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Panetta: From Washington Insider to CIA Outsider

For Leon Panetta, the CIA’s presumptive new boss, the hard part is yet to come. A confirmation hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee was hardly the trial-by-fire that some had predicted for President Barack Obama’s nominee, and since he has been unanimously confirmed by the panel, his ratification by the full Senate is expected to be uncomplicated. But Panetta must now take charge of an agency battered by years of controversy and scandal, ranging from failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks and faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to the torture of terrorism suspects and, most recently, allegations of rape by the agency’s Algeria station chief.

Panetta told the committee that his goal as director of Central Intelligence would be “to prevent surprise.” He spoke forcefully against the use of torture and the Bush Administration’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which involved moving detainees to third countries where they could be tortured. At the same time, Panetta drew a line under the abuses of the past, saying no agency member should be prosecuted for using interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that were authorized by the Bush Justice Department. And the nominee said his extensive political experience would help him in his new gig. “I know Washington,” Panetta said. “I know why it works, and why it fails to work.”

Panetta, 70, is the consummate Washington insider: he was President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and a longtime Congressman from California. But his nomination ran into some early trouble when the Obama transition team failed to consult Intelligence Committee head Senator Dianne Feinstein before naming Panetta. Feinstein let it be known that she would have preferred an intelligence professional for the job. But at the hearing, Feinstein said she was reassured that Panetta would “surround [himself] with seasoned professionals.”

Republican Senator Kit Bond, the committee’s vice chairman, was less forgiving. “Many of us believe that the CIA director should have a professional intelligence background, which you clearly don’t have,” he told Panetta.

But several former intelligence officials have told TIME that Panetta’s political experience will be an invaluable asset. “You have lots of smart people at the agency who can do the intelligence side,” says Paul Pillar, a 28-year CIA veteran who teaches at Georgetown University. “What Panetta brings is an understanding of the political side of things, and that’s a big part of the [director’s] job.”

The CIA has had mixed experiences with directors that came from outside its ranks. Clinton appointee John Deutch , for example, was regarded as a disaster. After he resigned, Deutch was found to have kept unclassified material in his personal computers; it took a presidential pardon to save him from further investigation.

But other “civilians” appointed to the job have had great success — President George H.W. Bush , for one, is credited with restoring the CIA’s morale after a series of scandals.

A retired top CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Panetta could learn from the examples of Deutch and Bush. “He shouldn’t turn up at Langley and say to the world, ‘This place is broken and I’m going to fix it,’ like Deutch did,” he says. “Bush was successful because he respected the agency and used his political skills to make it stronger.”

Panetta’s main challenge, say former intelligence officials, is to restore the CIA’s public image. In the latest scandal, the CIA station chief in Algiers has been brought back to the U.S. following allegations that he raped two women — a case that will likely be waiting on Panetta’s desk on his first day. Although the incident may be a one-off, says Fred Burton, a former intelligence analyst with the Diplomatic Security Service who now works for the private analysis firm Stratfor, it raises “questions about the hiring process, the background checks. How does a person like that get in [the CIA]”

Panetta, says Pillar, “will need to work on outside perceptions of the agency. It’s not only about image, it’s about an understanding of what the CIA can and can’t do.”

Another challenge is building a cordial relationship with Admiral Dennis Blair, the new director of National Intelligence. Although the CIA director ranks lower than the DNI, Panetta has considerably more clout inside the Beltway than Blair does. That could make for a tricky relationship. “It’s a bit upside-down,” says another former agency official. “In some ways, it would have made more sense to make Panetta DNI and Blair the DCI.”

Responding to a question at the hearing, Panetta described Blair as his “boss” and promised to work closely with the DNI.

Read “The CIA Scandals: How Bad a Blow”

See the top 10 Secret Service code names.

Israel’s Angry Elections

Israels Angry Elections

One by one, in reverse order, the leaders of Israel’s top three political parties appeared on television the night of the Feb. 10 elections and declared victory. This was clever, since none of them had really won. Avigdor Lieberman, whose extreme anti-Arab Yisrael Beitenu party finished third, went on first. His party had surged in the final weeks and would now, he boasted, be “the key” to forming a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party finished second, appeared next. He had won, he said, because Likud was the leading right-wing party and conservatives of various stripes had gained a majority of seats in the Knesset. But Netanyahu had been expecting a big victory; his support had plummeted in the last days. Finally, there was Tzipi Livni, whose moderate Kadima party won one more seat than Likud … but didn’t really win either, because Netanyahu was right: he would probably have an easier path to building a parliamentary majority than Livni would.

Israelis were both irked and entranced by the results. It had been an uninspiring campaign. There was no Barack Obama in the race; even Lieberman, the hot candidate, was a tepid speaker. For Israelis, a nation of political junkies, the aftermath will be more fun than the campaign: there will be a fascinating dance as the various players wheel and backstab in search of a governing coalition. For the rest of the world, however, the results are cause for concern. And for the Obama Administration, Israel presents an even greater foreign policy challenge than before — especially if, as expected, Lieberman’s extremists join the government.

