Federal Judge in Ohio Restores Early Voting

August 31, 2012, 10:01 pm

By RAY RIVERA

A federal judge in Ohio on Friday ordered the state to give all voters the right to cast their ballots in person on the final three days before Election Day.

The ruling was a victory for state Democrats and President Obama's campaign in a swing state and was the latest salvo in the contentious battle over the state's early voting laws before the Nov. 6 election.

The state Democratic Party and the Obama campaign had sued the state over the constitutionality of a law that ended early in-person voting on the Friday evening before the election to all but voters serving in the military or living overseas.

The judge, Peter C. Economus of Federal District Court in Columbus, issued a preliminary injuncti on against the law, saying that in making an exception for some, the law unconstitutionally valued some voters over others.

Judge Economus also cited statistical studies presented by Democrats showing that low-income and minority voters would be disproportionately affected by the elimination of the voting days.

In his ruling, the judge roundly rejected the state's arguments that restoring the final three days would make it difficult for county election boards to prepare for Election Day and would make it difficult for military voters to cast their ballots early.

The Ohio attorney general, Mike DeWine, above, announced that he would appeal the decision.

“With all due respect to the judge, we disagree with his ruling today,” Mr. DeWine said. “We have always allowed distinction for military voters, and to say this violates equal protection is wrong.”

Ohio opened early balloting to all voters - one of 32 states to do so - after the 2004 elec tion debacle that left thousands of state residents stranded in long lines unable to cast their ballots before the polls closed.

Democrats estimated in their lawsuit that 93,000 people voted early in the final three days of the 2008 election. At least one study Democrats presented in their lawsuit showed that early voters tended to favor Democrats.

The Republican-controlled legislature eliminated the final three days in a flurry of legislation in the last year. Then last month, the secretary of state, a Republican, eliminated all weekend voting during the five-week early voting period, which begins Oct. 2.

After Friday's decision, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio called on the state to restore all weekends during the early voting period.

Why College Money Is the Best Baby Gift

By RON LIEBER

This week's Your Money column about the ins and outs of giving money as a gift to someone's 529 college savings account wasn't meant to be an etiquette lesson. But I do think giving money is totally defensible, even if it means pushing the parents to open a 529 or other savings account to use the gift.

Sure, toys are nice and clothes are useful until babies outgrow them in a few months. But many parents can afford the basics. All but a few families could use a head start on saving up the six-figure sum that will probably be necessary to send the child to college one day.

Have you given college money to a newborn? How did it go over with the parents?

Way Cleared for November Vote

By MANNY FERNANDEZ

A federal three-judge panel in San Antonio ruled on Friday that the November elections in Texas would proceed, ending uncertainty about whether a Washington court's earlier ruling would delay the elections.

Earlier, the court in Washington struck down electoral redistricting maps passed by the Republican-dominated State Legislature, finding that they discriminated against minorities.

One of the minority groups that sued Texas over the maps asked the judges to redraw part of the Congressional district map and to set a new election schedule.

But on Friday, the San Antonio judges determined that the interim redistricting maps that they created would be used. A lawyer for the group, the League of United Latin American Citizens, had argued that the interim Congressional maps were discriminatory because they were based in part on the state's original maps.

The judges appeared reluctant to disrupt the elections, and they heard testimony from an elections administrator in Bexar County, where San Antonio is located, who said that any change to the electoral maps two months before Election Day would pose logistical problems and jeopardize her ability to meet the Sept. 22 deadline for mailing ballots to overseas military voters.

Scott Brown and Karl Rove Break Bread

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Senator Scott P. Brown had hoped his limited time at the Republican National Convention might spare him from appearing too enmeshed in events that might not play so well with independent voters back home in Massachusetts.

But no sooner had Mr. Brown arrived in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday than he was spotted by a Boston Globe reporter having a tête-à-tête at a restaurant with Karl Rove, the former political strategist to President George W. Bush.

Mr. Rove is also co-founder of American Crossroads, the “super PAC” that expects to spend at least $300 million on behalf of Republican candidates this year. Mr. Rove had made a presentation earlier in the day to wealthy conservative donors at a forum described in detail by Business Week. At that presentation, Mr. Rove showed ads “aimed at such Senate battleground states as Massachusetts,” to prompt the donors to open their wallets.

Mr. Brown faces an intense campaign against Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who has pulled in more money than he has, though he has more cash on hand.

After the Business Week scoop was published Friday, the Warren campaign raised the specter that Mr. Rove's super PAC was planning on invading Massachusetts with expensive negative advertising. The campaign wrote an open letter to Mr. Rove and the Brown campaign urging Mr. Rove to stay away and to respect the “people's pledge” in Massachusetts, in which the Brown and Warren campaigns have agreed to penalties if outside agitators come in on their behalf.

The letter, from Mindy Myers, Ms. Warren's campaign manager, said that the differences between the candidates were “best debated between the candidates and not via heavy ad spending from outside groups.”

But just in case that letter does not work, the Warren camp has taken the extra step of using the threat of a Rove invasion to raise more money.

< p>“Donate $5 right now to help Elizabeth fight back against Karl Rove and his Republican friends,” says the fund-raising appeal.

Follow Katharine Q. Seelye on Twitter at @kseelye.

Obama Honors Anniversary of Iraq Pullout

By JACKIE CALMES

EL PASO, Texas - President Obama came to Fort Bliss on the border with Mexico on Friday to meet privately with service members and their families and to highlight the second anniversary of the end of combat operations in Iraq.

As it happened, Mr. Obama met with the veterans of both the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars, and some soldiers about to be deployed to Afghanistan, the day after Mitt Romney failed to mention either war in his nomination-acceptance address at the Republican National Convention. The omission drew criticism from Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Obama did not mention his rival in his speech to about 5,000 troops, but, plainly referring to Republicans including Mr. Romney, he did say that the soldiers should ignore political talk of major cuts ahead in military spending.

“The United States will always maintain its military superiority,” he said.

The troops mainly listened quietly, but one of their bursts of applause and Army whoops came when Mr. Obama said, “After a nation of war, the nation we need to be rebuilding is the United States of America,” tapping the skills of its military veterans.

“If you fought for America,” he said, “you shouldn't have to fight for a job in America.”

Before his speech to the First Armored Division, Mr. Obama met privately with 13 people, including two wounded warriors, spouses of service members and Gen. Lloyd Austin, the last commanding general of American forces in Iraq.

According to the White House, the president went to hear “about their experiences, views and concerns on issues relating to the health of the force,” in particular mental health. Before leaving Washington, Mr. Obama signed an executive order redirecting some money for veterans to improve services for mental health and suicide prevention. His press secretary, Jay Carney, said the initiatives bui ld on previous steps “to treat the unseen wounds of war.”

The president highlighted the need to help veterans in his remarks Friday.

“Part of ending these wars responsibly is caring for those who fought in them,” Mr. Obama said. “We may be turning a page on a decade of war, but America's responsibilities to you have only just begun.”

Mr. Obama's visit to the base, his third in two years, inadvertently made for an awkward contrast with Mr. Romney after the Republican's convention speech the night before.

“What War?” was the headline on a scathing commentary Friday by the conservative editor William Kristol of The Weekly Standard. He wrote, “Has it ever happened that we've been at war and a presidential nominee has ignored, in this kind of major and formal speech, the war and our warriors?”

Mr. Carney said only that he was “surprised” by Mr. Romney's failure to mention Afghanistan, but he said that he was speaking only for himself.

One Woman\'s Data Trail Diary

By SCOTT SHANE

As part of The Agenda, The Times's look at major issues facing the next administration, we have been examining the trade-offs, more than a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, between security and privacy and civil liberties. Some readers have written in about the electronic data trail that all of us leave as we go about our lives, using the Internet and carrying smartphones.

Heidi Boghosian, a New Yorker and author of a book on surveillance scheduled for publication next year, “Spying on Democracy: A Short History of Government/Corporate Collusion in the Technology Age,” agreed to try to document her own data trail on one recent day. Her account, below, is nothing extraordinary â€" and that's the point. It is impossible to live in urban, wired America without leaving clues about ourselves, our movements and our views everywhere. And it is all but impossible to be certain who is looking at the resulting data or video and how much of it is accessible to federal, state or local government.

Ms. Boghosian is executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a group of self-described radical lawyers and law students founded in 1937, and between her day job and her book research, she thinks far more than most people about surveillance and privacy. But the exercise of documenting her day was nonetheless informative, she said.

“Definitely, for me, going through the process reinforced my sense of the role corporations play in our daily lives,” she said. “And I don't think most people realize the extent to which corporations cooperate in turning over personal information to the government.”

Here is the record she made:

A Day of Surveillance:

(1) 8:30 a.m.: Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in hallway permits private landlord to monitor departure of tenant from apartment building at 173 Avenue A, New York, N.Y. A sign is poste d alerting tenants that their actions are being monitored.

(2) City-owned video surveillance camera, mounted atop a streetlight pole, records pedestrian and vehicular traffic on corner of Avenue A and 11th Street.

(3) 9:45 a.m.: Internet Protocol-based, closed-circuit television CCTV/video surveillance camera at Chase Bank A.T.M. on Second Avenue and 10th Street records clear image of person withdrawing money. I.P. video surveillance footage probably transmitted to a central monitoring room and digitally stored (allowing for advanced search techniques), or viewed over the Internet. Intelligent I.P. cameras with video analytics such as motion sensors, facial recognition and behavioral recognition are used to identify abnormal activity in and around banking locations.

(4) 10 a.m.: Customer Loyalty Card at East Village coffee shop Café Pick Me Up, Avenue A and 9th Street, likely allow the business to track and predict customer spending habits.

