Millions Lose Homes, Countrywide CEO Gets $88M

Lavish Payout, Perks for Failed Mortgage CEO
His Severance Package Includes Jet Use, Country Club Dues and a Hefty Payout
By DANIEL ARNALL
ABC NEWS Business Unit
Jan. 11, 2008

Angelo Mozilo, the co-founder and public face of troubled mortgage giant Countrywide, is eligible for tens if not hundreds of millions in compensation and perks on the sale of the company to Bank of America.

During calendar 2006, the latest period available for review in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Mozilo took home $48.1 million in compensation. An early analysis of SEC filings by the Los Angeles Times suggests he could get upward of $115 million when he leaves after the sale is complete, despite the fact that the company tanked during the recent subprime mortgage crisis.

In December, Countrywide reported a record number of foreclosures and delinquencies in its loan portfolio. The value of shares has fallen more than 84 percent since mid-May of last year.

Bank of America today confirmed that Mozilo will stay on with the company through a “transition period.” Countrywide wouldn’t comment on Mozilo’s pay.

His long tenure with the firm he has been there since its beginning in 1969 and extensive employment agreement gives him the right to a significant payout when he leaves.

Immediately upon a change in control, Mozilo would get $13.3 million in accelerated vesting of stock grants, according to the terms of his 2004 compensation agreement, included in the company’s latest proxy statement.

Should he leave the company after the firm’s buyout, Mozilo would get a one-time cash payment of $88 million.

These numbers are presented in the proxy in the context of a “hypothetical” change in control on Dec. 31, 2006. The date is necessary since some of the value of the benefits is based on share price. The company entered into a new employment agreement with Mozilo in 2007, which the proxy statement says guarantees substantially the same post-merger benefits.

A senior Democratic lawmaker welcomed on Friday Bank of America’s $4 billion acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp, but urged Countrywide’s chief executive to donate some of his millions of dollars in pay to help subprime mortgage borrowers, Reuters reported.

The deal could be a “positive development” in the subprime mortgage crisis, said Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Some of the perks to which Mozilo is entitled after a change in control, according to the official filing:

• The company will retain Mozilo as a consultant. Mozilo is obligated to make himself available for a specified period of time each month through December 2011 and at the rate of $400,000 per year.

• He will also be entitled to receive other benefits, including office space, secretarial support, use of the company’s aircraft, financial consulting services and payment of annual country club dues.

• For three years, continuing health, life insurance and financial planning benefits for Mozilo and his beneficiaries. After those three years, health benefits for the lifetimes of Mozilo and his spouse.

• A “gross-up payment” equal to the excise tax charged to him as a result of his receipt of any of the above (with certain exceptions).

All this is based on contractual obligations made with Mozilo when the company was doing well. The terms of the sale to Bank of America might have forced Mozilo to give up some of these benefits.

Why Obama is No JFK

By Ted Widmer

John F. Kennedy is not running for anything in 2008, but you’d never know it. A front-page photo in the New York Times recently showed his electability in Serbia, of all places, where local candidates are vying to establish their credentials as the latest citizens of the New Frontier. Back in the U.S., no candidate has captured the reflected glory of JFK more than Barack Obama, thanks to his youth, eloquence, and message of change. The Kennedy-Obama parallel has been played up by the press, and Obama’s campaign has not discouraged those comparisons—indeed, it has brought in Ted Sorensen, JFK’s talented speechwriter, to make speeches and render the judgment of history.

But the comparison falls short when voters consider the key question for 2008: foreign policy experience. It’s true that Obama, like Kennedy, is a youngish senator (at 46, three years older than Kennedy when he ran for president), but the parallel falters after that. The more one looks into Kennedy’s lifelong preparation for the job, the more one realizes how misleading it was, then and now, to describe him as inexperienced. Everyone who has stressed Kennedy’s youth, from Dan Quayle in 1988 to Obama today, has bumped up against the uncomfortable fact that JFK was an extremely well-informed statesman in 1960. As Lloyd Bentsen reminded us in the zinger that pole-axed Quayle, the truth was a lot more complicated than the myth.

Kennedy, of course, was a decorated veteran of World War Two, which he fought in the South Pacific. But before and after the conflict, he had acquired travel experiences that most people take a lifetime to accumulate, richly detailed in biographies like Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life. His father was ambassador to the United Kingdom in the pivotal year 1938, and young Kennedy was in the audience of the House of Commons as the Munich deal was furiously debated (the experience shaped his first book, Why England Slept). As a young man, he made American officials uneasy with his relentless desire to see parts of Europe and the world that few Americans ever encountered. In 1939 alone, he took in the Soviet Union, Romania, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, France, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. As the war was ending, he attended the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations, filing seventeen dispatches for the Chicago Herald American.