If none of the winners really won, the loser — the Israeli left — clearly lost. The traditional liberal parties, Labor and Meretz, were decimated. Their supporters fled to the moderate Livni in the hope of thwarting a Netanyahu victory. After the war in Gaza, the peace movement seemed pointless: the Palestinians were shattered, unable to govern themselves, much less negotiate a peace. It was telling that the best-known figure on the Israeli left was Labor’s Ehud Barak, the man who had planned and executed the war.

Of all the election-night orators, Lieberman appeared the most confident. His support had grown since the war, on the strength of Jewish anger at Israel’s indigenous Arabs, some of whom had cheered Hamas and waved Palestinian flags during the fighting. Among other things, Lieberman had suggested that Israel should fight Hamas as “the U.S. did with the Japanese” — which some people saw as raising the remarkable specter of innocent Israeli Arabs interned in concentration camps. “Lieberman has created a classic European anti-immigrant party,” said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator. “Only his supporters are the immigrants, and their targets are people who have been on this land forever.”

Indeed, much of Lieberman’s support came from the most recent immigrants — the Russians, the Ethiopians, the refugees from Islamic persecution. For them, Lieberman’s call for signed loyalty oaths by all Israelis, including Arabs, seemed an obvious requirement for citizenship. But there was also a cold fury among mainstream Israelis who had given Gaza back to the Palestinians only to find it ruled by Hamas, armed by Iran and lobbing missiles across the border on a daily basis. “We have to crush terror and eliminate Hamas,” Lieberman said on election night, laying out his price for joining any coalition. “There can be no cease-fire with Hamas. There can be no negotiations, direct or indirect.”

So who is this Lieberman, and where did he come from Actually, from the same place as Livni and Netanyahu — from Likud. “Lieberman was Netanyahu’s chief of staff when Bibi was Prime Minister,” a veteran Likudnik told me. “He and Tzipi were also very close.” Lieberman left Netanyahu’s staff, turning right, in the late 1990s; Livni turned left, joining Ariel Sharon’s moderate Kadima party. But Livni made it clear that she would welcome Lieberman into a governing coalition if she won, which says something about the state of moderation in Israeli politics these days. In the hours after the election, it was assumed by the media and most politicians that Lieberman’s party would be asked to join any governing coalition, which says something about Israel’s growing isolation from the rest of the world.

It will be much harder now for the U.S. to continue its unambiguous support if Israel’s government prominently features a blatantly anti-Arab party. The ripples of Israeli intolerance will reverberate through the Middle East. It will make cooperation with Israel more difficult for moderate neighbors like Egypt and Jordan; it would make reconciliation with Israel impossible for Syria and Saudi Arabia.

There is an alternative, of course: a centrist coalition of Kadima, Likud and Labor. But that would require some real moderation and common sense, qualities overwhelmed by weariness and resentment in Israel’s dour winter of victory.

See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.

See pictures of Israeli soldiers sweeping into Gaza.

See pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza.

See pictures of 60 years of Israel.

After Israel’s Election, Palestinians Weigh a New Intifadeh

After Israels Election, Palestinians Weigh a New Intifadeh

Israel’s election and the Gaza conflict have revealed the scale of the
challenge facing U.S. President Barack Obama in jump-starting
Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Israeli voters tacked to the right, and
the government that results from Tuesday’s poll will be, if anything, even
less inclined to conclude a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinian
leadership than the current government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has
been. Meanwhile, the Gaza war cemented the stature of Hamas as the dominant political force among Palestinians.

Needless to say, there is not much optimism in the region over prospects for peace. But the urgency of resolving the conflict may be greater than ever, as the security situation is likely to see a perilous decline in the coming
months. Many members of Abbas’ Fatah movement, seeing themselves steadily eclipsed by Hamas, are urging a break from their President’s strategy of negotiating with the Israelis and a return to confronting the Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

Fatah leaders see the Israeli election as confirming what
they already knew: there’s nothing to be gained by continuing the
charade of U.S.-sponsored talks-about-talks with the Israelis. They could
not get what they needed from Olmert, and they know that his successors will take
even more of a hard line. From the Palestinian perspective, the past eight years
of waiting for negotiations with Israel have left Abbas empty-handed, while
the latest Gaza conflict has put Hamas in a stronger position than ever in the court of
Palestinian public opinion. Despite the violence by Hamas gunmen against Fatah activists in Gaza since the Israeli offensive, many in Fatah view their movement’s only hope of
re-establishing a leading role in Palestinian politics as joining a
unity government with Hamas — and beginning to directly challenge the Israeli
occupation in the West Bank. The fact that such a sentiment coincides with Israel’s electing a more hawkish government suggests that the Middle East could be in for a long, hot summer.

