Left Turn? Obama Speech Invigorates Progressives













A presidential campaign that was largely about jobs and the economy gave way during Monday's inaugural ceremonies to a sweeping affirmation of progressivism and call for "collective action."


Now, liberal allies of President Obama say they're closely watching to see whether the second-term president follows through on issues with which he has struggled before.


Obama's groundbreaking references to climate change and gay rights in his second inaugural address particularly surprised many progressive interest groups, which said their first-term frustrations have been replaced by a new sense of optimism.


"We are hopeful that the president's progressive speech signals a major strategy shift for the Obama administration," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.


Green's group and other liberal Democrats have openly expressed disappointment in Obama since 2009, saying his agenda has fallen short. Many have cited his failure to advance an assault-weapons ban, as promised, enact climate change legislation or overhaul the nation's immigration system.






J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo











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Other progressives have chafed at Obama's extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy in 2010 and move last month to make some of the cuts permanent, while putting changes to Social Security and Medicare on the table as part of a deficit-reduction deal.


During the election campaign, Obama ran no paid TV advertising that mentioned gays or gay rights, or the term "climate change," for example. Only four of his ads mentioned environmental issues, and two explicitly portrayed Obama as a defender of the coal industry, something anathema to many environmentalists.


"If the president's inaugural words and action on guns are the template for his governing strategy in a second term, that will allow the president to win big victories and secure a legacy of bold progressive change," Green said, responding to Obama's inaugural address.


In interviews with ABC News, advocates stressed that success on many liberal priorities remains a big "if," with a politically divided Congress and a record of failure by the White House to bridge the divide.


On the environment, activists say they are most closely watching the president's upcoming decision on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project, which would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.


Obama delayed a decision on the project in January 2012, ordering a new environmental-impact study. But with that study nearing completion, he will be forced to weigh in on an issue that has pitted a need for jobs and cheaper energy with environmental and health concerns.


"The decision on the Keystone XL pipeline will be the first indicator about how seriously he's taking climate change over the next four years," said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental advocacy group opposed to the pipeline. "We'll know in the next month and a half to two months whether he does."


Bill McKibben, an author and leading environmentalist, said in a blog post that he is not holding his breath. "With words like that, it's easy to let ourselves dream that something major might be about to happen to fix the biggest problem the world has ever faced," he wrote.
"And given the record of the last four years, we know that too often rhetoric has yielded little in the way of results."


McKibben is organizing a major environmental rally in Washington on Feb. 17.






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Netanyahu claims election win despite losses


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged the bruised winner of Israel's election on Tuesday, claiming victory despite unexpected losses to resurgent center-left challengers.


Exit polls showed the Israeli leader's Likud party, yoked with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu group, would still be the biggest bloc in the 120-member assembly with 31 seats, 11 fewer than the 42 they held in the previous parliament.


If the exit polls compiled by three local broadcasters prove correct - and they normally do in Israel - Netanyahu would be on course for a third term in office, perhaps leading a hardline coalition that would promote Jewish settlement on occupied land.


But his weakened showing in an election he himself called earlier than necessary could complicate the struggle to forge an alliance with a stable majority in parliament.


The 63-year-old Israeli leader promised during his election campaign to focus on tackling Iran's nuclear ambitions if he won, shunting Palestinian peacemaking well down the agenda despite Western concern to keep the quest for a solution alive.


The projections showed right-wing parties with a combined strength of 61-62 seats against 58-59 for the center-left.


"According to the exit poll results, it is clear that Israel's citizens have decided that they want me to continue in the job of prime minister of Israel and to form as broad a government as possible," Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page.


The centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, led by former television talk show host Yair Lapid, came second with 18 or 19 seats, exit polls showed - a stunning result for a newcomer to politics in a field of 32 contending parties.


Lapid won support amongst middle-class, secular voters by promising to resolve a growing housing shortage, abolish military draft exemptions for Jewish seminary students and seek an overhaul of the failing education system.


The once dominant Labour party led by Shelly Yachimovich was projected to take third place with 17 seats.


"YESH ATID SWEEP"


The mood was subdued at Netanyahu's Likud party election headquarters after the polls closed, with only a few hundred supporters in a venue that could house thousands.


"We anticipated we would lose some votes to Lapid, but not to this extent. This was a Yesh Atid sweep," Likud campaign adviser Ronen Moshe told Reuters.


A prominent Likud lawmaker, Danny Danon, told CNN: "We will reach out to everybody who is willing to join our government, mainly the center party of Yair Lapid."


