Judge Denies Bail for Ex-Suffolk County Police Chief: ‘He Still Has the Power’

Abstract: CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — A federal judge ordered the former police chief of Suffolk County held without bail on Friday, saying he had orchestrated such far-reaching corruption in the department that there was a risk he would continue meddling in the inquiry into his misconduct even after his arrest this week. The hearing, held in Federal District Court here, exposed in vivid detail the degree to which prosecutors believe that the former chief, James Burke, held sway over subordinates as he tried to quash reports that he had bludgeoned a man who stole ammunition and sex toys, among other items, from his car. Comparing his tactics to those of the Soviet-era K.G.B., prosecutors said Mr. Burke had contacted a witness in the middle of grand jury proceedings, asked a colleague to spy on rivals and instructed others to say that he had merely looked in on the interrogation of Christopher Loeb, 29, and did not beat him as prosecutors have contended. They also said police union members, under Mr. Burke’s influence, had tried to silence an officer who knew about his sex toys. Mr. Burke, 51, who left the Suffolk Police Department this fall amid an investigation after nearly three decades there, was arrested on Wednesday on federal charges of violating Mr. Loeb’s civil rights and obstructing the inquiry. In denying him bail, Judge Leonard D. Wexler said he agreed with prosecutors that Mr. Burke was a danger to his Long Island community because of his long-running campaign of coercion and secrecy in one of the country’s largest police forces. Prosecutors described his trying to put a tracking device on a rival’s car to sabotage her career and, on another occasion, paying to erase evidence that he had crashed his car while drunkenly following a state official. “I find the corruption of an entire department by this defendant is shocking,” Judge Wexler said. “The evidence is clear: He still has the power.” The indictment alleges that after Mr. Burke learned in 2012 that a duffel bag and other items from his car had been found in Mr. Loeb’s mother’s home, he retrieved the stolen bag while investigators were still conducting their search of the home. (Prosecutors said the bag contained a cigar box, humidor and sex toys.) Mr. Burke then drove to an interrogation room where Mr. Loeb was chained to a bolt in the floor, according to the indictment, and punched and kicked him in the head and body. Mr. Loeb ultimately pleaded guilty to the theft. In trying to cover up his brutality, prosecutors said, Mr. Burke exploited a stranglehold on the department so tight that his imprint was not diminished even by his arrest. “It was a two-minute assault in 2012, and the cover-up has been going on for years,” Lara Treinis Gatz, an assistant United States attorney, told the judge. Ms. Gatz said Mr. Burke had called a witness in October, as grand jury proceedings were underway in the case, to tell the witness to “make sure your guys get their stories straight.” Prosecutors also pointed to a group text message that they said Mr. Burke sent to 10 police officers, trying to find someone to go to a retirement party for a rival officer. Image James Burke, the former chief of the Suffolk County. N.Y., Police Department. Credit Newsday “We need a friendly to go to Cuff’s retirement party to take accurate attendance,” Mr. Burke wrote, according to an image of the text message released by prosecutors. “Not sure where. Whoever goes has to be able to recognize faces. Enemies, bosses active and retired and politicians.” And as far back as 2013, shortly after a special prosecutor was assigned to look into reports of a beating, Mr. Burke summoned three officers who were witnesses in the case and instructed them to get their stories straight, prosecutors said. “He told subordinates that if asked, that yes, he was at the Fourth Precinct but he merely looked in,” said James Miskiewicz, another assistant United States attorney, referring to the station house where the interrogation happened. “Their boss’s boss’s boss’s boss is telling them, ‘You lie.’ ” In arguing for his release, Mr. Burke’s lawyers said his influence had waned since he left the department. They cited other federal cases, including the one against Bernard L. Madoff, in saying that evidence of past obstruction does not prove a future risk. “He no longer has the power, ability to intimidate,” one of Mr. Burke’s lawyers, Joseph R. Conway, told the judge. “He does not have any power to obstruct justice.” But prosecutors said the beating fit a pattern of the former chief’s using his authority to undermine subordinates and conceal reckless behavior. One witness to the alleged beating recalled Mr. Burke “grabbing the victim by the ear and shaking him violently, screaming things like, ‘You want to steal from me?’ ” said Mr. Miskiewicz, the prosecutor. Another witness told prosecutors that Mr. Burke warned he was going to give Mr. Loeb a “hotshot,” a slang term for a fatal dose of heroin. Prosecutors said that was only the most brazen in a string of episodes. On one occasion, they said, Mr. Burke admitted to an officer that he had been drunk when he crashed into the car of a state official he had been following. They said he was never investigated in the case. “He pays out of pocket,” Mr. Miskiewicz said, “and makes it go away.” On another occasion, prosecutors said, Mr. Burke planned to put a GPS unit on the car of a rival, a high-ranking civilian in the department, in order to “dig up dirt on her” and “destroy her career.” Mr. Burke’s lawyers said he simply wanted to know whether she was filing false time sheets. Prosecutors called it “something out of the K.G.B.” Judge Wexler had planned to close the hearing on Friday to the public, but he reversed his decision after a number of news organizations, including The New York Times, signed a letter challenging its legality. Amy Marion, a lawyer for Mr. Loeb, said the hearing offered more evidence of the deep roots of corruption in the Suffolk County Police Department, which has also recently faced accusations of officers’ stealing money from undocumented immigrants . “It’s so inbred there,” Ms. Marion said.

Police Brutality,Police Misconduct,Police Shootings


Command for Africa Is Established by Pentagon

Abstract: WASHINGTON — For decades, Africa was rarely more than an afterthought for the Pentagon. Responsibilities for American military affairs across the vast African continent were divided clumsily among three regional combat headquarters, those for Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East. Commanders set priorities against obvious threats, whether the old Soviet Union and then a resurgent Russia, a rising China or a nuclear North Korea, or adversaries along the Persian Gulf. If deployment of fighting forces is an indicator, that historic focus north of the equator endures. But since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a new view has gained acceptance among senior Pentagon officials and military commanders: that ungoverned spaces and ill-governed states, whose impoverished citizens are vulnerable to the ideology of violent extremism, pose a growing risk to American security. Last week, in a small Pentagon conference hall, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, inaugurated the newest regional headquarters, Africa Command, which is responsible for coordinating American military affairs on the continent. There are barely 2,000 American combat troops and combat support personnel based in Africa, and the new top officer, Gen. William E. Ward of the Army, pledges that Africa Command has no designs on creating vast, permanent concentrations of forces on the continent. “Bases? Garrisons? It’s not about that,” General Ward said in an interview. “We are trying to prevent conflict, as opposed to having to react to a conflict.” Already, though, analysts at policy advocacy organizations and research institutes are warning of a militarization of American foreign policy across Africa. Mr. Gates said the new command was an example of the Pentagon’s evolving strategy of forging what he called “civilian-military partnerships,” in which the Defense Department works alongside and supports the State Department and the Agency for International Development, as well as host nations’ security and development agencies. “In this respect, Africom represents yet another important step in modernizing our defense arrangements in light of 21st-century realities,” Mr. Gates said. “It is, at its heart, a different kind of command with a different orientation, one that we hope and expect will institutionalize a lasting security relationship with Africa, a vast region of growing importance in the globe.” Mr. Gates and General Ward said that this work to complement and support American security and development policies would include missions like deploying military trainers to improve the abilities of local counterterrorism forces, assigning military engineers to help dig wells and build sewers, and sending in military doctors to inoculate the local population against diseases. While that thinking has influenced the work of all of the military’s regional war-fighting commands, it is the central focus of Africa Command. And over the past two years, it has quietly become the central focus of the military’s Southern Command, once better known for the invasions of Grenada and Panama, but now converting itself to a headquarters that supports efforts across the United States government and within host nations to improve security and economic development in Latin America. A number of specialists in African and Latin American politics at nongovernmental organizations express apprehension, however, that the new emphasis of both these commands represents an undesirable injection of the military into American foreign policy, a change driven by fears of terrorists or desires for natural resources. Officials at one leading relief organization, Refugees International, warned of the risk that Africom “will take over many humanitarian and development activities that soldiers aren’t trained to perform.” In a statement, Kenneth H. Bacon, the president of Refugees International, said that the creation of Africa Command was “a sign of increased U.S. attention to Africa.” But he also said that it was “important that Africom focus on training peacekeepers and helping African countries build militaries responsive to civilian control and democratic government.” Mr. Bacon, a Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton administration, added, “The military should stick to military tasks and let diplomats and development experts direct other aspects of U.S. policy in Africa.” Refugees International released statistics showing that the percentage of development assistance controlled by the Defense Department had grown to nearly 22 percent from 3.5 percent over the past 10 years, while the percentage controlled by the Agency for International Development dropped to 40 percent from 65 percent. General Ward rejected criticisms that Africa Command would result in a militarization of foreign policy, and he said it was specifically structured for cooperative efforts across the agencies of the United States government. For example, a deputy commander at Africom is Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, a career Foreign Service officer. And General Ward himself previously served in a combined diplomatic and military role, as director of efforts to help reform the Palestinian security services. But concerns remain that whatever arena the Pentagon enters, it has more money, more personnel and more power than any other government organization, American or foreign. “If we can bring a capability that can be an assist to one of our interagency partners, then I think we ought to do that,” General Ward said. “But I draw a distinction between leading that effort and supporting that effort. We don’t create policy. This is not the job of a unified command. We implement those aspects of policy that have military implications. And we support others.” Planners abandoned early intentions to base Africa Command in Africa, perhaps with a major headquarters and regional satellite offices. Owing to local sensitivities, security concerns and simple logistics of moving around the vast continent, which often requires routing through Europe, the command will for now have its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. General Ward said that in creating the Africa Command, he had been in close contact with his counterpart atop the military’s Southern Command, Adm. James G. Stavridis, who has received high marks from Pentagon leaders for converting the military presence in Central and South America. Where previously Southern Command emphasized direct military action, it now focuses on programs to train and support local forces, and assist economic development, health services and counternarcotics efforts. “The more I look at this region over the two years I have been at Southcom,” Admiral Stavridis said in an interview, “the more convinced I am that the approach we need to take for U.S. national security in the region is really an interagency approach. “Think of the problems that afflict this region — natural disasters, poverty, the narcotics trade, lack of medical care,” he said. “Our thought at Southcom is, How can we be supportive of an interagency approach? How can we partner with other interagency actors, and then tie that together with our international partners?” Admiral Stavridis said Southern Command was “very directly and consciously not taking the lead.” “We are trying to be part of the team, to be a facilitator,” he added. But George Withers, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit research and human-rights advocacy organization, said in a statement that “while improved delivery of U.S. assistance is certainly an admirable goal,” putting Southern Command into a coordinating role on issues like corruption, crime or poverty “drains authority from the State Department and resources from the Defense Department.”