The Gaza bloodbath prompted President Obama to dispatch former Senator
George Mitchell on a listening tour, to signal the new Administration’s
intent to prioritize peacemaking efforts. But the events of the past six
weeks have confirmed that the Israeli-Palestinian peace policy bequeathed by
the Bush Administration is dead in the water. If the new Administration is
to make good on its promise of progress toward a two-state peace agreement, it will
need the sort of thorough policy review currently being undertaken on its
Iran policy — and a fresh set of ideas.

President Bush confined himself to promoting symbolic gestures of
support for a two-state peace agreement — largely in order to win
the support of Arab moderates for the U.S.’s role in Iraq, and later for its
stance against Iran. A series of photo opportunities,
summits and declarations culminated in talks between Olmert and Abbas over
what Washington termed a “shelf” agreement — that is, something that would be
concluded and then shelved for a better day when the Palestinian security
situation had been resolved to Israel’s satisfaction. But none of this
substantially altered the realities of the West Bank occupation, leaving Abbas with little to show for his counseling of negotiation
over confrontation. Abbas was further weakened and marginalized when reality
forced Israel to negotiate truces and prisoner swaps with Hamas, precisely
because it was Hamas that was creating the security challenges that Israel
needed to contain.

An independent Palestinian polling organization found last week that, for
the first time, Hamas has greater political support than Fatah across the West Bank and Gaza, and that it would win any election that were held right now. Aides to Abbas are reportedly anxious that an
Israel-Hamas deal to secure the release of the captive Israeli soldier Gilad
Shalit in Gaza could involve releasing the Hamas parliamentarians currently
in Israeli detention. The Palestinian legislature is currently unable to
meet because Israel is holding those lawmakers; if it were able to
convene, Hamas would be the majority party.

Hamas could, in fact, use its majority to bring down the government of
President Abbas, but it’s unlikely to do that because its own best interests
lie in reconstituting a unity government with Abbas. Reports from Cairo,
where Egypt is brokering truce arrangements, suggest that Hamas has accepted
the idea that forces loyal to Abbas be placed in control of the border crossings into
Gaza to allow the crossings to be reopened. And much of Fatah’s rank and file is
pressing for a unity government — an option forcefully opposed by the
Bush Administration. Fatah is due to elect new leadership next month; while Abbas may survive in a titular leadership
position, control of the organization is likely to pass to a younger, more
militant generation that is more inclined to make common cause with Hamas.

Of course, the Israelis, whether led by the Likud Party’s Benjamin Netanyahu or
Kadima’s Tzipi Livni, will flatly refuse to talk to a Palestinian government
that includes Hamas. But that may not deter Fatah, since the movement has
gained little by talking to Israeli governments that are plainly unwilling
to meet the Palestinians’ bottom lines. Abbas, even in the eyes of many in
his movement, gambled everything on the willingness of the U.S. to press
the Israelis to deliver a credible two-state peace solution and lost.
Now, many of those in Fatah are inclined to bet on a third intifadeh.
After all, in the short term at least, the status quo works for the Israelis — as long as there are no missiles raining down on Israel from Gaza. But for the Palestinians, the
continued occupation in the West Bank is untenable. And it will not have been lost on Fatah activists that Hamas’ more confrontational stance has forced the Israelis, however reluctantly, to the negotiating table, as in the case of the Egypt-brokered Gaza truce negotiations.

The benign neglect shown on the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort by
the Bush Administration won’t be an option for the Obama Administration. But the policy pursued by the Bush Administration in its final year of isolating
Hamas while promoting talks-about-talks between Olmert and Abbas is also no
longer viable. Israel has tacked to the right, away from moves toward a
solution based on the Arab peace plan for which Obama recently
expressed support. The terms of that plan call for a two-state solution
on the basis of the 1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem. That Palestinian
bottom line, however, is explicitly rejected by the bloc of parties now
with a majority in Israel’s parliament. And the consensus on the Palestinian
side is moving toward a Fatah-Hamas unity government.

Jump-starting an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, then, or simply
preventing a further deterioration of the situation will demand a massive
effort and new thinking on the part of the Obama Administration. As far
as the Palestinians are concerned, progress would require a
readiness by Obama to do something no U.S. Administration since that of
President George H.W. Bush has done: throw Washington’s weight behind
positions at odds with those of the Israeli government. And few Palestinians
are betting on Obama to turn up the heat on Israel. Instead, they’re more
likely to try and do it themselves.

— With reporting by Jamil
Hamad / Bethlehem

Stimulus Deal Shows Reach and Limits of Obama’s Power

Stimulus Deal Shows Reach — and Limits — of Obamas Power

Moving at lightning speed and, even more unexpectedly, ahead of their President’s Day deadline, House and Senate negotiators agreed on the details of a $789 billion stimulus package barely 30 hours after Senate passed their version. In the process, they handed President Barack Obama his first major legislative victory, though the deliberations that led up to its passage highlighted the enormous challenges Obama will face in more complicated endeavors like healthcare, entitlement and energy reform.

The Senate Democratic leadership was so anxious to declare victory that they ran to announce the news before their House counterparts had fully signed off. “The difference between the Senate and House versions were resolved,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told a throng of reporters Wednesday afternoon. “The bills were really quite similar. And I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been able to bridge those differences.”

