"THE END OF PRESIDENT MORSI OF EGYPT:THE END OF ISLAMIST AGENDA IN EGYPT"

CAIRO — Egypt’s military on Wednesday deposed Mohamed Morsi, the nation’s first freely elected president, suspending the constitution, installing an interim government and insisting it was responding to the millions of Egyptians who had opposed Mr. Morsi’s Islamist agenda and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. The military intervention marked a tumultuous new phase in the politics of the Arab world’s most populous country, which overthrew Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011. In an announcement read on state television, the military said it had taken the extraordinary steps not to seize power for itself but to ensure that “confidence and stability are secured for the people.” Under a “road map” for a post-Morsi government, the announcement said the constitution would be suspended and plans would be expedited for new presidential elections while an interim government is in charge.

The announcement came after the armed forces and deployed tanks and troops in Cairo and other cities, restricted Mr. Morsi’s movements and convened an emergency meeting of top civilian and religious leaders to devise the details of how the interim government and new elections would proceed. Ahramonline, the government’s official English-language Web site, said the military had informed Mr. Morsi that he was no longer head of state. There was no word on Mr. Morsi’s whereabouts.

The developments followed the lapse of a 48-hour deadline imposed by the military generals on the increasingly isolated president to meet the demands of millions of Egyptians disaffected with the one-year-old governance of Mr. Morsi, who had been increasingly criticized by a broad range of Egyptians. By 6:30 p.m. military forces began moving around Cairo. Tanks and troops headed for the presidential palace — although it was unclear whether Mr. Morsi was inside — while other soldiers ringed the nearby square where tens of thousands of the president’s supporters were rallying.

Many of the Islamists had armed themselves with makeshift clubs, shields made of potcovers or metal scraps and plastic hard hats, and there were small scuffles with the better-armed soldiers. Some soldiers fired their weapons in the air. But the military forces held back. Soldiers also were seen erecting barbed-wire fences and barriers around a barracks where President Morsi may have been working.

Hours before the military’s announcement, Mr. Morsi’s senior foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, issued an open letter on his Web page lamenting what he called the imminent takeover of Egypt’s first freely elected government. “As I write these lines I am fully aware that these may be the last lines I get to post on this page,” he wrote. “For the sake of Egypt and for historical accuracy, let’s call what is happening by its real name: Military coup.” 

Security officials said the military’s intelligence service had banned any travel by President Morsi and senior Islamist aides, including the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme guide, Mohamed Badie, and his influential deputy, Khairat el-Shater. With millions of Egyptians waiting to see what the military would do, Mr. Morsi reiterated in a Facebook posting what he had said in a long and rambling televised speech Tuesday night — that he was the legitimate president of Egypt. 

“The presidency reaffirms that violating constitutional legitimacy threatens democratic practice by veering off the right track and threatens the freedom of expression that Egypt has lived since the revolution,” the statement said. Among those called to the meeting with the generals was Mohamed ElBaradei, the former United Nations diplomat who has been tapped by the protesters demanding Mr. Morsi’s ouster as one of their negotiators over a new interim government. 

Mr. ElBaradei has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, the Constitution they pushed to a referendum and the previous period of military rule. He has declined to comment in his current position. News agencies reported that top Muslim and Christian religious authorities were invited as well. Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, vowed that the group would not bend in its defiance of the military. “The only plan,” he said in a statement posted online, “is to stand in front of the tanks.”

The Obama administration, which has been watching the crisis with increased worry, reiterated that it had taken no sides and hoped for a peaceful outcome. “We do, of course, remain very concerned about what we’re seeing on the ground,” a State Department spokeswoman, Jennifer R. Psaki, told reporters at a daily briefing. “And we do realize, of course, that is an extremely tense and fast-moving situation in Egypt.” The escalating tensions between Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and their opponents continued to spur street violence overnight. Egyptian officials said at least 18 people had died and more than 300 were injured in fighting near an Islamist rally in support of Mr. Morsi near Cairo University. State media reported that the dead included victims from both sides and that most had died of gunshot wounds.

Even before the military deadline expired, there were signs of a new crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. Police officials said Wednesday that they had arrested six bodyguards protecting the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader. The police initially reported that more than 40 Islamists were wounded by birdshot, and Islamist witnesses later said that the police had begun shooting at them as well. But after the initial attack, the Islamists began lashing out and beating people suspected of being assailants. Opponents of the Islamists said they, too, were shooting as the fighting continued through the night. 

