By Tommy De Seno
Attorney/Writer

When it comes to the War on Terror, India has always thought locally, not globally.

Condoleezza Rice at a joint press conference in India on Dec. 3 (AP)

In 1998 India asked the U.S. and Great Britain to stop bombing strategic targets in Iraq.

In 2002 when the United States was considering invading Iraq over weapons inspections and Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism, India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said that no country should “force it’s will on another.”

It’s time for India to choose sides.

After the American invasion of Iraq, India claimed there was no justification for it, while at the same time expressing belief that Iraq actually did have weapons of mass destruction.

Think about that last paragraph. While hindsight may be 20/20, foresight is blind and requires judgment. Any country (like India) that believed Hussein had WMDs but still didn’t want to invade showed horrid judgment about security around the world.

What’s puzzling about India’s ambivalent position on the U.S. fight against world terror is that India has many more terror attacks on its soil than we in the US have on ours.

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By John Ziegler
Writer/Director/Producer, “Blocking the Path to 9/11″

It has been quite a strange couple of weeks since I decided to commission a Zogby poll of Obama voters. I chose to do this at great personal expense to determine whether interviews I did on Election Day (for a forthcoming documentary I am producing on the media coverage of the election) were indeed representative of the larger population.

In a nutshell, here’s what happened next: I suddenly become a favorite target of the Internet’s left-wing attack machine. Zogby was forced to defend the poll and two days later, his organization partially abandoned it. The video of Obama voters trying to answer the same questions that were asked by the Zogby poll has been viewed over 1.6 million times on YouTube. After Zogby balked, I managed to to commission a new poll that included both Obama and McCain voters as well as a couple of added twists.

President-elect Obama on Election Night (AP)

What was most remarkable about the left’s extreme reaction to the original Zogby poll was that it was utterly devoid of even the pretense of addressing the real issues that the nationwide telephone survey exposed. Instead of debating the implications of the results (in my view they clearly revealed a massive amount of media-induced ignorance on the part of the voting public), they chose to focus on the questioners rather than the actual answers from Obama voters — clearly, the responses they gave made them feel remarkably insecure. They also completely missed the original intent in asking these questions. It was not to make voters look stupid but rather to measure the impact of media bias on what they knew, or thought they knew.

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By Lis Wiehl
FOX News Legal Analyst/Former Prosecutor

I will admit to having an uneasy relationship with elevators…going down 18 flights in a few seconds just seems unnatural.  But we all have to rely on them everyday.  And we also have to rely on their proper maintenance.  Little Jacob Neuman lost his life doing just that.

Back in August, 5-year-old Jacob Neuman’s life came to a halt when the elevator he was on shut down.  He attempted to jump down to the hallway floor from the stalled elevator but instead fell backwards tumbling 120 feet down the elevator shaft of his Brooklyn apartment building. New details on Jacob’s accident have just surfaced in a 52-page report by inspectors with the city’s Department of Buildings revealing that the elevator’s technical problems were tied to faulty maintenance by the buildings landlord, the New York City Housing Authority.

The elevator power shutdown that led to the death appears to have been caused by the misalignment and wear and tear of electrical contacts in the motor room control panel, which experts say should have been part of the elevator’s day-to-day routine maintenance.  According to the Buildings Department records, prior to the accident, the elevator had failed 8 of 11 inspections. What’s the point of all these inspections if they let faulty equipment continue to operate? On top of the grief and tragedy, imagine finding out that it was something that could have been prevented with maintenance?

Who is to blame for such a horrible tragedy?

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By Alireza Jafarzadeh
Foreign Affairs Analyst

A week after the UN’s nuclear watchdog released an alarming report on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran declared that it now has more than 5,000 centrifuges operating and enriching uranium, and that it has launched another rocket into space.

Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization on 11/30 (AP)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report is based on its most recent inspections in early November. It states that Tehran now has nearly 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium (LEU). Several highly regarded nuclear experts have concluded that the amount is enough to build a nuclear bomb when converted into high-enriched uranium (HEU).

The survival of this unpopular regime depends on its being in a state of perpetual crisis. The Iranian theocracy is incapable of acting as a “normal” state or enacting the kind of behavioral changes the free world demands.

Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb, told The New York Times, “They clearly have enough material for a bomb.” Garwin’s assessment was shared by Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, who told The Times that the size of Tehran’s LEU stockpile “underscored that they are marching down the path to developing the nuclear weapons option.” Thomas B. Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council referred to the size of Iran’s stockpile as a “virtual milestone,” maintaining that it was enough for an advanced implosion-type bomb.

Other experts say the ayatollahs’ regime still needs more LEU, but they quickly add that it only takes a few months to produce the required amount.