If the prime minister can tempt Lapid to join a coalition, the ultra-Orthodox religious parties who often hold the balance of power in parliament might lose some of their leverage.


After a lacklustre campaign, Israelis voted in droves on a sunny winter day, registering a turnout of 66.6 percent, the highest since 2003. That buoyed center-left parties which had pinned their hopes on energizing an army of undecided voters against Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious allies.


Opinion polls before the election had predicted an easy win for Netanyahu, although the last ones suggested he would lose some votes to the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state and advocates annexing chunks of the occupied West Bank.


The exit polls projected 12 seats for Jewish Home.


Full election results are due by Wednesday morning and official ones will be announced on January 30. After that, President Shimon Peres is likely to ask Netanyahu, as leader of the biggest bloc in parliament, to try to form a government.


The former commando has traditionally looked to religious, conservative parties for backing and is widely expected to seek out self-made millionaire Naftali Bennett, who heads the Jewish Home party and stole much of the limelight during the campaign.


But Netanyahu might, as Danon suggested, try to include more moderate parties to assuage Western concerns about Israel's increasingly hardline approach to the Palestinians.


WESTERN ANXIETY


British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned Israel on Tuesday it was losing international support, saying prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were almost dead because of expanding Jewish settlements.


U.S.-brokered peace talks broke down in 2010 amid mutual acrimony. Since then Israel has accelerated construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want for their future state - much to the anger of Western partners.


Netanyahu's relations with U.S. President Barack Obama have been notably tense and Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the BBC the election was unlikely to change that.


"President Obama doesn't have high expectations that there's going to be a government in Israel committed to making peace and is capable of the kind of very difficult and painful concessions that would be needed to achieve a two-state solution," he said.


Tuesday's vote is the first in Israel since Arab uprisings swept the region two years ago, reshaping the Middle East.


Netanyahu, who had a first term as premier in the late 1990s, has said the turbulence, which has brought Islamist governments to power in several countries long ruled by secularist autocrats, including neighboring Egypt, shows the importance of strengthening national security.


He views Iran's nuclear program as a mortal threat to the Jewish state and has vowed not to let Tehran enrich enough uranium to make a single nuclear bomb - a threshold Israeli experts say could arrive as early as mid-2013.


Iran denies it is planning to build the bomb, and says Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, is the biggest threat to the region.


The issue barely registered during the election campaign, with a poll in Haaretz newspaper on Friday saying 47 percent of Israelis thought social and economic issues were the most pressing concern, against just 10 percent who cited Iran.


One of the first problems to face the next government, which is unlikely to take power before the middle of next month at the earliest, is the stuttering economy.


Data last week showed the budget deficit rose to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, double the original estimate, meaning spending cuts and tax hikes look certain.


(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)



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Rushdie in India for new film screening






NEW DELHI: British author Salman Rushdie said he was "sick and tired" of being called controversial as he flew in to India for the screening of a new film based on his iconic novel "Midnight's Children".

The Mumbai-born novelist, whose 1988 book "The Satanic Verses" remains banned in India for allegedly insulting Islam, said it was groups which enforce bans on books and artistes that should be branded as controversial instead.

"I don't know why the media calls me a controversial author. It is the extremist groups who enforce bans on books and artistes who should be called controversial," Rushdie told the NDTV news channel.

"I hope better sense prevails," added the Booker prize-winning writer, who was flanked by the film's director Deepa Mehta on the TV show.

The movie, set in post-independence India, would be shown on January 31 to a select audience including the director and author's friends in Mumbai, local media reports said.

"A day after the special screening, the author will host an intimate dinner for select members of the film's cast and crew," The Times of India newspaper reported.

Rushdie, whose visit was shrouded in secrecy for security reasons, spent a decade in hiding after Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for his death.

Last year, Rushdie was forced to withdraw from a literary festival in the northwestern city of Jaipur in January after death threats and angry protests from Islamists.

But he visited the country two months later and launched a stout defence of freedom of expression.

- AFP/jc



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Senator disputes Aaron Swartz's SOPA, Protect IP role



Peter Eckersley, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's technology projects director and Aaron Swartz's former roommate, speaks at a gathering in San Francisco.

Peter Eckersley, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's technology projects director and Aaron Swartz's former roommate, speaks at a gathering in San Francisco.



(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET)



Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, is taking issue with a description of how a discussion with one of his aides led the late Aaron Swartz to campaign against Hollywood-backed copyright bills.