(5) 10:30 a.m.: iPhone (with G.P.S. tracking) in owner's back pocket allows phone owner's movement and location to be tracked (by government, if cellphone provider gives access) through day and evening, even if phone is turned off, as phone owner walks to Astor Place subway stop.

(6) 10:45 a.m.: Passed by “smart sign” (digital billboard with cameras that gauges demographics of passers-by) that delivers ads tailored to the demographics of the passer-by.

(7) 10:45 a.m.: CCTV in NY subway system monitor boarding #6 subway line to work.

(8) 11:11 a.m.: CCTV in elevator records ride to ninth-floor office in office building. Building security guard has four cameras behind front desk showing elevator, stairways and hallways.

(9) 11:20 a.m.: Facebook software tracks user activities on sites on Internet after logging in and reading a few comments. “Tag Suggestions” feature employs facial recognition technology and suggests name tags after uploading photos.

< p>(10) 11:30 a.m.: Cookies on Internet monitor all Internet searches throughout day on range of subjects; ads appear on screen related to items purchased on line (athletic shoes, face cream).

(11) 1 p.m.: Credit card at Macy's Department store, used for quick purchase, has embedded RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chip, tracking consumer spending habits and providing that information to big business.

(12) 1:15 p.m.: Shoes in Macy's new shoe store all have RFID chips (unique identifier linked to database) in them.

(13) 1:30 p.m. Downloaded iTunes onto iPhone. Online music providers may share personal information with third parties.

(14) 2 p.m.: Video cameras and motion detectors in local supermarket track physical movements of customers (allegedly to aim for improved customer service) as customer drops in to pick up some fruit for lunch.

(15) 2:30 p.m.: Social security number and driver's license information, required by Fulton Street Verizon cellular s tore winds up in Verizon's digital database, as customer switches from AT&T. Allegedly needed Social Security number to conduct credit check even though customer has had a landline account with Verizon for many years.

(16) 3:30 p.m.: I.P. address may have been included on a bar code on a digital coupon while registering for at hotelcoupons.com to get a discount hotel deal.

(17) 4 p.m.: Continuous, systematic desktop monitoring surveillance of personal use of business computer to access site to order shoes could have been conducted had employer installed software to monitor my real time actions, purportedly to avoid discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits that may result from inappropriate e-mails sent within company.

(18) 6 p.m.: Dropped by anti-fracking protest on West 14th Street. Unmarked police van with tinted windows probably had NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) personnel recording protest activities, especially because several Occu py protesters were present. TARU provides investigative technical equipment and tactical support to all N.Y.P.D. bureaus and also provides assistance to other city, state and federal agencies. The unit employs several forms of computer forensics.

(19) 7:30 p.m.: CCTV cameras inside East Village restaurant while meeting friend for dinner after the protest.

(20) 9:30 p.m.: Surveillance cameras on several buildings passed on way home is captured on tape.

(21) 10 p.m.: Final check of Gmail, and a few Google searches, allow Google to collect even more data on consumer habits and personal interests.

Ways to Make Life Joyful

By BUCKS EDITORS

Paul Sullivan writes in his Wealth Matters column this week about a pursuit mainly for the wealthy - yachting.

While the market for yachts weakened significantly in the wake of the financial crisis, prices seem to have bottomed out and demand is rising again, Mr. Sullivan writes. Still, maintaining a yacht and paying for fuel remain expensive - a fact acknowledged by two owners Mr. Sullivan spoke to.

But both offered similar reasons for owning a yacht - the joy it adds to their lives.

While most of us could only dream of such an indulgence, there are many other ways to make life joyful, and they cost far less. We'll name a few - a day trip to the ocean, a week away from the office, a roller coaster ride, a meal meant to linger over. But we'd like to hear your suggestions.

Massachusetts Senator Supported by Both Sides of Abortion Debate

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Senator Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, has achieved a rare distinction. In a highly partisan environment, he has received support from the opposing sides in one of the nation's most enduring and polarizing debates - over abortion.

He was endorsed on Wednesday by the Republican Majority for Choice; before that, he received the backing of Massachusetts Citizens for Life.

For Mr. Brown, the support from the opposing camps is a badge of honor and a sign of his ability to reach across traditional political boundaries to the independent voters he needs.

To his critics, it is a mark of his ability to blur his Republican identity and be all things to all people.

Mr. Brown, who is locked in a tight race against Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who strongly supports abortion rights, describes himself as “pro-choice.” He objected to the Republican Party platform's hard line against abortion. Asked by a reporter recently whether he would pledge to “never vote in the Senate to curb women's reproductive rights,” Mr. Brown replied: “I'll promise that.”

But some of his past votes would not pass that test. Perhaps most notably, he co-sponsored the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed employers to refuse to pay for certain health benefits, including contraception, if they opposed them on religious grounds. He opposes taxpayer financing for abortions (though he recently supported allowing such financing for women in the military who are raped). He opposes the procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion and supports strong laws regarding parental consent.

The upshot of this dance is that Mr. Brown appears to be both for abortion rights and against them, a straddling that prompted one Twitter user to write that his positioning seemed “like being a little bit pregnant.”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Brown did little to clarify things.

Asked if he could prove his “pro-choice credentials,” he said: “I don't need to prove anything. I let my record speak for myself. I feel very comfortable getting support from everybody.”

Mr. Brown promotes himself as an independent, often pointing out that he has voted with his party only 54 percent of the time. Not being “pure” on the issue of abortion - from the perspective of either side - helps underscore that profile.

The National Right to Life Committee gives Mr. Brown a positive score of 80 percent, saying he has voted with its position on four of five votes that the group considers important.

At the same time, Naral Pro-Choice America has given him a score of only 50 percent on votes it considers important - unusually low for someone who considers himself “pro-choice.” In fact, some groups that favor abortion rights do not consider him one o f their own.

“One right vote in the midst of scores of wrong votes does not make you pro-choice,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily's List, which supports Democratic women who back abortion rights and has endorsed Ms. Warren.

But those who have endorsed Mr. Brown are less hung up on the concept of ideological purity and take a more practical approach. If Mr. Brown is re-elected, they say, he could help bring a Republican majority to the Senate, which is more important in the long run than how Mr. Brown may vote on individual bills.

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said that her group was backing Mr. Brown because he represented the better of two alternatives.

“In an ideal world, we would have someone who is 100 percent pro-life,” she said. “But we live in the real world.”

She said she understood that Mr. Brown was “pro-choice” because “he wants abortion to be available,” but her group is recom mending that its members vote for him anyway because it sees him as “less extreme” than Ms. Warren. (The group is not officially “endorsing” him because it endorses only those who are “pro-life.”)

Kellie Ferguson, executive director of the Republican Majority for Choice, which endorsed Mr. Brown on Wednesday, said her group was also not focused on ideological purity.

“A litmus test is not practical,” she said. “The Republican Party platform is so extreme that even the presidential nominee doesn't meet its litmus test.”

The Republican Majority had not planned to get involved in the Massachusetts race because abortion did not appear to be a factor in it, Ms. Ferguson said.

But it was moved to do so, she said, when Ms. Warren began trying to link Mr. Brown with Todd Akin, the Missouri Senate candidate who put forth the bizarre claim this month that a woman who had been the victim of “legitimate” rape could not get pregnant, obvia ting the need for abortions. Mr. Brown was the first Republican to call for Mr. Akin to drop out of the Senate race, but Ms. Warren tried to tar him with the Akin brush.

“We thought it was unfair to use this national strategy of tying every Republican to the most absurd and inexcusable statement instead of looking at the record,” Ms. Ferguson said. “We felt there was a distortion, and this was an opportunity to set that record straight.”

Mr. Brown's campaign appears content to live with the dichotomy of having support from the two opposing camps, even if it muddies the waters - or perhaps because it muddies the waters.

The Warren campaign hopes to portray him as an unreliable vote for women.

“Scott Brown may say the right things some of the time, but women in Massachusetts need someone who will stand up for them all the time,” said Alethea Harney, a spokeswoman for Ms. Warren. “On issue after issue, Scott Brown hasn't been there - votin g against equal pay for equal work and supporting a bill that would allow employers to limit access to birth control. Women just can't count on him.”

Isabella Moschen contributed reporting from Tampa, Fla.

Follow Katharine Q. Seelye on Twitter at @kseelye.

Obama to Visit Gulf Coast on Monday

August 31, 2012, 12:54 pm

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JEREMY W. PETERS

LAKELAND, Fla. - The two contenders for the White House announced Friday morning that they would both visit the Gulf Coast to tour the damage from Hurricane Isaac and meet with officials about the recovery efforts.

Mitt Romney, fresh from the conclusion of his nominating convention in Tampa, will arrive first. His campaign said the Republican nominee would skip a planned rally in Virginia on Friday afternoon to tour the bayou region south of New Orleans.

The White House said a few hours later that President Obama would visit the region on Monday to meet with local officials in the area and view the damage left by the powerful storm.

Both men moved quickly a fter the slow-moving storm flooded many of the low-lying areas along the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines this week, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people.

The storm struck on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, raising the political stakes for both men as they seek to avoid the impression of indifference that President George W. Bush initially left after the much larger storm five years ago.

This year's storm has already exerted political as well as meteorological impact. Its initial track suggested that it might hit Tampa, where as many as 50,000 people were about to gather for the Republican National Convention. Organizers canceled the first day of the convention.

Its shift west spared Tampa but raised the specter of another damaging blow to New Orleans, a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Romney's organizers kept a wary eye on the storm throughout the convention, telling reporte rs that they were ready to make other schedule changes at a moment's notice.

Now, with the storm headed inland, Mr. Romney's campaign spared no time, announcing its intentions before Mr. Obama did.