Problem was, House Democrats weren’t resolved, their initial hesitancy to sign on reflecting their frustration at the cuts to state aid and education dollars that were made to woo the crucial votes of three Republican senators and moderate Democrats. Three hours and a few tweaks later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally announced her support. “We’re having a very — shall we say — highly spirited caucus right now, people’s spirits are high,” Pelosi said, emerging from a meeting of House Democrats. “They’re very proud of the work that we did in the House to create up to four million new jobs.” The deal could come to a vote in the House as early as Thursday and before the end of the week in the Senate.

The final hiccup in a three-week process that was full of hiccups was over about $10 billion added to the state stabilization fund that House Democrats wanted to see directed towards school construction. The three Senate Republicans — Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, without whose votes the bill would not have passed the Senate — had wanted to see the funds spent simply at governors’ discretion. Ultimately, the two sides agreed to allow governors the option of spending the money on school construction but not limit the money to that. “There’s no question that one of our overriding priorities in the House was a very strong commitment to school construction,” Pelosi said. “I would have liked it to be its own item, but the fact is, is that the outcome that we have is a good one as well.”

The bill is expected to draw at least a few GOP votes in the House, reflecting just how far to the center the measure has moved in passing the Senate. The final cost, $789 billion, is well below the $800 billion ceiling that the three Republicans and a group of 15 centrist Senate Democrats demanded in exchange for their support. Even so, House Republicans complained bitterly about being left out of the process. “Some have said that we don’t want to see anything done, nothing could be further from the truth,” said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. “I don’t think you’re going to find a Republican in the House who says he or she doesn’t think we need to act on a stimulus now. We’re just concerned that the actions being talked and discussed about in this conference committee is action that we will later regret, action that possibly could do more harm than good to get us out of the economic crisis that we’re in.”

No Republicans voted for the House bill and the meager support — just those three votes — in the Senate prompted GOP complaints that the Dems were not living up to Obama’s campaign promises of bipartisanship. But in voting en masse against the bill, the GOP is making a risky long-term bet, said Clyde Wilcox, a political science professor at Georgetown University. “The GOP is gambling here that the stimulus does not work, and they can make big gains in 2010 — given the sticky economy, that is certainly a possibility,” Wilcox said. “But all it took for Ronald Reagan in 1984 was for the economy to turn the corner, and he was reelected easily.”

Obama, whose chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro personally oversaw the negotiations on the Hill, hailed the agreement, saying it will help companies like Caterpillar, Inc., which announced 20,000 layoffs last month. “Just today, the CEO of Caterpillar said that if this American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is passed, his company would be able to rehire some of the employees they’ve been forced to lay off,” Obama said. “It’s also a plan that will provide immediate tax relief to families and businesses, while investing in priorities like health care, education, energy, and infrastructure that will grow our economy once more.”

The ahead-of-schedule victory gives Obama a massive running start on much of his campaign promises, from investments in clean energy and education to healthcare reform. But given how hard it was for the President to win the backing of enough members of his own party and the GOP, the stimulus fight showed the limits of even his seemingly enormous electoral mandate. Many Democrats, for instance, felt the White House had tried too hard to win the favor of Republicans who in the end didn’t lend their support. “I am not happy with it,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “You are not looking at a happy camper. I mean they took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction and they put it more into tax issues.”

The final bill is made up of about 35% tax cuts and 65% in spending, including more than $150 billion for infrastructure projects. The conferees removed $68 billion in business tax cuts that would have let companies write off recent losses, and a home buyers credit of $15,000 was reduced to $8,000. A provision to help car buyers write off their interest payments was also reduced from $11 billion to $2 billion. The bill does include a $70 billion annual Alternative Minimum Tax relief patch to prevent millions of middle class Americans from getting penalized by a measure that was originally targeted at the rich. Reid on Wednesday boasted the measure will cut taxes for 95% of workers, though the final agreement trimmed Obama’s proposed tax rebates of $500 a year for individuals and $1,000 for families to $400 and $800 respectively.

Also included is $54 billion in aid for states, many of which have already been forced to dramatically scale back services, though some critics say this may not be enough. “State and local governments, in particular, were hoping for much more aid, and they’ll undoubtedly be back as their own budgets sag,” said Don Kettl, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The bill includes $59 billion to help unemployed workers and extends aid for their health insurance. Another $90 billion will go to shoring up Medicaid, $19 billion for Obama’s “down payment” on modernizing healthcare records — short of the $25 billion he’d originally envisioned — and one-time payments of $250 for senior citizens, disabled veterans and disabled workers.

“Obama wins, big,” said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist for Stanford Washington Research Group. “He needed a victory. GOP got some sound bites for 2010 if this doesn’t boost the economy but they looked obstructionist and negative.” Still, if the $789 billion stimulus was a tidal wave, the next item on Obama’s to-do list is a tsunami — a $2.5 trillion bank bailout. Fortunately for the President, little of that plan requires congressional action. Unless, and until, that is, the Administration ends up needing more money for it, at which point no one will expect Congress to move as rapidly as it did this week.