At an event in San Francisco last weekend, Peter Eckersley, Swartz's former roommate and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's technology projects director, told an audience that the late activist created the advocacy group Demand Progress after a fruitless meeting with one of Leahy's aides.



Aaron Cooper, who works for Leahy -- the author of the Protect IP Act -- as the chief intellectual property counsel for the Senate Judiciary committee, told Swartz during the meeting that "the priority of this country is going to be making sure that files cannot be shared, songs cannot be copied, movies cannot be copied," Eckersley said.



Jessica Brady, a spokeswoman for Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNET this afternoon that's absolutely not what happened:



T

he third-party description of the November 2010 conversation between Aaron Cooper and Aaron Swartz is entirely fabricated. It is wrong on the substance, and it is wrong on the very nature of their conversation. The two had a positive meeting, and their discussion focused mainly on whether an agreement could be reached to go after infringers and counterfeiters living in countries where the United States does not have extradition treaties. Aaron Cooper -- a tireless, highly respected and superbly knowledgeable policy advisor on these and other complex issues -- never said anything remotely similar to the quote described in this false account. Further, the timeline provided in this account is inaccurate. The organization Demand Progress began well before the two men met in late November of 2010. And finally, the support Senator Leahy received for his version of the legislation from the Internet service provider community, as well as domain name registries and registrars, is evidence that ensuring the legislation would not 'break' the Internet was a top priority for Senator Leahy and his staff.




Domain name registrar GoDaddy initially supported, but after a customer boycott, backed down and said it opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act and Leahy's similar Protect IP Act. AT&T said at the time that "we have been supportive of the general framework" of Protect IP, which stopped short of a formal endorsement, and Verizon expressed concerns about SOPA.



Swartz committed suicide on January 11 in New York City. His family and friends have blamed Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, for filing 13 felony charges against the late activist for allegedly downloading academic journals he was permitted to access (but not access in large quantities). A congressional investigation of Ortiz, who has denied any wrongdoing, is underway.



Eckersley -- who did not immediately respond to a request for comment -- told the story about Swartz at a retrospective event titled "a year after SOPA/PIPA," organized by EFF, Engine Advocacy, and Craig Newmark's craigconnects. SOPA was, of course, the Stop Online Piracy Act; PIPA was Leahy's Senate counterpart also known as the Protect IP Act.


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Prince Harry says he killed Taliban fighters

Prince Harry, on his way home to England from Afghanistan, said he killed Taliban insurgents on his latest tour.

According to the Press Association's pool report, the 28-year-old British royal said he took enemy fighters "out of the game" during his 20-week posting.

"Yea, so lots of people have," he said when asked if he had killed anyone from working as a gunner inn Apache attack helicopters. "The squadron's been out here. Everyone's fired a certain amount."

Harry, known as Captain Wales in the British Army, handled deadly rockets, missiles and a 30mm cannon. He supported allied troops and accompanied British chinook and U.S. Black Hawk helicopters during casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) missions over Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, according to the Press Association.




53 Photos


Prince Harry on second Afghanistan tour



"Take a life to save a life," the prince said. "That's what we revolve around, I suppose."

"If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we'll take them out of the game, I suppose," he added/

Harry said he was treated like "one of the guys" in the army, serving in the 662 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps. Although his deployment in Afghanistan -- his second so far -- allowed him to step back from the public eye, he said his father, the Prince of Wales, is always reminding him of his birthright.

Colleagues and superiors commended Prince Harry for how well he fit into his unit and for being "on top of his game" during and "extremely busy" and dangerous tour.

Harry also commented on the news that his sister-in-law, Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, was expecting her first child. He said he was "thrilled" for the duchess and his brother, Prince William, and "can't wait to be an uncle."


Prince Harry in Helmand, Afghanistan, during his second tour with the army. The British royal returned home on Monday.

Prince Harry in Helmand, Afghanistan, during his second tour with the army. The British royal returned home on Monday.


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Obama's 2nd Term: Who's Time Is 'Our Time'?


Jan 21, 2013 12:50pm







gty barack obama inauguration 2 ll 130121 wblog Obamas Inaugural Declaration: Our Time for Changing Nation

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

ANALYSIS By RICK KLEIN

President Obama used a brief pause in the partisan warfare that’s scarred his time in office to return to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, with his own declaration of urgency and a call to action that reflects shared sacrifice and responsibility.