By morning, the area around Cairo University was filled with burned cars, smoldering piles of garbage, makeshift barricades, and torn textbook pages in English, French and German. Campaign posters from last year’s historic presidential election still hung on the walls. A few hundred Islamists and a smaller crowd of their opponents clustered in opposing camps, both sides armed with clubs and sticks. A sign hung by Mr. Morsi’s supporters declared: “To the coup supporters, our blood will haunt you, and you will pay an expensive price for every spilled drop of our blood.” Some of the Islamists gathered belong to more conservative factions than the Muslim Brotherhood and said the efforts to oust Mr. Morsi demonstrated that democracy itself could not be trusted. “Isn’t this the democracy they wanted?” asked Mahmoud Taha, 40, a trader. “Didn’t we do what they asked?” 

"We don't believe in democracy to begin with; it’s not part of our ideology. But we accepted it and we followed them and then this is what they do,” he said. “They’re protesting against an elected democracy.” His friend who gave his name as Abu Hamza, 41, said: “This is a conspiracy against religion. They just don’t want an Islamist group to rule.” All said they were bracing for a return to the repression Islamists endured under the former government of President Hosni Mubarak. “Of course. What else are they going to do?” said Ahmed Sami, 22, a salesman. Their opponents were vitriolic. “God willing, there will be no Muslim Brother left in the country today,” said Mohamed Saleh, 52, a laborer armed with long shaft of timber labeled “martyr in the making.” “Let them get exiled or find rocks to hide underneath like they used to do, or go to prisons, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “No such a thing as ‘an Islamist party’ shall exist after today.” 

The confrontation on the streets reflected an equally bitter clash at the most senior levels of state and military power. “We swear to God that we will sacrifice even our blood for Egypt and its people, to defend them against any terrorist, radical or fool,” the armed forces said on a military-affiliated Facebook page early on Wednesday in a posting titled “Final hours.” It was published shortly after Mr. Morsi delivered an angry, impassioned speech pledging to uphold the legitimacy of the elections that brought him to power last year. The posting quoted Gen. Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s top officer, as saying “it was more honorable for us to die than to have the people of Egypt terrorized or threatened.” Mr. Morsi insisted late Tuesday that he was the legitimate leader of the country, hinted that any effort to remove him by force could plunge the nation into chaos, and seemed to disregard the record numbers of Egyptians who took to the streets demanding he resign. 

But before the president’s speech, Egypt’s generals took control of the state’s flagship newspaper, Al Ahram, and used it to describe on Wednesday’s front page their plans to enforce a military ultimatum issued a day earlier: remove Mr. Morsi from office if he failed to satisfy protesters’ demands. The military’s vow to intervene raised questions about whether Egypt’s revolution would fulfill its promise to build a new democracy at the heart of the Arab world. The defiance of Mr. Morsi and his Brotherhood allies raised the specter of the bloody years of the 1990s when fringe Islamist groups used violence in an effort to overthrow the military government. 

Under the banner headline “removal or resignation,” Al Ahram reported that the generals would “abolish the controversial Constitution” and form a committee of experts to write a new charter, form an interim presidential council with three members led by the chief of the constitutional court, and put a military leader in charge of the executive branch as an interim prime minister. Mr. Morsi refused to back down. In an impassioned, if at times rambling, midnight address broadcast on state television, he hinted that his removal would lead only to more violence. “The people empowered me, the people chose me, through a free and fair election,” he said. “Legitimacy is the only way to protect our country and prevent bloodshed, to move to a new phase,” Mr. Morsi said. 

“Legitimacy is the only thing that guarantees for all of us that there will not be any fighting and conflict, that there will not be bloodshed.” “If the price of protecting legitimacy is my blood, I’m willing to pay it,” he said. “And it would be a cheap price for the sake of protecting this country.” Mr. Morsi was responding to the threat by the military issued a day earlier that he had 48 hours to meet the protesters’ demands. With the clock still ticking on that deadline — set for about 3 p.m. Wednesday Egyptian time — it still remained possible that the sides could reach some compromise or power-sharing arrangement. But the vehemence of the president’s speech and the official reports of arrests made the possibility seem remote. Faced with the huge protests against Mr. Morsi and the growing paralysis of Egyptian politics, a more conservative Islamists party, Al Nour, also broke with the Muslim Brotherhood to join the call for early presidential elections. But Al Nour and other ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, have sought to preserve the newly approved Constitution because they cherish its provisions regarding Islamic law, and a military-backed constitutional panel may well revise them. 