He maintained this lively interest in world affairs as a young Congressman. In 1951 he went on two extraordinary journeys, the first a five-week trip to Europe, from England to Yugoslavia, to consider the military situation on the continent. Then, a few months later, a seven-week, 25,000-mile trek that included Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Thailand, French Indochina, Korea and Japan. It was this trip, in particular, that awakened a sense in him that the old colonial empires were doomed, and that the French effort to keep Vietnam was especially futile. In the aftermath of his trip, he gave speeches that ridiculed the French (and by extension, the American) position, and proved that he was no simplistic Cold Warrior. In 1957, he continued to chart a maverick’s course with a deeply-informed speech on Algeria that criticized France and the U.S. for trying to sustain an unsustainable conflict against an insurgent population. It infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, and France, a NATO ally at the time, was enraged—but obviously he was correct.

Critics and admirers alike have generally neglected the full extent of Kennedy’s early experience. But clearly it shaped him profoundly, and each journey deepened his portfolio. Further, each trip empowered him, and gave him the confidence to swim against the tide, a trait that would prove essential in the presidency. While dedicated to veterans and certain core principles of American defense, he also showed, well before his election, a growing skepticism of the extremes of Pentagon thinking. Perhaps most impressively, he found the courage to reject the knee-jerk isolationism of his most important backer—his father, Joseph P. Kennedy.

To be sure, even with all of that training, Kennedy showed inexperience during his early months in the White House, including the disastrous decision to invade Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, and his ineffective performance at his first summit with Khrushchev in Vienna. But he soon righted himself, and returned to the independent judgment that he had acquired during his long and literal journey toward the presidency.

Of course, travel does not instantly translate into electability—if it did, Geraldo Rivera might be president. But it’s an important consideration, especially for a candidate like Obama, who is running against an array of Democratic contenders (Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Richardson) who have far more first-hand experience dealing with issues of foreign policy and national security. And compared to Kennedy, Obama’s record of world travel is quite thin.

Like Kennedy, Obama did spend some time in his youth living in a foreign country. And because that country, Indonesia, is both Asian and majority Muslim, Obama can—and does—claim to have a unique perspective on a region and a religion that increasingly command Washington’s attention. But it’s worth noting the considerable differences between Obama’s and Kennedy’s overseas experiences. Kennedy lived in Europe, then the geo-strategic center of the world, as a footloose young man who had front-row seats at momentous diplomatic dramas, thanks to his ambassador father. Obama lived as a boy in Indonesia—a big, fascinating country, but not central to U.S. global strategy. If that childhood experience had a genuine impact beyond teaching him the obvious truth that the world is diverse, then he needs to make it clearer how he will translate that knowledge into sound policy.

As an adult prior to wining elective office, Kennedy continued to see the world, including from the helm of a PT boat. Obama’s campaign has implied that the candidate traveled extensively before assuming office, but so far has resisted appeals to provide further information. Given the prevalence of the Kennedy comparison, Obama’s travels have become relevant enough to be made public.

Like Kennedy, Obama has taken several long trips as a lawmaker—through the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union. But there is one noteworthy gap in Obama’s itinerary: except for a brief stopover in London, returning from Russia in 2005, he has apparently never been to Western Europe since launching his political career. What renders this gap especially surprising is that Obama is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. Not only has the Senator not visited the region his committee oversees, but as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note has observed, Obama’s committee has not held a single policy-oriented hearing since he’s been chairman. Europe may not be the central playing field it was in Kennedy’s day, but it remains essential to the global set of alliances and relationships that the U.S. needs to cultivate in the new century. In fact, there is no place where it will be more urgent to rebuild bridges. As Obama knows, the United States cannot do it alone—and Europe will need to play a supporting role in whatever strategy the next president articulates.

It is encouraging that Obama has several times displayed what his campaign calls independence, expressing his disapproval of the Iraq war in particular. But disapproving Iraq is not exactly independence—it is more or less the standard line on the left, and quite different from developing a nuanced third position, which was Kennedy’s strength in the 1950s, as he steered between the hand-wringing of Stevenson liberals and the mindless conservatism of many Democrats and Republicans on the right. It’s true that Obama threatened to bomb Pakistan, a position that most people on the left would find scary—but that is not the kind of measured solution, tough but practical, that most of us associate with JFK. In fact, it is a rather extraordinary lurch to the right, like an involuntary tic, that most on the right would actually disavow. It is difficult to see how a bombing run over Pakistan would do anything to help anyone except the very people it was designed to punish.