This was no centrist conciliator. It was the speech of a committed, unapologetic progressive, an Obama doctrine for domestic policy that included concrete commitments in areas he made little progress on over his first four years. Above all, he was speaking to a changing America – the nation that propelled him to a second term, and whose voices he will need to channel to be effective over the next four years.


“My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together,” the president declared.


That word “together” appeared seven times in the president’s speech. He used the phrase, “we, the people” five times. Notably, the president said “our time” five times. It was a clear signal that Obama is not satisfied with the frustrations that marked his first term, and that he is cognizant of his opportunity at this moment.


And he sees those opportunities mainly to his left. Obama made a firm commitment to pursue climate-change legislation, in addition to immigration reform and gun control. In an era of budget-cutting, he delivered a rousing endorsement of the social safety net, including Medicare and Social Security.


Obama cited the civil-rights movement and listed Stonewall – the 1960s demonstrations over a police raid of a New York City gay bar that galvanized the gay-rights movement – alongside Seneca Falls and Selma. He also promised equality for “our gay brothers and sisters,” apparently becoming the first president to use the word “gay” in an inaugural address.


Obama’s defining challenge as president has been to deliver on the hope and promise he rode into office on in 2008. He may never hope to fulfill the expectations that surrounded his elevation. But speaking to the largest crowd he’s likely to ever appear before again, the president sounded both more optimistic and more committed to progress on his priorities than anything in our current political system would suggest is warranted.


“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time,” the president said.


For a president whose very inauguration speaks to the promise of America, but whose first term ended with so much frustration, it was a return to his roots. President Obama is cognizant of his role in history, though clearly not content with leaving it at that.










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Algeria vows to fight Qaeda after 38 workers killed


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's prime minister accused a Canadian of coordinating last week's raid on a desert gas plant and, praising the storming of the complex where 38 mostly foreign hostages were killed, he pledged to resist the rise of Islamists in the Sahara.


Algeria will never succumb to terrorism or allow al Qaeda to establish "Sahelistan", an Afghan-style power base in arid northwest Africa, Abdelmalek Sellal told a news conference in Algiers where he also said at least 37 foreign hostages died.


"There is clear political will," the prime minister said.


Claimed by an Algerian al Qaeda leader as a riposte to France's attack on his allies in neighboring Mali the previous week, the four-day siege drew global attention to Islamists in the Sahara and Sahel regions and brought promises of support to African governments from Western powers whose toppling of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi helped flood the region with weapons.


The attack on a valuable part of its vital energy industry raised questions about the security capacity of an establishment that took power from French colonists 50 years ago, held off a bloody Islamist insurgency in the 1990s and has avoided the democratic upheavals the Arab Spring brought to North Africa.


Sellal said a Canadian citizen whom he named only as Chedad, a surname found among Arabs in the region, was among 29 gunmen killed and added that he had "coordinated" the attack. Another three militants were taken alive and were in custody.


Among hostages confirmed dead by their own governments were three Americans, seven Japanese, six Filipinos and three Britons; others from Britain, Norway and elsewhere were listed as unaccounted for. Sellal said seven of the 37 foreign dead were unidentified, while a further five foreigners were missing.


Nearly 700 Algerians and 100 other foreigners survived.


An Algerian security source said investigators pursuing the possibility that the attackers had inside help to map the complex and gain entry were questioning at least two employees.


Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament in London that Britain would increase its help to Algeria's intelligence and security forces and might do more for France in Mali, though he ruled out sending many of its stretched armed forces to Africa.


Noting a shift in the source of threats to British interests from Afghanistan to Africa, he also noted Sellal's rundown of a multinational group of gunmen from across north and west Africa and said the region was becoming "a magnet for jihadists".


Alongside a "strong security response", however, he called for efforts to address long-standing grievances, such as poverty and political exclusion, which foster support for violence. Some militants in Algeria want autonomy for the south and complain of domination by an unchanging establishment in Algiers.


DEATH AND SURVIVAL


As Algerian forces combed the Tigantourine plant near the town of In Amenas for explosives and the missing, survivors and the bereaved told tales of terror, narrow escapes and of death.


"The terrorists lined up four hostages and assassinated them ... shot them in the head," a brother of Kenneth Whiteside told Sky News, in an account of the Briton's death given to the family by an Algerian colleague who witnessed it. "Kenny just smiled the whole way through. He'd accepted his fate."


Filipino survivor Joseph Balmaceda said gunmen used him for cover: "Whenever government troops tried to use a helicopter to shoot at the enemy, we were used as human shields."


