Thank you for contacting me regarding the expansion of domestic drilling in our nation. I appreciate hearing from you and would like to respond to your concerns.

The United States faces a fundamental need for increased domestic energy supply in the face of increased global demand to reduce energy prices. I share your concerns with the high price of fuel and its effects, particularly the unprecedented wealth reallocation resulting from our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

I helped design the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (S. 3711), which was passed into law in 2006. This bill opened 8 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf in the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration while securing environmental protection for Florida’s beaches. Although this opened OCS area contains trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and millions of barrels of oil, no new production has begun. Production in this area is the most immediate option we have for a large-scale increase in domestic energy supply. We must take advantage of this available asset before considering expanding coastal drilling that may jeopardize our beaches.

In order to increase domestic energy supply, I have consistently supported an environmentally responsible approach for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). I have also promoted coal-to-liquids technology, the development of cellulosic ethanol and other non-food-based renewable fuels, tax incentives for renewable energies, and the extraction of vast oil shale deposits in America’s West. To reduce demand, I have consistently supported increases in fuel efficiency standards and investment in mass transit. I am committed to both increasing domestic supply and decreasing domestic demand of energy in order to alleviate these factors that contribute to high fuel prices.

I am working closely with the Administration and my colleagues in the Senate to ensure that Florida’s voice is heard as we address the need for increased domestic energy supply. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any additional comments or questions. For more information about issues and activities important to Florida, please sign up for my weekly newsletter at http://martinez.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Mel Martinez
United States Senator

September 9, 2008

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Kurt in Pittsburgh, hello, sir.  Nice to have you on the EIB Network, and how about the Steelers defense?

CALLER:  How about those Steelers, huh?

RUSH:  How about that?

CALLER:  Hey, listen, Rush, longtime listener, first-time caller, one of those Bible, family, gun clingers from western Pennsylvania.

RUSH:  Thank you.

CALLER:  And I wanted to share a story with you.  A week ago last Saturday we went to the Palin-McCain rally in Washington, Pennsylvania, and we have a five-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, and we made a sign that said: ‘We Love Kids with Down Syndrome.’  So when they pulled in in their bus the sign did catch their, McCain and Palin and the rest of their family, it caught their eye, we could tell, they gave us a thumbs-up from the bus, so we were all excited just by that –

RUSH:  Wait, wait, wait.  Who gave you the thumbs up, McCain and Palin?

CALLER:  McCain, Palin, Cindy McCain, we could see them from the bus. We were in a position where we had eye contact with them –

RUSH:  Oh, cool!

CALLER:  My wife was holding our daughter.

RUSH:  Very, very, very cool.

CALLER:  It was really cool, Rush. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,’ because I love Governor Palin and so I thought that’s really neat.  So then we moved around as the bus was getting ready to pull out, we kind of positioned ourselves so we could just wave them on and a Secret Service agent came up to us and said, ‘Hey, can you come with us?’  I was like, ‘Do we have a choice?’

RUSH: (laughing) You shouldn’t have worried.  It’s not the Clinton administration.

CALLER: Right. So we accompanied them up the hill, we went right to the bus, where it was, and Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Cindy, Todd Palin, they’re all standing there. We’re in this inner circle with just us and them, and the Secret Service agent, and they came right up to us and thanked us for coming out, said they loved our sign, and Governor Palin immediately said, ‘May I hold your daughter?’ and our daughter Chloe, who’s five, went right to her, and I have some pictures I’d love to send you maybe when I’m done here, but Governor Palin was hugging Chloe, and then her little daughter brought their baby Trig who has Down syndrome from the bus, he was napping, and Chloe went right over and kissed him on the cheek, and my son Nolan who’s nine, he thanked her.

RUSH: This is amazing.

CALLER: I will send you all the stuff, Senator McCain was talking to my son, and we thanked him for his service, and he asked my son if he wanted to see the bus, and we were hanging out and it was very surreal. I felt like we could have had a pizza and a beer with them, they were so warm.

RUSH: You know what? I want to put you on hold. I want Snerdley to give you our super-secret, known-only-to-three-people here, e-mail address.

CALLER: I will send you everything, Rush.

RUSH: And then could you send us these pictures? Would you mind if we put them on the website?

