G.O.P. Checks for a Pulse, and Finds One   Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times The audience listened to speakers at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Friday.          

 'Edlington brothers should be jailed for longer'Child welfare campaigners are calling for the Attorney General to double the sentence of the two brothers convicted in the Edlington torture case. Yesterday a judge gave the brothers an indefinite custodial sentence, of which they must spend at least five years in detention. However today the founder of the charity Kidscape, Psychologist Dr Michelle Elliott, said they should not be freed for at least a decade. The pair were aged 10 and 11 when they tortured and sexually humiliated two other boys, aged 9 and 11, in Edlington, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Related LinksTorturers' parents face prosecution for neglect Dr Elliot claims a longer sentence would give the victims a "clear ten years" to come to terms with the sadistic assault. She said: “I’m grateful for the indeterminate sentence but I would have urged a 10-year minimum before they are assessed for release. “I will be appealing to Baroness Scotland (the Attorney General). Several groups are doing that." Dr Elliot argued that a longer sentence may also prove more effective in rehabilitating the brothers. She criticised the pairs’ parents, who are facing criminal action from South Yorkshire police, saying the boys, now aged 11 and 12, were "better off" away from them. Dr Elliot added: “They’ve got security now they’ve never known.” Shy Keenan, founder of the Phoenix Survivors, who help the victims of child sexual abuse, is also calling for the tougher sentencing. She said: “We have appealed (against) the five-year minimum tariff on this sentence to the Attorney General on the grounds that it is unduly lenient. “We do hope that the authorities involved will now pursue the offenders’ parents for their neglect and abuse in this awful case.” The jury at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the brothers had been allowed smoke cigarettes and cannabis, drink alcohol and watch pornography and extreme horror films, from a young age. Last April they lured the two younger boys, an uncle and nephew, to a secluded area where they subjected them to physical and sexual abuse for 90 minutes. The case has raised questions as to whether social services could have prevented the assault by intervening in the brother’s “toxic home-life”. Doncaster Children's Safeguarding Board has conducted an independent report into the case, however only a summary of their findings has been released    

  Conservatives launch attack on Obama's supreme court pick Prominent Republicans and conservative interest groups seek to portray Sonia Sotomayor as racist and un-American    Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 May 2009 18.54 BST Article history Conservatives have unleashed a campaign against Sonia Sotomayor to portray her as racist. Photograph: Matthew Cavanaugh/EPA Prominent Republicans and conservative interest groups have unleashed a campaign to portray President Barack Obama's supreme court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, as racist for suggesting that white men don't always make the best judges and un-American for using a Spanish pronunciation of her name.What Obama has portrayed as Sotomayor's strength as an American of Puerto Rican descent raised in the Bronx who made it to Princeton and Yale, bringing areas of experience and understanding not immediately evident among the white male majority on the supreme court, is being played by her opponents as evidence that she was nominated because she has a racial agenda.Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the house of representatives, and Karl Rove, George Bush's chief strategist, have both called Sotomayor "racist" and said she should withdraw as a nominee over comments she made in 2001. In a talk at the University of California, she offered the view that a female Hispanic judge would better understand certain issues around race and gender than a white male."I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she said. "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."To some Americans, Sotomayor's comments appear self-evident. They point to the personal experience that Thurgood Marshall brought as a black man elevated to the supreme court during the civil rights era. But conservatives said her comments are evidence that she will be biased against whites and men.Gingrich, in a Twitter feed to more than 340,000 followers, said she should resign. "Imagine a judicial nominee said, 'My experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.' New racism is no better than old racism," wrote Gingrich. He sent a second tweet a few minutes later saying: "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."Rove and two Republican members of congress also called Sotomayor racist.The White House warned the Republicans to be "exceedingly careful" about such language. Some Republican strategists said the tactic could backfire if it alienates large numbers of Hispanics who support the party.But other conservatives took up the cudgel.Rush Limbaugh, the country's most popular talk radio host with millions of listeners, said the party should press the issue."If the GOP [Republican party] allows itself to be trapped in the false premise that it's racist and sexist and must show the world that it isn't,…

