interest in the event his wife were to take over the top U.S. diplomatic post.

"He is definitely helping. He is not an obstacle at all," a Democrat familiar with the deliberations said.

Obama met former rival New York Sen. Hillary Clinton last Thursday to discuss the secretary of state job, a secret session that quickly leaked out.

Clinton, who was defeated by Obama during a tough Democratic primary battle earlier this year, was described by the adviser as conflicted about whether she wants to be secretary of state or remain in the Senate.

"That is true. The question is where she can be of best service," a Clinton adviser said.

Obama's transition team is believed to be looking at Bill Clinton's post-White House work to review whether his international philanthropic and business dealings would pose a conflict of interest if his wife were secretary of state.

He has amassed a fortune since leaving the White House in early 2001 and is believed to be worth about $100 million, much of it from writing books and giving speeches.

Clinton has raised millions of dollars for his presidential library and foundation, with donations coming from some foreign governments and individuals.

The Democrats familiar with the issue confirmed a report in The Wall Street Journal that he had agreed to disclose the names of all new donors and make public the identities of major donors from the past.

He would also seek clearance from the White House counsel and the State Department ethics office for all donations to his William J. Clinton Foundation, they said. The foundation is used to help battle AIDS, malaria and global warming.

It remains to be seen whether Obama will make an actual job offer to Hillary Clinton.

Obama passed over Clinton and instead chose Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate, a decision that angered her biggest supporters and widened a split in the party that both Obama and Clinton have sought to heal.

Given the spate of news stories and increased attention to whether Clinton will be picked to run the State Department, some Clinton backers said it was time for Obama to clarify the situation.

"This has the potential of being a rather difficult situation for Obama and he needs to clarify it quickly," a Democratic official said.
 
Al Qaeda No. 2 insults Obama with racial slur in new video

By Caryle Murphy
Christian Science Monitor, November 20


Using a racially derogatory term, Al Qaeda's second-in-command disparaged US President-elect Barack Obama in an apparent effort to deflate high expectations among Muslims that relations between the United States and the Islamic world will improve under an Obama administration, say Al Qaeda experts. But Ayman al-Zawahiri's racist demeaning of President-elect Obama as one of America's "house negroes," implying that he does the bidding of whites, may backfire. There is also speculation among terrorism analysts that this latest statement may reflect of Mr. Zawahiri's weakening support base.

"This won't play well. Zawahiri has over-reached," writes William McCants in an e-mail. The Washington-based founder of www.jihadica.com, which monitors Al Qaeda activity on the Internet, says that after Obama's victory racist remarks about him on jihadi websites were not universally welcomed. Zawahiri is said to be under a lot of pressure these days because of Al Qaeda's loss of popular support following suicide attacks in Pakistan and Iraq. In addition, the group has been plagued by infighting among top officials in recent months that has included virulent attacks on Zawahiri from former confederate Sayyid Imam. Esteemed in jihadi circles as a major theoretician, Imam has renounced jihadi ideology in writings from an Egyptian prison, where he is serving a life sentence. Imam's latest denunciations of Zawahiri, including that he worked for Sudanese intelligence in the 1990s, are appearing in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Masry Al Youm, according to jihadica.com.

Extremist websites broadcast Zawahiri's 11-minute message. It was the terrorist group's first official reaction to Obama's win. The video showed only a still image of Egyptian-born Zawahiri, along with other pictures, including one of Obama wearing a yarmulke and meeting Jewish leaders. "You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims and pray the prayer of the Jews," said Zawahiri of Obama, according to an English transcript from Sahab, Al Qaeda's publishing arm. Addressing Muslims, Zawahiri said that despite the election of its first African-American president, America remains "the criminal, trespassing Crusader...so we must continue to harm it...This, then, is the path, so stick to it."

Mustafa Alani, director of counterterrorism research at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, says Zawahiri is trying to "dampen expectations and the improvement of the US image" that have followed Obama's election. The historic vote on November 4 was largely greeted with joy and relief in the Middle East, where the Bush administration's foreign policies are widely disliked. Many also praised the American electorate for moving away from the racial discrimination that has marred its professed ideals.