CALLER: I would be honored, and my main thing is they are warm, kind, genuine people, and they represent the best of this country.

RUSH:  That’s right.  And when you send these pictures, make sure you identify them.  I mean, we’ll know Palin and McCain, of course.  Identify yourselves.

CALLER:  I will, I will identify everybody in the picture, Rush, and God bless you for being a beacon of hope and truth in this country.

RUSH:  Oh, no, no.  It’s nothing, it’s nothing.  You’re doing the Lord’s work.

CALLER:  Well, we’re very blessed and I want people to know what a blessing it is to have a child with Down syndrome. These kids, they’re angels.

RUSH:  That’s the thing.  There’s always good to be found in everything that happens.  It may be a while before it reveals itself.

CALLER:  Absolutely.

RUSH:  Right, and when she hugged my daughter I said, here’s the difference, this candidate embraces life and all its limitless possibilities.

RUSH:  All right.

CALLER:  That’s what she is.

RUSH:  Terrific, okay, I gotta run here, but I’m going to put you on hold.

CALLER:  Thank you, Rush.

RUSH:  Thank you, Kurt.  I really appreciate it.

END TRANSCRIPT

The facts surrounding the New York City rally organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, to protest the visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and demonstrate opposition to the Iranian government’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons, are slowly trickling out.

Governor Sarah Palin, on behalf of the Republican presidential ticket, was invited and accepted.

Senator Hillary Clinton was invited presumably to represent the Obama team but then withdrew in a [1] fit of pique, we are told, upon learning that Palin would be there.

An effort was extended to [2] Senator Joe Biden but he was otherwise occupied.

A group of [3] liberal Jewish groups then prevailed on the rally organizers to disinvite Palin. What was to be a bipartisan show of support had collapsed. The McCain camp fired off a statement on Thursday:

Throughout my political career, I have sought to rise above partisanship on critical national issues. Nowhere is this truer than on important matters of national security. Earlier this year, Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and I issued a joint statement on the genocide in Darfur and pledged to support efforts to bring it to an end. Earlier this month, Senator Obama and I put the campaign aside to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on our country and talk about the importance of national service.

“Next Monday, the day before Iranian President Ahmadinejad is to speak before the United Nations General Assembly, several organizations will sponsor an event to draw attention to the importance of halting Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Governor Palin and I share a strong belief that a nuclear armed Iran poses a grave threat to the security of Americans and to our allies. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The risk that Iran would provide terrorists with a nuclear weapon is too great for the world to ignore. Iranian President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust occurred and called Israel a ’stinking corpse.’ A nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the entire region.

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should be a shared goal of every American, not another occasion for partisan posturing.

“Governor Palin was pleased to accept an invitation to address this rally and show her resolve on this grave national security issue, regrettably that invitation has since been withdrawn under pressure from Democratic partisans. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Republicans, Democrats and independents alike to oppose Ahmadinejad’s goal of a nuclear armed Iran. Senator Obama’s campaign had the opportunity to join us. Senator Obama chose politics rather than the national interest.

Thursday evening I spoke with Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, about the cancellation of the event next week. He said: “This is one of the saddest days for the Jewish community — to let a vocal minority of partisan folks hijack a bipartisan event.” “We should send a message to Iran and the rest of the world that Iran’s effort to acquire nuclear weapons is unacceptable,” he added. Brooks holds activist groups such as  “J Street” (a group of Left wing activists attempting to style themselves as an alternative to AIPAC) responsible for “stirring the pot” and pressuring the event’s sponsors to withdraw the invitation to allow Palin to speak. He said, “At the end of the day all we can ask of community leaders is to invite both sides to attend.”

Many observers, regardless of political preference, would agree that this was a shameful episode.

Apparently, the Obama camp and its allies on the left have higher priorities than a showing of bipartisan solidarity on an issue they claim to care about. Whatever drama surrounds the Clintons had ripped through the Jewish community, dashed a showing of bipartisan support, and given Ahmadinejad a moral victory.

But Barack Obama may have been the biggest loser on a number of fronts.