See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.

Salma Hayek, Breast-Feeding and One Very Public Service

If anyone on the planet could convince men that breast-feeding moms can have a sex life, it would be Salma Hayek. The beautifully busty actress, on a trip to Sierra Leone to support a tetanus-vaccination project, nursed a starving baby she encountered while being filmed by ABC News. She did this, she told the camera crew, in part out of compassion for a suffering child, but also to help lift the stigma against breast-feeding in Africa, where men often think women can’t have sex if they’re still nursing. “So the husbands, of course, of these women are really encouraging them to stop [breast-feeding],” Hayek said.

But if breast-feeding is taboo in Africa, cross-nursing — in which one woman suckles another’s baby — is taboo in the U.S. While crunchy sites like Mothering.com have exploded with hundreds of giddy posts praising Hayek for promoting the cause of breast-feeding, plenty of online reactions were more squeamish. EW.com gave the YouTube clip its “biggest eyebrow raiser” of the day award.

Although donating breast milk is becoming more mainstream — Nadya Suleman’s octuplets have been consuming donated milk — cross-nursing still conjures up the specter of wet-nursing, with all its class issues and antiquated notions about women’s bodies yoked in service to others. The official word on cross-nursing is still nix. It seems that no institution, even those that support milk-sharing, is willing to endorse women who offer their milk without a breast pump serving as an intermediary. The Human Milk Banking Association of North America, which screens and distributes donated milk to hospitals across the U.S. and Canada, insists that banked milk be pasteurized before being distributed.

“Babies benefit from human milk donated by other mothers when their own mother’s milk is unavailable,” La Leche League says in its cross-nursing and wet-nursing statement. But, the statement continues, the group’s breast-feeding advocates “shall not ever suggest an informal milk-donation arrangement, including wet-nursing or cross-nursing.”

La Leche’s concerns include the possibility of transmitting infections, a decrease in supply for the donor’s own baby, psychological confusion on the part of the infant and the fact that the composition of breast milk changes as children get older.

But assuming that Hayek wasn’t at risk of contracting anything from the baby — who Hayek reported was healthy but whose mother simply had no milk — none of these caveats seem relevant. Hayek’s emergency nursing more closely resembles Chinese policewoman Jiang Xiaojuan’s heroic breast-feeding of several babies orphaned by the May earthquake, and few would argue she was anything but a lifesaver.

Sure, it was only one feeding, and that baby — who was born on the same day as Hayek’s daughter — will need a lot more milk to see him safely out of infancy. But perhaps Hayek’s gesture will indeed make a difference to the breast-feeding cause in Africa. And if nothing else, the world’s cross-nursers — long equated with wet nurses and made to feel shame for their hippie ways — suddenly have the most glamorous spokeswoman they could ever have imagined.

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Why Lincoln still matters

Abraham Lincoln is invoked by politicians of both parties, observes historian Ronald C. White Jr.
Two hundred years after his birth in a log cabin in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln continues to fascinate.

His moral clarity, his extraordinary gifts with language, his decisive role in preserving the Union and what some consider his ultimate martyrdom combine to make of Lincoln a mythic figure with a firm hold on our collective imagination. In conjunction with the bicentennial of his birth, a slew of new books on the 16th U.S. president have appeared. Among the best-reviewed is the biography “A. Lincoln” (Random House) by historian Ronald C. White Jr., who drew on new research for his portrait. CNN talked with White about Lincoln’s impact on the country, President Obama’s affinity for him and what lessons Lincoln has to offer Americans of today. The following is an edited version of White’s comments: CNN: Thousands of books have been published about Lincoln. Why did you decide to write a new biography Ronald C. White Jr.: Probably surprising to many is how many new discoveries have been made about Lincoln just in the last 15 to 20 years. For example, about 20 years ago, a professor in Illinois wondered if there were still Lincoln legal papers laying around in the almost 100 courthouses in Illinois. So he got together a group of students, and they began searching those courthouses, and they found [thousands] of Lincoln legal documents. … I wanted to treat more of that part of Lincoln’s life — he spent nearly 24 years as a lawyer. This is just an example of what we have discovered only in recent years. See iReporters don stovepipe hats like Lincoln

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Commentary: The real ties between Lincoln and Obama