Another Briton, Garry Barlow, called his wife from within the site before he was killed and said: "I'm sat here at my desk with Semtex strapped to my chest."


Several hostages died on Thursday when Algerian helicopters blasted jeeps in which the militants were trying to move them.


An Algerian security source had earlier told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of two militants had identified them as Canadians: "A Canadian was among the militants. He was coordinating the attack," Sellal said.


In Ottawa, Canada's foreign affairs department said it was seeking information. Security experts noted that some Canadian citizens had been involved with international militants before.


Officials have also named other militants in recent days as having leadership roles among the attackers. Veteran Islamist Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda.


In a video distributed on the Internet, the one-eyed veteran of Afghan wars of the 1980s, of Algeria's civil war and of the lucrative trans-Sahara cigarette smuggling trade, said: "We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation."


Dressed in combat fatigues, Belmokhtar demanded an end to French attacks on Islamist fighters in Mali.


The jihadists had planned the attack two months ago in neighboring Mali, Sellal added. They had traveled from there through Niger and Libya, hence evading Algeria's strong security services, until close to In Amenas. Their aim, he said, had been to take foreign hostages to Mali, and they made a first attempt to take captives from a bus near the site early on Wednesday.


Normally producing 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, the facility was shut down during the incident. The government said it aimed to reopen it this week, although officials at Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil, which operate the plant with Algeria's state energy firm, said the plans were not clear.


MALI CONFLICT


An Algerian newspaper said the jihadists had arrived in cars painted in the colors of Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach but registered in Libya, a country awash with weaponry since Western powers backed a revolt to oust Gaddafi in 2011.


Using his oil wealth, the Libyan dictator exercised a degree of influence in the region and the consequences of his death are still unfolding.


In a sign of the complexities wrought by the Arab Spring revolts, Egypt, a former military dictatorship now led by one of the generals' Islamist foes, criticized France's intervention in Mali on Monday. President Mohamed Mursi called instead for more spending to address rebels' grievances and warned that the military moves would "inflame the conflict in this region".


The bloodshed also increased the strains in Algeria's long fraught relations with Western powers, where some complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.


But this week, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.


Chafik Mesbah, a former Algerian presidential security adviser, said: "The West did not criticize Algeria because it knows an assault was inevitable in the circumstances ... The victims were a minimum price to pay to solve the crisis."


(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich)



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US seeks quick vote on N.Korea sanctions resolution






UNITED NATIONS: The United States on Monday circulated a resolution on sanctions against North Korea to other UN Security Council members and hopes for a vote within days, diplomats said.

The resolution condemns North Korea for staging a ballistic missile test in December and follows weeks of negotiations between the United States and China, diplomats said.

"The United States circulated the draft text today after getting agreement from China. The vote could be held Wednesday," a diplomat from the 15-member council told AFP.

China, the unpredictable North's closest ally, has opposed establishing new sanctions against Pyongyang for the December 12 rocket launch. But it has agreed to expand existing sanctions and to the formal resolution instead of a lower-level statement, diplomats said.

The United States, supported by Japan and South Korea, had wanted tough new sanctions for the rocket launch, which was virtually unanimously condemned by the international community.

North Korea already faces UN sanctions for its nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009.

Under US-China agreement, new North Korean companies and entities could be added to the sanctions list, diplomats said. Individuals could be named for sanctions for the first time, they added.

The United States and China want a resolution passed before South Korea takes over the presidency of the Security Council in February, envoys said.

US and Chinese diplomats made no immediate comment on the resolution.

The Security Council agreed on a presidential statement, with lower standing than a binding resolution, after North Korea staged a failed rocket launch in April last year.

That had already called for a tightening of existing UN sanctions.

-AFP/ac



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Clouds ruin GeoEye's satellite image of inauguration





A nighttime shot of Washington, D.C. taken on January 19.



(Credit:
Chris Hadfield)


Aw, shucks: imaging company GeoEye could not capture a super high-resolution image of Obama's inauguration today from space.


Using its GeoEye-1 and IKONOS satellites positioned 423 miles above the Earth, the company tried and failed -- due to clouds -- on two separate attempts to capture the image of the inauguration, a GeoEye representative told CNET. GeoEye planned to release an interactive map of the ceremony with a built-in zoom and a slider that would have let the user compare this year's image to the one captured four years ago. Feel free to zoom around in the 2009 Inauguration image embedded below.