Brotherhood leaders have sounded increasingly alienated and determined to fight. “Everybody abandoned us, without exception,” Mohamed el-Beltagy, a senior Brotherhood leader, declared in a statement posted Tuesday on the Internet. “The police looks like it’s assigned to protect one group of protesters and not the other,” he wrote, “and maybe instead of blaming the thugs they will shortly accuse our supporters of assaulting themselves in addition to their alleged assault on the opposition.” “They want us to go away to prevent bloodshed,” Ahmed Aref, a Brotherhood spokesman, declared to a crowd of Morsi supporters not long after the president’s speech. “We tried that before in the fifties, and people’s blood was shed in prisons, detention centers and by the hands of dawn visitors for 20 years. Do you want this to happen again?” - Reports from the New York Times

"FBI SURVEILLANCE REVEALED THAT ANWAR AL-AWALAKI HAD STRONG TASTE FOR PIZZA AND PROSTITUTES"

Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Muslim cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone in September 2011, led a double life, indulging in pizza and prostitutes even as he was ministering to some of the 9/11 hijackers, according to FBI records. Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico in 1971, was the first U.S. citizen publicly known to have been added to the U.S. kill-or-capture list, in April 2010. After a near-miss in May 2010, the CIA killed him with a drone strike 14 months later in Yemen.

But before all that, he was the imam of a mosque in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., in 2001 and 2002 — a period that included the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — where he is believed to have preached to three of the 9/11 hijackers. That brought him to the attention of the FBI, which began tailing him after 9/11, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative public policy group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Judicial Watch posted the documents as a .pdf file here.

The FBI learned that the preacher engaged in some decidedly un-preacher-like activities. 

As early as June 2002, FBI agents sought higher-ups' approval to prosecute al-Awlaki on prostitution-related charges, detailing at least seven encounters with call girls from Nov. 5, 2001, to Feb. 4, 2002 — the day before he represented the "moderate Muslim" viewpoint at a Defense Department conference called "Islam and Middle Eastern Politics and Culture." All told, the new documents reveal, al-Awlaki spent $2,320 for the encounters. If the FBI agents' reports are accurate, al-Awlaki liked to watch.

Otherwise, the agents had a relatively boring task, documenting al-Awlaki's movements around the Washington area. The 348 pages of surveillance notes, public records and collected news articles makes for mind-numbing reading. Large passages are redacted, however, so it's not known whether the imam was pursuing more exciting activities.

"4:07 at Bertuccis eating solo [Bertucci's is a gourmet pizza joint near George Washington University, where al-Awlaki ministered to Muslim students as a chaplain.] 

"4:09 cell phone call

"4:15 still there

"4:36 eating pizza, 2 slices left

"4:45 finished eating — doing work"

On Nov. 15, 2001, an agent followed al-Awlaki into the Washington Metro system, where he traveled to an unexpected location: the offices of WAMU-FM, one of Washington's NPR stations. He was there to discuss Islam on "Talk of the Nation," which was canceled just last week. And at least once — on Nov. 20, 2001 — al-Awlaki spotted his tail, according to an agent, who noted simply "surv disc."The agent conscientiously noted that al-Awlaki was talking on his cellphone as he crossed Massachusetts Avenue NW after the interview.

Al-Awlaki wasn't previously believed to have become radicalized until he was imprisoned in Yemen in 2006 and 2007, and blamed U.S. officials for his prolonged incarceration. In more recent times, he was closely linked to terrorist plots like the attempted "underwear bombing" of a jet at the Detroit airport in 2009. Judicial Watch has sued the government seeking details of what it alleges was the U.S.'s preferential treatment of al-Awlaki despite his suspected involvement with terrorists stretching back before 9/11. 

The documents Judicial Watch revealed Tuesday show that as early as June 1999, the FBI's office in San Diego, where al-Awlaki was imam of a mosque before moving to the Washington area, asked headquarters to authorize a counterterrorism investigation into his activities. The explanation for that request is among the redacted material.

Among the anomalies it has highlighted are Al-Awlaki's detention at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in Oct. 10, 2002, under an arrest warrant for alleged passport fraud. Documents it has obtained show that the FBI ordered al-Awlaki's release, even though the warrant was still in effect.

In a statement Tuesday, Tom Fitton, the group's president, promised to "continue searching for the answers to this burgeoning scandal."  The preferential treatment accorded [al-Awlaki] raises serious questions about the unique relationship between the terrorist leader and our own government," he said - M. Alex Johnson Staff Writer for NBC News.

"HOW THE GOP STOPPED WORRYING ABOUT LATINOS AND LEARNED TO LOVE THE BASE"

If the 2012 election was a wakeup call for Republicans to address their relationship to Latino voters, the 2013 immigration debate is starting to resemble a chloroform-soaked rag.