In an editorial supporting Obama, the Boston Globe called attention to his “intuitive sense of the wider world.” But “intuition” would have seemed a silly quality to JFK, a realist even among the realists of his day. He and the other veterans he had served with were tired of inflated promises and wanted a world that would live up to the sacrifice they had already made for it. Like Kennedy, Obama certainly has a capacity to learn, and learn quickly. But there are qualities that cannot be gleaned from briefing books, even by the quickest study—independence of judgment, calm determination, and the deep knowledge of all possibilities that comes from years of experience in the trenches. To his credit, Obama has not personally cited intuition as a reason to vote for him, but the campaign profited enormously from the Globe endorsement, and has tolerated a certain vagueness about his background and intentions that now needs to be clarified.

In fact, no modern politician has trafficked more in “intuition” than President Bush, who trumpeted his “instincts” to an incredulous Joe Biden as his justification for invading Iraq, and famously claimed to see into the soul of Vladimir Putin. To run entirely on intuition and the negation of experience can work, and did in 2000. But to do so while wearing the deeply realist mantle of John F. Kennedy is to spin a garment of such fine cloth that it is completely invisible.

Ted Widmer, Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America America Foundation, and was a foreign policy speechwriter for President Clinton (1997-2000). His next book, Ark of the Liberties: America and the World, will be published this summer.

Sperm donor ordered to pay child support

The Associated Press

HARRISBURG — A sperm donor who helped a lesbian couple conceive two children is liable for child support under a state appeals-court ruling that a legal expert believes might be the first of its kind.

A Superior Court panel last week ordered a Dauphin County judge to establish how much Carl L. Frampton Jr. would have to pay to the birth mother of an 8-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl.

“I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s support and are also entitled to visitation,” said New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard, an expert on sexuality and the law.

But Mr. Frampton, 60, of Indiana, Pa., died suddenly of a stroke in March, leaving lawyers involved in the case with different theories about how his death may affect the precedent-setting case.

Jodilynn Jacob, 33, and Jennifer Lee Shultz-Jacob, 48, moved in together as a couple in 1996, and were granted a civil-union license in Vermont in 2002. In addition to conceiving the two children with the help of Mr. Frampton — a longtime friend of Shultz-Jacob’s — Ms. Jacob also adopted her brother’s two older children, now 12 and 13.

But the women’s relationship fell apart, and Ms. Jacob and the children moved out of their Dillsburg, York County, home in February 2006.

Shortly afterward, a court awarded her about $1,000 a month in support from Ms. Shultz-Jacob. Ms. Shultz-Jacob later lost an effort to have the court force Mr. Frampton to contribute support — a decision that the Superior Court overturned April 30.

Ms. Jacob, who now lives in Harrisburg, said Mr. Frampton provided some financial support over the years and gradually took a greater interest in the children.

“Part of the decision came down because he was so involved with them,” Ms. Jacob said yesterday. “It wasn’t that he went to the (sperm) bank and that was it. They called him Papa.”

The process was very informal — Ms. Jacob was inseminated at home.

Lori Andrews, a Chicago-Kent College of Law professor with expertise in reproductive technology, said as many as five people could claim some parental status toward a single child if its conception involved a surrogate mother, an egg donor and a sperm donor.

“The courts are beginning to find increased rights for all the parties involved,” she said. “Most states have adoption laws that go dozens of pages, and we see very few laws with a comprehensive approach to reproductive technology.”

In his written opinion requiring Mr. Frampton to help pay for the child’s support, Superior Court Judge John T.J. Kelly Jr. noted that Mr. Frampton spent thousands of dollars on the children, including purchases of toys and clothing.

“Such constant and attentive solicitude seems widely at variance with the support court’s characterization of (him) having ‘played a minimal role in raising and supporting’ the children,” Judge Kelly said.

The children knew he was their biological father and attended his funeral, but Mr. Frampton opposed the effort to compel support from him.

“We made the argument that, according to Pennsylvania law as it stands, there can really only be two adult individuals that can be held liable for support in a child-custody case,” said Mr. Frampton’s lawyer, Matthew Aaron Smith.

Ms. Shultz-Jacob’s lawyer, Heather Z. Reynosa, wants Mr. Frampton’s support obligation to be made retroactive to when Ms. Jacob first filed for support. Mr. Frampton’s Social Security survivor benefits may also help reduce Ms. Shultz-Jacob’s monthly obligation.