For those who just can't accept the bad news from GeoEye, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield snapped an image (seen above) of an illuminated Washington, D.C. several days before the inauguration. The day before the event, astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured a picture (seen below) of the greater National Mall area.


"This detailed view shows the Potomac River and its bridges at left, with National Mall at the center, stretching eastward from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument toward the Capitol building, where the inaugural ceremony will be held," NASA officials said in a statement.


In 2009, GeoEye released a satellite image of Obama's first Inauguration that clearly revealed the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the landmark event, which takes place on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.





A view of Washington, D.C. from space, taken on January 20.



(Credit:
NASA)


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MLK's "content of character" quote inspires debate

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This sentence spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been quoted countless times as expressing one of America's bedrock values, its language almost sounding like a constitutional amendment on equality.




20 Photos


Martin Luther King Jr.






Play Video


Martin Luther King III talks his father's legacy






Play Video


King, Civil Rights Act remembered



Yet today, 50 years after King shared this vision during his most famous speech, there is considerable disagreement over what it means.

The quote is used to support opposing views on politics, affirmative action and programs intended to help the disadvantaged. Just as the words of the nation's founders are parsed for modern meanings on guns and abortion, so are King's words used in debates over the proper place of race in America.

As we mark the King holiday, what might he ask of us in a time when both the president and a disproportionate number of people in poverty are black? Would King have wanted us to completely ignore race in a "color-blind" society? To consider race as one of many factors about a person? And how do we discern character?

For at least two of King's children, the future envisioned by the father has yet to arrive.

"I don't think we can ignore race," says Martin Luther King III.

"What my father is asking is to create the climate where every American can realize his or her dreams," he says. "Now what does that mean when you have 50 million people living in poverty?"

Bernice King doubts her father would seek to ignore differences.

"When he talked about the beloved community, he talked about everyone bringing their gifts, their talents, their cultural experiences," she says. "We live in a society where we may have differences, of course, but we learn to celebrate these differences."

The meaning of King's monumental quote is more complex today than in 1963 because "the unconscious signals have changed," says the historian Taylor Branch, author of the acclaimed trilogy "America in the King Years."

Fifty years ago, bigotry was widely accepted. Today, Branch says, even though prejudice is widely denounced, many people unconsciously pre-judge others.

"Unfortunately race in American history has been one area in which Americans kid themselves and pretend to be fair-minded when they really are not," says Branch, whose new book is "The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement."

Branch believes that today, King would ask people of all backgrounds - not just whites - to deepen their patriotism by leaving their comfort zones, reaching across barriers and learning about different people.

"To remember that we all have to stretch ourselves to build the ties that bind a democracy, which really is the source of our strength," Branch says.

Bernice King says her father is asking us "to get to a place - we're obviously not there - but to get to a place where the first thing that we utilize as a measurement is not someone's external designation, but it really is trying to look beyond that into the substance of a person in making certain decisions, to rid ourselves of those kinds of prejudices and biases that we often bring to decisions that we make."

That takes a lot of "psychological work," she says, adding, "He's really challenging us."

For many conservatives, the modern meaning of King's quote is clear: Special consideration for one racial or ethnic group is a violation of the dream.

The quote is like the Declaration of Independence, says Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank that studies race and ethnicity. In years past, he says, America may have needed to grow into the words, but today they must be obeyed to the letter.

"The Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal," Clegg says. "Nobody thinks it doesn't really mean what it says because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. King gave a brilliant and moving quotation, and I think it says we should not be treating people differently on the basis of skin color."

Many others agree. King's quote has become a staple of conservative belief that "judged by the color of their skin" includes things such as unique appeals to certain voter groups, reserving government contracts for Hispanic-owned businesses, seeking more non-white corporate executives, or admitting black students to college with lower test scores.

In the latest issue of the Weekly Standard magazine, the quote appears in the lead of a book review titled "The Price Was High: Affirmative Action and the Betrayal of a Colorblind Society."

Considering race as a factor in affirmative action keeps the wounds of slavery and Jim Crow "sore and festering. It encourages beneficiaries to rely on ethnicity rather than self-improvement to get ahead," wrote the author, George Leef.

Last week, the RightWingNews.com blog included "The idea that everyone should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin" in a list of "25 People, Places and Things Liberals Love to Hate."

"Conservatives feel they have embraced that quote completely. They are the embodiment of that quote but get no credit for doing it," says the author of the article, John Hawkins. "Liberals like the idea of the quote because it's the most famous thing Martin Luther King said, but they left the principles behind the quote behind a long time ago."


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