CNN: More than 100 years after his death, why does Lincoln still fascinate us White: I think for many he embodies the best of America. The fact that a man of such humble origins, with less than one year of formal education, could, in his term, have the “right to rise.” He felt that America was a land where we should not put any shackles or weights upon people. One reason he hated slavery so much was that it puts weights upon people. … I’m going to be speaking in Italy and Germany in April, and people there are fascinated with Lincoln for the same reason. Now, to be sure, Obama has shone a large spotlight on Abraham Lincoln. I think this is somewhat responsible for rediscovering this man at the beginning of the Lincoln bicentennial in the year 2009. CNN: Why do you think Barack Obama has made such a point of aligning himself with Lincoln White: It’s become commonplace for politicians of both parties to invoke Lincoln — literally wrap themselves in the mantle of Lincoln — especially at political conventions. But when I read “The Audacity of Hope” it came through to me that this is something quite genuine. As Obama is seeking to define his own vocation as a politician, he found in Lincoln — Lincoln’s inclusive spirit, Lincoln’s humble demeanor, Lincoln’s great gift with words — he found here some of the very values that he wished to inculcate into his own life. … I think he picked up on the symbolism of Lincoln, using the very same ceremonial Bible [for his swearing-in], picking as his theme a “new birth of freedom,” re-enacting the final 137 miles of the train ride [Lincoln took to Washington for his first inaugural]. It’s fascinating that here this African-American politician is finding a model and a mentor, and I think it is the values that Lincoln represents that Obama is finding. CNN: Some people have noted temperamental similarities between Lincoln and Obama. Is there any justification for that comparison White: I think there is. Obama comes across as a person of kind of calm, reassuring demeanor. He is a person who likes to circle around questions and problems. He was as interested, as I’ve come to understand, when he taught law in Chicago, in asking questions as in coming up with answers. This is exactly the way Lincoln approached reality. They both have a real sense for oratory, how less is more; they have a compelling way of speaking. … To be sure there are real differences. [Obama] had an education far beyond Lincoln’s. It’s yet to be determined how Obama will emulate Lincoln. I would argue that Lincoln had to teach himself to be president. He was very aware of his inadequacies, certainly in administration and military policy. And I think with all the fanfare for Obama I think he understands that he has to teach himself how to be president, too. iReport.com: Send your rendition of Lincoln’s second inaugural speech CNN: [Historian] Henry Louis Gates suggests Lincoln’s attitudes on race were not as enlightened as some would like to think. In your book, you say it’s important to consider the context in which Lincoln articulated his racial views. White: This is the difficulty … with understanding the context. Lincoln’s racial attitudes … were left of center and moving in that direction, toward the left. … Lincoln said in one of his debates with Stephen Douglas, “It’s not that I’m about to marry a black woman, it’s not that I think blacks should serve on juries.” … He then comes back and says, “But this black woman, in terms of her right to eat the bread she earns from her own hands is every bit my equal and the equal of every person here because if you’re referring to the Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal.” Even the most radical abolitionist would probably not have granted social equality [between blacks and whites]. CNN: What did you discover about the evolution of Lincoln’s religious views White: His religious odyssey comes to more of a full scope during his presidency. … We see him re-appropriating elements of the Christian faith — not his parents’ tradition — but a more rational, logical, thoughtful old-school Presbyterian tradition [after he became president]. This is a story that has not often been told, and I think it’s an important part of understanding the moral core of Abraham Lincoln. It wasn’t simply that he had an ethic, which he certainly did, but there was a theological kind of undergirding of that ethic that came to the forefront more in his years as president. CNN: Do you feel Lincoln is our greatest president White: Well, there are a lot of great presidents. … Certainly the times make the man. Lincoln led us through the greatest crisis of our nation’s history — an internal crisis — even as Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one of our greatest presidents, who led us through two other great crises — the Great Depression and World War II. It’s hard to compare people of different eras, but I think Lincoln sort of incarnates the best values of the American experience. CNN: What can we all learn from Lincoln White: If there is an ultimate value in doing a biography of Lincoln, it is that Lincoln offers some wisdom for today. We don’t have to be political leaders to catch the values — his humility, the strength of his character and moral vision, the fact that words fiercely mattered to him and should matter to us. … He said at the second inaugural, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” I was intrigued to find … that people wore mourning badges right after his death that said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” Lincoln didn’t just speak these words, he had come to embody these words for the people who knew him and loved him. And so these values are not simply back there in the 19th century. They’re values that we can embody and work with in the 21st century.

Father of missing girl vows no revenge if child returned

The father of a missing 5-year-old Florida girl made a renewed plea Thursday for the return of his daughter.

“If you have my daughter and you’re watching this, drop her off somewhere safe,” Roland Cummings said of his daughter Haleigh. “I’m not out for revenge, I’m not out for nothing else. I want my daughter back,” Cummings said, with his girlfriend, Misty Croslin, at his side. He said he could think of no reason Haleigh would be taken. “Why would anybody be sick enough” to abduct a child he asked. Cummings, 25, said earlier that he and Croslin had passed lie detector tests. Croslin, 17, was the last person to see Haleigh when she put the girl to bed Monday night in their Satsuma, Florida, home. She said she awoke in the middle of the night to find Haleigh gone and the back door to the double-wide trailer propped open with a brick. Putnam County authorities on Thursday continued working with the FBI and state investigators to search a five-mile area for Haleigh. Police have no official suspects, but say they are treating everyone they interview as one.