The Romney campaign announced the schedule change on Friday morning, as the candidate was en route to this city along Florida's heavily populated and politically significant I-4 corridor, a belt of interstate that stretches from Daytona Beach to Tampa, where the Republicans wrapped up their convention on Thursday night.

The trip, to the bayou region south of New Orleans, will have a decidedly presidential feel. Mr. Romney plans to meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a Republican, and stop by an emergency command center.

Aides to Mr. Obama have not provided any other details about the president's schedule in the region on Monday.

The trip to New Orleans forced the president to cancel a campaign trip to Cleveland on Monday. He had been scheduled t o deliver remarks at the 11th Congressional District Community Caucus Labor Day Festival.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

One More Rally Before Ryan and Romney Leave Florida

August 31, 2012, 12:22 pm

By TRIP GABRIEL

LAKELAND, Fla. - With his-and-his jets in the background now wrapped with campaign slogans and logos, Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan waved goodbye to Florida on Friday morning, repeating favorite lines from their convention speeches while seeking to mobilize the 2,000 supporters who turned out to help carry this largest, most crucial of battleground states.

“The convention was a wonderful and magnificent opportunity for us to share our message,'' Mr. Romney said. “Now we're going to need you to get out there and get your friends to vote.''

He added, “You've proved it before, Florida can be a very close election.''

Originally planning to campaign here and in Virginia with Mr. Ryan on Friday, Mr. Romney announced that he would detour to Louisiana to inspect storm damage.

“Last night you got to know me a little more,'' he said, standing atop a stage and speaking to the enthusiastic crowd in a hangar. “I was embarrassed from time to time with the nice things said.''

Speaking first, Mr. Ryan seemed to slip into the traditional vice-presidential role of the ticket's more barbed aggressor, aiming attacks at President Obama with more edge than the smiles he flashed at the convention.

He repeated one of his most effective zingers, that college graduates in their 20s shouldn't have to return home jobless to their childhood bedrooms and look up at fading Obama posters.

“President Obama made a whole bunch of promises when he ran for president,” he said. “Now we see a laundry list of broken promises.”

“The record of contrast couldn't be more stark,'' he said, comparing Mr. Romney's fo ur years as Massachusetts governor with Mr. Obama's “failed leadership.'' He mentioned the decline in the state unemployment rate under Mr. Romney, without including that the state ranked 47th in job creation over Mr. Romney's four years in office. He assailed the downgrade of the United States credit rating under Mr. Obama “for the first time in our history,'' but did not mention that the downgrade was partly because of Congressional gridlock over raising the debt ceiling driven by House Republicans' demands for spending cuts.

The visit to Lakeland, midway between Tampa and Orlando, was no coincidence. It is hotly contested ground in the presidential race because of an explosively growing population of retirees, working-class residents and Hispanics. The housing crisis devastated the region, with the 2010 census showing that 15 percent of Lakeland households were vacant.

Adam Putnam, the state agriculture commissioner and a chairman of Mr. Romney's state cam paign, called Lakeland “the fulcrum of the I-4 corridor'' in introducing the nominees. “The eyes of the world and the hopes of Americans are on us in central Florida, and we will deliver,'' he said.

The future of Medicare, of course, will be a major issue, and Democrats are hitting the Romney-Ryan ticket hard for proposals that will “end Medicare as we know it.” Polls show a strong majority of seniors oppose the idea of transforming Medicare into an optional voucherlike plan, as Mr. Ryan proposes.

But Paul Senet, the national Republican committeeman from Florida, who sat in the stands at the rally, said he thought Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan were winning the messaging war on Medicare.

“We've got too much good communication going with seniors,'' he said. “They are enlightened and informed. There's respect for somebody finally being honest with them and admitting we've got to get this fixed.''

One More Rally Before Ryan and Romney Leave Florida

August 31, 2012, 12:22 pm

By TRIP GABRIEL

LAKELAND, Fla. - With his-and-his jets in the background now wrapped with campaign slogans and logos, Mitt Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan waved goodbye to Florida on Friday morning, repeating favorite lines from their convention speeches while seeking to mobilize the 2,000 supporters who turned out to help carry this largest, most crucial of battleground states.

“The convention was a wonderful and magnificent opportunity for us to share our message,'' Mr. Romney said. “Now we're going to need you to get out there and get your friends to vote.''

He added, “You've proved it before, Florida can be a very close election.''

Originally planning to campaign here and in Virginia with Mr. Ryan on Friday, Mr. Romney announced that he would detour to Louisiana to inspect storm damage.

“Last night you got to know me a little more,'' he said, standing atop a stage and speaking to the enthusiastic crowd in a hangar. “I was embarrassed from time to time with the nice things said.''

Speaking first, Mr. Ryan seemed to slip into the traditional vice-presidential role of the ticket's more barbed aggressor, aiming attacks at President Obama with more edge than the smiles he flashed at the convention.

He repeated one of his most effective zingers, that college graduates in their 20s shouldn't have to return home jobless to their childhood bedrooms and look up at fading Obama posters.

“President Obama made a whole bunch of promises when he ran for president,” he said. “Now we see a laundry list of broken promises.”

“The record of contrast couldn't be more stark,'' he said, comparing Mr. Romney's fo ur years as Massachusetts governor with Mr. Obama's “failed leadership.'' He mentioned the decline in the state unemployment rate under Mr. Romney, without including that the state ranked 47th in job creation over Mr. Romney's four years in office. He assailed the downgrade of the United States credit rating under Mr. Obama “for the first time in our history,'' but did not mention that the downgrade was partly because of Congressional gridlock over raising the debt ceiling driven by House Republicans' demands for spending cuts.

The visit to Lakeland, midway between Tampa and Orlando, was no coincidence. It is hotly contested ground in the presidential race because of an explosively growing population of retirees, working-class residents and Hispanics. The housing crisis devastated the region, with the 2010 census showing that 15 percent of Lakeland households were vacant.

Adam Putnam, the state agriculture commissioner and a chairman of Mr. Romney's state cam paign, called Lakeland “the fulcrum of the I-4 corridor'' in introducing the nominees. “The eyes of the world and the hopes of Americans are on us in central Florida, and we will deliver,'' he said.

The future of Medicare, of course, will be a major issue, and Democrats are hitting the Romney-Ryan ticket hard for proposals that will “end Medicare as we know it.” Polls show a strong majority of seniors oppose the idea of transforming Medicare into an optional voucherlike plan, as Mr. Ryan proposes.

But Paul Senet, the national Republican committeeman from Florida, who sat in the stands at the rally, said he thought Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan were winning the messaging war on Medicare.

“We've got too much good communication going with seniors,'' he said. “They are enlightened and informed. There's respect for somebody finally being honest with them and admitting we've got to get this fixed.''

D\'Oh! Eastwood\'s Convention Speech Spawns Fake \'Simpsons\' Meme

August 31, 2012, 11:34 am

By DAVE ITZKOFF

In the words of that great animated philosopher Homer J. Simpson: “When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work.” Sometimes the same can be said for social media.

In the wake of Clint Eastwood's unusual exchange with an empty chair representing President Obama at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, the collective creativity of the Internet has generated countless illustrations and other widely circulated memes making light of the speech. (Including at least one rejoinder that came from the President's own Twitter account.)

But another humorous image, made to look like it came from an episode of “The Simpsons,” overstates the predictive power of that satirical Fox c artoon series.

This particular meme, which has spread rapidly on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, shows the cantankerous character Grampa Simpson in a newspaper clipping, shaking his fist in a photograph beneath the headline “Old Man Yells at Chair.” The image is often accompanied by captions reading: “The Simpsons' Knew It Was Coming.”

Though rival animators have previously expressed their awed frustration at the ability of “Simpsons” writers to beat them to every possible joke and plotline, in this case, “The Simpsons” didn't do it.

That image of Grampa Simpson, created by a thus-far anonymous denizen of the Web, is an alteration of a gag that appeared in a 2002 “Simpsons” episode called “The Old Man and the Key”: lacking a photograph for a driver's license, Grampa displays an old newspaper article whose headline reads: “Old Man Yells At Cloud.”

The original “cloud” joke has been referenced around the Intern et for years, often invoked in arguments where one or both sides appear to be growing especially heated over nothing particularly important.

On Friday, “Simpsons” executive producer Al Jean reluctantly acknowledged that he and his colleagues did not have quite enough foresight to anticipate Mr. Eastwood's speech.

“We didn't predict this but we GUARANTEE the world will end December 21,” Mr. Jean wrote in an e-mail. “Save money by not booking any holiday plans!”

Romney\'s Performance Provided a Smooth Ending for G.O.P. Convention

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TAMPA , Fla. - Just after 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, about 10 minutes behind schedule, Mitt Romney strode down on the red-carpeted floor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, shaking hands on both sides of the aisle.

It was as if he were already the president and about to deliver his first State of the Union speech. As Mr. Romney ambled his way toward the platform, workers moved a lectern to the front of the stage â€" closer to the audience that for so long has seemed so distant for Mr. Romney.

For nearly 40 minutes, Mr. Romney spoke - confident and at ease, alone on the huge stage erected for this moment - and accepted the Republican nomination for president. It was a polished moment of stagecraft, a smooth ending to a convention that had begun in the unsteady shadow of a looming tropical storm and a primary campaign that been stormy throughout.

For Mr. Romney, this was the performance of someone who may not be a natural at politics, but had clearly spent time practicing for this appearance before the biggest audience of his life. He spoke quickly, but there were no flubbed lines. He was at ease as he joked with the crowd, careful not to step on his own applause lines.

There were moments it was easy to imagine Mr. Romney, the competitive perfectionist, practicing in front of a mirror or before a room filled with aides. Yet for all the criticism of him as wooden or forced, he did not seem too practiced, as he breezed between gauzy stories about his life and tough, though not piercing, attacks on Mr. Obama.