After November’s stunning loss, an array of influential Republicans argued that immigration reform was the party’s best chance to claim Latino voters before they become permanent Democrats. But in a mere eight months, a counter-narrative has taken hold in conservative circles, nurtured by a shrewd group of anti-immigration lobbyists and Tea Party enthusiasts. The new argument sees immigration reform at best as a divisive distraction from the GOP’s real problem of countering “white flight” from the polls. At worst, they view it as an electoral apocalypse, a seventh seal behind which lies an unbroken line of future Democratic presidents.

As the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill moves to the House, whose members are overwhelmingly planted in safe GOP districts, the stakes couldn’t be higher for comprehensive reform. Whether it passes will be determined in large part by which of the two narratives can win over the conservative mainstream.

At the moment, the anti-immigration argument appears to be gaining converts fast. On election night, Fox News anchor Brit Hume called the “demographic” threat posed by Latino voters“absolutely real” and suggested Mitt Romney’s “hardline position on immigration” may be to blame for election losses. On Monday, Hume declared that argument “baloney.” The Hispanic vote, he said, “is not nearly as important, still, as the white vote.”

Sean Hannity, a reliable bellwether on the right, has been on a similar journey since the fall. He announced days after President Obama’s re-election that he had “evolved” on immigration reform and now supported a “path to citizenship” in order to improve relations with Hispanic voters. Hannity has now flipped hard against the Senate’s bill.

“Not only do I doubt the current legislation will solve the immigration problem,” he wrote in a Junecolumn, “but it also won’t help the GOP in future elections.”

Hannity and Hume didn’t arrive at their latest destination by accident. They’re just the latest figures on the right to embrace the compelling new message that’s whipping Republicans against immigration reform while still promising a better tomorrow for the GOP’s presidential candidates.

‘You Don’t Get To Come Over Here And Be Takers’

House leaders have been cagey about their views on immigration reform, political or otherwise, suggesting a “wait-and-see” approach to the ongoing civil war over the Senate bill. Speaker John Boehner says he supports immigration reform in an abstract sense, but won’t bring forward any bill that doesn’t have the support of the majority of his caucus. Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shifted since the November election to favoring a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants, a far more modest position than the Senate’s “Gang of Eight,” but one that suggests he’s at least nominally concerned about the rising Latino vote.

The most vocal advocate for passing a far-reaching bill along the lines of the Senate’s has beenCongressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Perhaps not coincidentally, he’s also the member most likely to face a national Latino electorate in 2016 as the party’s presidential nominee. But he’s gone out of his way to avoid the political argument over the bill, focusing his attention on advocating for its individual policy provisions instead.

But other House leaders are moving in the opposite direction. After entertaining the idea of bipartisan immigration reform earlier this year, House Judiciary Committee Bob Goodlatte and Immigration Subcommittee Chair Trey Gowdy are pushing an enforcement-oriented bill modeled after Arizona’s SB 1070–despised by Latino groups–that would criminalize unauthorized immigrants and task local police with investigating suspected violators. This doesn’t look like the behavior of politicians who are terribly worried about courting Latino voters.

At the heart of their dueling approaches is a basic question: can the party win back the White House without winning more Latinos?

Rush Limbaugh argues that it can, and if House Republicans and their constituents take his side, the motivation to pass immigration reform will vanish. For months, he’s tried to convince his listeners that Latinos are unlikely to vote for the current Republican Party even if immigration reform passes. During one on-air confrontation with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Limbaugh asked whether “the Republican party is committing suicide” by adding “nine million automatic Democrat voters” through a path to citizenship.

Reformers such as Rubio counter that Latinos are only voting for Democrats in such large numbers because the immigration debate has drowned out Republicans’ compelling message of low taxes and deregulation. Often they describe the bill as a “gateway” issue, one that won’t win the GOP any votes by itself, but will at least open the doors to outreach.

“I believe if we pass this legislation, it won’t gain us a single Hispanic vote, but what it will do is put us on a playing field where we can compete,” John McCain said in an April breakfast with reporters.

Or, as Rubio is fond of saying, “It’s really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on healthcare if they think you want to deport their grandmother.”

But Rush has some compelling data to back up his electoral claim. An April 2012 survey by the Pew Research Hispanic Center found that 75% of Latinos preferred a “bigger government” that provides more services versus 19% who favor a “smaller” one. Among the general population, smaller government won out by a 48-31 margin. Obama’s healthcare law often polls well with Latinos–a dynamic Romney infamously cited as one of the Democratic “gifts” that cost him the election.

“This is scholarly data in academic reports: 75% of illegal immigrants in the country also believe that government is the source of prosperity,” Limbaugh said in a January 31 broadcast. “So they’re naturally going to be inclined to vote Democrat.”