United States Defense and Military Forces


A Gym Taskmaster With a Knack for Making People Sweat

Abstract: Terrence Walcott, 25, has worked for two years as a personal trainer at the David Barton Gym at Madison Avenue and East 85th Street. He grew up in Crown Heights and was on the track team at the University of Michigan, where he could long-jump 26 feet. Slogan on work shirt: Look Better Naked Way he knows his workouts are working: I use the spousal test: “So, has your husband or wife said anything yet?” Everyone you know, the guy on the corner who hits on you, your boss, may be noticing that you’re working out. I was training this woman for two years and she said to me, “Yesterday my husband gave me a compliment on my arms,” and I said to myself, “I’m the best trainer in the world.” Loves to hear: “I got down on the floor and picked up my grandson for the first time.” There was a 75-year-old client of mine who went kayaking last week, and before, he could barely walk. I get so much joy from being able to work someone out hard. Hates to hear: “I just got my hair done and I can’t sweat today.” No matter what we do, there’s no way you can be here for an hour and you don’t sweat. It becomes like a chess match. If I know a person needs things, I’ve got to figure out a way so they get the benefit of that exercise. If they didn’t get what I felt they needed, it’s a bad session that weighs on my days sometimes. Typical lunch: A couple of turkey burgers on pita, with grilled sweet potato and a drink. And in an hour and a half, I’ll eat the same thing again. Who comes in when: Some guys get here at 7, get beat up, and they say, “Good morning, Terrence, goodbye, Terrence” — that’s it. They tend to be the Wall Street finance guys. Once 9 o’clock hits, it changes at 9. At 9 are these guys’ wives. And the wives at 9 are more focused than the ones at 11. Childhood obstacle: I was born bowlegged, and I had braces to correct it, but they were too tight, and the bones fused incorrectly. I had surgery on my right leg as an infant, and I was never supposed to be able to walk again. My mother was ecstatic when I started running track. The road through college: I was planning on going into geriatrics. Halfway through school I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor. It was painful. It was even more painful because I didn’t know what I did want to do. After college, when I couldn’t run or compete anymore, it devastated me. I figured, that’s my passion. After work: When I have a couple of hours I watch documentaries on the Science Channel, and sports. Every so often someone will force me to go to the movie theater. Should a trainer look totally buff? I had this one trainer, she was 4 feet 11 and maybe 90 pounds wet, she beat me down like no one has ever done in my life. It’s all about knowledge.


Bonds Says He'll Retire but Then Backpedals

Abstract: Two days before Barry Bonds was to begin spring training with the San Francisco Giants and resume his pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home run record, he said that he planned to retire after this season. In an article posted yesterday on USA Today's Web site, Bonds said he was tired of playing. "I'm not playing baseball anymore after this," Bonds said. "The game is not fun anymore." Last night, however, in an interview with MLB.com, Bonds seemed to back away from his comments. "If my knee holds up, I'll keep on going," he said. "I'm playing psychological games with myself right now. So I go back and forth." If the 41-year-old Bonds were to retire, he would be giving himself one season to surpass Babe Ruth and then Aaron for what is arguably the most hallowed record in sports. Bonds has 708 home runs. Ruth hit 714, and Aaron hit 755. Bonds has been adamant about his desire to unseat Ruth, but he has been reverential toward Aaron and has seemed hesitant at times about possibly nudging past him. "I've never cared about records," Bonds told USA Today. "So what difference does it make? Right now, I'm telling you, I don't even want to play next year. Baseball is a fun sport. But I'm not having fun." Bonds, a seven-time most valuable player, testified before a federal grand jury in the steroids case against the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative in 2003. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2004 that Bonds had testified that he used a clear substance and a cream supplied by a trainer but that he did not know they were steroids. Greg Anderson, Bonds's personal trainer, pleaded guilty last July to steroid distribution and money laundering. He was sentenced in October to three months in prison and three months of home confinement. According to USA Today, Bonds spoke in the phone interview in a fashion that made him sound as if he were feeling sorry for himself. He mentioned the pain pills he takes to be able to play and how he can barely run because of the pain in his knee. He did not play until Sept. 12 last season because of knee injuries, but he hit 5 homers in 14 games. "Breaking these records aren't a big thing to me," Bonds said in the interview. "It's a great honor to pass Ruth, but it means more to baseball than it does to me." Bonds will be paid $18 million in the final year of a five-year, $90 million contract with the Giants. He can become a free agent after the season. If Bonds is close to the record, could the Giants or perhaps a team in the American League, where he could be a designated hitter, persuade him to return for another season? If Bonds remains healthy this season, he will certainly move ahead of Ruth. Whether or not Bonds could hit well enough to pass Aaron and become baseball's most prolific home run hitter is uncertain, especially because of his recent injury history. He has hit more than 48 home runs twice in his 20-year career, with 49 in 2000 and 73 in his record-setting season of 2001.

SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
BONDS BARRY
BASEBALL


A Presidential Campaign’s Toughest Challenge: Coping With Defeat

Abstract: Shortly after the curtain fell on the 1976 election, Hubert H. Humphrey took his dejected friend Bob Dole, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, out for ice cream to try to improve his mood. Mr. Humphrey, who had lost a presidential race eight years earlier, told him it would get worse before it got better. “Today, people will be second-guessing you,” Mr. Humphrey told Mr. Dole, the running mate of Gerald R. Ford, the incumbent president defeated by Jimmy Carter. “They’re going to be looking for someone to blame.” Then Mr. Humphrey offered a gesture of kindness, Mr. Dole recalled in an interview, telling him, “Let’s talk about tomorrow and your future and move on.” Mr. Humphrey was speaking to Mr. Dole as a new inductee into an elite but hardly sought-after fraternity: candidates who have endured a failed national political campaign, an experience of loss that some have compared to a death in the family. After Tuesday’s election , Donald J. Trump or Hillary Clinton will join those ranks. For most failed presidential candidates, it is not their first exposure to the intense emotions that come with such a public defeat. Even so, little else compares to it. President George Bush, who had suffered his share of defeats earlier in his career, wrote in his journal on Nov. 4, 1992, about the exquisite torture of his loss to Bill Clinton: “It’s hurt, hurt, hurt and I guess it’s the pride too.” He reflected wistfully, too, on his failure to embarrass the pollsters. “I was absolutely convinced we would prove them wrong,” he wrote, “but I was wrong and they were right and that hurts a lot.” Having lost the 2000 presidential race after the legal battle over the Florida recount, Al Gore effectively disappeared from public life for several years. Mrs. Clinton knows a similar feeling, having lost a drawn-out and contentious primary battle to Barack Obama in 2008. “This was not going to be easy for me,” she wrote in her memoir “Hard Choices.” Yet she took little time to nurse her wounds before becoming Mr. Obama’s secretary of state. In contrast, Mr. Trump is a first-time candidate — and someone who has built his public persona on the idea that no matter the contest, he always comes out a winner. He was plainly rattled and off-kilter the night of the Iowa caucuses , when, despite aides’ assurances that he was coasting to victory, he lost the Republican contest to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. And Mr. Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail — exulting in his large crowds, maintaining that he holds a lead even when the polls say otherwise — suggests he could have an unusually difficult time handling an undesired result Tuesday night. “Somebody coming from a successful business to politics, if he should lose — I’m not certain what the reaction would be,” Mr. Dole said. “He must know that somebody’s going to lose.” Whether Mr. Trump has allowed for the possibility is unclear. Advisers said he had spoken of nothing but victory. Former Senator George Allen of Virginia, who lost a close race for re-election in 2006, said both presidential candidates needed to have at least a vague idea of what they would say in the event of a loss. “That’s the responsible thing to do,” he said. “I do think preparation is important.” Image Hillary Clinton campaigning in Allendale, Mich., on Monday, a day before the presidential election. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times The psychological dimensions of a loss can take a few days to sink in. “It’s shrouded a bit in the first 24 to 48 hours because you’re recovering from the campaign,” said Rick A. Lazio, the former Republican congressman from Long Island who was the first person to lose to Mrs. Clinton , in the 2000 Senate race in New York. “Pretty soon after that, you’re faced with the reality that your status has changed and your life has changed,” said Mr. Lazio, whose dazed mind-set seemed to have been captured by a memorable photograph of him gazing out the window of his campaign plane after his final Election Day event that year, his eyes fixed on the clouds. Mr. Dole’s loss to Mr. Clinton in 1996 was less painful than his 1976 defeat, he said, primarily because he considered Mr. Clinton his friend. They “still are friends as far as I know,” said Mr. Dole, the only former Republican presidential nominee to endorse Mr. Trump. Mitt Romney said his defeat by Mr. Obama in 2012 was less painful than his loss in a 1994 bid to replace Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense analytically,” Mr. Romney wrote in an email. “I knew I had very little chance of beating him but when the loss actually happened, it was pretty emotional.” Image Donald J. Trump on Monday in Sarasota, Fla. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times He said he and his wife, Ann, were in a “funk” for a few months. “We didn’t want to watch the news,” he wrote. “We held back from social engagements. Sometimes emotions don’t make a lot of sense, but that doesn’t mean they’re not real.” Mr. Allen, the former Virginia senator (he also served as governor), recalled an acute sadness that also overtook his family. He recalled that after an earlier race, a legislative contest that was close, he had contemplated hundreds of things that could have been done differently. Mr. Lazio’s first loss was compounded by millions of dollars in campaign debt, which consumed him and made it difficult for him to move on. Gray Davis, who was abruptly forced out of the California governor’s mansion in a recall election in 2003, tried to ignore the sting of defeat by plunging himself into working with his successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the transition. “It hurts,” Mr. Davis said. But not that much, he added hastily. “Let’s not overstate it — war didn’t break out,” Mr. Davis said. “The stock market didn’t drop a thousand points. No one died.” “You have to be stoic, but you also have to handle both victory and defeat with grace and gratitude,” Mr. Davis said, calling it a privilege to have had supporters. “This is like a mission. And sometimes it’s successful, and sometimes it isn’t.” Mr. Trump has referred to his campaign as a movement, but he has also moaned to his supporters at various points that it would be a “big, beautiful and, yes, very expensive waste of time” were he to lose. Mr. Lazio said the sudden lack of attention could be most jarring. “I think it’s the crowds that are the major experience that you miss,” Mr. Lazio said. “You don’t get that again unless you’re a candidate again.”