  Tiger Woods: profile of a reclusive superstarThe golf star has obsessively shunned publicity for years. But, following the rumours surrounding his bizarre car crash on Friday, he now faces a huge PR crisis. Can he cope?Lawrence Donegan guardian.co.uk, Article historyTiger Woods on the course in 2005 Photograph: A. Messerschmidt/Getty Images Tiger Woods is famously insomniac but when (or if) he eventually fell asleep on Sunday night, it is easy to imagine his dreams being haunted by a scene earlier that day at Los Angeles airport, where a tall, beautiful young woman called Rachel Uchitel was greeted on her arrival from New York by a bank of cameras and a well-dressed lawyer called Gloria Allred.It was, in every conceivable way, the last thing Woods would have wanted to see as he attempted to claw his way back from three days that had seen him transformed from the "seriously injured" victim of an unfortunate car crash to a pseudo-fugitive, apparently intent on avoiding further scrutiny of the events that saw him crash his SUV into a tree outside his home, causing £5,000-worth of damage to the car and inestimable damage to his reputation as the quintessential family man.Three times the police reportedly came calling at his door over the weekend, and three times they were turned away. In the end the Florida Highway Patrol, like the rest of the world, had to make do with the statement on Woods's official website; a five-paragraph missive notable mostly for its precise yet tortured syntax and the barely concealed fury of its signatory at the fact that the public had caught a glimpse of his private world in circumstances that were beyond his control."Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," Woods (or at least his army of PR advisers) wrote. "I would . . . ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy, no matter how intrusive some people can be."Uchitel, who has firmly denied allegations in the National Enquirer that she is Woods' mistress, and Allred, a voluble lawyer who has elbowed her way on to centre stage of many of America's modern tabloid scandals (her most recent celebrity client was mother-of-14 Nadya Suleman, AKA Octomom), obligingly posed for the paparazzi on the arrivals floor of Los Angeles airport, the media's unspoken response to Woods's plea to be left alone was clear: no chance.Being denied his wish for privacy is new territory for the world's most famous athlete, who, according to Forbes magazine, in September became the first sports star to earn more than a billion dollars in his career. Up until now, the Nike-adorned Woods has been able to control his public image simply by virtue of who he is.When he plays in a golf tournament anywhere in the world, television ratings are…

 Why Obama's spokesman is angered, and pessimistic
By David S. Broder
Sunday, August 22, 2010  Acouple of weeks ago, when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was criticizing "the professional left" for prematurely finding fault with President Obama -- an act for which he later sought to make amends -- he did not, as far as I can recall, name names. If he had, he might well have mentioned John B. Judis, the opinion journalist who wrote the cover story in the latest issue of the New Republic, "The Unnecessary Fall: A Counter-History of the Obama Presidency." Gibbs's target was the left wing of the Democratic Party, which, rather than celebrating Obama's victories on health care and financial regulation, has piled up complaints about his failings at home and abroad. Judis, a man of the left, decided to anticipate the voters' November verdict and rush his explanation of the Democrats' defeat into print without waiting for the election to be held. Referring to the off-year setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, he wrote: "What doomed Obama politically was the way he dealt with the financial crisis in the first six months of his presidency. In an atmosphere primed for a populist backlash, he allowed the right wing to define the terms." The problem, as Judis sees it, is that when "the public was up in arms," Obama did not do enough bashing of the banks. Instead, the president argued that excesses had been committed by everyone in "a perfect storm of irresponsibility" that implicated Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and Main Street. Judis quoted Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) as saying that because Obama "hired people from the culture of Wall Street" for top jobs in his administration and "failed to push Congress to immediately enact new financial regulations or even to set up a commission to investigate fraud," he "sparked a right-wing populist revolt in the country." If Obama was not going to mount the barricades, then, in this version of history, the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck and Fox News would. No matter that their targets were different; to populists the anger always is believed to obliterate any substantive differences, let alone ideology. I have witnessed this blurring before. When George McGovern was running for president, his pollster, Pat Caddell, argued that emphasizing his prairie populism would make McGovern an appealing candidate to millions of George Wallace's followers. It didn't matter, he thought, that they were mad about different things. After many paragraphs lamenting "Obama's reluctance to rail against Wall Street," Judis does get around to acknowledging that reality, and not just rhetoric, does have some influence on the voters. "There is no doubt that, if the economy were growing faster, and if unemployment were dropping below 9 percent, Obama and the Democrats would be more popular and not fearing a November rout." But even after acknowledging that fact, Judis quickly argues that rhetorical timidity bred equal cravenness in economic policy. So "the principal culprit is clearly Barack…