This helps explain Michele Bachmann’s warning last month to conservative fringe site World Net Daily: “We will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect.” The Limbaugh argument is especially powerful in Tea Party hands because it flatters their self-image as rugged independents fighting off the welfare-hoarding invaders.

“The things that made America great are Americans like you that work and understand that it’s sacrifice,” Congressman Randy Weber of Texas said at a June rally against the Senate bill. “You don’t get to come over here and be takers.”

Some conservative commentators argue that Latinos’ faith gives them an advantage on social issues instead. Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote after the election that Latinos “should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example)” and plenty of others have made similar arguments.

But on abortion, there’s little evidence Latino voters are as conservative as they’ve been portrayed compared to the general population. And on gay marriage, an issue the national GOP isn’t too inclined to highlight these days anyway, some polls suggest they’ve actually grown more liberal than the average voter.

Their rhetoric may be crude, but here the skeptics raise a legitimate point: if Republicans can’t win Latinos on the economy and they can’t win them on religion, there isn’t a lot left to go on at the moment.

‘Natural Conservatives!’

Talk radio hosts and conservative lawmakers didn’t just stumble upon this narrative. Anti-immigration groups like NumbersUSA have pushed the argument for months in the hopes of increasing opposition to the bill.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a leading spokesman for the anti-reform movement, has made it a special focus. Each day, he tracks and then highlights every poll or news story that indicates Latinos are to the left of the general public, often tweeting them out with a mocking “Natural conservatives!”

According to Krikorian, his group doesn’t have a “thought-out strategy” when it comes to undercutting pro-reform political arguments, but they try to showcase evidence as it arises.

“The debunking of this ‘natural conservatives’ storyline isn’t ongoing: it’s over,” he told MSNBC. “You only really see Lindsey Graham making this kind of argument and nobody takes him seriously,” he said of the South Carolina senator.

To further stiffen wavering conservative spines, CIS sponsored a study by University of Houston researcher George Hawley in February demonstrating that Republican members of Congress who supported immigration reform in 2006 fared as poorly with Latino voters as those who opposed it. More brazenly (and less successfully), NumbersUSA president Roy Beck has tried to persuade Republicans that opposing immigration reform will actually endear them to Latinos.

Krikorian and his fellow activists have done a bang-up job convincing conservatives that Latinos won’t vote for them after they pass immigration reform. But that conclusion raises the obvious problem: Obama beat Romney by 5 million votes in 2012 in a lousy economy. If Latinos aren’t going to close that gap in 2016, who is?

The Case Of The Missing Whites

In the run-up to the 2012 conventions, a Republican strategist predicted to the National Journalthat Romney’s plan to run up the white vote at the expense of minorities would be “the last time anyone will try to do this.”

Wrong. A new view on the right is taking hold: Romney lost because he didn’t go after whites hard enough.

This will probably sound a little odd if you were watching TV on election night 2012. Romney won 59% of the white vote in exit polls, better than President Bush’s 58% in 2004. Unfortunately for Romney, the white share of the electorate declined from 79.2% to 73.7 % over the same period. The result: Obama won by an even bigger margin than Bush did thanks to blowout margins with minorities.

But conservative commentators are convincing themselves they can find a few million more whites tucked between the couch cushions–at least enough for one more election. Two columnists have been particularly influential in this regard. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics has argued that census data shows about 5 million mostly poor and rural white voters were “projected” to vote in 2012 based on population growth and past turnout but didn’t show up to the polls. Byron York, a columnist at the Washington Examiner, published a related piece noting that Romney would have lost even if he had racked up a majority of Latino voters.

“Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day,” York wrote in May. “If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.”

The problem is there’s no way Romney would have won all 5 million of those whites, so Obama’s lead would have held. But if Obama had failed to replicate his 2008 performance with minority voters and Romney had matched Bush’s 2004 performance with whites, the GOP could have narrowly prevailed. This was the exact scenario Romney was shooting for.

York and Trende have some nuanced ideas about how the GOP can accomplish what Romney failed to do, many of which involve tacking left on the economy. But to the talk radio right, the main takeaway is that there are several million angry white votes ripe for the taking if the party can swing even more to the right.

White voters stayed home, Limbaugh said in May, because “they didn’t think the Republican Party was conservative enough.”

You can hear the “missing whites” thesis everywhere once you start looking for it. Hannity cited York’s piece in his column opposing the “Gang of Eight” bill. Social conservative leader Phyllis Schlafly recently told a radio host that “the people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn’t vote in the last election and there are millions of them.” There’s “not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican,” she said.