...In what he called his "message," Zawahiri, who is believed to be in hiding somewhere in the tribal hinterlands of Pakistan, compared Obama unfavorably to Malcolm X. "You represent the direct opposite of honorable black Americans like...Malcolm X," Zawahiri said. "And in you and in Colin Powell, [Condoleezza] Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him) concerning 'house negroes' are confirmed." Zawahiri has mentioned Malcolm X in past speeches, says Mr. McCants, adding that this reference appears to be an effort to impress African-American Muslims "who he may feel are more susceptible to his message."

Obama has taken a hard line against Al Qaeda, saying that the capture of Osama bin Laden is "critical" for US security. He also has said that he wants to increase US combat forces in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban insurgency there. To this, Zawahiri replied with his own version of President George Bush's "Bring 'em on!" remark that referred to Iraqi insurgents. "It appears that you don't know anything about...the history of Afghanistan and its free and defiant Muslim people," he said. "And be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them."
 
gROHDlifRfx47zuuu4s5Xm6Qo1_500.jpg
 
Lila64 said:
got this email from Rolling Stone:
Click to expand...

They need to start sending that to high schools.

Some schools ban talk about election- NOLA.com

And this was emailed to me by a friend in Mississippi:

The ACLU has received complaints from students and parents in that state claiming they are being told not to say Barack Obama's name or wear shirts or other items expressing their support for the President-Elect. At Pearl Junior High School, two students were kicked off the bus for daring to utter Obama's name. Players for the girls' basketball team were told they would be suspended if they spoke Obama's name. And at Puckett Attendance Center, two students were informed that Barack Obama was only to be discussed in history class, not in other classes or in the halls.
----
Reginald Simpson, a student at Pearl Junior High School, MS, was one of two students kicked from the bus after saying the president-elect’s name. Simpson said that the driver told the students to stop saying Obama because she didn't want to hear it.
----
The ACLU said it's popping up in schools like Northwest Rankin Middle.
"Northwest Rankin had the assembly, where they, it is my understanding, excused all the white students from the assembly and just talked to the black students and told them that they were not allowed to speak about Obama," said Bennett.
Click to expand...
 
I saw some stories about the school incidents on a Southern politics listserv earlier this week. Apparently the Mississippi ACLU received about a dozen scattered reports from around the state of individual teachers/bus drivers/coaches, and in one Jackson-area middle school's case a schoolwide policy, implying to students that if they didn't stop discussing the election (or in some cases, Obama specifically), they'd get in trouble. A couple of the reports (notably the NW Rankin Middle School assembly one, which sounds noncredible on its face) were apparently wholly false; a couple others were clearly true (the bus driver and coach mentioned in cydewaze's email were disciplined by their schools, which then apologized to parents for the incidents); and for other reports there've been conflicting accounts, or just no media followup, since.

I grew up in MS, went to public schools for K-8 there, and am not particularly surprised that you'd get some incidents like this happening. There are likely a higher number of racially acrimonious arguments between students themselves about the election there than elsewhere to begin with, and some teachers don't know how, or simply don't want to, deal with that; also, racist white adults, some of which the schools doubtless employ, may perceive a black student wearing an Obama T-shirt as if s/he were wearing an 'I hate white people' T-shirt, and in turn interpret anything that student says about the election in that light. The ACLU sent notices to the relevant school systems about every complaint they received; hopefully every complaint will be properly investigated and dealt with.
 
yolland said:
Al Qaeda No. 2 insults Obama with racial slur in new video

By Caryle Murphy
Christian Science Monitor, November 20


Using a racially derogatory term, Al Qaeda's second-in-command disparaged US President-elect Barack Obama in an apparent effort to deflate high expectations among Muslims that relations between the United States and the Islamic world will improve under an Obama administration, say Al Qaeda experts. But Ayman al-Zawahiri's racist demeaning of President-elect Obama as one of America's "house negroes," implying that he does the bidding of whites, may backfire. There is also speculation among terrorism analysts that this latest statement may reflect of Mr. Zawahiri's weakening support base.