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Mr. Romney said, pausing - almost a moment too long - as the audience rose in mocking laughter. “My promise is to help you and your family.”

Mr. Romney's broadly thematic speech was largely devoid of specific proposals. Still, as was the case with the acceptance speech of his ru nning mate, Paul D. Ryan, it contained some questionable statements, among them his oft-repeated (and oft-debunked) claim that Mr. Obama had gone on “an apology tour” for America.

And he spoke almost matter-of-factly of using this speech to do what many Republicans - and for that matter, Sunday morning television commentators - had told him he needed to do. “You need to know more about me and where I will lead the country,” he said, before starting with the “I was born” section of his remarks.

If the normally punctual Mr. Romney was irritated by the late start of his speech, it was not apparent. And how could he be? The delay came because of Clint Eastwood, the actor and director, who was the surprise guest at the convention, at the candidate's request, to introduce Mr. Romney.

Mr. Eastwood walked on stage to a burst of flashbulbs and Hollywood-like applause. “Save a little for Mitt,” he said.

Mr. Eastwood also arrived without any visi ble script - the only words on the teleprompter were stage directions (“Whip team - hand out the flags”). And it showed. As the cameras clicked, he launched into lanky, meandering remarks, included a mock, and at times off-color, interview with an imaginary Mr. Obama sitting in an empty chair on the stage.

A red light flashed furiously under the teleprompter. If Mr. Eastwood, who is 82, saw it, he paid it no mind. Given his line of work, it seems unlikely he was unfamiliar with its meaning.

Before Mr. Eastwood, a lineup of Mr. Romney's friends, fellow church elders, associates from his business life and people who worked for him when he was governor of Massachusetts paid tribute to his compassion and charity. A biographical videotape included intimate accounts of the life of Mr. Romney and his family - complete with pictures of his babies and marriage and a discussion of Ann Romney's struggle with multiple sclerosis. The video was powerful, yet it was shown b efore prime time, to make way for Mr. Eastwood and Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who introduced Mr. Romney.

That put the pressure on Mr. Romney to use his speech to sketch in for this larger audience the details of his personal life that have been so absent during this campaign.

The crowd seemed heartened by Mr. Romney's stories of his life. “That's the type of leadership I look for,” said Andrew Kotyuk, a delegate from California. “It's somebody who is humble, and willing to give a helping hand, and doesn't brag about giving a helping hand.”

But it offered its loudest cheers when Mr. Romney pledged to eliminate Obamacare and when he asserted that the “the centerpiece of the president's entire re-election campaign is attacking success.”

Overall, the reception for Mr. Romney may not have been quite as ecstatic as the response that greeted Mr. Ryan the night before. Still, the response in the room was warm and enthusiasm, the applause of a crowd of people who were eager for their speaker to succeed and had concluded, with almost palpable relief, that he had.

Ashley Parker contributed reporting.

Romney to Visit Hurricane Zone in Louisiana

By JEREMY W. PETERS

LAKELAND, Fla. - Fresh off his acceptance of the Republican nomination for president, Mitt Romney will make a last-minute trip to Louisiana on Friday to tour areas damaged by Hurricane Isaac.

The trip, to the bayou region south of New Orleans, will have a decidedly presidential feel. Mr. Romney plans to meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a Republican, and stop by an emergency command center.

The Romney campaign announced the schedule change on Friday morning, as the candidate was en route to this city along Florida's heavily populated and politically significant I-4 corridor, a belt of interstate that stretches from Daytona Beach to Tampa, where the Republicans wrapped up their convention on Thursday night.

Mr. Romney is set to deliver remarks here to a crowd of several hundred people, who gathered early Friday morning to see the candidate in his first campaign rally since his acceptance speech.

Friday Reading: To Brief the Teacher, or Hold Your Tongue?

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Surprise Speaker Delivers the Unexpected

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MICHAEL BARBARO

TAMPA, Fla.-Clint Eastwood's rambling, head-scratching endorsement of Mitt Romney on Thursday set off immediate questions and finger-pointing among Romney supporters: Who booked Mr. Eastwood? Did anyone have an idea of what he was going to say? Did anyone read his remarks before they were broadcast?

The actor, in one of the more unusual moments in Republican convention history, offered a speech in which he pretended to have an off-color conversation with an imaginary President Obama sitting by his side in an empty chair.

“Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you made when you were running for election?” the onetime Dirty Harry said, mumbling to a befuddled crowd of thousands in the convention hall and millions of television viewers.

As thousands of “OMG!” tweets started flying, Mr. Eastwood, 82, asked the invisible Mr. Obama why he had not closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“What do you mean shut up?” he said, continuing to talk to his imaginary companion. A moment later, he stopped again, saying, “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?”

“I can't tell him that. He can't do that to himself,” Mr. Eastwood said. “You're getting as bad as Biden.”

On Twitter, one person said, “If Romney is elected, Clint Eastwood will be named Secretary of BlargleflagglemurplePANCAKES!!!”

Another wondered: “OK, who is going to reality check the Clint Eastwood speech?”

One Romney aide said that Mr. Eastwood had been booked months ago and that the expectation was that he would deliver a more standard endorsement, as he did earlier this year.

Another aide tried gamely to find an upside, saying that the Eastwood appearance offered a moment of unpredictability in a convention that was otherwise surprise-free.

An Ex-Governor Slips By

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

TAMPA, Fla.-Tim Pawlenty came close to being a star of the last two Republican conventions.

Close, but not close enough.

On Thursday evening, as Mitt Romney prepared to formally accept his party's nomination for president, Mr. Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, walked through the convention hall, largely unnoticed.

“Who is that guy?” one Republican delegate asked as he walked by. Another woman asked have her picture taken next to him. Another man said he liked what he heard when Mr. Pawlenty visited Alabama as a candidate.

Asked what he would do on behalf of Mr. Romney, Mr. Pawlenty seemed surprised at the question.

“I'm just a volunteer,” he said, “so I've got other stuff I've got to do. So as my schedule allows, I'll go out and do surrogate speaking.”

That's a far cry from what might have been if Mr. Romney had picked him, instead of Representative Paul D. Ryan, to be h is running mate this year. Senator John McCain of Arizona also passed over Mr. Pawlenty in 2008.

The fact that he did not get picked may allow Mr. Pawlenty to be a bit more candid. Asked the chances that Mr. Romney might win Minnesota, he shrugged.

“It remains a state that tilts toward Democrats, but it's not inconceivable that a Republican could win there,” he said. “We have in the past. Not in the presidential recently.”

A few minutes later, a nearby crowd surged around Mr. Ryan as he made his way into a television booth for an evening interview. Mr. Pawlenty answered one more question - and shook another hand - and he was off, into the crowd, largely unnoticed.

Campaigns Hit the Road for Labor Day Weekend

By TRIP GABRIEL

So where to from here?

Labor Day weekend fills the lull between the end of the Republican National Convention on Thursday and the start of its Democratic counterpart on Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C., but neither campaign is pausing for breath.

Labor Day might once have been the unofficial kickoff of presidential campaigns, but in the era of the yearlong primary fight, that schedule is as quaint as marching in parades to get voters' attention.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan will spend Friday together, starting with a send-off rally in Lakeland, Fla., east of Tampa along the Interstate 4 corridor, a swing region in a battleground state. From there, they hop to Richmond, Va., for another joint appearance.

President Obama, in the meantime, is beginning his own itinerary of battleground states on Saturday, rolling out what he calls a “Road to Charlotte” tour. First stop is outside Des Moines, a continuation of Mr. Obam a's saturation campaigning in Iowa, which included a three-day bus tour this month. He visits Sioux City, Iowa, later in the day.

On Saturday, Mr. Ryan has a public event in Columbus, Ohio (the site of the big game between Ohio State University and his alma mater, Miami of Ohio), while Mr. Romney appears in Cincinnati. The Republican ticket returns to Florida later that day for a rally in Jacksonville.

Mr. Obama will campaign Sunday morning on the quad at the University of Colorado in the liberal city of Boulder. He flies to Toledo, Ohio, that afternoon.

If it seems as though the two presidential campaigns are dancing around each other, shuffling and dodging in a tight ring defined by a handful of states, that is likely to be the status quo until they put on the real gloves at a series of debates in October.

Koch Opens Up About His Financing of Super PACs

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

TAMPA, Fla. - David H. Koch, the billionaire oil executive and conservative philanthropist, does not often speak publicly about his political life.

But in the shadow of the Republican convention on Thursday, Mr. Koch, whose discrete financing of conservative activist groups have made him one of the most influential men in American politics, made an appearance at a reception for Americans for Prosperity, a group he helped start and which is now spending millions of dollars to beat President Obama.

“The institution that I feel most closely attached to and most proud of is Americans for Prosperity,” Mr. Koch said. “My brother and I provided the funding to create this wonderful organization about ten years. We started very small, and we've grown enormously now to an organization that has two million grassroots activists.”

The reception - where Mr. Koch was honored with an award - marked the growing infl uence of the Tea Party-linked group within a Republican Party that it has sought to prod to the right on spending and regulation. Several Republican lawmakers close to Mr. Koch and his brother Charles attended, including Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who credited the group with his decision to run for Senate, and Senator John Boozman of Arkansas. (Representative Paul Ryan, who has close ties to Americans for Prosperity and has been embraced by the Koch network of donors and groups, did not attend.)

Mr. Koch is a Republican delegate from New York. Art Pope, a North Carolina businessman who sits on Americans for Prosperity's board, also attended and was given an award.

