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Insider Report: Hillary May Pull Out, Coulter on Couric Special From NewsMax's Most Informed Sources
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Ted Sorensen: Obama Is the New JFK Former John F. Kennedy adviser and speechwriter Ted Sorensen says the similarities between JFK's candidacy in 1960 and Barack Obama's candidacy today are "striking." Both Kennedy and Obama entered the race for the Democratic nomination as first-term U.S. senators in their 40s, and both were faced with obstacles many observers deemed insurmountable, Sorensen writes in an opinion piece in Britain's Guardian newspaper. For Kennedy, the obstacles were his lack of experience when compared to other Democratic candidates, and his Catholic heritage — no Catholic had ever been elected president up until that point. Obama faces the same criticism for his lack of experience, and must overcome the reluctance of some to vote for a black presidential candidate.
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The "subtly bigoted phrase" most often heard during Kennedy's campaign was that it was "too early" for a Catholic president, Sorensen recalls. "No doubt Obama will hear — or has already heard — similar sentiments about the color of his skin." Kennedy and Obama were both Harvard-educated, and both entered the political limelight as the result of starring roles at the Democratic convention preceding their candidacies — Kennedy in 1956, when he nominated Adlai Stevenson, and Obama in 2004. Both also gained national attention through their best-selling inspirational books — JFK's "Profiles in Courage" and Obama's "The Audacity of Hope." "Both men immediately stood out as young, handsome, and eloquent new faces who attracted and excited ever larger and younger crowds at the grass-roots level," Sorensen writes. "Both were cerebral rather than emotional speakers, relying on the communication of values and hope rather than cheap applause lines."
Sorensen concludes in the Guardian: "Above all, after eight years out of power and two bitter defeats, Democrats in 1960, like today, wanted a winner — and Kennedy, despite his supposed handicaps, was a winner." Regarding civil rights, the Cuban missile crisis, the space race and moon landing, and other issues, Sorensen added, Kennedy "succeeded by demonstrating the same courage, imagination, compassion, judgment, and ability to lead and unite a troubled country that he had shown during his presidential campaign. I believe Obama will do the same." Editor's Note: 2. NY Times May Scrap TimesSelect Pay Site The New York Times is under pressure from staffers to pull the plug on its subscription-only TimesSelect online service. The two-year-old service, which has 225,000 subscribers, charges $49.95 a year to allow online access to columns from Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Thomas L. Friedman and other Times writers, although subscribers to the print edition can get access for no additional charge. "A growing chorus of people within the paper" are lobbying to shut down the service, the New York Post reports. TimesSelect is reportedly making money, and Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and President Janet Robinson are in favor of keeping it alive. But many within the company think the service is not a good idea for the long haul, an insider told the Post, adding: "There are many who think they would be better just sending it globally and selling advertising rather than operating a toll booth." Editor's Note: 3. Whittaker Chambers Library to Open in Maryland Plans are underway for a library housing the personal papers of anti-communist hero Whittaker Chambers, who played a pivotal role in exposing Soviet spying in the U.S. more than a half-century ago. Chambers' son John said he has begun the process of cataloguing the papers and building the library, on the site of the Chambers farm in Westminster, Md. He hopes to open the library next spring, according to a newsletter from Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., an organization concerned with United Nations' influence on American affairs. Whittaker Chambers, a communist turned vehement anti-communist, first provided authorities with information about communist spying by people in the U.S. government — including senior State Department official Alger Hiss — in 1939.
But no actions were taken until House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings in 1948. Whittaker testified about Hiss's activities as a communist and Soviet spy, and Hiss was convicted of perjury for earlier testimony before a federal grand jury.
He could not be prosecuted for espionage because the statue of limitations had run out. Sentenced to five years in prison, he served less than four years. One other result of the Congressional hearings was that they catapulted a young Republican congressman into national headlines. His name was Richard Nixon. In 1952, Chambers published the book "Witness," which Ronald Reagan later credited with helping convince him to switch from Democrat to conservative Republican. Chambers died in 1961. His farm was declared a national historic landmark during the Reagan administration, and President Reagan posthumously bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Chambers. "The possibility of a rich depository of the papers of an individual who was so intimately involved, in multiple ways, with Soviet espionage in the United States from the 1920s until his death in 1961, is an exciting one for historians of those years," said G. Edward White, professor of law at the University of Virginia and author of "Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars." Hiss helped lay the groundwork for the United Nations and also advised President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta conference, "which defined post-World War II Europe and betrayed Eastern European nations to Soviet control," according to Kincaid. He died in 1996 at age 92. Editor's Note: 4. Condi Rice Spurned by Major Papers Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote an opinion piece about Lebanon and offered it to major newspapers both here and abroad. But in a sign of the major media's dislike of Bush administration foreign policy, not one of the papers agreed to publish it. "Think about that — every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state," Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. Brinkley suggested Rice's influence had dwindled. Rice enlisted the aid of John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems, and together they wrote about public/private partnerships that might help rebuild Lebanon following last summer's conflict there. Price Floyd, until recently the State Department's director of media affairs, said the essay was sent to papers including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. When there were no takers, the department tried a foreign newspaper, the Financial Times of London, but again there was no interest. "As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper, but finally they just gave up," writes Brinkley, a former foreign policy correspondent for The New York Times. "Floyd said: 'I kept hearing the same thing: There's no news in this.' The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush's wise leadership. 'It read like a campaign document.'" Brinkley opines that Rice's waning influence can be attributed in part to her department's failure to achieve significant positive results, especially regarding Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Russia, and Venezuela. Recalling a round-the-world trip Brinkley took with Rice soon after she took office 2 1/2 years ago, he said back then crowds enthusiastically greeted Condi, interviewers peppered her with questions about a possible White House run, and "one reporter in India told her she was 'arguably the most powerful woman in the world.'" Editor's Note: 5. Organized Crime Funded by Cybercrime Organized crime use to own all the rackets: drugs, prostitution, illegal gambling, and loan sharking. Now, evidence organized crime is making more money on than Internet these days.
In fact, law enforcement says organized crime has not only moved into the lucrative realm of cybercrime, its proceeds from their cyberturf is actually funding the rest of its underground operations.
Criminal figures are using hackers to run scams and break into systems to steal
personal, business, and financial information that can be used for identify
theft and other nefarious activities, according to a report in the newsletter
Homeland Security Daily Wire.
6. We Heard . . . Editor's notes:
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