2016 Presidential Election
Bob Dole
Rick A Lazio
Mitt Romney
Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump


N.Y. Legislators Scarce at Committee Budget Hearings

Abstract: ALBANY — Membership in the State Legislature involves a variety of responsibilities, like attending hearings held by legislative committees. These can often be tedious, protracted affairs. Still, the current round of Albany hearings would seem to merit some attention. Many of those testifying are pleading for financial salvation. Such was the case with the college and university officials who traveled here on Thursday to ask for relief from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposed budget cuts. But if the officials hoped to find allies in the State Senate’s Higher Education Committee , they were in the wrong place. Sixteen of the committee’s 19 members skipped the hearing. Attendance from the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee was little better. Eighteen of the 22 members were absent. A week and a half after Mr. Cuomo unveiled his budget, the annual parade of jointly sponsored budget hearings is well under way, and the absence of many lawmakers has provoked some raised eyebrows at the Capitol — and a few acid-tongued news releases highlighting the no-shows. The Senate Democratic conference issued five notices to the news media on Thursday naming Republicans who were absent from the higher education hearing, including the chairman of the Senate’s Higher Education Committee, Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, Republican of Suffolk County. “Chairman LaValle has an obligation to stand up for New Yorkers who rely on our higher education system,” said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats. “But he can’t do that if he doesn’t show up.” Absenteeism, however, was a bipartisan issue. Five of the eight Democrats on the Senate Higher Education Committee did not attend the hearing on Thursday either. Three earlier hearings this week, on matters concerning local government, the environment and public safety, also drew relatively few lawmakers. Anyone who has attended the annual budget hearings could guess why. The hearings — 13 in all — would be considered dull even by faithful C-Span viewers. For hours on end, officials sit before lawmakers and read long, carefully worded speeches noting the need for shared sacrifice in tight fiscal times. Then, with varying levels of shamelessness, they tend to ask the lawmakers to reverse the governor’s proposed cuts as they pertain to their own institution or agency. The hearings are held in a big auditorium in the Legislative Office Building across the street from the Capitol. Audience members are not allowed bring in provisions like food or coffee. The meetings last for ages — 6 hours 6 minutes in the case of the higher education session. That was actually a big improvement over last year, when the higher education hearing ran into the evening and the last speakers, student government representatives who had traveled from the City University of New York, spoke to a nearly empty auditorium. This year, a digital countdown clock was installed to police speakers who might wander beyond their allotted time, a misdeed that the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee , John A. DeFrancisco , Republican of Syracuse, warned speakers against on Thursday. “If you can adhere to the clock,” Senator DeFrancisco promised, “everybody will be so much happier and so much more charitable to your area of the budget.” Mr. DeFrancisco has had the pleasure — or burden — of presiding over the hearings, along with Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr., Democrat of Manhattan, the chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee . Telephone calls to lawmakers’ offices on Friday asking about their whereabouts for the hearings during the week produced a wide range of excuses. Some aides said they had been sent to attend the hearings in their bosses’ stead. Other legislators were said to have watched the proceedings on the Internet. Mr. LaValle could not make it on Thursday because he was holding an environmental round table in his district, an annual event that had been on his calendar for months, said Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republicans. “Even the Democrats know that no one works harder or is more passionate about issues related to higher education than Senator LaValle,” Mr. Reif said, adding that Mr. LaValle had met the day before with officials from the State University of New York. Still, no one disputed that the hearings require stamina. By Thursday afternoon, Mr. DeFrancisco could no longer contain his frustration with the long-windedness of some of the people who came to testify. “It’s so annoying — and I guess I am offending prior speakers — for someone to read a six-page, single-spaced letter that we have in front of us,” Mr. DeFrancisco explained. He asked for a summary instead. “You could do whatever you choose to do,” he added, raising his palms outward, as if to signify he was not trying to pressure anyone. “I’m just telling you what is the most impressive way to present your case.”

New York State
State Legislatures
Budgets and Budgeting
Colleges and Universities
DeFrancisco John A
LaValle Kenneth P


Film Shows a Selma Some Would Rather Not Revisit

Abstract: SELMA, Ala. — Like many residents here this summer, Josh Wilkerson eagerly signed up to be an extra in the film “Selma.” But when he was asked to play a member of the sheriff’s posse that beat civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he respectfully declined. “I said, ‘This is my city, and that’s not in my heart,’ ” Mr. Wilkerson, 29, an office administrator, recalled recently. “I knew that would open doors that I’ve shut.” Today, in this small city still struggling to emerge from the shadows of Jim Crow, the attack on the bridge on March 7, 1965, is incessantly rued, revisited, and marketed as a tourist attraction. It was the dramatic apogee of the tense and violent period when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers took to the streets of Alabama to convince lawmakers of the need for a voting rights act. And it is the key moment in the film, which opens Thursday in a nation freshly embroiled in anguish about race and policing. And so, along with excitement and curiosity, the coming release of “ Selma ” has also stirred a host of complex, though familiar, emotions here, as the city’s 20,000 residents are again forced to consider the relationship between Southern history and the Southern present — and measure the distance between the two. Image Civil rights marchers joined Dr. King in crossing the bridge en route to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery to convince lawmakers of the need for a voting rights act, which was signed that year. Credit Associated Press For some, “Selma,” the film, will be a moment to celebrate how far the city — with its black mayor, majority-black City Council and black police chief — has come since the days of segregation. But others, particularly some white residents, are more wary. “There’s no reason to make a movie like that,” said Harvey King, 64, a Selma native and the owner of HK Custom Guns, a shop just outside of town. “It’s like if you cut your hand, and you keep messing with it. It’s not going to heal up.” Such reaction is unsurprising to George Patrick Evans, 70, Selma’s second black mayor. Many of the major players depicted in the film have died, including Jim Clark , who as sheriff led his posse to join state troopers in beating back marchers on the bridge in the confrontation known as Bloody Sunday. But other participants still walk Selma’s streets. “Those were difficult times,” Mr. Evans said. “Some of these families were a part of that difficult time. A lot of them are concerned now about what the movie is going to depict.” Image A water tower in Selma says, "Selma, a Nice Place To Live." Residents have mixed feelings about the movie's release. Credit Meggan Haller for The New York Times Long before the movie cameras arrived in Selma, the city’s past felt inescapable. The bridge over the muddy Alabama River is still the city’s most prominent landmark. On the north bank is Selma’s quaint downtown, which hosts a civil rights interpretive center operated by the National Park Service. On the south bank is the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute , founded by local activists who, since 1993, have hosted a yearly re-creation and commemoration of Bloody Sunday called the Bridge Crossing Jubilee. Like much of the rest of the South, Selma’s story since 1965 has encompassed change and stasis, accommodation and intransigence. Today, 80 percent of the population is African-American, and while blacks dominate local government, white residents retain much of the economic power. Selma High School, once all white, is today nearly all black; this year the local school district was taken over by the state because of poor management. Many white children attend private schools like John T. Morgan Academy, founded three months after Bloody Sunday. The United States senator after whom it was named was also a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Image Faya Rose Toure, a founder of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee, is intent on keeping Selma’s past linked to the struggles of today. Credit Meggan Haller for The New York Times But even Morgan has some black students now, and well-off black residents can be found living alongside white ones in the handsome, woodsy, suburban-style neighborhoods just beyond downtown. Residents noted other signs of progress: Black and white churches have been forming partnerships and intermingling. Mr. Wilkerson, who eventually took a job playing a National Guardsman in the film, noted that his twin brother, Paul, owner of a local institution called the Tally-Ho Restaurant, is swift to boot out customers who pepper their speech with racial slurs. If the slurs endure in some quarters, so, too, does a grinding destitution: In Dallas County, of which Selma is the county seat, 36 percent of residents live in poverty, nearly double the statewide rate. The city lacks a dedicated cinema, and as of Tuesday, had not decided where it would host a screening of “Selma.” (The film, d irected by Ava DuVernay , has been talked about as an Oscar contender.) In the long term, many here are hoping that the film, along with the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday this March, will spur a boom in tourism. Image Josh Wilkerson of Selma declined a movie role as a member of the sheriff’s posse, saying it wasn’t “in my heart.” Credit Meggan Haller for The New York Times “We say it’s harvest time in Selma,” said Faya Rose Toure, a lawyer and activist and a founder of the both the Jubilee march and the voting museum. “We need a company to come in and say, ‘You know what? Considering what Selma did for democracy, I’m going to put my industry here.’” Ms. Toure, who is African-American, is intent on keeping the spirit of Bloody Sunday connected to the struggles of the present day. Last week, she walked onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge to draw attention to the fatal shootings nationwide of African-American men by the police — including one in Selma involving a 74-year-old black man whom officers accused of wielding a hatchet. No officers were charged with a crime. “This is the bridge where Bloody Sunday took place,” Ms. Toure said. “Because of that, we’ve got a black district attorney and black judges. But there’s a police culture built upon the premise that black life isn’t valuable.” Many here say Ms. Toure’s outspoken style is one reason that many whites do not participate in the yearly bridge crossing event. There is talk this year of a separate march of blacks and whites, organized by the churches. It remains to be seen if such efforts will lure white Selmians like Jamie Henderson, 65, across the bridge for the first time. “There’s a lot of people who recognize the importance of it, but don’t want to be an agitator,” he said. But would he go see the movie? “I doubt it,” he said. “If it comes on TV, maybe.”