“Obviously, a good many of you in this room may be here for an event going on behind me,” Mr. Pope said, drawing laughs as he gestured out the window to the nearby Tampa Bay Times Forum, where the Republican convention was being held. “I believe in the Republic an Party. But the purpose of the Republican Party is to elect Republican candidates. The Democrat Party's about the Democratic candidates. AFP is about driving home the issues to ensure freedom and future prosperity and holding the elected officials of both parties accountable how they stand on the issues.”

Mr. Koch spent a few minutes taking questions from reporters. “We're in this for the long haul,” Mr. Koch said, regardless of whether Mitt Romney wins or loses in November. Asked whether there was too much money in politics, Mr. Koch, who with his brother donates almost exclusively to political organizations that do not disclose their donors, would have none of it.

“It's a free society,” Mr. Koch said. “People can invest what they want.”

Ryan\'s Speech Echoed in a \'Super PAC\' Ad

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

One of the biggest lines Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin uncorked during his acceptance speech Wednesday night was his appeal to the disaffected young voters who were once among President Obama's staunchest supporters.

“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life,” Mr. Ryan said.

In a matter of hours, Mr. Ryan's message was echoed by Crossroads Generation, an offshoot of the Karl Rove-founded “super PAC” American Crossroads, Young Republican National Federation and other Republican youth groups. On Thursday afternoon, Crossroads Generation posted an advertisement that tracked Mr. Ryan's words with almost eerie precision, ending with a young man tearing a poster of Mr. Obama off his wall.

The group and the campaign are barred by law from coordinating their advertising or spending with each other. A Ryan spokesman said the campaign had no knowledge of the ad until it went online. Derek Flowers, the executive director of Crossroads Generation, said that the advertisement had actually been in production since before Mitt Romney picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate.

“We were pleasantly surprised to hear the line in his speech last night and so decided there's no better time to release our ad,” Mr. Flowers said.

Seven Held Briefly in Anti-Romney Protest

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

TAMPA â€" On the last day of the Republican National Convention, the authorities took into custody seven people who had blocked a roadway Thursday outside a power plant on the eastern edge of Tampa Bay.

In the protest, a group of protesters had chained themselves together in two groups of three and another had chained himself to a vehicle.

Organizers said the protest at Apollo Beach was meant to highlight what they said were Mitt Romney's close ties to energy companies and that participants knew that they faced arrest.

But as officers used a power saw to cut the chains that connected some of the protesters, a major in the Hillsborough County Sheriff's office told about 100 other protesters gathered nearby that he would release the seven who were being detained if the entire group agreed to leave an area near the Big Bend Power Station, which is run by the Tampa Electric Company.

“We don't gain anything from locking anyone up,” said Major Ray Lawton.

Just before 5 p.m., the protesters accepted the offer and began a long walk down a desolate road toward U.S. 41, where their cars and buses were parked.

The protest, which began around 2 p.m., was organized by Earth First, an environmental activist group.

Organizers said they planned the action for Thursday to coincide with Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Kirsten Harvey, 22, from Tallahassee, Fla., said that six protesters had lain on the ground at two separate spots near the power plant after clipping caribiners into chains inside lengths of PVC pipe. A seventh man locked himself to a truck displaying a banner that read “You Built This Disaster,” she said, a reference to the coal burning plant and to the “We Built It” slogan being repeated at the Republican National Convention.

DealBook: Before Romney\'s Big Speech, a Focus on Bain

Mitt Romney's campaign Web site features videos focused on his time at the investment firm Bain Capital.

As Mitt Romney prepares to take the stage at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night to make his case for the presidency, his record at Bain Capital continues to be a focus - some might say the focus - of both his supporters and detractors.

Just hours before Mr. Romney's speech, his campaign started a Web site on Thursday - business.mittromney.com - devoted almost entirely on his years at the investment firm Bain Capital. “Governor Romney's work at Bain Capital was about fixing companies that were broken and giving new companies a shot at success,” reads the Web site's home page.

The site features nine one- to two-minute videos, each highlighting a successful Bain deal. Two videos focus on the office-supplies retailer Staples, one of Mr. Romney's most successful investments during hi s tenure at Bain. Both show Mr. Romney roaming the aisles at a Staples store wearing that a blue dress shirt with a contrasting white collar, a de rigueur uniform of 1980s Wall Street.

The Staples videos are featured under the “building businesses” category. Two other categories - “fixing businesses” and “growing business” - highlight other money-making Bain deals, including a revival of the gadget chain Brookstone and a venture investment in the mountain bike maker GT Bicycles. There is also a video chronicling Mr. Romney's rescue of Bain & Company, the management consulting firm where he started his career. Mr. Romney came back to the firm and led a turnaround. (Bain & Company spun off the private equity arm, Bain Capital, in 1984.)

Outside of Bain's New York headquarters on Thursday, no one was focused on the private equity firm's successes. Instead, all of the attention was on Bane, an imposing 10-foot-tall monster who lurched around the sun-kisse d Manhattan sidewalks lambasting Bain's business practices. Bane is the villain who faced off against Batman in this summer's blockbuster movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” It will be “a long dark night you'll be facing if Romney gets elected,” said Bane, according to Bloomberg News report.

The protest was organized by United NY, a coalition of labor unions and community organizations that has staged a number of demonstrations against Bain. Accompanying Bane was a woman from the Bronx who was recently laid off from her job at Burlington Coat Factory, a Bain-owned company.

Cara Noel, a United NY spokeswoman, said that it staged the protest because “we wanted to send a clear message that a Romney economy would not work for the middle class and for low-wage earners.”

Media outlets also continue to center on Mr. Romney's Bain years. Matt Taibbi, a writer who has made headlines for his screeds against Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street players, has now taken aim at Bain. In a new Rolling Stone article, Mr. Taibbi calls Mr. Romney “the hard-charging, chameleonic champion of a disgraced-yet-defiant Wall Street.”

Reporter and Adelson\'s Daughter Trade Claims of Force

By SARAH WHEATON

TAMPA, Fla. â€" A confrontation between a television producer and Sheldon Adelson's daughter, captured on video, illustrates escalating tensions as the news media tries to scrutinize the mega-donors who are pouring millions into the presidential race.

A producer and cameraman for the left-leaning news program “Democracy Now” were wandering the halls of the corporate suites at the Tampa Bay Times Forum when they came across Mr. Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, being pushed in a wheelchair. Mr. Adelson, who has given tens of millions of dollars to Republicans and the “super PACs” that support them, replied “no comment” when the producer, Mike Burke, asked what he thought of the Romney-Ryan ticket. (The segment begins at the 10-minute mark in this video.)

Mr. Burke continues to follow Mr. Adelson as he is wheeled away, according to the video, and then it becomes difficult to tell what happened.

M r. Burke pursues Mr. Adelson and his entourage, and the producer appears to collide with a dark-haired woman, believed to be Mr. Adelson's daughter.

“Don't touch me!” the woman says, leaping forward. “I'll hit you.”

“I did not touch her,” Mr. Burke says. “She ran back into me.”

As the cameraman moves forward, the camera suddenly starts shaking, and Mr. Burke claims that the woman stole the camera. It crashes to the ground.

A spokesman for the family would not discuss the details of what took place, but did say, “We believe in free access by the press and access to people of interest.”

He continued, “But in general, members of the press should not push, shove, or force any physical contact with anyone in order to conduct an interview. We wish them the best in their continuing coverage of the convention.”

Although Mr. Adelson, chief executive of the Sands Corporation, has pledged to spend up to $100 million to defeat President Obama, he has preferred to let his money do the talking, rarely granting interviews.

That has not spared him and his family scrutiny in the national press, whether it's coverage of his plans to attend the Republican National Convention here or a deep investigation into his casino company's dealings in China.

Live Updates from the Republican National Convention

The Times will be providing updates and analysis from Tampa on our live dashboard. You can also follow along on Twitter @thecaucus, or follow our list of Times journalists covering the convention.

A To-Do List for Romney\'s Speech

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

TAMPA, Fla. - The list of things Mitt Romney has to do in his address to the Republican National Convention on Thursday night is a long one.

He must go on the offensive against a well-liked sitting president; offer a subtle defense of his own background and record; unveil a personal biography that voters can relate to; reach out to women, minorities and independents; and fire up his party's conservative activists.

The challenge for Mr. Romney and his speechwriters is to craft remarks that hang together and do not appear to be the poll-tested handiwork of a campaign committee.

Mr. Rommey has not always demonstrated the ability to use soaring language. His speeches on the campaign trail have tended to be workaday: he delivers his message in a disciplined but not passionate way.

But there is no stage like the one he will step onto tonight. Candidates in the past - including his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan - have accepted the challenge and found within themselves the kind of speech that they have never before delivered.

“I think you'll enjoy the speech,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a top aide to Mr. Romney, said Thursday afternoon. “He's very happy with it, and one thing we know about Mitt Romney is that he always rises to the occasion.”

Here's a more detailed look at the tasks that Mr. Romney must accomplish:

1. GO ON THE OFFENSIVE. Mr. Romney will never again have the same opportunity to crystalize his critique of President Obama in front of such a large audience.

Viewers should expect to hear the sharp-edged attacks about Mr. Obama's economic policies that Mr. Romney has honed for more than a year during hundreds of campaign appearances. If the recent past is a guide, he will continue to criticize Mr. Obama for his “build it” comments and accuse Democrats of taking billions from Medicare.

But he will also attack the administration 's handling of foreign policy. And he is likely to seek to undermine the president's character, largely by focusing on what he calls an unfair and intensely negative campaign waged by Mr. Obama and his aides.

2. PLAY DEFENSE. This part is tricky. Mr. Romney cannot afford to be seen as overly defensive, or to fall into a trap by reacting to Mr. Obama's campaign playbook. And yet he must find subtle ways to push back against Mr. Obama's attacks.