"This won't play well. Zawahiri has over-reached," writes William McCants in an e-mail. The Washington-based founder of www.jihadica.com, which monitors Al Qaeda activity on the Internet, says that after Obama's victory racist remarks about him on jihadi websites were not universally welcomed. Zawahiri is said to be under a lot of pressure these days because of Al Qaeda's loss of popular support following suicide attacks in Pakistan and Iraq. In addition, the group has been plagued by infighting among top officials in recent months that has included virulent attacks on Zawahiri from former confederate Sayyid Imam. Esteemed in jihadi circles as a major theoretician, Imam has renounced jihadi ideology in writings from an Egyptian prison, where he is serving a life sentence. Imam's latest denunciations of Zawahiri, including that he worked for Sudanese intelligence in the 1990s, are appearing in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Masry Al Youm, according to jihadica.com.

Extremist websites broadcast Zawahiri's 11-minute message. It was the terrorist group's first official reaction to Obama's win. The video showed only a still image of Egyptian-born Zawahiri, along with other pictures, including one of Obama wearing a yarmulke and meeting Jewish leaders. "You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims and pray the prayer of the Jews," said Zawahiri of Obama, according to an English transcript from Sahab, Al Qaeda's publishing arm. Addressing Muslims, Zawahiri said that despite the election of its first African-American president, America remains "the criminal, trespassing Crusader...so we must continue to harm it...This, then, is the path, so stick to it."

Mustafa Alani, director of counterterrorism research at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, says Zawahiri is trying to "dampen expectations and the improvement of the US image" that have followed Obama's election. The historic vote on November 4 was largely greeted with joy and relief in the Middle East, where the Bush administration's foreign policies are widely disliked. Many also praised the American electorate for moving away from the racial discrimination that has marred its professed ideals.

...In what he called his "message," Zawahiri, who is believed to be in hiding somewhere in the tribal hinterlands of Pakistan, compared Obama unfavorably to Malcolm X. "You represent the direct opposite of honorable black Americans like...Malcolm X," Zawahiri said. "And in you and in Colin Powell, [Condoleezza] Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him) concerning 'house negroes' are confirmed." Zawahiri has mentioned Malcolm X in past speeches, says Mr. McCants, adding that this reference appears to be an effort to impress African-American Muslims "who he may feel are more susceptible to his message."

Obama has taken a hard line against Al Qaeda, saying that the capture of Osama bin Laden is "critical" for US security. He also has said that he wants to increase US combat forces in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban insurgency there. To this, Zawahiri replied with his own version of President George Bush's "Bring 'em on!" remark that referred to Iraqi insurgents. "It appears that you don't know anything about...the history of Afghanistan and its free and defiant Muslim people," he said. "And be aware that the dogs of Afghanistan have found the flesh of your soldiers to be delicious, so send thousands after thousands to them."
Click to expand...


this is so terrible.

it's almost as bad as decapitating and mutilating percieved infidels.:yes:

don't worry w/those choice of words..they've now invigorated the sleeping Left and a few fence-sitting pacifists I suppose.


There will be hell to pay, for sure.

*yawn*
<>
 
diamond said:
this is so terrible.

it's almost as bad as decapitating and mutilating percieved infidels.:yes:

don't worry w/those choice of words..they've now invigorated the sleeping Left and a few fence-sitting pacifists I suppose.
Click to expand...

I didn't know Sept 11th, the Cole, the 2 ongoing wars, only affected those on the conservative side of the fence.

Bad things happen to all kinds of people on september 11th......

Mountain Meadows massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
PITY poor irony. Declared dead after 9/11, it staged a strong rally beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner, only to find itself in mortal danger once again.

Its ill health was noted by, among others, no less an ironist than Joan Didion, the nation’s poet laureate of disillusion. The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïveté, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.”

Who’d want to live in a world like that?

But are ironic sensibilities like Ms. Didion’s — the detachment of mind, the appreciation of the folly of taking things at face value — really disappearing?

Not according to the conservative humorist P. J. O’Rourke, who reported from his New Hampshire office on Wednesday that he was finishing a piece for The Weekly Standard with the working title, “Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?”

Not according to the thin black novelist Colson Whitehead, who wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times under the headline, “Finally, a Thin President.”

“Something bad happens, like 9/11, it’s the death of irony,” Mr. Whitehead said in an e-mail message on Thursday. “Something good happens, like Obama’s win, it’s the death of irony. When will someone proclaim the death of iceberg lettuce? I’m sick of it making my salads boring.”