It’s unclear how the child-support guidelines, which assume two parents, will be adapted to account for three parents.

“That’s what’s going to be interesting, because there’s not a whole lot of guidance out there,” Ms. Reynosa said.

The state Supreme Court is currently considering a similar case, in which a sperm donor wants to enforce a promise made by the mother that he would not have to be involved in the child’s life. That biological father was ordered to pay $1,520 in monthly support.

About two-thirds of states have adopted versions of the Uniform Parentage Act that can shield sperm donors from being forced to assume parenting responsibilities. Pennsylvania has no such law.

Fox Business a failure in first months

Fox News, long known for it’s lying, and one-sided, right-wing reporting has thus far been a failure for Rupert Murdoch. The upstart Fox Business Network drew an estimated 6,000 average weekday viewers in its first few months on U.S. cable television, far behind entrenched rival CNBC, according to early ratings estimates obtained by Reuters.CNBC, which has been on the air for nearly two decades, brought in an estimated 283,000 viewers on an average weekday in the same period, according to results tabulated by Nielsen Media Research for clients.

The Fox numbers show that the network still is a long way from striking distance of CNBC, which is available to more households through deals with cable operators.

“The launch of any new cable network in this environment — the numbers are going to be very small starting out, regardless of whether it’s coming from a big media conglomerate or not,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, who tracks media trends. Additionally, “the network is well known to be less than honest with their news reporting so how can viewers be expected to trust their business reporting.”

Fox Business is aiming for a wider audience of individual investors and small business owners, mixing plain talk on business news and economic data with personal finance tips.

Fox Business, part of News Corp, attracted a high of 9,000 viewers during business hours on an average weekday in the week of December 10. It had a low of 4,000 for the week of October 29.

While the daytime numbers appear low, Nielsen does not measure viewership outside people’s homes.

“All these corner offices of C-level executives are watching these business news channels, but they’re not getting recorded,” Adgate said.

At the same time, Fox Business saw audience numbers pick up during prime time, while CNBC has generally seen its viewership drop in the evening hours after financial markets close.

Fox Business prime time averaged 15,000 viewers in the nine weeks through the week of December 16, compared to 234,000 for CNBC. CNBC’s parent NBC Universal is majority-owned by General Electric Co.

A CNBC official declined to comment. A Fox executive was not immediately available for comment. Fox Executive Vice President Kevin Magee told Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz on Friday that the numbers are “absolutely no surprise” because the network is still in its early stages.

A Nielsen official did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Murdoch, News Corp’s chairman and chief executive, said in October that he expects the Fox Business network to reach more than 40 million U.S. homes in 2008. The network launched in a little more than 30 million homes.

Fred Thompson “I’m not particularly interested in running for president”

(CNN) — Republican Fred Thompson has long faced criticism he lacks motivation to be President of the United States, but the Tennessee Republican’s latest comments Saturday are likely to spawn fresh heat.

“I’m not particularly interested in running for president,” the former senator said at a campaign event in Burlington when challenged by a voter over his desire to be commander-in-chief.

“But I think I’d make a good president,” Thompson continued. “I have the background, capability, and concern to do this and I’m doing it for the right reasons.”

Thompson took heat for not jumping into the White House race until September — significantly later than every other candidate — and has since been criticized for his lax campaign style and often-times light schedule.

The former actor has criticized his rivals for launching their presidential bids months ahead of his, and continually touts the fact he hasn’t harbored presidential ambitions his whole career.

“I am not consumed by personal ambition,” Thompson also said Saturday. “I’m offering myself up.”

“I’m only consumed by a few things and politics is not one of them.”

But Thompson also said the sacrifices he has made to run for president proves he wants the top job.

“To be clean I had to cut everything off. I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a TV show, I had a contract with ABC Radio like I was talking about earlier and so forth,” he said. “I guess a man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family, which is not a joyful thing at all, if he didn’t want to do it.”

CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

US Military Deaths in Iraq at 3,901

While you’re ringing in the new year on December 31, take some time to remember this post. Also remember this when it comes time for YOU to vote in the next election.

As of Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007, at least 3,901 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians. At least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

The British military has reported 174 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, South Korea, one death each.

Transcripts show chaos after San Francisco Zoo attack

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, Associated Press Writer

Police radio transcripts from the night of a deadly tiger attack revealed a chaotic scene at the San Francisco Zoo as zookeepers struggled to sedate the animal and medics refused to enter until they knew they would be safe.