The list of those attacks is long: Bain Capital, tax returns, the offshore bank accounts; his Massachusetts record. Mr. Romney must find a way to set aside Mr. Obama's critique without drawing new attention to it.

Mr. Ryan found simple ways to do that on Wednesday night, and that could be a model for Mr. Romney. In an effort to address Mr. Romney's wealth and his time at Bain Capital, Mr. Ryan said simply: “By the way, being successful in business â€" that's a good thing,” to which the audience responded with enth usiastic applause.

Mr. Romney will seek a similar way to highlight his business record. A new Web site unveiled by the campaign on Thursday - www.sterlingbusinesscareer.com - offers clues to how he might do that.

3. BIOGRAPHY. Mr. Romney does not have an up-from-the-bootstraps story to tell, though he sometimes leans on the stories of his father, a self-made businessman who became the governor of Michigan, and of his wife's grandfather, a coal miner. But he needs to find a way to connect with voters on a personal level.

His likely path: through his wife, Ann, and their children. His wife's struggles with multiple sclerosis and breast cancer, he has said, were moments that tested him. And the images of Mr. Romney and his five sons have frequently been part of the campaign's message.

Mr. Romney's faith has not been front and center. But he recently has been more open in discussing his faith, and he may conclude that he needs to offer voters more of a w indow into his beliefs.

4. WOMEN AND MINORITIES. Much of the Republican convention has been dedicated to reaching out to crucial voter groups who may hold the key to the election: women, minorities and independents. Mr. Romney's speech will be aimed, in part, at them.

The effort to win over those voters will no doubt involve an attempt by Mr. Romney to offer softer language on issues of importance to them. For Hispanics, Mr. Romney may talk about immigration reform; for women, he will stress kitchen-table economic issues like college tuition.

5. THE BASE VOTERS. But even as he moderates his language in some part of the speech, look for Mr. Romney to offer red meat to the thousands of activists gathered in the convention hall and watching on television.

For them, the speech is likely to serve up some biting comments about Mr. Obama; attacks about “Obamacare” are always crowd-pleasers for Mr. Romney. And there will be mentions of abortion, protectin g marriage and the fight by churches to avoid paying for contraception for their employees.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

Ryan\'s Night at the Convention Draws About 20 Million Viewers

By GERRY MULLANY

TAMPA, Fla. - Representative Paul D. Ryan's speech to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night drew roughly 20 million viewers, a decline from the 37 million who viewed Sarah Palin's speech after she was selected as Senator John McCain's running mate in 2008, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Fox News captured the most viewers for the convention Wednesday night, with 7.7 million. NBC was next with more than 4 million viewers, while ABC and CBS were third and fourth, with more than 2 million viewers apiece.

Democrats Outline Convention Schedule

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON - Just when it seemed as if there could not possibly be any more red, white and blue speeches ringing across the airways from the convention floor, the Democrats are unveiling their counterpunch to the Republican show that has been under way all week in Tampa.

Unlike the Republican National Convention, which had to be cut short to three days because of Hurricane Isaac, the Democratic festivities in Charlotte, N.C., next week were always scheduled for three days, beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 4, and culminating on Thursday, Sept. 6, when President Obama will punctuate the convention with his prime-time acceptance speech, Democratic officials said Thursday.

But first, there will be feel-good Tuesday night, with speeches by the first lady, Michelle Obama, who will seek to counter Ann Romney‘s appearance this week with one of her own. Mrs. Obama will be joined Tuesday night by the convention's keynote speaker, J ulián Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, reprising the role Mr. Obama himself took in 2004 when he addressed the Democratic National Convention and introduced himself to the country. Mr. Castro will also serve as an in-your-face reminder, the Obama campaign hopes, of the president's support in the Hispanic community, since Latino voters will be crucial in swing states like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Wednesday night is attack night. Elizabeth Warren, who is trying to unseat Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, will offer up her particular brand of Democratic-base appeal, while former President Bill Clinton will play the part of Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate who slammed Mr. Obama in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday night. Expect to hear a broad takedown of the Republican agenda.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will appear before the hall on Thursday night around 9:30 p.m., right before his boss , and will offer up a testimonial on the Obama years, officials said. Finally, around 10 p.m., will come the president himself.

Democrats Outline Convention Schedule

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON - Just when it seemed as if there could not possibly be any more red, white and blue speeches ringing across the airways from the convention floor, the Democrats are unveiling their counterpunch to the Republican show that has been under way all week in Tampa.

Unlike the Republican National Convention, which had to be cut short to three days because of Hurricane Isaac, the Democratic festivities in Charlotte, N.C., next week were always scheduled for three days, beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 4, and culminating on Thursday, Sept. 6, when President Obama will punctuate the convention with his prime-time acceptance speech, Democratic officials said Thursday.

But first, there will be feel-good Tuesday night, with speeches by the first lady, Michelle Obama, who will seek to counter Ann Romney‘s appearance this week with one of her own. Mrs. Obama will be joined Tuesday night by the convention's keynote speaker, J ulián Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, reprising the role Mr. Obama himself took in 2004 when he addressed the Democratic National Convention and introduced himself to the country. Mr. Castro will also serve as an in-your-face reminder, the Obama campaign hopes, of the president's support in the Hispanic community, since Latino voters will be crucial in swing states like Florida, Colorado and Nevada.

Wednesday night is attack night. Elizabeth Warren, who is trying to unseat Senator Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, will offer up her particular brand of Democratic-base appeal, while former President Bill Clinton will play the part of Representative Paul Ryan, the Republican vice-presidential candidate who slammed Mr. Obama in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday night. Expect to hear a broad takedown of the Republican agenda.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will appear before the hall on Thursday night around 9:30 p.m., right before his boss , and will offer up a testimonial on the Obama years, officials said. Finally, around 10 p.m., will come the president himself.

Which Bug Repellent Is Best?

By ANN CARRNS

If your family is like ours, you'll be spending time outdoors this Labor Day weekend. And if you're a mother like me (read: a worrier), you're well aware of news reports about the abundance of ticks this year, and about an increase in cases of West Nile virus in some parts of the country.

That means we'll be spraying ourselves and our children with bug repellent, to ward off both ticks and the pesky mosquitoes that carry West Nile. (Generally we avoid slathering our offspring with chemicals. But we make an exception in this case, if they're going to be out in nature for extended periods of time). But which repellent is best?

Consumer Reports has updated a test of widely available repellents that work on both deer ticks and mosquitoes that carry West Nile, along with cost information on a per-ounce basis. The six top-rated products are $2 an ounce or less. The data on costs is from 2010, according to Consumer Reports, but all the products are currently available.  (And a quick check online suggests prices are about the same, or in some cases, lower.)

Just how much chemical you are comfortable exposing yourself and your children to is up to you. The four top-ranked brands - Off Deep Woods Sportsmen II, Cutter Backwoods Unscented, Off Family Care Smooth & Dry, and 3M Ultrathon Insect Repellent - all contain DEET in varying concentrations from 15 percent to 30 percent, and were able to repel mosquitoes for at least eight hours.

DEET is effective, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is safe when used as directed, but you shouldn't use it on babies under 2 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using products with more than 30 percent DEET on children.

The fifth- and sixth-ranked products - Repel Plant Based Lemon Eucalyptus and Natrapel 8-hour with Picaridin - don't contain DEET, but provided long-lasting protec tion as well.

The lower-ranked products also repelled mosquitoes effectively, but generally for shorter periods of time, and some had other drawbacks, like a tendency to stain clothing.

The upshot, Consumer Report says, is that “most of the tested products will do the job if you're going to be outside for only a couple of hours, but look for a highly rated product to protect you on longer excursions.”

The E.P.A. has information on its Web site to help you choose a repellent based on your specific needs, although it doesn't include cost data. General information about West Nile is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Are you stepping up your use of bug repellent due to West Nile?

Which Bug Repellent Is Best?

By ANN CARRNS

If your family is like ours, you'll be spending time outdoors this Labor Day weekend. And if you're a mother like me (read: a worrier), you're well aware of news reports about the abundance of ticks this year, and about an increase in cases of West Nile virus in some parts of the country.

That means we'll be spraying ourselves and our children with bug repellent, to ward off both ticks and the pesky mosquitoes that carry West Nile. (Generally we avoid slathering our offspring with chemicals. But we make an exception in this case, if they're going to be out in nature for extended periods of time). But which repellent is best?

Consumer Reports has updated a test of widely available repellents that work on both deer ticks and mosquitoes that carry West Nile, along with cost information on a per-ounce basis. The six top-rated products are $2 an ounce or less. The data on costs is from 2010, according to Consumer Reports, but all the products are currently available.  (And a quick check online suggests prices are about the same, or in some cases, lower.)

Just how much chemical you are comfortable exposing yourself and your children to is up to you. The four top-ranked brands - Off Deep Woods Sportsmen II, Cutter Backwoods Unscented, Off Family Care Smooth & Dry, and 3M Ultrathon Insect Repellent - all contain DEET in varying concentrations from 15 percent to 30 percent, and were able to repel mosquitoes for at least eight hours.

DEET is effective, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it is safe when used as directed, but you shouldn't use it on babies under 2 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises against using products with more than 30 percent DEET on children.

The fifth- and sixth-ranked products - Repel Plant Based Lemon Eucalyptus and Natrapel 8-hour with Picaridin - don't contain DEET, but provided long-lasting protec tion as well.

The lower-ranked products also repelled mosquitoes effectively, but generally for shorter periods of time, and some had other drawbacks, like a tendency to stain clothing.

The upshot, Consumer Report says, is that “most of the tested products will do the job if you're going to be outside for only a couple of hours, but look for a highly rated product to protect you on longer excursions.”