Obama is after all struggling to [4] overcome skepticism in the Jewish community. His past [5] affiliation with Palestinian groups, his flip-flop on an “Undivided Jerusalem,” his coterie of [6] advisors who have made troubling comments regarding Israel or America Jews have given pause to some Jews, the vast majority of whom have voted Democratic in presidential elections.  The fact that partisan politics by Obama’s allies — and perhaps his own campaign — submarined an event in defense of both U.S. and Israeli interests will not go unnoticed. Many will ask: “Is bumping Palin off the stage more important than standing up to Ahmadinejad?” It seems so.

On a broader level, Obama’s claim to fame is his ability — how can we forget — to organize his community. His dismal failure here, indeed his role in wrecking a community protest, doesn’t speak well of his ability to bring people together for a common purpose.

And finally, to the extent this implicates Joe Biden, it adds fuel to the fire of burning discontent as to his selection as VP. This is not his only [7] faux pas with Jewish organizations, it should be noted. Just last month he got into a row with AIPAC which had to be quickly patched up.

Bluntly put, this is a mess. The group’s organizers, the liberal Jewish groups who thought it more important to “dis” Palin than Ahmadinejad, and the Obama camp, all look amateurish and misguided. The others have a lifetime to live this down — Obama has less than fifty days before Election Day.

So the question remains: How’s he going to fix it?

John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland
Does John McCain represent a third Bush term? The Obama campaign claims the two are almost indistinguishable. It was the mantra during the Democratic convention, and it is the theme of new ads Barack Obama is running. The ads claim that McCain is “no maverick when he votes with Bush 90 percent of the time.”

This week Obama has begun a constant refrain that there is “not a dime worth of difference” between Bush’s and McCain’s views. It is a consistent theme of Democratic pundits on talk shows.

Is this the same McCain who drove Republicans nuts on campaign finance, the environment, taxes, torture, immigration and more? Where has McCain not crossed swords with his own party?

As it’s being used, the 90 percent figure, from Congressional Quarterly, is nonsensical. As Washington Post congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman explained, “The vast majority of those votes are procedural, and virtually every member of Congress votes with his or her leadership on procedural motions.”

Obama might want to be a little careful with these attacks, as the same measure has him voting with Democrats 97 percent of the time.

Fortunately, a number of organizations on the left and right provide useful evaluations on how congressmen and senators vote each year. These conservative and liberal groups pick the votes they care about most and figure out how often lawmakers match up with their positions.

Well-known organizations that rank congressional voting include the American Conservative Union on the right, Americans for Democratic Action on the left, and the nonpartisan National Journal in the middle. The League of Conservation Voters also ranks politicians from an environmentalist position.

These groups’ rankings from 2001 to 2007 paint fairly similar pictures, putting McCain to the left of most Republican senators and to the right of most Democratic senators – though usually much closer to the average Republican.

The American Conservative Union finds that the average Republican senator voted conservatively 85 percent of the time, and that the average Democrat voted conservatively 13 percent of the time. McCain voted conservatively 74 percent of the time.

Although it’s at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Americans for Democratic Action essentially agreed. It found that the average Republican senator voted liberally just over 12 percent of the time, and the average Democrat voted liberally 89 percent of the time. McCain voted liberally 24 percent of the time – twice as frequently as the average Republican.

McCain missed too many votes campaigning in 2007 to be included in the National Journal ranking for that year, but it found that he voted conservatively 59.4 percent of the time from 2001 to 2006.

According to the League of Conservation Voters, John McCain is the ultimate centrist. While the average Republican supported liberal environmentalist positions 13 percent of the time, and the average Democrat supported them 76 percent of the time, McCain’s 44 percent put him in the middle.

Another way to look at these numbers is to see how many of the 99 other senators voted more conservatively than McCain. In 2006, these four groups ranked McCain as the 47th, 46th, 44th and 51st most conservative member of the Senate, respectively. Surely, McCain is not nearly as liberal as the typical Democratic senator, but rankings from the left, middle and right find he is more liberal than the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate.

What issues put McCain well to the left of the average Senate Republican? The American Conservative Union lists a number of specific votes on which he differed from most other Republicans, including:

Taxes. He opposed reducing capital-gains tax rates, eliminating the inheritance tax and lowering income-tax rates.

Environment. He opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, supported compliance with the Kyoto global-warming treaty, supported requiring businesses to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, favored stricter mercury-emission rules for power plants, and supported stricter fuel-efficiency standards.

Other regulations. McCain consistently supported stricter campaign-finance regulations and voted to mandate that handguns be sold only with locks.

A number of these votes were closely contested. Some of McCain’s votes led to a 50-50 deadlock in the Senate, requiring Vice President Cheney to break the tie.

In contrast to the very liberal ratings given to Obama, the interest groups find that there are about as many senators to McCain’s right as there are to his left. This might not endear him to many conservatives or liberals. But it is a real distortion to claim he is a Bush clone.

E-mail John R. Lott Jr. at jlott@umd.edu.

Martinez cop died trying to save 6 captives

(09-07) 21:10 PDT Martinez — Trying to save three women and three screaming children from an angry gunman, Martinez police officers Paul Starzyk and Ian Leong stood in a narrow hallway leading to a second-floor apartment on Saturday – and prepared to go in.

But before they could, police officials said, gunman Felix Sandoval poked a hand out from behind the door and opened fire, blindly, with a .38-caliber revolver. Starzyk, a 47-year-old sergeant, was wearing a bulletproof vest but was hit twice in the upper body.

Starzyk initially returned fire along with Leong, but he was fatally wounded.

Within minutes, officials said, Sandoval was shot dead by a third officer who responded to the apartment and unleashed a German shepherd. Once inside the apartment, authorities found a 44-year-old woman – the cousin of Sandoval’s estranged wife – dead in the kitchen.

The account of the three deaths in Martinez emerged Sunday as relatives and friends of the two victims grieved.

Police and witnesses said Sandoval, a 49-year-old retired laborer with three children and a recent arrest for methamphetamine use, intended to attack his estranged wife – who last year filed for divorce and obtained a restraining order against him.

He tried to find his wife at her business, Elegant Hair Design on Pacheco Boulevard, at about 11:30 a.m., police said. Margarita Sandoval hid in her shop, but Sandoval didn’t know that – and he continued searching for her in the apartment building the couple owned behind the salon.

“What we had was trained officers determined to attempt to save lives, and they put their own lives in jeopardy,” Martinez Police Chief Tom Simonetti said in an interview Sunday. “Unfortunately, it’s a one-in-a-million shot, and the suspect managed to hit Sgt. Starzyk.”

Colleagues of Starzyk – described as popular, funny and well-schooled in police tactics – were in mourning Sunday, with officers from neighboring jurisdictions covering their patrols.

Starzyk was the father of two young boys and a girl. The Chicago native was a banker until his early 30s, then joined the Martinez force as a volunteer reserve before his permanent hiring in 1995, Simonetti said.

He was a former leader of the agency’s SWAT team, and he taught officers how to shoot weapons properly and how to deal with armed suspects. He was promoted in December to sergeant. On the side, he volunteered at a soup kitchen.

“I can’t say enough good things about him,” Simonetti said. “It’s just hard for all of us here. We’re having a tough time.”

Fought for battered women

Friends of Sandoval’s other apparent victim – Catalina Torres, a 44-year-old mother of two grown sons – said her death was bitterly ironic because she had worked as a volunteer advocate for battered women at Concord-based Stand! Against Domestic Violence.

“Catalina was an advocate for women’s rights, and she died doing what she believed in,” said Pam Center, a friend. “It’s too ironic – it’s terrible.”

Torres was born in Mexico and grew up in Martinez, then attended Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill and St. Mary’s College in Moraga, friends said.

She returned to Diablo Valley College to tutor math students for more than 10 years, said Rachel Westlake, division dean of the Mathematics Department.

“She was very good at working with students that had a lot of anxiety with mathematics,” said Westlake.

Sandoval, meanwhile, had been upset with his wife for accusing him of abuse, a friend said Sunday.

“He said, ‘I want people to know the truth,’ ” said Mario Fiorella, his longtime friend and neighbor on a quiet Martinez cul-de-sac. “He said he wanted to take a lie detector test” to prove he wasn’t a threat to his wife.

Last year, Margarita Sandoval petitioned to divorce her husband and obtained a restraining order against him that was to expire in 2010, Contra Costa County Superior Court records show. The couple was scheduled to return to court on Oct. 27 for a settlement conference in connection with their divorce.

Fiorella said Sandoval’s divorce was complicated because the couple owned the building that houses the salon and a tattoo parlor, plus the apartment building and a nearby home. Sandoval talked about moving to Mexico, where he was born, after the divorce was finalized, Fiorella said.

Sandoval retired from contractor Galletti and Sons Inc. in Martinez a few years ago after suffering knee and back injuries, Fiorella said. He said Sandoval was a gun enthusiast with a small collection of firearms.

Sandoval’s neighbor also said Sandoval was one of the kindest and most loving people he had ever met, and said he trusted him completely. He said his friend “must have snapped.”

‘This was her refuge’

But friends and relatives of Sandoval’s wife, Margarita Sandoval, said she had become increasingly fearful of him.

“She was really scared,” said a longtime friend who declined to give her name as she stood outside the salon. “She knew her husband could be dangerous, but this was her refuge.”

Felix Sandoval seemed to be in good spirits Saturday morning, Fiorella said, playing pool with his teenage son in his garage at 9:30 a.m. and then attending his son’s soccer game near downtown Martinez.

Soon after, though, the father of three drove his classic Ford Mustang convertible to his wife’s small salon. The first 911 call came in at 11:35 a.m., Simonetti said.

Kellie Schramm, 43, of Martinez, said she was getting her hair cut when she heard glass breaking. Sandoval had used his bare hands and arms to bash through the salon’s front window, bloodying himself in the process.

“Everybody started screaming,” Schramm said in an interview Sunday.

She said Sandoval said, “Where is she?” while she and two other female customers tried to escape through a side door – which was locked. The other customers then managed to flee in another direction, but Schramm was stuck.

“I turned and he was standing next to me near the back door,” Schramm said. “The gun was in his right hand.”

Schramm said Sandoval’s 19-year-old daughter, who works at the salon, was hysterically pleading with him to stop what he was doing. But it was no use, and Sandoval, wearing a hat, continued to ask, “Where is your mother?”

Schramm said she ran past Sandoval and into a small closet, roughly 10 feet wide and 3 feet deep.

“All I could think of was, ‘He’s going to shoot me,’ ” Schramm said. “It happened so fast.

“I heard the doorknob turn, and the door opened, and there he was,” she said. “I said, ‘Please don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!’ He just shook his head and shut the door. Luckily for me, he wanted someone specific.”

Simonetti said Sandoval told his daughter that he was going to kill her mother and made comments about killing her and his other children – then climbed stairs to the apartment where Torres had fled. It appears he then kicked and shot the apartment door to get it open.

Leong, a K-9 officer, was the first to arrive at 11:37 a.m., Simonetti said. He heard gunfire. He left his dog in his car but grabbed his MP5 submachine gun.

Starzyk pulled up a minute later and grabbed his own AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

Children’s screams

After climbing the stairs to the apartment, Simonetti said, the officers heard children screaming inside.

“They decide that they have what we call an ‘active shooter’-type situation,” the chief said. “We have someone that’s doing harm and we need to stop it.”

All of a sudden, Simonetti said, a hand and revolver came from behind the door. Both Starzyk and Leong returned fire until the hand disappeared.

Struck twice, Starzyk fell, leaving Leong to try to drag him to safety, Simonetti said. But Sandoval fired again, the same way, and Leong returned fire again.

Soon, Simonetti said, another K-9 officer, Cpl. Glenn Walkup, arrived and pulled Starzyk out of the way. Then he sent his German shepherd, Enzo, into the apartment – where he found Sandoval and dragged his legs into the doorway.

“Walkup sees the suspect on his back with the gun pointed at the dog,” Simonetti said. “He shoots him twice. The confrontation is over.”

Leong made an “officer down” call at 11:40 a.m., Simonetti said. Officers reported a “code 4″ – a secure scene – at 11:41 a.m. The whole encounter had lasted six minutes.

Inside the apartment, two women were found screaming hysterically and three small children were found in a closet, cowering, Simonetti said. He said one of the women said she witnessed Sandoval shoot Torres in the kitchen.

“It was not a pleasant thing,” Simonetti said. “The reality is, based on their actions, there are five people alive today that might not be.”

Staff writers Henry K. Lee and Wyatt Buchanan contributed to this report. E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@sfchronicle.com.

We rarely get a chance to see another country’s editorial about the USA .

Read this excerpt from a Romanian Newspaper. The article was written by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu and published under the title ‘C’ntarea Americii, meaning ‘Ode To America ‘) in the Romanian newspaper Evenimentulzilei ‘The Daily Event’ or ‘News of the Day’

~An Ode to America ~

Why are Americans so united?  They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color!  They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart.
Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of losers.
Nobody rushe d to empty their bank accounts.
Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about
Instead the Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.

After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, p utting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in ev ery place and on every car a governmen t official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing:’God Bless America !’

I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have kill ed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being?  Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put into collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way?
Their land?  Their history? Their economic Power?  Money?
I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one conclusion… Only freedom can work such miracles.

Cornel Nistorescu

OBAMA’S WOMEN PROBLEM

By DICK MORRIS

Published on TheHill.com on July 29, 2008.

If soccer moms determined the outcome of the 1996 presidential race and security moms tipped the balance in 2004, it is beginning to look as if older moms are the key to the 2008 contest. Obama has a problem among women over 40 and a big problem among women over 50. These groups, normally the staunchest of Democratic supporters, are showing a propensity to back McCain and a disinclination to support Obama.

According to the latest Fox News survey, Obama is winning among women under 40 by 13 points, but McCain is winning among women aged 41-45 by four points. Among women 50 and over, McCain is three points ahead. Obama’s 48-35 lead among women under 40 is normal for a Democrat, but to trail among women in their 40s by 45-41 and by women over 50 by 38-35 is extraordinary.

The problem is that older women don’t like Obama as much as younger women do. While 70 percent of women under 40 have a favorable opinion of the Democratic candidate, only 58 percent of women in their 40s feel the same way, and only 52 percent of those over 50 see him favorably.

For a Democrat to be losing among women over 40 is without precedent in the past 20 years.

In fact, the gap between male and female voting preference in this election is far lower than it normally is. Among people under 40, men back Obama by eight points and women support him by 13. Among those in their 40s, men back McCain by 11 points and women support him by four. And for those over 50, men vote for the Republican by a nine-point margin while women prefer him by three points.

Usually, the gender gap runs at least 10 points in each age group and, more usually, averages a 15-point differential. The lower gap in this race does not indicate any special popularity for McCain or negatives on Obama among men. Men are voting the way they usually do. It’s women who are making the big difference and keeping this race tied.

Part of the problem may stem from Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Hillary drew her strongest support from older women who still remembered the sexism of their youth and their struggles to pierce the glass ceiling. For younger women, sexism has much less personal relevance and they were less drawn to her candidacy.

But a bigger problem may be a cultural alienation older white women feel toward Obama. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright may linger as a worry in their increasingly gray heads as they contemplate an Obama presidency. This fear of the unknown and the gap they seem to feel with Obama is so strong that it is overcoming their normal proclivity to back Democrats.

Of course, McCain is a uniquely attractive candidate to the Democratic and independent base. Long regarded as a maverick Republican, he attracts these swing voters and is ideally positioned to exploit the estrangement between older women and Barack Obama.

Would choosing Hillary as a running mate assuage the concerns of older white women? It might.

They could get enthusiastic, one would think, about seeing a woman sitting a few feet away from the president in the Oval Office (again!).

But Hillary would bring with her a different set of problems. Her candidacy would invite scrutiny of Bill’s financial dealings, most recently exposed in The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the incredible corruption of his buddy the president of Kazakhstan.

The problem is Obama. And it can only be solved by Obama, not by his running mate. For his part, McCain should take dead aim at this demographic, perhaps by selecting a female running mate who would appeal to them.

The current favorite, Mitt Romney, does him no earthly good with these folks, and his Mormonism is likely to be a big turnoff. But McCain could choose Condi Rice or any number of other Republican women (like Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator) and attract these dissident women.

Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick’s columns!

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Lausanne, Switzerland – An agreement between the Iraqi government and the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday clears the way for Iraqi participation in the Olympic Games in Beijing

The case has also sparked new debate over illegal immigration. The Chronicle reports Ramos, an undocumented immigrant, had been convicted of two other felonies as a juvenile but was never deported due to San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city.

It’ worth a laugh!