“Their idea seems to be gaining currency,” Frank Sharry, executive director of immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, told MSNBC. “Right after the election most of the conservative commentariat said they had to do something to get right with Latino voters. Now there seems to be this bizarre conversation that could only happen in the conservative bubble about how Romney didn’t win because he didn’t mobilize enough white voters.”

Underlying these claims is a belief that Romney lost because he was a blue-blooded moderate who failed to connect to conservative white voters on a visceral level. Nominate an American bad-ass in 2016 and those missing whites will reappear in a hurry. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to add a few Hispanic voters, but the GOP can do that with some kind of inoffensive “outreach” program instead. After all, look at Congressman Steve Pearce of New Mexico, an immigration hawk whose retail politicking has earned him an impressive Latino following.

‘The Demographic Death Spiral’

If Bachmann, Schlafly and Limbaugh are able to convince the party that it doesn’t need Latinos, then the GOP may be screwed for generations. That’s because the coming Latino wave isn’t some hypothetical outcome that can be undone by blocking “amnesty” or bringing a few more white voters to the polls. It’s already baked into the demographic cake.

The Latino share of the electorate was 8.4% in 2012. What’s worrisome to the GOP is that the Latino share of the population in 2012 was 17.2% and growing. The reason for the disparity has much less to do with illegal immigration than it does with the relative youth of the Latino community, where the median age is 27 versus 42 for whites. According to Pew, there are about 7.1 million undocumented Latino adults who could become citizens under the Senate bill–and only some of them would do so, let alone vote. That group is dwarfed by the 17.6 million Latinos under-18, the overwhelming majority of whom (93%) are US-born citizens. Every election cycle, more of them will become eligible to vote, while the oldest, whitest and most Republican generations age out of the electorate on the other end. (“Age out of the electorate” is a euphemism for “die.”)

It actually gets worse for the GOP. Hispanic turnout is extremely low–48% in 2012–in part because their eligible voters are so young. By comparison, white turnout was 64% and black turnout was 66%. That gives Democrats room to grow their Latino base through registration and voting drives–an area where they’ve been incredibly successful with black voters already–while Republicans may be operating near their ceiling with whites.

The white vote also looks so GOP-friendly because the Deep South backs Republicans byhuge margins: Obama won 51% of the white vote in Iowa, for example, but just 10% in Mississippi. And according to Trende’s analysis, a lot of the “missing” white vote is concentrated in rural portions of the Northeast. So even if Republicans boost white turnout, a bunch of the gains will go to running up the score in Southern states they already win or to improving their margin in Northern states they don’t contest.

This is the “demographic death spiral” Sen. Graham is so worried about. And pro-reform Republicans are growing panicked as the new revisionism on Mitt Romney’s loss takes hold. Karl Rove, whose Crossroads group is spending millions promoting immigration reform, confronted his critics head on in the Wall Street Journal last month in an op-ed titled “More White Votes Won’t Save The GOP.” Graham and fellow immigration co-sponsor John McCain aren’t just warning of a 2016 loss anymore, they’ve taken to publicly guaranteeing one if their immigration bill fails.

“[If] we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way,” Graham said on Meet The Press last month, “it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016.” - From Benjy Sarlin, @benjysarlin of MSNBC (Hardball with Chris Matthews).

IS THE EGYPTIAN LEADER MORSI GOING, GOING AND GONE?

 The next 48 hours will be the most important moment in the presidency of this man who was elected just one year ago by Egyptians in a people represented democracy. Today, the opposition protests against Morsi are growing in numbers daily and these opposition groups have also successfully collected over 22 million signatures from the voting age Egyptians calling for Morsi and calling for his immediate resignation from power. Morsi's own supporters across Egypt have also set up their own rival protests across Egypt side by side.

 Who will be the first to blink between the Morsi's supporters and the opposition groups? Will the intervention plan of the Egyptian military going to change the power equation in Egypt in the next 1 to 2 days? Will Morsi survive this political force against his young presidency this time around? Will Morsi be successful in implementing his proposed full-blown Islamic agenda that will change the Egyptian constitution from its present secular status to an Islamic law and state in the midst of his present country's worsening economic crises? Will his religious agenda defeat the much needed economic agenda and the thriving secular democracy in Egypt that addresses the nation's diversities under the presidency and the watch of this man? 