The E.P.A. has information on its Web site to help you choose a repellent based on your specific needs, although it doesn't include cost data. General information about West Nile is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Are you stepping up your use of bug repellent due to West Nile?

In Tampa, the Obama Campaign Has Its Own War Room

By TRIP GABRIEL

TAMPA, Fla. - The awning over the door says “American Institute of Architects.”

But inside the message on a lectern and a backdrop reads “Romney Economics: Wrong for the Middle Class.”

Welcome to the Obama campaign's mobile war room, a 30-person pop-up shop in a storefront one block beyond the security perimeter of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, where the Republican National Convention is being held, and dedicated to pushing back against the hurricane-strength messaging of the Republicans.

“There are now 70 days left until the election, and we're not going to cede any one of them,” said Stephanie Cutter, the president's deputy campaign manager, who has relocated to Tampa from Chicago along with Ben LaBolt, the campaign press secretary, and a rapid-response team. As Republican luminaries command the attention of millions in prime time, the war room wages its guerrilla counteroffensive, dumping into reporter s' e-mail in-boxes messages like “FACT CHECK: Factory Closing Ryan Cited Happened Under President Bush.”

And on Thursday morning, the folding tables were cleared away, and the cramped storefront turned over to a news conference to try to dismantle Representative Paul D. Ryan's convention-rocking speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination the night before.

Mr. Ryan was hypocritical for criticizing Mr. Obama for doing “exactly nothing” when a debt reduction panel he appointed “came back with an urgent report,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, a co-chairman of the president's campaign.

Mr. Durbin sat with Mr. Ryan on the bipartisan panel, the Simpson-Bowles committee, whose final report Mr. Ryan and the other House Republicans rejected because it included tax increases along with spending cuts.

“So they can stand there with their deficit clock ticking in the background,” Mr. Durbin said, referring to a convention-hall prop, “but t hey've got to explain why their candidate for vice president voted against President Obama's deficit reduction plan,” and “now criticizes the president for it.”

Mr. Ryan said at the time he voted against the plan because it relied too much on tax increases and didn't address what he considered the key driver of the deficit, the growth of health care entitlements. He worked with Alice Rivlin, a Clinton administration official, to include a voucherlike reform of Medicare, but the plan was voted down.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida, who serves on the budget committee with Mr. Ryan, said his image as “Mr. Fiscal Responsibility” omits the fact “he voted for every single policy proposal by President Bush that exploded our deficit,” including expanding Medicare drug benefits, tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. “To suggest that Paul Ryan is fiscally responsible,” she said, “is ludicrous.”

A spokesman for Mr. Ryan said the attacks were trying to shift the focus from Mr. Obama's record on the economy.

“Instead of admitting that his policies have led to record unemployment, debt that puts our economy at risk and programs that have grown government at the expense of the private sector, President Obama continues to double down on the same false attacks and policies that have done nothing to fix our economy,” the spokesman, Brendan Buck, said in a statement.

Looking to Mitt Romney's acceptance speech Thursday evening, the war room flew in a former Democratic mayor of North Adams, Mass., John Barrett. With about 30 reporters in the room, he castigated Mr. Romney's one term as governor. Mr. Romney's claim not to have raised taxes while balancing budgets omits that he raised $700 million in fees, Mr. Barrett said, while cutting state aid to cities that led to higher property taxes to pay for schools and public safety.

“School districts were forced to charge fe es for everything from sports programs to riding the bus,” Mr. Barrett said. “If you looked at the record, you'd know this guy is a fake.”

Ms. Cutter said the Democrats' real response to the Republican convention would come next week in North Carolina, when the president is renominated with, his campaign hopes, the same gale-force blast of publicity for his message.

With Speech, Ryan May Have Helped Himself More Than Romney

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

TAMPA, Fla. â€" By every measure â€" the cheers in the hall, the praise from commentators across the country, the elation among aides to Mitt Romney â€" â€" the speech by Representative Paul D. Ryan accepting the vice-presidential nomination was a hit. He aggressively framed the campaign against President Obama, signaled that he, unlike some previous vice-presidential candidates, had no compunctions about leading the attack, and anchored Mr. Romney in a conservative school of thought that has come to define the Republican Party.

The question now is what it might mean for Mr. Romney's prospects of winning the White House. Could Mr. Ryan's speech to the Republican convention here ultimately be remembered as doing more good for Mr. Ryan, the young Republican congressman from Wisconsin making his first foray into national politics, than for Mr. Romney, the 65-year-old former governor of Massachusetts making his second, and potentially final, bid for the presidency?

There seems little doubt, delegates and analysts said, that Mr. Ryan served himself well on Wednesday night. After a tentative start, Mr. Ryan seemed in command of the room, drawing cheer after cheer as he made the Republican case against President Obama and presented the vision of greatly reduced government that he has championed on his rise to power in the House. At 42, several Republicans said, he cemented his stature â€" if he even needed to by now â€" as the leader of the generation of Republicans taking to the stage as Mr. Romney's generation begins its exit.

Mr. Romney is another question. History shows that with rare exceptions â€" Sarah Palin in 2008 â€" the choice of a vice-presidential nominee rarely has significant influence on the outcome of an election, and when it does, it is more likely to be a negative than a positive.

“Vice presidents often influence he election ,” said Alex Castellanos, a Republican consultant. “And hardly ever in a positive way.”

Mr. Castellanos said that he thought that Mr. Ryan had passed that threshold of not being remembered as a negative, at least before Wednesday night. The stage might have changed a bit.

For one thing, Mr. Ryan's sheer stage presence â€" his cool command of the stage, his crisp and sunny delivery of attack lines, his endearing invocation of biography - has raised the stakes for Mr. Romney. Mr. Romney's political strengths have not, for the most part, included delivering the kind of speech that moves a hall or captures a television audience. And until now, he has avoided the intimately personal discussion of his background that was so prevalent in the Ryan speech â€" starting with the death of his father when he was 16. The line has been drawn.

Beyond that, although Democrats were quick to point out that Mr. Ryan glossed over â€" or in some cases, outright distorte d â€" many of the details of his views, particularly on the issues of Medicare and deficit reduction, he unambiguously tied the Romney-Ryan ticket to the Ryan budget wagon. He used the national stage of his convention speech to turn the Romney-Ryan campaign into a referendum on Mr. Ryan's program to revamp Medicare. If Mr. Romney had hoped to finesse differences between his Medicare views and those of his running-mate, as he hinted in the early days after announcing his choice of Mr. Ryan, that seems all the more difficult now.

Finally, after the initial glow over Mr. Ryan's speech, many of the statements he made have been challenged by independent fact-checkers, such as when he attacked President Obama for abandoning the deficit reduction proposals put forward National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform â€" even though he, as a member of the commission, voted against them. Democrats seem intent to use that and other examples to raise questions about Mr. R yan's credibility and character, which if successful could be something that spills over onto Mr. Romney as well.

Still, for all the attention paid to Mr. Ryan over the past few weeks â€" and the likelihood that he will draw more attention than most vice-presidential candidates â€" the contest will enter a new phrase as Mr. Romney takes the stage tonight. “The nominee is the big deal,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican consultant who has advised Mr. Romney from time to time over the years. “A V.P. nominee can help at the edges but the great presidential campaign drama has only one true star.”

Is This Thing On? Yahoo Firing Proves the Perils of Feeding Many Platforms

August 30, 2012, 11:40 am

By DAVID CARR

David Chalian, the Washington bureau chief of Yahoo News, was fired in record time on Wednesday after he was overheard on a hot mic making a remark about Mitt Romney and his wife not caring about the African-American victims of Hurricane Isaac. The comment came during a webcast at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., where Yahoo is partnered with ABC News.

The fact that a journalist for a large digital news enterprise was fired for what is a classic television error is a reminder of how much things have changed. Webcasts have little of the audience of television, but all of the potential pitfalls. As digital enterprises move toward the complicated world of prompters, microphones and live commen tary, it's clear that some eggs are going to get broken in making this particular new media omelet.

It was not that long ago when a journalist had a single route to the ocean. If she or he was a print reporter, they did their reporting, wrote their stories and then went home. But now, instead being issued a hammer to make a story, reporters are handed a whole tool belt of power equipment to get the word out, which is great until it is not.

Reporters, especially in political realms, are supposed to be dervishes of content, writing stories, blogging items, doing updates on Facebook and Twitter, going on cable to serve as a talking head or making their own videos. The campaign bus has been replaced by a rolling, always-on and always hungry media apparatus.

But sometimes reporters fall into the crevices when trying to cross from one platform to the other. Television broadcasters end up in trouble for something they tweeted. A radio person can get the gate for s omething he popped off about on cable television. A print journalist, working in the high wire world of live television, ends up saying something dumb and ill-considered. Or journalists can get so jammed up feeding all manner of platforms that they end up cutting a corner or getting sloppy.

With new media moving into legacy media realms, and so-called old media adopting the tools of the insurgency, the possibility for pratfalls multiply.

Mr. Chalain was dismissed for making what many described as a bad joke during an online broadcast for Yahoo News. Certainly, if you are in the business of live-streaming coverage of events in a way that combines audio and video, it behooves participants to remember that they are working around pipes that head out into the world and you have to know when you are on “air,” or whatever it is called on the Web, and when you are not.

But working journalists have to punch in with the knowledge that someone is always poised, l ike crows on a wire, looking for evidence of bias or error. (Some suggested, on Twitter, of course, that given Mr. Chalain's history of fair-minded reporting and solid work, that Yahoo moved too precipitously.)

Media outlets want their reporters to be everywhere, creating a persistent media identity regardless of platform and developing news muscles as different routes to an audience open up. It's made for a golden age of sorts, a time when audiences have access to voices and thinking they crave on almost any medium they wish. But it makes a once simple task - find the news, report it out, make a story - far more complicated.