Selma
Civil Rights Movement
Movies
Ava DuVernay
Discrimination
Martin Luther King Jr
Black People,African-Americans
Selma


A Review of Modern, in New Rochelle

Abstract: Modern, New Rochelle’s beloved pizza joint, moved this past winter from cramped quarters to a lofty space that was first a car showroom and later a restaurant supply store. As recorded on various social media sites, loyal patrons were variously elated and scandalized. But no one can dispute that the new home of this Italian-American emporium — with its vaulted ceiling, giant arched windows and granite floor — is a knockout. You can get your expectations up. The valet parking, the glamorous room, the bustling bar, the swell soundtrack, the curvy banquettes — all conspire to make you feel like a million bucks. As one guest noted metaphorically, “The temperature is just right.” (If only diners dressed for the occasion; the cargo shorts and T-shirts many wore seemed wrong for the place.) Image The shrimp scampi. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times Service at Modern, owned and managed by two cousins, Anthony Russo and Sebastian Aliberti, is top-notch: on our first visit, our waiter, decked out as if for prom night in black shirt and shiny pink tie, promptly offered to fetch drinks; his attentiveness never flagged. At a long table behind us, an extended family celebrated a young man’s Confirmation (we overheard the toast); nearby, five stocky guys took delivery on enough food — I have never seen a bigger pork chop in my life — to feed themselves and five more. The expanded menu is a marvel of excess. From baked clams oreganata (made with freshly shucked clams) and scungilli in marinara to spaghetti carbonara and a $38 rack of lamb, the long march of dishes brought to mind my favorite local Columbus Day parade, with its resplendent priests, gleaming dump truck aflutter with tiny tricolore and loaded with Little Leaguers, and buffed Ferraris tied with red and green balloons. Modern takes special pride in its brick-oven pizzas and calzones. A snappy customized pie with mushrooms and prosciutto (not listed as a topping — you have to ask for it) and drizzled with balsamic vinegar was one of the best things we ate. On a split pie, the margherita half, with pools of fresh mozzarella, was better than the half devoted to sausage, onions and peppers, which was somewhat soggy. Image The individual-size margherita pizza. Credit Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times To start, I loved my big stuffed artichoke afloat in chicken broth, straight from a Roman trattoria. Mozzarella sticks were “killer,” in the words of the young man who had to have them. Crunchy popcorn shrimp were just what you’d expect, with that deep-fried deliciousness that always wins the popularity contest. Fresh mozzarella with sliced tomatoes and roasted red peppers, a lightly dressed Caesar salad, gnocchi with homey Bolognese, and sharp spaghetti puttanesca were all perfectly good, as were entrees of garlicky shrimp scampi and chicken Marsala (entrees come with a crisp house salad dotted with fat black olives and underripe pear tomatoes and a side of spaghetti or French fries). A few dishes inspired regrets: fried zucchini sticks that slid from their crusts on contact; dull, sodden crab cakes; heavy veal parmigiana cloaked in mozzarella; and a side of acrid sautéed spinach. For dessert, we fell for the assortment of traditional layer cakes, with their boozy fillings and gobs of whipped cream, in flavors like lemon mascarpone, tiramisù and strawberry shortcake. One night, a homemade chocolate layer cake (“made by an old lady,” according to our waiter) caused a full-blown turf battle, forks clashing to the last bite.

New Rochelle NY
Restaurant
Modern New Rochelle NY Restaurant


Eviction of Palestinians in Jerusalem Hits a Nerve

Abstract: JERUSALEM — Israeli police officers evicted a Palestinian family from their home in a predominantly Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, and a group of Jewish settlers moved into the property at night. The episode struck one of the more sensitive nerves in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship at a time of increasing tension and as the Obama administration is working to restart stalled peace negotiations. Such evictions have drawn international condemnation in the past. The Palestinian family, the Karains, lost a legal battle for ownership of the house. They said it had been sold to settlers illegally and without their knowledge by a relative, Ali Karain, who was a part-owner of the house, and who has since died. The Israeli courts upheld the sale about six months ago. After the eviction, family members milled about in the street and on a neighboring rooftop, while Israelis protected by armed police officers went about installing security cameras and sealing the windows and balconies of the building with boards and wire mesh. “My uncle died almost two years ago,” said Fadi Karain, 21, who is studying to be a teacher at an Israeli college in predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem. “A month after he died, we heard from the bailiffs that the house had been sold.” He said that the new owners were associated with Elad, a group that promotes Jewish settlement in Arab areas of Jerusalem, and particularly in Silwan. The settler takeover of the Karain house will represent a new point of Jewish settlement in this contested city. The three-story stone building is wedged among other houses on a steep slope in the Farouk section of the Jebel Mukaber neighborhood, with a panoramic view of the Old City, the Aksa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock. Those shrines sit atop the plateau revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount. A stone slab set into the wall of the house is engraved with an image of the Dome of the Rock and the words “Al mulk lillah,” Arabic for “Everything belongs to God.” A Jewish volunteer who was helping to prepare the house for its new inhabitants said he was acting out of “Zionism.” Israelis have the right to live and buy property anywhere in Jerusalem, Israel ’s capital, he said. The issue of Israeli construction in Jewish sections of East Jerusalem has been a source of tension in recent months between Israel, the Palestinians and the United States. Jewish settlers are increasingly moving into predominantly Arab neighborhoods, deepening confusion about the future shape of the city. Israel annexed East Jerusalem shortly after capturing it and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. The annexation was never internationally recognized, and the Palestinians claim the territory as the capital of a future independent state. But many Israelis maintain that Jerusalem belongs entirely to Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently had a sharp exchange with the Obama administration in which his office released a statement defending Jewish construction in Jerusalem, saying, “Jerusalem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel.” In recent years, settlers have evicted Palestinians and taken over several houses in Sheikh Jarrah , a coveted area near the Old City, after the Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, upheld rulings from the 1970s that the properties had originally belonged to Jews. Activists of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity group were in Jebel Mukaber on Tuesday, helping the Karain family remove boxes of food and some last belongings from the house. The group issued a statement saying that the objective of the new settlement was “without doubt to undercut the rationale of the 2000 Clinton Proposal, namely the division of Jerusalem into two capitals,” referring to an idea put forward by President Bill Clinton. On the upper edge of Jebel Mukaber, dozens of Jewish families now live in a private Jewish development, Nof Zion , built on land that was purchased by an Israeli developer. Udi Ragones, a spokesman for Elad, said the Karain home was purchased a few years ago by a foreign-registered company called Lowell. Mr. Ragones did not acknowledge any direct Elad role in buying the property, but he said that there had been contacts between the group and the purchasers. But groups like Elad, also known as the City of David , are known to use foreign-registered straw companies to buy properties in East Jerusalem. They say that they have to work discreetly in order to protect the Palestinian sellers whose lives are threatened by other Palestinians who oppose such deals.