"EDWARD SNOWDEN THE AMERICAN SECRET LEAKER SEEKS POLITICAL ASYLUM IN 20 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES"

Snowden remains holed up in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport [AFP]

The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has said Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who leaked National Security Agency surveillance programme, is seeking asylum in 20 countries. The group which has adopted Snowden and his cause said on its website that WikiLeaks legal adviser Sarah Harrison delivered the requests for asylum to an official at the Russian consulate at the Moscow airport on Sunday. The WikiLeaks statement says requests were made to China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, India, and several European countries. A Russian government spokesperson told the Reuters news agency that Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, withdrew his request for asylum in Russia after President Vladimir Putin said he was not welcome unless he stopped harming US interests. Venezuela said it had not yet received Snowden's request but President Nicolas Maduro said the whistleblower deserved the "world's protection". Meanwhile, India, Norway, Finland, Austria, and Poland confirmed that they had received Snowden's request on Tuesday. But Poland's foreign minister said he would not recommend granting a request. "We received a document that does not meet the requirements for a formal application for asylum," Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on his Twitter account. "Even if it did, I will not give a positive recommendation." A Finnish foreign ministry spokeswoman said Finland could not accept Snowden's application as Finnish law required him to be in the country. Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner told the Austria Press Agency that Snowden would need to submit such a request directly in Austria but would not be deported if he arrived in Austria because "there is no international arrest warrant". A spokesperson for India's foreign ministry said the Indian Embassy in Moscow did receive the application but "see no reason to accede to the Snowden request" after careful consideration. US man-hunt The devolopments came as Snowden broke his silence for the first time since fleeing to Moscow and insisted he was free to make new disclosures about US spying activity. In a letter to Ecuador seen by the Reuters news agency, Snowden on Monday said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance programme, PRISM, but made it clear he did not intend to be muzzled. "I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest," he said in the undated letter in Spanish sent to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. "No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world. If any of those days ahead realise a contribution to the common good, the world will have the principles of Ecuador to thank." Snowden poured scorn on the US government and accused it of waging an "extrajudicial man-hunt" against him. "While the public has cried out support of my shining a light on this secret system of injustice, the Government of the United States of America responded with an extrajudicial man-hunt costing me my family, my freedom to travel, and my right to live peacefully without fear of illegal aggression," he wrote. Russian condition Putin, speaking eight days after Snowden landed in Moscow, repeated that Russia had no intention of handing him over to the US, where he faces espionage charges. "Russia has never given up anyone to anybody and does not plan to. And nobody ever gave anyone up to us," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my lips," he told reporters after a gas exporters' conference in Moscow. But Putin said he suspected that Snowden would not stop leaking information, because "he feels himself to be a human rights activist". "So he must choose a country of destination and go there," he said, speaking before the asylum request to Russia was reported. "Unfortunately, I don't know when this will happen." Correa said on Sunday that Snowden's fate was in Russia's hands because Ecuador could not consider the plea until he reached Ecuador or one of its embassies. Ecuador granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum at its embassy in London where he has been holed up for more than a year, fighting extradition to Sweden over sexual assault charges. Shortly after Snowden fled the US to Hong Kong last month and long before he arrived in Russia, Putin suggested the surveillance methods he revealed were justified for national interests, if carried out lawfully. Obama, at a news conference in Tanzania dominated by the EU controversy, repeated that the US was working through law enforcement channels to prod Russia to extradite Snowden. Obama said there had been "high-level discussions with the Russians about trying to find a solution to the problem".

Source: Reuters

"THE AMERICAN FUGITIVE AND WHISTLE-BLOWER EDWARD SNOWDEN BROKE HIS SILENCE"

NSA leaker Edward Snowden broke his weeklong silence Monday, defending his “right to seek asylum” while separately claiming he remains “free and able” to publish sensitive information on U.S. surveillance. The statement came as it was reported Snowden was now seeking asylum in Russia, which says it will not grant him refuge unless he stops leaking. In his statement issued on theWikiLeaks website, Snowden attacked the Obama administration, saying, “On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic ‘wheeling and dealing’ over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”

Snowden added, “In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.”

Separately,  in a letter in Spanish sent by Snowden to Ecuador President Rafael Correa and obtained and translated by Britain's Press Association, he declared, "I remain free and able to publish information that serves the public interest. No matter how many more days my life contains, I remain dedicated to the fight for justice in this unequal world.”

It was the first known statement from Snowden since he flew out of Hong Kong into Moscow more than a week ago.

Since then, Snowden has been seeking asylum in Ecuador. But he also reportedly is seeking asylum in a number of other countries, including Russia.

The Interfax news agency quoted a Russian official on Monday as saying that Snowden's representative, Sarah Harrison, handed over his request for political asylum on Sunday. 

Yet Russia's President Vladimir Putin publicly issued a condition for any asylum request from Snowden -- he must stop leaking America's secrets. 