When news of his hot-mic miscue mushroomed, Mr. Chalian, a former broadcast editor and producer, took to Twitter and then Facebook to apologize.

I am profoundly sorry for making an inappropriate and thoughtless joke. Full statement here: http://t.co/Z2BrqCfq

- David Chalian (@DavidChalian) 29 Aug 12

Mr. Chalian said something really dumb and tasteless that suggested significant personal bias, so it is no surprise he ended up in trouble. But you get the feeling that the bold new world we operate in played a role in his demise. The answer to “Is this thing on?” is always yes.

Paul Backers Aided Disruption of Ryan\'s Speech

August 30, 2012, 11:37 am

By SARAH WHEATON

The women's antiwar group CodePink was behind the disruption of Representative Paul D. Ryan's speech on Wednesday night, but it was in part a product of the Romney campaign's continuing dispute with Ron Paul supporters.

“An angry Ron Paul person was like, here, take my pass,” said Laura Mills, the 21-year-old CodePink intern who was escorted out of the Tampa Bay Times Forum after interrupting Mr. Paul's speech.

Ms. Mill and a more seasoned activist, Ann Wright, were just waiting for Mr. Ryan to say something about health care. When he did, they yelled, “Health care, not warfare” and “My body, my choice.” Ms. Mills unfurled a banner that read, “Vagina: Can't Say It? Don't Legislate It,â € a reference to an abortion debate in Michigan when a female lawmaker was barred from speaking after referring to women's genitals.

The protest was quickly drowned out by the crowd's energetic chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

Ms. Mill said her credential, which she got from supporters of Mr. Paul after his son Rand, a senator from Kentucky, addressed the convention, would have put her in a remote area of the forum. But by pretending that Ms. Wright was her grandmother, they talked their way into a seating area closer to the floor, near rows of reporters.

A recent graduate from Knox College in Illinois, Ms. Mills said she was more interested in CodePink's less ostentatious effort to organize an antidrone movement. But she hopes her action will give another girl “the courage to stand up for herself â€" maybe not in the middle of a possible vice president's speech â€" but maybe in her own personal life.”

Asked if CodePin k has anything in store for Mr. Romney's acceptance speech on Thursday, Ms. Mills said, “I don't know.”

Members of the seasoned protest group, which has carried out similar disruptions at political conventions since 2004, have been parading around Tampa in vagina costumes and trying to conduct a citizen's arrest of Condoleezza Rice.

The Agenda: What Will It Take?

August 30, 2012, 10:00 am

By JOHN M. BRODER

Two years ago, at a Washington symposium observing the 40th anniversary of the Clean Air Act, much of the discussion centered around the use of the landmark pollution law to try to address a problem its authors never anticipated â€" climate change caused by increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.

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The meeting took place just a few months after the Senate refused to act on a bill passed by the House in 2009 that would have addressed climate change by creating a cap and trade system to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

The frustration in the auditorium wa s palpable, as the largely like-minded government officials, scientists, public health experts and environmental advocates bemoaned the political paralysis that had blocked any major action on what they considered the most urgent problem facing the planet.

What will it take, one audience member asked at an afternoon panel discussion, for the country to wake up to the problem of climate change and decide to do something about it?

One of the panelists, William K. Reilly, who served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator under the first President Bush, said Katrina wasn't big enough to provoke a real debate on climate change. He speculated that it would take a weather event, or a series of weather events, of epic proportions to galvanize the public and policy makers to take action.

What has happened since then? The thunderstorm and tornado swarms of early 2011, including the monstrous Joplin, Mo., disaster. Hurricane Irene, which inundated much of th e Northeast. The worst heat wave in Russia in 1,000 years. Record-shattering heat and drought in much of the United States this year. The lowest level of Arctic sea ice ever measured. The melting of virtually the entire ice sheet of Greenland, something not seen in 30 years of satellite measurements.

And yet climate change is barely a blip on the political radar in this year's campaign. The topic appears in the Republican convention platform only in one passage berating the Obama administration for elevating climate change to a “‘severe threat' equivalent to foreign aggression.” The platform also calls for rescinding the E.P.A.'s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama seldom mentions the topic in campaign appearances, although in a speech at Iowa State University on Tuesday he did refer to his efforts to promote alternative energy sources and more efficient cars as ways to reduce carbon pollution.

So what will it take to start a de bate on climate change and government efforts to address it? The League of Conservation voters has started a petition drive calling on PBS's Jim Lehrer, the moderator of the first presidential debate, to force the candidates to answer questions about climate change.

Do you believe climate change should have a more prominent place in the political debate? What would it take to assure that it does? Use the comments section to share your ideas.

Abortion Will Stay Legal, Romney\'s Sister Predicts

August 29, 2012, 10:14 pm

By MICHAEL BARBARO

TAMPA, Fla. - Mitt Romney's sister promised that a ban on abortion was “never going to happen” under her brother's presidency, a reassurance to women that is at odds with the nominee's stated position on the issue.

“It's not his focus,” Jane Romney said at a talk here on Wednesday. “He's not going to be touching any of that.”

Her remarks seemed to revive uncertainty about Mr. Romney's stance on abortion just 24 hours before he was scheduled to accept his party's presidential nomination.

Few issues have bedeviled Mr. Romney as much as abortion has. When he first ran for the Senate from Massachusetts in 1994, he said he supported abortion rights, a position he reversed in 2006 as h e prepared to make his first run for president.

Today, Mr. Romney says he favors overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Ms. Romney challenged Democrats' assertions that abortion rights would be in danger under Mr. Romney and his running mate, Paul D. Ryan.

“That's what women are afraid of, but that's conjured,” she said in remarks that were first reported in The National Journal. “Personally, I don't think abortion should be used as a football in the political arena.”

A spokeswoman for Mr. Romney declined to comment.

Ms. Romney, an actress who lives in California, said her brother understood that if there were a federal ban on abortion, “women would take to the streets.”

“Women fought for our choice,” she said. “We're not going to go back.”

G.O.P. Platform Seeks to Weaken Powers of Unions

August 30, 2012, 10:58 am

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Unlike in the past, this year's Republican platform in Tampa, Fla., does not contain any sympathetic nods to the nation's labor unions, which have become among the Republicans' most formidable political foes. Instead, the platform calls for numerous steps that could significantly weaken America's labor unions - public-sector and private-sector ones - and help speed organized labor's overall decline.

The 2012 platform urges elected officials across the country to change their laws regarding public-sector unions and follow the lead of Wisconsin's governor, Scott Walker, who spearheaded an effort to curb the ability of his state's public employees to bargain collectively. The platform states, “We salut e Republican governors and state legislators who have saved their states from fiscal disaster by reforming their laws governing public employee unions.” Mr. Walker said that that legislation was needed to weaken overly powerful unions and balance Wisconsin's budget, while labor leaders said the legislation aimed to destroy public-sector unions and cripple them politically.

The platform - saying it would promote “greater economic liberty” - calls for enacting a nationwide “right-to-work” law. Such a law would prohibit union contracts at private-sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to a union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees. Right-to-work laws exist in 23 states, and labor leaders say these laws undermine unions' strength by reducing the flow of dues money.

The platform said a Republican president would protect public emp loyees by proposing legislation to bar mandatory members' dues for political purposes. Such a move would likely weaken government employees' unions politically by prohibiting them from using any dues money for politics unless the member first gives individual authorization for his dues money to be used for political campaigns or legislative work.

In a move that would further deplete the coffers of public-sector unions, the platform says “no government at any level should act as the dues collector for unions.” Nowadays many states, counties and cities do public-sector unions a big favor by collecting members' dues through a deduction from workers' paychecks. This proposal would force unions to make individual arrangements with each worker to collect dues.

The Republican platform also calls for barring the use of “card check” anywhere in the United States as a way for workers to unionize. Ever since the 1930s, the National Labor Relations Board has allowed, but not required, employers to grant union recognition once a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to to join a union.

Nowadays, unions often pressure employers to grant recognition through card check, and President Obama and Democrats in Congress supported, but failed to enact a law that would have given unions the right to insist on using card check, instead of a traditional secret ballot vote, to gain recognition. Employer groups argue that card check is far less trustworthy than secret ballot elections, asserting that union organizers pressure workers to sign pro-union cards. But labor leaders complain that election campaigns often turn into an unfair exercise in which companies intimidate workers and have far greater access and ability to persuade workers than the union has. Specifically, the platform calls for enacting a “Secret Ballot Protection Act.”

The platform calls for repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, a law that Congress passed in 1931 r equiring that all federal construction projects pay a prevailing wage, usually equal to or not far below union wage levels. The platform says this law “costs the taxpayers billions of dollars annually in artificially high wages on government projects.”

The platform attacks the Obama administration, saying it has clung “to antiquated notions of confrontation and concentrating power in the Washington offices of union elites.” The platform also attacks the National Labor Relations Board, saying that under President Obama the board has become “a partisan advocate for Big Labor, using threats and coercion outside the law to attack business.”

In a move that teacher unions will no doubt oppose, the platform calls for getting rid of teacher tenure. It states, “Rigid tenure systems based on the ‘last in-first-out' policy should be replaced with a merit-based approach that can attract fresh talent and dedication in the classroom.”

Labor leaders, con vinced and fearing that Republicans are intent on weakening the nation's unions, have vowed to mount their biggest political effort ever this year to help re-elect President Obama. On its Web site, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation's main labor federation, condemns the Romney-Ryan ticket and vision, saying it “may be the dream of the extreme right, Tea Party Republican base and the wealthy, corporate financiers fueling the Romney campaign, but it is a nightmare for America's working families.”