Israel
Palestinians
Temple Mount (Jerusalem)
Israeli Settlements


Leaving Military Aid Intact, U.S. Takes Steps to Halt Economic Help to Egypt

Abstract: CHILMARK, Mass. — The Obama administration has taken preliminary steps to withhold financial aid to the Egyptian government, officials said on Sunday, though it is curtailing economic assistance, not the much larger military aid on which Egypt’s generals depend. The State Department has put a hold on financing for economic programs that directly involve the Egyptian government, administration officials said, out of a concern that the military-led government might have violated Congressional rules prohibiting aid to countries where there has been a coup. The administration has not declared whether the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi constituted a coup. But the State Department is abiding by a complex web of restrictions governing foreign aid, an official said. Those restrictions are tighter than the rules governing the military aid, which has not been suspended. Whether to cut off the remaining $585 million in military aid available to Egypt this year was one of the questions that awaited President Obama as he returned to Washington from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard that was shadowed by the bloodshed in Egypt that has left hundreds of Islamist protesters dead. For Egypt, the value of the military aid is perhaps less important than the advanced systems it can buy with American support. Already, the United States is considering a delay in the shipment of Apache attack helicopters and repair kits for tanks. That comes on top of decisions to delay the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets and to pull out of a major joint military exercise next month with the Egyptian Army. But the administration has stopped short of suspending the aid, which has served as a foundation of the American relationship with Egypt for more than three decades and is viewed as critical to the region’s stability, not least as a pillar of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Military aid to Egypt dwarfs civilian aid: of the $1.55 billion in total assistance the White House has requested for 2014, $1.3 billion is military and $250 million is economic. The civilian aid goes to such things as training programs and projects run by the United States Agency for International Development. “We have stopped spending money in areas that would be prevented if it were determined to be a coup,” said an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “We’ll put a pause on those programs, because we don’t want to flout the law.” Among the programs affected, the official said, would be training programs in the United States for Egyptian government workers, teachers or hospital administrators. Depending on how events in Egypt unfold, and on how lawmakers react when they return from August recess, the economic aid could resume later, the official said. There are fewer legal restrictions on the $585 million in military aid — the amount remaining from the original $1.3 billion appropriation. This has yet to be deposited in an account in the Federal Reserve in New York, where the Egyptian military could use it to buy weapons and spare parts and to pay for maintenance and training. "As we’ve made clear, all of our assistance to Egypt is currently under review,” the State Department’s deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said. “At this point, no additional decisions have been made regarding assistance.” In the past, administration officials have said they were skeptical that halting military aid would persuade the generals to put Egypt back on a path to democracy. They also worry that withdrawing the funds would leave the United States without any leverage. Israel and several Arab counties have lobbied the United States not to cut off aid, arguing that the army is still the best hope to stop Egypt from slipping into chaos and that the need for stability should outweigh, for now, concerns about democracy and human rights. But with the death toll from the week’s violence surpassing 1,000 and little prospect of an end to the standoff, officials said, the administration had begun a debate over what threshold it was willing to bear before it fundamentally rethought its relationship with the military. During his week on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Obama tried not to allow the Egypt crisis to intrude on his vacation routine of golf, dinner with friends, and beach and bike outings with his family. But on Thursday, the president held a conference call with members of the National Security Council to discuss options for dealing with the standoff. Back in Washington, pressure on Mr. Obama to do more about Egypt is mounting, but lawmakers remain divided on whether to cut off aid, with a handful of outspoken Republican hawks calling for it, while other Republicans and most Democrats still have qualms. Given the reluctance of many lawmakers to suspend military aid for security reasons, canceling economic aid may be an easier way for them to register their displeasure with the Egyptian government. Senator John McCain of Arizona, who recently traveled to Cairo and took part in a failed diplomatic effort to defuse the standoff, said in a television interview that the administration lost credibility when it did not cut off aid, even after the generals clearly engineered a coup in removing Mr. Morsi. “We could be cutting off the aid,” Mr. McCain said on the CNN program “State of the Union” “The spare parts and maintenance of this military equipment we’ve given the Egyptians is important to their capabilities.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who accompanied Mr. McCain to Egypt, said the United States should send a powerful message to the Egyptian military leader, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. “Somebody needs to look el-Sisi in the eye and say, ‘You’re going to destroy Egypt, you’re going to doom your country to a beggar state, you’re going to create an insurgency for generations to come; turn around, General, before it’s too late,’ ” Mr. Graham said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” But the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, said the United States should “recalibrate” its aid to make its unhappiness clear but not endanger security needs like priority passage through the Suez Canal in a crisis. “I don’t want to cut off our relations,” Mr. Corker said on ABC News’s “This Week.” Several Democrats echoed Mr. Corker’s sense that overarching American security interests made any aid cutoff problematic. “I think we’ll find that aid that we may withhold is compensated by aid that the Gulf states may provide,” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said on “Fox News Sunday.” In one small but telling way, the relationship between the United States and Egypt has already changed. An administration official said that when the Pentagon finally delivers the four delayed F-16 planes, it will charge the Egyptian Air Force a fee for storing them.

US Foreign Policy
Foreign Aid
Egypt
Barack Obama


Trying for Balance in Rural Development

Abstract: Jasper County, S.C. THE Lowcountry area here at the southern tip of South Carolina has long been passed through by people driving to and from Florida on Interstate 95. It has even been overlooked by visitors to Hilton Head, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., both within a half-hour’s drive. But this county’s lush landscape — rural and marshy, with wetlands and rivers and an abundance of Southern live oak trees draped with Spanish moss — is finally being discovered by outsiders. Explosive residential development has sprung up nationwide, even in the most unlikely places. But it is only now arriving in Jasper County. With a population of less than 30,000 spread over 600 square miles, an area about twice the size of New York City, Jasper could become the site of 40,000 or so new homes in the coming years, which could more than double the current population, local officials say. Rather than allowing development to overwhelm the county, officials have collaborated on a plan that tries to guide growth and preserve the region’s natural beauty. An estimated 30,000 new homes have already been approved in Hardeeville, which grew in a few years from 5 square miles to more than 50. One large-scale development, called Tradition, broke ground in October, with 9,500 homes in the $500,000 price range. Hampton Pointe, a gated golf community of 1,022 homes by Toll Brothers, is also under way, with prices starting in the mid-$300,000s. The first occupancies are expected this fall. Ridgeland, the largest town in Jasper, has 1,000 homes on the way, according to local officials, not including expected development on an additional 20,000 acres still outside the city limits. “Jasper has been waiting for this,” said Edward G. Evans Jr., who has lived here for 30 years with his wife, Diane. Mr. Evans, a principal owner of a land planning and landscape design firm, Wood & Partners, said that he and his wife had recently built a new “preretirement” home for themselves on land that is still reached by a dirt road. It is in a development area that four years ago was vacant and now has 45 houses. The single-family homes are priced from $300,000 to $600,000. Longtime residents and local officials who want to guide growth, but not hinder it, say they believe that Jasper will benefit from developing later than other parts of the South. Having watched their neighbors, particularly Beaufort County, become overwhelmed by growth that spilled over from Hilton Head, Jasper officials say, they saw what was coming and got together to set some ground rules. “In areas like ours, where people are starved for development, they’re willing to give away the farm,” said Kevin Griffin, assistant city manager of Hardeeville, who has an advanced degree in urban planning. “But we’ve really tried to get ahead of the growth, rather than being five years behind and having to catch up.” More than two years ago, local leaders from Hardeeville and Ridgeland got together with county officials to collaborate on a shared growth plan. A five-mile radius was drawn around Ridgeland, and another five-mile radius was set around Hardeeville, delineating where development could occur according to local zoning laws. Any landowners who fall outside of each town’s boundary and want to build have to petition to be annexed and, if they are approved, pay for the installation of sewers, water, and roads. After extensive research, the joint planning committee determined that every new residential unit costs about $6,200 in services. “People talk about smart growth, but this is more like fiscal growth,” Mr. Griffin said. “We don’t say you can’t develop here; it’s a pay-to-play environment. Suddenly, that cheap land doesn’t seem so cheap anymore. But the good developers, the ones who want to be stewards of the land, they are the ones who can adjust their plans and create a quality product.” Not only does the joint planning agreement require impact fees, it also encourages mixed-use development and mandates that land be set aside for public services like parks. “The boundary acts like a greenbelt,” said Jason Taylor, the administrator for Ridgeland, the county seat. “It’s a beautiful area down here, but the problem is, people discover areas like this that have been undiscovered for so long, and they crush it under the weight of new growth. All the land’s been cleared, and wildlife has disappeared, and it’s no longer what it was. Guiding growth will prevent that from happening.” Land that is outside of the two designated boundaries is regulated by the county, which currently has a moratorium on development until an updated zoning plan is put into effect, which is expected to happen in June. “We want to maintain the rural character,” said Glenn Storck, chairman of the county planning commission — particularly the pristine land on the northern tip of the county, known as Mackay Point. “It’s beautiful, virgin land up there.” Until recently, Mackay Point was virtually uninhabited, except for the Mackay Point Plantation, an old, private club where Vice President Dick Cheney has hunted. Coming soon is the Settings of Mackay Point, an upscale development on the Pocotaligo River that was already under way before the moratorium was put in place. But the developer’s sensitivity to the landscape won over its very private neighbor and county officials alike. Situated on 327 acres of marsh and wetland, with 40 percent set aside for a natural preserve with hiking trails and open space, the development will have 411 homes built on lots slightly smaller than those on similar upscale developments. Shared boat docks and narrow roadways also help preserve land. Lots were specifically drawn to accommodate the oldest live oak trees, and the developer, the Settings Development Companies, based in Atlanta, has a policy of no clear-cutting. The first phase of the project is nearly sold out, with vacant lots selling for $100,000 to $800,000. Debbie and Tim Phipps, who live in Cincinnati with their three sons — Kyle, 18, Austin, 15, and Parker, 12 — came across the Settings after vacationing at Savannah and Hilton Head. They were recently in the area to look at Lowcountry home designs, characterized by wraparound porches, large windows and pitched roofs. It is a style they will use when building on their newly bought lot. “We just fell in love with the whole area,” Mrs. Phipps said. “It’s not built up and not in the middle of a big hub of activity, with the huge clubhouse and all of that. It’s simple living but accessible to Savannah and Hilton Head” — which is a 40-minute boat ride away. “The landscape to us, it just said ‘South,’ with the live oaks and Spanish moss, marshes and rivers,” said Mr. Phipps, an operations manager for a packaging firm. “It just puts us in a soft frame of mind.” BUT for all the efforts at progressive planning and development, growth is still changing the area, creating mixed feelings for a few lifetime residents, like Tommy and Tyler Stanley. The Stanleys are fourth-generation Jasper County residents. They live in a home, which they are now renovating, that had belonged to Mr. Stanley’s grandmother. Mr. Stanley, 37, said he specifically chose a career as a land surveyor so he could stay in Jasper County after graduating from high school. He thought he was going to work for timber companies, which until recently owned much of the land in Jasper County. Instead he is working for developers — a job that is keeping him busy. “Development is coming like a tsunami,” Mr. Stanley said. “As a surveyor, you know you’re seeing these properties for the last time as they are. But we’re open-minded enough to know that things change.”

Area Planning and Renewal
Housing
Zoning
Wetlands
South Carolina


Brian Williams’s and Jon Stewart’s Common Ground

Abstract: Other than timing, Jon Stewart’s triumphant retirement and Brian Williams’s public and humbling disenfranchisement would seem to have little in common. But begin with the fact that both men went to high school in New Jersey and both began their adult lives without much going for them, other than a sense that the island with all of the tall buildings in the distance suggested there was more to life than volunteering as a firefighter (Mr. Williams) or tending bar (Mr. Stewart). Both men made up for lost time once they got into their careers. Mr. Williams churned through assignments and assumed an anchor chair on MSNBC and at NBC on the weekends while he was in his 30s, and slid into the big chair in 2004 by the time he was 45. Mr. Stewart ground it out in stand-up, working almost nightly at the Comedy Cellar, then landed some TV gigs here and there. After blowing up large on the “Late Night With David Letterman” in 1993, he was thought to be a favorite to replace him, but that job went to Conan O’Brien. It was only when he got his hands on the wheel of “The Daily Show” that he found his sweet spot and opened up a singular vein in American comedy. Both men spent more than a decade on top of their businesses for good reasons. Mr. Stewart had a remarkable eye for hypocrisy, found amazing writers and executed their work and his own with savage grace, no small feat. Mr. Williams managed to convey gravitas and self-awareness at the same time while sitting atop one of the best television news operations in the business. They were kings of their respective crafts. But now they are both done, at least for the time being. Mr. Stewart, who said Tuesday he would leave “The Daily Show’’ sometime this year, leaves on top, on his own terms. For all the cynicism assigned to his approach, Mr. Stewart is at heart a patriot and an idealist. Again and again, his indictment of politicians and media figures was less about what they were and more about what they failed to be. It is telling that when he did take time off from hosting his show, he did so to make a feature film called “Rosewater,” about Maziar Bahari, an Iranian journalist who was imprisoned shortly after appearing on “The Daily Show.” His subject was, in essence, being punished for an act of speech and Mr. Stewart, in spite of his nightly beatdowns of the press, admires the profession. You got the feeling after a while that he had grown tired of pointing out the foibles of the press and the politicians he covered. His version of the news may have started as fake, but it was seeming more and more real all the time. Oddly, Mr. Stewart will leave his desk as arguably the most trusted man in news. And Mr. Williams will find his way back to his desk only if he figures out a way to regain the trust he has squandered. Mr. Williams is now all but locked in his own home — he might as well have an ankle monitor on. There is no playbook on how to come back from such a fall. Stephen B. Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, said everyone deserved a second chance. I very much agree. I just can’t figure out how that second chance comes at NBC. What is the path to that? At what point will the tabloids and blogs take their boot off his neck and allow him to go to the gym, take a walk, have dinner with friends, let alone begin to resume a kind of active rehabilitation — whatever that looks like — in the public eye? When news of his untruths first broke, I think it was commonly believed that Mr. Williams was too big to fail. He seemed to think he would find a way to thread the needle and keep his job. But after a week of management miscues, aided by Mr. Williams’s ham-handed apology and misguided self-exile, NBC executives took firm control of what they came to see as an existential threat to the credibility of their news operation and suspended him. It is difficult to surmise what Mr. Stewart will do next — he has been plain about the fact that he isn’t sure himself — in part because his next step is not a natural one. His talents do not fit easily into that of a generic talk show host. His interview skills are intermittent and his interest in that kind of thing would seem to be low. While Mr. Stewart is adept at live television, you get the feeling that his need for its blandishments have diminished over time. He may be that odd celebrity who says he is taking time off to spend with his family and actually means it. “I’m going to have dinner on a school night with my family, who I have heard from multiple sources are lovely people,” he said in his announcement, which was a surprise in terms of timing, but not in terms of intention. We all knew he was getting close to done. Mr. Williams is another matter. I visited him at his apartment in 2011 when he was doing promotion for “Rock Center,” a newsmagazine that did not pan out. He made the source of his happiness plain. “When you see me on television, I am there,″ he said. “That is where I am.” Gesturing toward the big flat panel on the wall of his apartment, he added, “I am a creature of live television.” Still, it was not enough for him to be the No. 1 anchor of the No. 1 news program in America. Perhaps he sensed that he was king of an entropic kingdom imprisoned by incontinence and cholesterol ads. As the ever more manic news cycle whirred around his evening newscast, it would be hard not to feel a little beside the point. And so came the serial talk show appearances on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Show With David Letterman.” He appeared several times on “30 Rock,” often as a version of himself, and hosted “Saturday Night Live.” He was good at all these things, good enough so that when NBC was thinking about a successor for Jay Leno, Mr. Williams raised his hands, a gesture that went over like a box of rocks with his overseers. And, of course, there were appearances on “The Daily Show,” including a very funny few minutes in August 2012. Mr. Stewart was mocking something that had been on the NBC newscast, and Mr. Williams mentioned that sometimes when he is writing the show, he actually thinks of what Mr. Stewart will do with the same material. “You don’t write any of that stuff,” Mr. Stewart said, laughing as he said it. “They take you out of the vegetable crisper five minutes before the show and they put you in front of something that is spelled out phonetically. I know how this goes.” So, everyone is in on the joke. It’s all knowing winks and fake attacks on confected news read by people who are somewhat bored by what they do. It just seems less funny now.

TV
Jon Stewart
Brian Williams
News media,journalism
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
NBC


T.C.U. Erases a 31-Point Deficit to Stun Oregon in the Alamo Bowl

Abstract: Bram Kohlhausen’s 8-yard touchdown run in the third overtime carried No. 11 Texas Christian to a wild 47-41 victory over No. 15 Oregon in the Alamo Bowl on Saturday night in San Antonio after the Horned Frogs had stormed back from a 31-0 halftime deficit behind a backup quarterback. The 31-point comeback for a victory tied the record for a bowl game, matching one by Texas Tech in the 2006 Insight Bowl against Minnesota. Oregon (9-4) stormed to its big early lead behind quarterback Vernon Adams Jr., but he left the game late in the second quarter after taking a hard hit to the head. Oregon gained only 18 yards in regulation in the second half. Kohlhausen started in place of Trevone Boykin, who was suspended after a bar fight two days earlier. Kohlhausen passed for 351 yards and two touchdowns and ran for two more scores. The Ducks were clicking behind Adams, who passed for 197 yards and a touchdown, scrambled out of several sacks and marched Oregon to four consecutive touchdowns and a 28-0 lead. But Oregon stopped in its tracks when Adams was hurt on a run, a rare call for him. T.C.U. (11-2) scored on every one of its possessions in the second half and in overtime. The Horned Frogs started their march back with 17 points in the third quarter, twice scoring touchdowns on fourth down. Kohlhausen threw a touchdown pass to Jaelen Austin, then ran 2 yards for his first score. Jaden Oberkrom’s 22-yard field goal with 19 seconds left tied the game, and T.C.U. scored first in the first overtime when Kohlhausen hit Emanauel Porter for a 7-yard touchdown. Oregon answered with Royce Freeman’s third touchdown run. After the teams exchanged field goals in the second overtime, Kohlhausen sneaked around the right end on an option. T.C.U.’s 2-point conversion attempt failed, but Oregon’s final chance to tie the game and keep it going ended with an incomplete pass on fourth down near the goal line. TAXSLAYER BOWL Terry Godwin, a receiver, lined up in the Wildcat, took the snap and threw a 44-yard touchdown pass that got Georgia going and later caught a 17-yard scoring pass in the Bulldogs’ 24-17 win over Penn State in Jacksonville, Fla. The play helped the Bulldogs (10-3) end the season with their fifth consecutive victory. It helped that Penn State (7-6) played more than half of the game without its star quarterback, Christian Hackenberg, who left in the second quarter with a right shoulder injury. A junior and the program’s career leader in passing yards (8,457) and touchdowns (48), Hackenberg completed 8 of 14 for 139 yards against Georgia. LIBERTY BOWL Alex Collins ran for 185 yards and three touchdowns, and Arkansas capped its late-season surge with a 45-23 victory over Kansas State in Memphis. Ranked 18th as the season opened, Arkansas stumbled through a 1-3 start that knocked it out of the Top 25. The Razorbacks (8-5) turned things around won six of their final seven games. Collins overwhelmed Kansas State’s defense in front of an announced sellout crowd of 61,136, the fourth-largest crowd in the game’s 57-year history. Kansas State (6-7) finished a season below .500 for the first time since Bill Snyder began his second stint as coach in 2009. Kansas State’s Kody Cook, starting at quarterback for the first time, went 12 of 24 for 163 yards with a touchdown.