To be sure, President-elect, you’re no 9/11. Back then, irony seemed, for a time, impossible. Nowadays, Ms. Didion said in her talk, which will be published Monday in The New York Review of Books, it is simply “not the preferred way” of viewing events.

Mr. O’Rourke, for his part, said that Mr. Change himself, with his choices of usual suspects and Beltway insiders to help him run the country, was proving no slouch in the irony department.

But Ms. Didion might be on to something. A Nexis search found that the incidence of the words “irony,” “ironic” and “ironically” in major American newspapers during the two-week period beginning Nov. 6 slipped 19 percent from the same period last year.

In New York, Ms. Didion’s home city, irony has been steadily disappearing from daily newspapers for a decade, the analysis found. In those same two-week November periods from 2000 to 2008, appearances of “irony” and its cognates tumbled 56 percent. Some of the drop seems to be because of the shrinking of newspapers, but a similar Nexis search with a control word, “went,” showed a drop of only 32 percent, leaving an irony gap of 24 percentage points.

The analysis may have its flaws. For one thing, the search algorithm also, ironically, picked up phrases like “end of irony.” More significantly, no self-respecting ironist actually uses the word “ironic,” except, perhaps, ironically.

Still, there is little doubt that these are challenging times for the professionally arch. Gilbert Gottfried, widely credited with being the first standup comic to tell a 9/11 joke (he complained 18 days after the attacks that he couldn’t get a direct flight to California because “they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first”), noted that his gun-shy colleagues, afraid of spoiling the love fest or being accused of racism, “continue to do Sarah Palin insults, and that really struck me as odd.”

THE ONION, whose less-than-half-joking postelection headline read something like “Nation Finally Lousy Enough to Make Social Progress,” seems to be having trouble finding its bearings, too. Even a gentle, somewhat toothless Nov. 11 article, “International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million in Campaign Fund-Raising,” drew criticism on discussion boards for feeding into stereotypes about blacks, said The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo.

“After eight years of the Bush administration, where irony was almost a measure of desperation — maybe now that people have seen something happen they never thought possible, their sarcasm processors have kind of gone into shock,” he said.

Officials at “Saturday Night Live” declined to comment for this article. “We have been trying to avoid these ‘what now’ stories,” the show’s spokesman, Marc Liepis, said in an e-mail message.

Some sometime cynics bristled at the suggestion that they had gone soft or lost their edge. “To me, it’s a false choice to say we’re either going to be running our own little ‘Daily Show’ of the mind 24/7 or we’re going to be completely earnest,” said Kurt Andersen, the novelist, Spy magazine co-founder and author of a 3,500-word New York magazine mash note to the president-elect and the people who voted for him. “One can maintain one’s ironic armor and arsenal where one needs it.”

Roger Rosenblatt, the former Time columnist who wrote that Sept. 11 might at least “spell the end of the age of irony,” said that while irony had its place and time, this was not it.

“Irony,” Mr. Rosenblatt said, “is a diminishing act — the incongruity between what’s expected and what occurs makes us smile at the distance. But there are some events that occur, like 9/11, and perhaps Obama, though I didn’t think of him in this context, that are so big that they almost imply an obligation not to diminish it by clever comparisons.”

John H. McWhorter, the semiconservative black commentator and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that the orgy of self-congratulation he saw among whites was an understandable and even sort of defensible response to the expiation of white America’s sins that Mr. Obama’s ascendance enabled. “When you vote for Obama,” he said, “you are showing that you are past the nastiness, and that’s a natural feeling and a healthy feeling for white people to have.”

But it is at times like these, Ms. Didion seemed to argue, when a distanced perspective is needed most. (Not that she was willing to elaborate on her talk. “Basically,” she said on the phone Tuesday, “I don’t like to talk about anything I’ve written or that I’m writing. What you write down, there it is and you’ve done it.”)

Mr. Randazzo of The Onion promised that irony would make a speedy recovery. “This isn’t the end of history,” he said, invoking another famous wrong prediction. “We never know what will be the next dumb thing to satirize — that’s the beauty of the thing.”
Click to expand...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/f...artner=permalink&exprod=permalink&oref=slogin

Judging by the ever growing Sarah Palin thread this is an interesting observation
 
Mumbai Points to Top Obama Challenge
As President-Elect Assembles Natl. Security Team, South Asia Regional Issues at Fore
By JOHN HENDREN

Nov. 30, 2008

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to introduce his national security team Monday, last week's massacre in Mumbai is already shaping the agenda.

"South Asia is going to be a focus for the Obama Administration," said Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations.

With almost two months before Obama takes office, a Who's Who of foreign policy thinkers are already crafting the Obama administration's strategy in a region that includes Afghanistan, India and the increasingly embattled Pakistan -- a nation many in India blame for the Mumbai attacks, as at least some of the attackers are said to have been Pakistani. There is not a shrinking violet in the bunch.

"There will not be a transition when it comes to keeping America safe and secure," Democratic strategist Donna Brazille told ABC News. "The terrorists will not wait."

As previously reported, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's rival in the Democratic primary, is his choice for Secretary of State.

"Despite a lot of talk during the campaign about Afghanistan, really Pakistan is the central issue here. And we can see that because it sits very squarely between these problems in India and the problems we're already seeing in Afghanistan," Markey told ABC. "If I were Hillary Clinton, I'd have second thoughts. And if I were Barack Obama, I'd also wonder what exactly I had gotten myself into. This is going to be tremendously challenging for this new team."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be asked to remain at the Pentagon for at least another year. Eric Holder will be asked to return to the Justice Department as attorney general. Former NATO commander General Jim Jones -- who at a chiseled 6-foot-5 is a Marine straight out of central casting -- will be Obama's choice for National Security Adviser.

It is a roster of political heavy-hitters, assembled to instill confidence, under a president with a slim resume on foreign policy.

"You're looking at grownups. These are people who are tough and they're smart, and they know foreign policy," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of The Rothenberg Political Report. "And the kind of a team that will make people who might be a little nervous about Barack Obama's lack of foreign policy experience, make those people much more comfortable."

Even before Mumbai, Obama sought to assure the nation, saying in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" program, "I think it's important to get a national security team in place because transition periods are potentially times of vulnerability to a terrorist attack."

The president elect is also expected to name Retired Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence, Susan Rice as ambassador to the United Nations, and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Obama's challenge in assembling such a high-profile team will be to ensure they are all pulling the administration's foreign policy agenda in the same direction.
 
2008 elecction ends tomorrow.


will they score one for the Obama team or the Palin team?

Palin campaigns in Ga.'s Senate runoff
Associated Press Writer= AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP)

- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin implored Georgia Republicans to back Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his hotly contested Senate runoff, telling a cheering crowd Monday that the first step in rebuilding the GOP begins with the Southern state.

The former vice presidential candidate made her first campaign appearance since the Republican ticket of John McCain and Palin lost on Nov. 4. Palin's four stops for Chambliss underscored not only the stakes for the GOP in the Senate race but Palin's popularity within the party. She has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012 — a fact not lost on some Georgia voters.

Several thousand supporters waited in the cold to file into the James Brown Arena in Augusta. Vendors sold bright pink "Palin 2012" T-shirts and "Palin for President: You Go Girl" buttons. She was greeted like a rock star with chants of "Sa-rah!"

"Georgia the eyes of America are upon you," the former vice presidential candidate said. "We all have Georgia on our minds."

Last month in the general election, Chambliss fell short of crossing the 50 percent threshold in a three-way race against Democrat Jim Martin and a Libertarian candidate, Allen Buckley, who drew 3.4 percent of the vote. The runoff between Chambliss and Martin will help determine the balance of power in Washington where Democrats are just two votes shy of the 60 votes needed to prevent Republican filibusters. Georgia is one of two undecided contests. A recount is under way in Minnesota in the tight race between Republican Sen. Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

Palin cast the Georgia runoff as the first step in rehabilitating the Republican Party, wounded by losses in November including the defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket.

"It takes rebuilding and I say let that begin here in Georgia tomorrow," Palin said.

She highlighted Chambliss' support for gun rights as well his opposition to abortion and tax hikes.

"We must send Saxby back to the United States Senate," she said.

Palin said she has a soft spot for Georgia where her eldest son, Track, trained at Fort Benning before deploying to Iraq.

"You took good care of my son," Palin said.

Martin is touring the state Monday with prominent Georgia Democrats, including Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta. He'll cap the day with a state Capitol rally with the Atlanta hip hop artist Ludacris.

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., warmed up a crowd of about 2,000 at Palin and Chambliss' second stop in Savannah by taking a dig at Martin for campaigning with a rapper who has written some raunchy lyrics. "Would you play that for your momma?" Kingston said of Ludacris' music.

"I think Jim Martin should be with Ludacris," Kingston said. "It would be ludicrous to vote for Jim Martin."

Martin had asked President-elect Barack Obama to campaign with him. Obama recorded a radio ad and automated phone calls for Martin but did not campaign in the state. Some 100 Obama field operatives traveled to the state to help with turnout.
Click to expand...
 
buar02_power.jpg


“We don’t know yet what position she’ll have,” he said. “But I think she’s a very strong candidate for a position.”

Samantha Power Rejoins Team Obama

Published On 11/30/2008 8:42:53 PM

By ESTHER I. YI

She called Senator Hillary Clinton a “monster” last March, and it cost her her position in President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign.

Now, it seems, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Samantha Power has been invited back into the fold—she’s reviewing the State Department, which Clinton is expected to lead, for Obama’s transition team.

Since mid-November, Obama’s transition Web site has listed Power among the officials selected by the president-elect’s office to review national security agencies.

As one of the fourteen foreign policy experts who will focus on the State Department, Power will help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state, expected to be announced today.

And Power’s return to Washington may foreshadow a possible government appointment.

A rumor that Power may take on the role of an official or advisor in Obama’s administration is making its rounds at the Kennedy School, said Leonardo Vivas, a fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which Power founded.

“We don’t know yet what position she’ll have,” he said. “But I think she’s a very strong candidate for a position.”
Click to expand...


I hope Obama puts her to good use.
 
deep said:
2008 elecction ends tomorrow.


will they score one for the Obama team or the Palin team?
Click to expand...

Score a big win for the Palin GOP team.

Most likely this is a preview of 2010 Congressional elections.


I believe the Dems have peaked with W's gross unpopularity.

Look for moderate GOP gains in 2010.
 
He said he would have said the same thing about a man

Wednesday, Dec. 03, 2008
Rendell: Napolitano perfect due to 'no family'
By MARK SCOLFORO
- Associated Press Writer

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell was picked up on an open microphone explaining why Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is a good choice for Homeland Security secretary: The job requires someone who has "no life," and Napolitano is perfect because she "has no family"

Rendell made the comment Tuesday at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Philadelphia that featured President-elect Barack Obama.

Rendell said Napolitano is "perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it."

Napolitano, a second-term governor, former state attorney general and former U.S. attorney, has never been married and has no children.

Napolitano's spokeswoman, Jeanine L'Ecuyer, said the Arizona governor described Rendell as a good friend and had little to say about his remarks.

"She said she really appreciates Gov. Rendell's confidence in her and the confidence of the president-elect," L'Ecuyer said.

L'Ecuyer deflected questions about whether the comment could be construed as sexist.

"There's a lot of people weighing in on that. We'll leave it to you guys to do that," she said.

At a news conference in Harrisburg, Rendell said former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who became the first Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush, "told me you have to live that job every minute."

"I think it's clear, to do that job you have to be ready to work 24-7," Rendell said. "You can't have another job, you can't have an avocation you're addicted to like golf or anything like that."

He said he "didn't mean it the wrong way" and called Napolitano "one of the best governors in the country."

"If anybody out there was offended, I apologize," Rendell said. "But you could say the exact same thing to me, about me." Rendell is married to a federal judge and they have an adult son.

Rendell press secretary Chuck Ardo said he did not know with whom Rendell was speaking at the time.

In a similar incident nearly four years ago, a leading Arizona state senator apologized to Napolitano after making light of her status as a lawyer and person without a family.

Senate President Ken Bennett was critical of Napolitano's positions regarding lawsuit reform and family values.

"She's a lawyer, and she doesn't have a family," Bennett said at the time. He later called the governor to apologize.
 
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