"If he wants to go somewhere and there are those who would take him, he is welcome to do so," Putin said. "If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must stop his activities aimed at inflicting damage on our American partners, no matter how strange it may sound coming from my lips."

Snowden’s letter to Ecuador gave no indication he plans to meet that condition, though the letter may have been sent before Putin’s comments.

Putin addressed the controversy as Obama, during a visit to Tanzania, reiterated that he's "hopeful" Russia will take up the United States' request for extradition. 

"There have been high-level discussions with the Russians about trying to find a solution to the problem," Obama said. 

Officials still believe Snowden is in the transit zone somewhere in the Moscow airport. He found his status even more in limbo late last week, after Ecuador revoked travel documents that WikiLeaks, which is aiding Snowden, got from a lower-level Ecuadorian official.

With the U.S. also revoking Snowden's passport, Snowden has no apparent way -- at the moment -- to leave the Moscow airport without risking arrest. 

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell, while saying he could not confirm Snowden's latest asylum request, reiterated that the U.S. can issue Snowden "one-entry travel documents" back to the United States, where he would presumably face the charges against him - From the Associated Press. 

"PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S TRUE LEGACIES FOR AFRICA IN THIS 21ST CENTURY"

Africans from all walks of life, in diaspora, across the African continent and from the biggest cities to the remotest hamlets were equally excited like the way most Americans were over the historical presidency of Barack Hussein Obama on the night of the November 4, 2008 when he changed the course of the political history of the American nation by becoming the first black person to win the White House and to break the age-long racial barrier. Africans for the first time saw a great hope in this historical event that happened in America thousands of miles away from the African continent for two major reasons. Firstly, they were witnessing the enthronement of a black person in American into the highest political office in the only superpower nation of our 21st century world. Secondly, Barack Obama as a black American has a very direct and a recent African descent, Barack Obama was born to a Kenyan student that came to study in America. 

Many important questions today are agitating the minds of most Africans about the presidency of Barack Obama in relation to Africa, a continent that has experienced to date the major destructive impacts of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, European colonization of Africa, many failed democracies, several military coups, decades of deadly civil wars, unspeakable genocides, terrible famines, mammoth droughts, economically devastating brain drain to the west, refugees that were displaced by civil unrests, massive poverty, HIV/AIDS at record high epidemic levels, bad governments that are riddled with corruption, huge resource mismanagement and the ongoing menace of terrorism in the name of the religion of Islam in Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Libya and Algeria.

What is the true significance of the presidency of Barack Obama to Africa as a continent that is behind the rest of the world in this 21^st century in terms of all the important human development indicators? What important legacies will President Barack Obama leave behind for Africans, the African leaders and the unborn Africans at the end of his historical presidency? How will African historians describe his presidency in the nearest future?  Will his presidency be a true blessing to the African continent or not?

The political vision of the presidency of Barack Obama can be summed up in two sentences: “The destiny of Africa is in the hands of Africans to either make or mar. Africans should take the lead and then the America will support". During the President Barack Obama’s first historical visit to Africa, he highlighted the major challenges that have held the Africa continent down in his address to the Ghana National Assembly in Accra.  President Barack Obama identified the various obstacles that have prevented Africa from experiencing any tangible progress in this century. President Barack Obama summed up the Africa’s problems in this way. "I will focus on four areas that are critical to the future of Africa and the entire developing world: democracy; opportunity; health; and the peaceful resolution of conflict." President Obama went further and was more specific. "Repression takes many forms, and too many nations are plagued by problems that condemn their people to poverty. No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police that can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the Port Authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.” President Barack Obama concluded on this note "Development depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans"

President Barack Obama this week on his second visit to Africa that took him to the nations of Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania laid down clearly the vision of his presidency for Africa in these words “If somebody says they want to come build something here, are they hiring African workers? If somebody says that they want to help you develop your natural resources, how much of the money is staying in Africa? If they say that they're very interested in a certain industry, is the manufacturing and value-added done in Africa?  President Barack Obama then announced the new $7 billion program titled the “African Power Plan” that will double the availability of electricity to be nations of the sub-Saharan Africa. He urged the African leaders to emulate the enduring legacies of Nelson Mandela of South Africa. President Barack Obama also promised to invite the African leaders from the sub-Sahara African region to a summit in Washington, DC next year to plan the new proposed American-African Partnership Project.

The new Obama’s vision for Africa that is based on the doctrine of equal partnership with America has the potential of moving the Africa forward into the working democracies, good governments, economic prosperity and emerging economies of the new 21^st century that are truly capable of meeting and addressing this continent’s ongoing huge challenges and turning the African continent into one of the global economic powers in our 21^st century human universe. Time alone will tell.