Zoo employees also initially questioned whether early reports of the Dec. 25 attack were coming from a mentally unstable person, according to an 18-page log of communications from police dispatchers to officers and emergency responders at the scene.

Police spokesman Sgt. Neville Gittens declined to comment beyond the transcript released late Friday. The police chief has praised officers for their quick action and collaborative work with the zoo staff.

Zoo officials on Saturday did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

The tiger that escaped from its enclosure killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr., whose throat was slashed while he tried to scare away the animal. Two of Sousa’s friends suffered bite and claw injuries. They were released from the hospital Saturday.

The first report of an attack — a male bleeding from the head — came in at 5:08 p.m.

According to the logs, zoo personnel initially told police that two men reporting the escaped tiger might be mentally disturbed and “making something up,” though one was bleeding from the back of the head.

But by 5:10 p.m., zoo employees reported that a tiger was loose. By 5:13 p.m., the zoo was being evacuated.

For several minutes, medics refused to enter the zoo until it had been secured. Meanwhile, zoo keepers were trying to round up what they initially believed to be multiple tigers on the loose and hit them with tranquilizers.

“Zoo personnel have the tiger in sight and are dealing with it,” reads a 5:17 p.m. note on the transcript.

The transcript does not indicate when police or emergency responders entered, but by 5:20 p.m. medics had located one victim with a large puncture hole to his neck. The tiger was still loose.

As medics attended to the victim, an officer spotted the tiger sitting down before it fled and began attacking another victim, according to the logs.

At 5:27 p.m., less than 20 minutes after the initial reports were made, the officers began firing, killing the 350-pound Siberian tiger.

It was unclear whether letting police and medics into the zoo sooner would have helped the victims or subjected emergency responders to greater danger with a tiger on the loose.

Late Saturday, about 50 people gathered outside the San Jose home of Souza’s grandmother to attend a candlelight vigil. Mourners watched silently as Souza’s father stood in front of two enlarged photos of he and his son together.

“My son Carlos was a very good boy” the elder Souza said, choking back tears. “I can see that he had a lot of friends here. I want you all to remember the good things that he did and carry this with you in your hearts for as long as you can.”

Police said Friday that they had completed their investigation on zoo grounds and that investigators “found absolutely no evidence of an intentional release.”

It has become increasingly clear that the tiger climbed over the wall of its enclosure, which at just under 12 1/2 high was about 4 feet below the recommended minimum for U.S. zoos.

Zoo officials said the zoo, which has been closed since the attack, would reopen Jan. 3. It could face heavy fines from regulators and lose its license. It also could be hit with a huge lawsuit by the victims or their families.

Meanwhile, at the Oakland Zoo, officials have said they plan to raise the height of the walls surrounding their tiger enclosure to avoid any escapes like the one in San Francisco. The current walls range from 13 1/2 to 16 feet.

Associated Press writers Ron Harris in San Jose and Marcus Wohlsen in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Patriots – Giants game most watched television broadcast in U.S. history

(AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is lifted in the air by his teammates Logan Mankins (70) and Russ Hochstein, left, after Brady threw a 65-yard touchdown to Randy Moss in the third quarter of an NFL football game against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2007. Brady broke the single-season record with his 50th touchdown pass and Moss broke the single season-record with his 23rd touchdown reception on the play.

By Sam Evans, Associated Pass Writer
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.

The numbers are in and the preliminary ratings indicate the 29 December 2007 game between the Patriots and Giants was the most watched broadcast in U.S. television history.

Up to this point, the most watched program in U.S. television history was the M*A*S*H series finale: “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” which aired in 50.15 million households on 28 February, 1983 with a 77% share of the entire viewing audience. The M*A*S*H broadcast had 105.9 million total viewers. Since 2000, the most watched program was Super Bowl XLI Indianapolis Colts vs. Chicago Bears), which had 93.1 million million viewers on 4 February, 2007 .

Overnight ratings of the Patriots-Giants game show 53.2 million households watched the game. In addition, Nielsen Media Research is reporting overnight viewers totaled more than 107.3 million on the three networks broadcasting the game (NFL Network, NBC, CBS) and an 83% share of the total television viewing audience.

After weeks of insisting they wouldn’t cave in, NFL officials did just that Wednesday. As a result, all of America saw the Patriots’ make history. Saturday night’s game between New England and the New York Giants on the NFL Network, was also simulcast nationwide on CBS and NBC. It was the first time in NFL history the same game was broadcast on three separate networks at the same time.