College football
Bowl Games
University of Georgia
Penn State
Texas Christian University
University of Oregon


City Agency Concedes It Wasn’t Ready for New Voting Machines

Abstract: Six days before the primary on Tuesday, state election officials received a request from the city’s Board of Elections: Could it cut short tests on some of its voting machines because of worries that the testing would not be finished before voters went to the polls? State officials granted the request, if a bit warily. “It was an unusual request,” said Douglas A. Kellner, co-chairman of the State Board of Elections. “It’s always annoying when someone comes to you at the last minute and says, ‘Gee, we didn’t know it would take this long,’ and you say, ‘Well, why did you wait this long to figure it out?’ ” For all of the calm assurances that the city’s Board of Elections offered to the state and public about how prepared it was for the transition from mechanical machines to electronic ones, there was no shortage of behind-the-scenes jitters in the run-up to the primary over whether they would actually be ready. And, as it turned out, plenty of things did not go according to plan: some polling places did not receive the optical scanners required to read the new paper ballots by the time the polls were supposed to open at 6 a.m., so they remained closed, in some cases for hours. Some polling sites opened late because no one had the new keys, literally, to the machines. And when some machines failed to work properly, poll workers seemed unsure of how to improvise. A day after the machines’ inaugural run, city election officials conceded that the problems were due, in part, to inadequate preparation, but they said the city was trying to abide by requirements imposed by the state. “The New York State Board of Elections and the New York City Board of Elections did not fully comprehend the time requirements for the intensive methodology of testing required” by state regulations for primaries, George Gonzalez, executive director of the city’s Board of Elections, said in a statement. “This caused delays in machine preparation and delivery.” He added: “These and other issues are being reviewed, and we will provide detailed statistics when we can compile them.” A spokesman for the State Board of Elections did not immediately return an e-mail asking for a response to the city’s statement. The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, and the city comptroller, John C. Liu, said they wanted to investigate the election process and would consider an audit of the process. A spokeswoman for Mr. Liu said that when he went to vote on Tuesday, he was particularly troubled by the sight of marked ballots lying out in the open. “The problems are significant enough to warrant a closer look,” said the spokeswoman, Sharon Lee. Still, New York is hardly alone in making what is often a bumpy transition to electronic democracy. Washington also rolled out new electronic voting machines on Tuesday — for a hotly contested mayoral race — and similar problems were reported, said Eric Marshall, manager of legal mobilization at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is part of the national nonpartisan Election Protection coalition. John S. Groh, senior vice president of Elections System and Software, which manufactured the voting machines used in New York, said he believed that, in general, the process worked well in New York. “From my perspective, New York did way more than a lot of other places” to prepare for the new system, Mr. Groh said. “But I also recognize that there’s nothing else like New York that’s ever been done.” In particular, he said there were three factors that could have been improved upon. One was delivering the machines, which was complicated, he said, by the fact that Rosh Hashana occurred the Thursday and Friday before the primary. “The holiday probably throws a little wrinkle into it,” he said. “They would have been all done by Saturday night if everything had been a normal weekend and a normal Friday.” Mr. Groh also said that poll workers should receive more-extensive training than they did and that they should be required to show up at their polling sites before voters do — not at the same time — to have time to prepare and deal with problems. “Poll workers coming in at 6 o’clock is too late,” he said. “People need to be there at 5:30.” But even if election officials remedy the problems from the primary, a new one could emerge in November: a quirk called “double voting.” That occurs when a voter checks more than one box for the same candidate running on more than one party line. When that happens, the major party — Democrat or Republican — gets the full vote and the minor party gets no credit. Under the old lever-machine system, it was impossible to vote for the same candidate on more than one party line. But that is not the case with paper ballots that are part of the electronic system. So on Tuesday, two strange bedfellows — the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party — filed a suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan challenging the constitutionality of such a rule.

Voting Machines
Elections
Board of Elections (NYC)
New York City


Facing Trap, Ruthless Jets Refuse to Tiptoe

Abstract: EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — After his team celebrated its overtime victory against the Giants last week, after the owner Woody Johnson danced in the locker room and the Empire State Building started to twinkle in green and white, Jets Coach Todd Bowles found a text message waiting on his phone. “Everybody’s talking playoffs,” Bowles said the message read. “Just coach your team and worry about the next game.” The sender was Bill Parcells, the former Jets coach who has mentored Bowles since hiring him as a defensive backs coach in 2000. Challenges like the one the Jets faced Sunday against the Tennessee Titans were anathema to Parcells. As the Dallas Cowboys’ coach, he hung mousetraps from shoelaces in the locker room before a game to remind his players not to fall into the trap of overlooking their next opponent after an emotional victory. After the Jets dismantled Tennessee, 30-8, at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, there was no “I told you so” message waiting on Bowles’s phone. He never needed to warn his players to keep their focus from straying. They assured him they were not going to be trapped. “We didn’t hear that word all week,” receiver Brandon Marshall said. Against a clearly outmatched opponent, the Jets displayed some ruthless efficiency early in Sunday’s game. Their opening drive included a 19-yard scramble by quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, a 12-yard pickup by Marshall that featured a ferocious stiff arm and a 16-yard touchdown catch by Eric Decker. There was more explosiveness out of the backfield from Bilal Powell, who caught five passes in the game, one of them for a touchdown, and more thundering runs from Chris Ivory, who finished with 101 rushing yards. Muhammad Wilkerson had three sacks and forced a fumble, and Buster Skrine snagged his first interception of the year. And then there was a play that defied explanation. With less than two minutes left in the first half, the Titans failed to realize until far too late that Marshall (all 6 feet 4 inches of him) was left to roam unguarded at the line of scrimmage. Marshall waved his arm, and Fitzpatrick quickly checked out of a shotgun formation and rushed to take the snap under center Nick Mangold. He then fired the ball to Marshall, who ran down the sideline for a 69-yard touchdown, the Jets’ longest scoring play of the season, making it 27-0 after the extra point. Image Jets receiver Brandon Marshall with Ryan Fitzpatrick, left, and Bilal Powell after he turned a short pass into a 69-yard touchdown. The Titans were not covering Marshall at the line of scrimmage. Credit Al Bello/Getty Images “Fitz and Brandon have been around awhile, so they saw something,” Bowles said. “Luckily, Brandon didn’t get caught by a defensive tackle.” Marshall said, “I’ll take it.” He had another monster game. Decker did, too. Together they are establishing one of the league’s most dangerous tandems, and it seems that their interchangeability is rubbing off on Ivory and Powell, who are having a similar effect in the running game. Together, the four of them generated 388 of the team’s 439 total yards Sunday, with three scores. There may have been other skill players on the field for the Jets, but it was hard to notice them. Fitzpatrick, who finished 21 for 36 for 263 yards and three touchdowns, could sprinkle the ball to any of the four and still leave the defense fearing where it was going next. “You want guys cheering for each other and pushing each other,” Marshall said. “That’s what we have here.” Image Brandon Marshall beat the Titans’ B.W. Webb for a first down in the first quarter. Marshall also scored a 69-yard touchdown. Credit Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via Reuters Fitzpatrick credited the team’s chemistry with recognizing and exploiting the Titans’ mistake on the Marshall touchdown, which he said was not a situation the team regularly practiced (or, for that matter, expected to see in a game). “It’s just three guys — me, Nick and Brandon — being on the same page,” Fitzpatrick said. Whatever the Jets were doing offensively, the Titans (3-10) did the opposite. Their chemistry was not going to impress at a fourth-grade science fair. The rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota, coming off a record-setting performance against Jacksonville in which he became the first player in N.F.L. history to throw for at least 250 yards and three touchdowns and rush for at least 100 yards, struggled to find any rhythm. The Jets spent the week focusing on his explosive scrambling ability, and they blitzed the pocket from all directions. “He’s really a pocket passer who’s able to run,” linebacker David Harris said of Mariota. “One of our goals was to keep him in the pocket, because everybody knows how dangerous he is when he gets to the perimeter.” Image Eric Decker making a 16-yard touchdown catch in the first quarter. The Jets improved to 8-5. Credit Julio Cortez/Associated Press The Jets held Mariota to three rushing attempts for 3 yards, with no touchdowns and one interception. “I can do a better job moving our protections or getting us out of things to help those guys up front,” Mariota said. “I’ve just got to do a better job of getting us in better plays.” Mariota did show just how versatile his athleticism could look with a 41-yard reception on a pass from running back Antonio Andrews late in the third quarter. But for the most part, his activity was limited to fleeing pressure from a defense that sacked him five times and hit him seven times. “We know he’s an elusive guy,” Wilkerson said. “But our job as pass rushers is to have precise rushing lanes, and I think we did that pretty well today.” The Jets (8-5) have kept pace with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs, both winners Sunday, in a battle for the two wild-card spots in the A.F.C. The Jets had the same record at this stage in 2011, and they wound up missing the postseason. It was a similar story in 2008, 2000, 1997 and 1993. So there was a cautious optimism after Sunday’s victory — a convincing blowout, but one that leaves the Jets still reaching for the postseason from the same distance as before. “We understand what’s on the line,” Marshall said. “All these games down the stretch are big.” EXTRA POINTS The rookie Jets receiver DEVIN SMITH was carted off the field in the third quarter with an injury to his right knee, and the punt returner JEREMY KERLEY left the game with a calf injury.