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“All the world’s a suspect” now, a sheriff’s spokesman has said. Cummings said earlier that he was surprised when he arrived home from work at 3 a.m. Tuesday to see his girlfriend awake, and he asked her why she was up. “She said, ‘Your back door’s open and your daughter’s gone,’ ” Cummings told Nancy Grace on her show on CNN’s sister network HLN on Wednesday night. Watch Cummings describe his shock » Croslin waited until Cummings came home to phone 911 about the girl’s disappearance, though it’s unclear how long that wait was. Watch the father describe what happened » Police said Wednesday that Croslin had tucked the girl and her 4-year-old brother into bed at 8 p.m. before going to sleep at 10. Croslin told police she woke up around 3 a.m. to use the bathroom and returned to find the girl missing. The boy was still in bed, Cummings told CNN. A brick was propping the trailer’s door open, Croslin told a 911 dispatcher. Hear the frantic 911 call » The father said he has used the back door only two times since he’s been living in the trailer. Police say they believe the girl was abducted. “There’s no longer any reason to believe that the child simply wandered outside,” Maj. Gary Bowling of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday. The police must “assume abduction,” he said, adding, “All the answers to why you’d want to take a 5-year-old are ugly.” Haleigh’s mother, Crystal Sheffield, shook as she spoke Thursday near the search area. Sheffield’s mother, Marie Griffis, said that she and her daughter are devastated. “It’s like I’ve got a hole in my body, and she feels helpless because she can’t do anything but sit here.” A nationwide Amber Alert says the girl was last seen wearing a pink shirt and underwear. Croslin is staying with relatives as the investigation continues, said Bowling, describing the girlfriend as a “child herself.” Griffis said that her daughter and Ronald Cummings had a “rocky relationship” and that the two took turns spending weekends with their daughter. Watch mother’s tearful plea » It’s unclear if Sheffield and Cummings were ever married, but they are “legally separated,” police said Thursday. Authorities were unable to answer media questions about how and why Cummings had custody of Haleigh. Sheffield lives near the Florida-Georgia line and has been interviewed by law enforcement, according to police. Investigators are looking into various angles of the case, including finding out the location of 44 registered sexual offenders who live within a five-mile radius of the Cummings home, said Lt. Johnny Greenwood of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. Police are offering but not requiring all those interviewed in the case to take polygraph tests. A familiar face from the Caylee Anthony case is involved in the search. Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla joined the hunt Tuesday and is offering a $25,000 reward for the girl’s return.

Padilla initially bonded out Caylee’s mother, Casey, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the toddler’s death, and then helped launch one of several searches for Caylee. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office at 386-329-0800 or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Missing Endangered Persons Information Clearinghouse at 888-FL-MISSING.

In-flight food: Heaven or hell on a tray?

Mean cuisine? Airline industry experts insist standards of in-flight food are improving.
The "crime scene cookies", "baaji custard" and "sponge shafts" depicted in Oliver Beale’s letter of complaint to Virgin Atlantic struck a chord worldwide.

The missive he sent to Virgin chairman Sir Richard Branson about a meal he received on board a Virgin flight from Mumbai to London in December spread across the web and email with a vengeance. Not only was this a complaint letter par excellence, but it hit upon one of the most emotive subjects of long-haul air travel: the in-flight meal. Read the letter here. “Food gets everybody going, whether they are sitting at the back end or the front end of the plane,” says Peter Miller, marketing director at Skytrax, a UK-based aviation research organization. “Apart from the sheer fact you might be hungry, it is there to alleviate the boredom. Because of that people tend to focus on it more.” But the criticism passengers target at airline food is not always warranted, Miller argues. Skytrax has been tracking airline service for a decade and every year it ranks airlines according to catering in economy, business and first class. Miller acknowledges that there have been cut backs on catering across short-haul flights and a decline in spending on food in long-haul economy. But Skytrax’s research has also revealed a general improvement in standards over the last five years. “We are actually strong supporters of the overall quality that is served up across most airlines in most parts of the world,” says Miller. Standards have improved firstly as a result of greater competition between airline catering companies, says Miller. What do you think Are in-flight meals getting better or worse What was your worse meal Sound off below.

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Austrian catering company DO & CO has transformed the food served onboard Austrian Airlines and Turkish Airlines flights. Skytrax reported a 35 percent increase in customer satisfaction for Turkish Airlines since DO & CO was hired in 2007. “In the last 15-20 years, the industry has focused on lean production. But we believe [airline catering] is not the job of a car manufacturer,” says Attila Dogudan, CEO of DO & CO. Good quality airline food not only depends on the quality of raw ingredients, he says, but also the intangible elements of good cuisine. “If you have chefs doing 3,000 filets on the grill, after 300 they lose the passion,” says Dogudan. To inspire enthusiasm in its kitchens, DO & CO says it employs an unusually high ratio of chefs to work on a greater variety of dishes. They say they also insist on training cabin staff in food service; they replace the dreaded disposable food trays with crockery; and give passengers menus explaining where their fresh, local ingredients come from. Airlines also use food as a marketing tool and improve standards to attract premium customers. Austrian Airlines has won the Skytrax award for Best Business Class Catering for the last two years. As Michael Braun, spokesman at Austrian Airlines says, “the current situation in the airline industry is tough and costs have to be cut. But the competition is also very tough, so we need something that makes us unique compared to other airlines.” And for Austrian Airlines, one unique selling point is its food. There is an on-board chef on every Austrian Airlines flight who puts the crucial finishing touches on premium-class meals. The airline also offers a “Vienna coffee house in the air” and one quarter of flight attendants are trained sommeliers to guide passengers through the extensive wine list. Airlines worldwide also hire celebrity chefs to add prestige to their culinary efforts. British chef, Gordon Ramsay is one of Singapore Airline’s “Culinary Panel”; Juan Amador works with Lufthansa; and United Airlines enlisted the services of U.S. chef Charlie Trotter to inspire its in-flight menu. Chefs help airlines design meals that perform at high altitude. As Michelle Bernstein, Delta’s celebrity chef has said, palates weaken in pressurized air cabins, which means dishes need to be made a more flavorful and seasoned than they would be on the ground. Miller at SkyTrax is skeptical about the true benefits a celebrity chef can bring to onboard catering. After all, Gordon Ramsay isn’t actually in the cabin sautéing the potatoes. But he does acknowledge that some chefs have influenced a new style of in-flight cuisine. Chef Neil Perry, hired by Qantas in 2003, initiated a move to healthy eating in first and business class. His work has since influenced standards across catering in all classes. Qantas won the Skytrax award for Best Economy Class Catering in 2008 partly as a result of simple enhancements such as the availability of fresh fruit between meals and from the self-serve bar in economy on its A380 aircraft. But as airlines grapple with a deepening recession, can passengers expect treats to vanish from food trays Across short-haul flights, making cuts is an “easier game,” says Miller. Passengers notice it far less if an airline switches a sandwich for a packet of biscuits and a plastic cup of coffee, he says. But on long-haul flights, airlines are restrained in what they can cut. Miller: “People measure the standard of their flight by the quality of the food or the size of the portion they get. If a meal is cut back too severely they are going to walk away.” How important is food for you on flights Is it good enough Sound off below.

Arrests made after tainted medicine kills 84 children

The My Pikin teething medicine has been reomved from shops in Nigeria.
Twelve people were arrested in connection with a tainted teething medicine that killed at least 84 children in Nigeria, authorities said Thursday.

The medicine was found to contain a solvent typically found in antifreeze and brake fluid, authorities said. More than 110 children have been sickened since November by the tainted batch of My Pikin, which was found to contain diethylene glycol, the country’s health minister has said. Tests on the teething formula showed high concentrations of diethylene glycol, which can damage the kidney, heart and nervous system and can lead to death. The victims ranged from ages 2 months to 7 years, authorities said. Five of the suspects arrested were from the company that manufactured the medicine. The rest of the suspects were from a chemical company that sold the diethylene glycol, said Abubakar Jimoh, deputy director of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration. The suspects have been bonded out of jail but could face 15 years in prison or $3,380 fine, Jimoh said. Diethylene glycol found in other products, such as tainted toothpaste from China, has led to recalls and public health warnings in the United States. In July 2007, such toothpaste was linked to 83 deaths in Panama.

Thai PM admits boat people pushed out to sea

Rohingya refugees being treated in Idi, Indonesia.
Thailand’s prime minister suspects there were "some instances" in which Thai authorities pushed Myanmar’s Rohingya boat people out to sea, a frank admittance of a practice drawing worldwide condemnation.

In an exclusive interview with CNN Thursday, Abhisit Vejjajiva said he could not pinpoint who in the government approved the practice, but said he was working on rectifying the problem. “It’s not exactly clear whose work it is,” Vejjajiva said. “All the authorities say it’s not their policy, but I have reason to believe some instances of this happened, but if I can have the evidence as to who exactly did this I will certainly bring them to account.” Thousands of Rohingya refugees — a Muslim minority group from Myanmar — have fled to Thailand over the years and many of them have been housed in Thai camps near the Myanmar border. In some cases, there are charges that many of them have been kicked back out to sea from Thailand. A recent CNN investigation found evidence of the Thai army towing an apparent boatload of 190 Rohingya refugees out to sea, prompting Thai authorities to launch an investigation. And a group of the refugees rescued by Indonesian authorities last week told harrowing tales of being captured, beaten and abandoned at sea by the Thai military.

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Actress Angelina Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. refugee agency, spoke out on the plight of the refugees last week as she visited the area with her husband, Brad Pitt. She asked Thailand to permit greater freedom of movement for the roughly 111,000 refugees housed in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border. Vejjajiva said “at times” there has been “a lot of pressure in terms of the numbers of these people coming in.”

“There are attempts, I think, to let these people drift to other shores. I have asked whether people are aware of such practices. The one thing that is clear is that when these practices do occur, it is done on the understanding that there is enough food and water supplied.” The prime minister said he regrets “any losses” that may have occurred from the refugees’ ordeals, but he said he is “doing the best I can to correct the situation.”