The game itself also set several NFL records. Tom Brady and Randy Moss set single-season records for touchdown passes and TD catches, respectively, Saturday night when the New England Patriots stars combined on a 65-yard scoring pass play in the fourth quarter.

The play gave Brady 50 TD passes for the season, breaking Peyton Manning’s 2004 record of 49. Moss now has 23 catches, breaking the mark of Jerry Rice, who did it in 12 games during a strike-marred 1987 season.

The play and subsequent two-point conversion gave the Patriots a 31-28 fourth-quarter lead over the New York Giants and a record 582 points for the season. The old mark was 556 by the 1998 Vikings.

Brady and Moss earlier combined on a 4-yard touchdown pass. On the second one, Brady ran past safety James Butler, who seemed to reinjure a hamstring on the play. Moss caught the ball and trotted into the end zone. The New England Patriots finished the regular season 16-0 with a 38-35 win in East Rutherford, N.J.

New Hampshire newspaper calls Mitt Romney a phony

 By GLEN JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

The Concord Monitor broke with political tradition Sunday, telling readers in the state with the first presidential primary why they should not vote for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney instead of whom they should support.

In a scathing anti-endorsement that called Romney a “disquieting figure,” the New Hampshire newspaper’s editorial board said he looks and acts like a presidential contender but “surely must be stopped” because he lacks the core philosophical beliefs to be a trustworthy president.

In particular, the newspaper noted the former Massachusetts governor’s change of heart on such issues as abortion rights, stem-cell research and access to emergency contraception, as well as on signing an anti-tax pledge.

“When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state’s first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we’ll know it,” the newspaper said. “Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no.”

Romney’s campaign sloughed off the criticism and instead pointed to his endorsement Sunday by the Sioux City Journal in Iowa, the state whose Jan. 3 caucuses kick off the presidential nominating process. Romney also has been stumping hard in New Hampshire ahead of its Jan. 8 primary, including stops here and in two other communities on Sunday.

“The Monitor’s editorial board is regarded as a liberal one on many issues, so it is not surprising that they would criticize Governor Romney for his conservative views and platform,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. “Governor Romney has taken firm positions that are at odds with the board’s support for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, their position against school choice and their advocacy for taking `Under God’ out of the Pledge of Allegiance. The governor happens to disagree with the editorial board on all those issues.”

In its endorsement, the Iowa newspaper said: “Romney combines an outsider’s new face with a proven track record of success as an executive in both the private and public sectors. …Personally, he is engaging, even charming, he has shown an ability to reach across partisan divides, and he is passionate on the campaign trail. In terms of leadership qualities, he possesses ‘it,’ and the importance of ‘it’ should not be diminished.”

President George Bush pardons record 3 turkeys in 2007

Adhering to a tradition now entering its 60th year, President Bush on Tuesday delivered a full presidential pardon to the national Thanksgiving turkey in the Rose Garden at the White House.

He also announced the names of the bird and its alternate, which were chosen by people who voted online. They will officially be called May and Flower, the president said.

“That’s certainly better than the names the vice president suggested: Lunch and Dinner,” Bush joked.

This marks the second and third pardons by President Bush this year. It’s the first time in the history of the country a U.S. President has pardoned 3 turkeys in the same calendar year. As you probably recall, Bush pardoned Lewis Scooter Libby on 2 July of this year, not long after a jury of U.S. citizens convicted him of lying in the presidential CIA leak scandal.

On a more serious note, the president reminded Americans they have much to be thankful for this holiday season.

• They have to be thankful that they’re not like military personnel and overpaid mercenary contractors who are spending the holiday in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• They have to be thankful that billions and billions of US debt is being racked up for future generations rather than being fiscally responsible and paying for this war now by making all taxpayers pay their fair share and fund his war through increased taxes. After all, we all need to sacrifice and support the troops, don’t we?

• They have to be thankful that the President chose to recycle and redeploy military personnel 2, 3, 4, or more tours rather than asking all U.S. citizens to sacrifice and support the war effort by instituting a draft.

The President went on to say, “May they live the rest of their lives in blissful gobbling and may all Americans enjoy a holiday filled with love and peace,”.

I guess this love and peace comment does not apply to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens who have either been displaced, injured, or killed in the course of our “liberation” of their country from Saddam Husein. Oh that’s right, those people, those Iraqis, they live over there and we really don’t care about the suffering that has been brought upon them as we try to force democracy upon a people that doesn’t want it.

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody