Rocky Politics: The Coal Question

clipped from blogs.wsj.com Which weighs more this election year—the economy, or the environment? This was supposed to be the year the environment and climate change reached a political tipping point For the Democrats, the issue is especially prickly. As the WSJ reports today (sub reqd.), coal has become part of the political battlefield as the primaries wind down: The race for the Democratic nomination hinges on a handful of states where coal is still king. That puts Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a bind: how to attack global warming without threatening an industry that provides half the U.S.’s electricity and more than 80,000 mining jobs. Sen. Barack Obama called the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” We’ve written before And both candidates have been taken to task for double-talk on coal, such as Sen. Clinton’s apparent support for mountain-top removal coal mining

Road to the White House

clipped from www.cnn.com Delegate Definitions TOTAL DELEGATES Democrats » Republicans » 1,527 Obama 1,428 Clinton 1,289 McCain 267 Huckabee 1,328 Pledged: 1,190 Pledged: 1,207 Pledged: 264 Pledged: 199 Superdels: 238 Superdels: 82 Unpl. RNC: 3 Unpl. RNC: Needed to Win: 2,024 Needed to Win: 1,191

Clinton digs in on toxic toys after China's 'slander' charge

clipped from afp.google.com Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton Friday slammed China for calling her criticism of made-in-China toys "slander," and urged Washington to take "immediate, decisive steps" to protect US children. "This is the same government that just this month revoked the licenses of more than 750 of its toy companies because of quality control problems and ordered another 690 to renovate or improve their facilities, even as it asserted that 99 percent of toy exports met quality standards," Clinton said in her statement. "And the Chinese government's watchdog agency reported earlier this year that 20 percent of the toys made and sold in China pose safety risks. That is unacceptable." Clinton also took up China's claim that the majority of problems with Chinese toy exports were due to "design faults by (foreign) importers and designers." China is the world's top toy exporter, selling 22 billion toys overseas last year, or 60 percent of the globe's total.

How do we beat the bitch?

clipped from news.aol.com

Giuliani wants Clinton to apologize to Petraeus

clipped from http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2007/09/14/giuliani0914.html In metro Atlanta for a pair of private fund-raisers, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Thursday sought to please the Georgia GOP base by bashing Democrat Hillary Clinton for her "disbelief" of Gen. David Petraeus —- and demanding she apologize. But the former New York mayor also might have bewildered some Republicans when he categorized illegal immigration as something other than a crime. "The law books say that crossing the border without permission is a misdemeanor. Other than that, it's not a crime," Giuliani said. "That's a question of law, not political rhetoric or political spinning or political positioning." The Republican candidate was responding to an article published in Thursday's editions of the Washington Times, in which he was quoted as saying illegal immigration shouldn't be classified as a crime "because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. "We couldn't prosecute 12 million people," he said in the article.