Football
Jets
Titans
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Brandon Marshall
Marcus Mariota
Bill Parcells
Todd Bowles


After 4 Years, Friends See Shifts in Obamas

Abstract: Barack and Michelle Obama have spent more than a thousand days on display before the nation’s eyes, but the personal changes they have undergone can be hard to detect. Up close, though, those who know the Obamas say they can see an accumulation of small shifts in the president and the first lady since they walked the inaugural parade route four years ago. The man who wanted to change the nature of Washington now warns job candidates that it is hard to get anything done there. Not so long ago, he told others that he did not need a presidential library, a tribute to himself costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Now a former aide, Susan Sher, is quietly eyeing possibilities for him in Chicago. The first lady who wanted to forge connections with her new city found that even viewing the cherry blossoms required a hat, sunglasses and wheedling the Secret Service. In a demonstration of how difficult it can be for any president or first lady to sustain relationships, Mrs. Obama stopped taking on girls in a mentorship program she founded because of concerns that other teenagers would envy the lucky advisees, according to an aide. When the president returned from consoling families of teachers and children killed in the Newtown, Conn., massacre — he wept as they handed him photos and told him stories of victim after victim — aides could see in his face the toll of absorbing the nation’s traumas. “This is what I do,” Mr. Obama told them. “This position has perhaps cost him more on a personal, and even energic, level than most of his predecessors, because he was most entirely an outsider,” observed the playwright Tony Kushner, a supporter who recently dined with Mr. Obama to discuss the film “Lincoln,” for which Mr. Kushner wrote the screenplay. Image The first lady, Michelle Obama, greeted her husband after introducing him at a campaign event in Iowa last year. Those who know the Obamas say they can see a number of small shifts in the president and the first lady since they walked the inaugural parade route four years ago. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times The Obamas have gained and lost in their four years in the White House, becoming seasoned professionals instead of newcomers, more conventional, with a contracted sense of possibility. They are steady characters, not given to serial self-reinvention. Yet in interviews, current and former White House and campaign aides, donors and friends from Chicago said they could see how the president and the first lady had been affected by their roles. Describing them, they used phrases like: more confident but more scarred. More isolated. Less hesitant about directing staff members, whether butlers or highest-level advisers. Gratified by re-election, which the Obamas view as sweet vindication, and bloodier-minded when it comes to beating Republicans. And Mr. Obama has learned that his presidency will be shaped by unanticipated events — “locusts,” one former aide called them, for the way they swarm without warning. Mr. Obama never wanted to be an ordinary politician — there was a time when Mrs. Obama could barely use that noun to describe her husband — and his advisers resist the idea that he has succumbed to standard Washington practice. Some donors and aides give an “if only” laugh at the idea that the couple now follows political ritual more closely: this is a president who still has not had Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton to dinner but holds lunches to discuss moral philosophy with the fellow Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. “He thinks about destiny in human terms,” Mr. Wiesel said in an interview. Still, others say the Obamas have become more relaxed schmoozers, more at ease with the porous line between the political and social, more willing to reveal themselves. They have recently begun inviting more outsiders into their private living quarters, including Mr. Kushner, Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis at the “Lincoln” dinner. At a dinner in late November to thank top campaign fund-raisers, the first couple was like a bride and groom, bantering and traveling from table to table to accept congratulations and good wishes for the years ahead, making sly jokes that guests would not repeat for publication. Even Mr. Obama’s speech has changed a bit, close observers say. Though he still disdains Washington, he often sounds less like a disapproving outsider and more like a participant. One former aide was startled to hear Mr. Obama use “impact” as a verb, a particular tendency in the capital. Another longtime adviser said he was struck during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations when Mr. Obama grew offended that House Speaker John A. Boehner did not return his multiple phone calls. The old Barack Obama would have thought the who-calls-whom protocol was stupid, the adviser said, but “the world that he inhabits now is the world of inside-the-Beltway maneuvering.” In video footage of Mr. Obama as president, the contrasts can be subtle but amusing. At his first Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony in 2009, the president played along, but then paused to distance himself from what he was doing and hint that he found the tradition ridiculous. “There are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office,” he said. “And then there are moments like this — where I pardon a turkey and send it to Disneyland.” Cut to the same ceremony, three years later, and cue Mr. Obama promoting a contest over which bird to pardon and giggling just a little. “You can’t maintain your day-to-day cynicism about that stuff,” said Arun Chaudhary, the former White House videographer, because many Americans cherish White House rituals. What Mr. Obama wants to achieve this term is pretty clear: a fiscal deal and overhauls of gun and immigration laws, steps to address climate change and less restrictive voter identification laws. But what Mrs. Obama wants is more of a mystery. In almost every appearance, she sounds warm, unpretentious notes; on Friday, she continued her Twitter banter with Ellen DeGeneres over who could do more push-ups. Video Jodi Kantor examines how the Obamas' first four years in the White House have affected and changed them. That informal tone can mask how disciplined she is. Though many surrounding the Obamas say she has changed far more than her husband, mastering a role she initially found uncomfortable, she still treats the job of first lady like a dangerous country through which she must navigate safe passage. The woman who never wanted to live in the bubble now uses it to protect herself, according to friends and former aides, preparing her public activities in 6- and 12-month strategic plans, rarely saying anything unscripted. First ladies are often figures of comfort, but she did not address the Newtown tragedy, beyond two brief letters she published, even though some of her fans were clamoring for the self-described “mom in chief” to do more. In recent weeks, Mrs. Obama and her advisers have been discussing whether to expand her work beyond childhood obesity and military families and how to capitalize on her popularity. On Friday, she threw herself into her husband’s new effort to organize supporters, introducing the group, Organizing for Action, in an announcement video . (The effort did not seem to garner as much attention as her new hairstyle, which set off headlines like “Michelle Obama’s Bangs Are a Total Shock to the System.”) Mrs. Obama cannot wait too long to set out on a new course: the Obamas will soon have more time behind them in the White House than in front of them. The rituals they introduced are now matters of tradition instead of innovation. At their White House Seder, the small group of mostly African-American and Jewish attendees reads the Emancipation Proclamation right before welcoming Elijah, just as the year before. The president played basketball on Election Day 2012, as he did on most of the voting days in 2008. But this time it felt different: the men older, the action slower, a reunion game with everyone talking about the old days, said John Rogers Jr., a longtime friend who joined in. Mr. Obama’s entire career has been about getting to the next stage: if he could only become a lawyer, and then a public official, and then a United States senator, and then president, he could create real change. But soon there will be no higher job to reach for, and aides say there is an all-business quality to the Obamas now, a contrast with the sense of possibility that hung over the first inauguration. Early in the presidency, Mr. Obama would sometimes spend hours polishing ceremonial speeches, like one for Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial; now, the president has a more finely honed sense of how to use his precious time, said Adam Frankel, a former speechwriter. When Mr. Obama walked off the stage on election night, he did not pause to exult; instead, he wanted to talk about the impact of outside spending in that night’s Congressional races, said Patrick Gaspard, the director of the Democratic National Committee. But Mr. Obama also knows now that he is not fully in control of his fate, that the presidency will continue to bring tasks that no one could ever anticipate. Mr. and Mrs. Obama were supposed to spend the evening of Dec. 16 enjoying their daughter Sasha’s “Nutcracker” recital. Instead, the president was making condolence calls in cordoned-off rooms at Newtown High School. “Words don’t exist” to describe the grief on his face as he approached the families, said Sarah D’Avino, whose sister Rachel died protecting her students. The president asked each family to describe the relative who died, paying special attention to the victims’ mothers. Mourning parents handed him pictures to carry back to the White House, and he told them that the children were beautiful, that the teachers were national heroes. Moments later, he was smiling, on cue. One of his photographers was on hand, as always, and despite everything, the bereaved wanted pictures with the president.

Barack Obama
Michelle Obama
President of the United States
2012 Presidential Election
2008 Presidential Election
US Politics