The latest report is all the more alarming because the IAEA’s assessment was based on Iran having around 3,800 centrifuges in operation, not the nearly 5,000 declared on November 26. The report underscores that Tehran is in breach of four UN Security Council resolutions and is defying the international demand that it halt nuclear enrichment and relevant activities.

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By John R. Lott, Jr.
Author/Senior Research Scholar, University of Maryland

Banning guns is in the news. India practically bans guns, but that didn’t stop the horrific Muslim terrorist attacks this last week.

A firefighter rescues guests of The Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India.

A football player concerned for his safety violates New York City’s tough gun control regulations by carrying a concealed handgun, and people call for everything from banning NFL players from carrying guns to demanding that the athlete serve many years in jail.

When police can’t promise to protect law-abiding citizens such Plaxico Burress or the victims in India, why don’t we allow people the right to protect themselves?

Where is the sympathy or debate in either case over letting people defend themselves? Given that the terrorists smuggled their machine guns in with them, would anyone argue that India’s extremely strict gun licensing and artificially high prices for guns helped prevent the terrorist attacks? In fact, the reverse is more likely the case.

Would Plaxico Burress, the New York Giant’s receiver who was arrested yesterday, really have been safer just trusting the police to protect him?

Terrorism

In India, victims watched as armed police cowered and didn’t fire back at the terrorists. A photographer at the scene described his frustration: “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything. At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.”

Meanwhile, according to the hotel company’s chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi, security at “the hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government.”

India has extremely strict gun control laws, but who did it succeed in disarming?

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Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was left out of the mix on Monday when President-elect Obama announced members of his national security team.  About two-thirds of the Obama cabinet has now been named. Kerry  — who ran for president in 2004 and lost by 34 electoral votes — made Obama the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention that year, helping make Obama, who was running for Senate in Illinois, a rising star within his party.  This year Kerry has been a staunch Obama supporter and became one of his top surrogates during the campaign.

YOU DECIDE: Did Obama leave Kerry out in the cold? Should he have offered him a cabinet post or a position on his White House team? Share your thoughts. Click on “Leave a Comment” below.

By Joel Mowbray
Investigative Journalist/Syndicated Columnist

The most under-reported story of the election is that conservative voters provided the margin of victory for Barack Obama—a finding that has dramatic implications for both Democrats and Republicans.

AP

Normally winning with impressive margins in the popular vote and Electoral College would translate into a governing mandate. Obama’s victory was not an ideological one, however. The electorate is almost exactly as center-right as it was in 2004. The Bush 2004 voters who pushed Obama over the top rejected Bush and the GOP, but not conservative principles.

“Change” in Parties, Not Beliefs

Voters backed the candidate who ran on change, but they haven’t much changed their views of the public sector. On the fundamental question about the role government should play in society, voters shifted only slightly from four years ago.

Conservative voters provided the margin of victory for Barack Obama.

In 2004, a 49%-46% plurality of exit poll respondents said the government should not “do more to solve problems.” In the immediate aftermath of the meltdown on Wall Street that the media blamed on free markets run amok, a slim majority of voters, 51%, thought the government should do more.

Though the lion’s share of Obama’s voters wanted more activist government, over one-fifth of his supporters said that the government is already “doing too much.” This smaller group—largely consisting of the conservatives and conservative-leaning independents who had voted for Bush in 2004—cannot be forgotten as Obama and his advisors weigh their options for everything from financial industry regulations to an automaker bailout.

Defying conventional wisdom, Obama’s vaunted ground game only boosted liberal and youth turnout by one percent each of the total electorate. A detailed examination of exit polling suggests that the Democrat’s victory primarily was sparked by two key factors:

1) Many conservatives who used to consider themselves Republicans no longer do.

2) Almost one-fifth of Bush 2004 voters chose Obama, with the biggest defectors being conservative-leaning independents: that is “Security Moms” and Catholics.

Conservatives Abandoned the GOP

Despite the harsh criticism most prominent conservatives leveled at him, Obama picked up one-third more conservative voters than John Kerry, at 20%. Self-identified conservatives in exit polling comprised 34% of voters in both 2004 and 2008, yet the number who called themselves Republican dropped from 37% to 32%. In an evenly split nation, the GOP losing 14% of its base overwhelmed almost everything else.

On statewide ballot initiatives, voters supported gay marriage bans in Arizona, Florida and California. In Florida, Amendment 2 needed to clear the 60% threshold the state sets for amending the constitution, and the measure garnered 62% support. McCain lost Florida, 51% to 49%. While most attention in California has focused on the 52% support for the gay marriage ban, an equal percentage passed the constitutional amendment to require 48-hour parental notification for teenagers seeking abortions.

Even on what is presumed to be safe liberal territory—the environment—the electorate did not tilt leftward. As reported on the Wall Street Journal web site, “Among five major energy and environmental ballot initiatives from California to Missouri, all but one were voted down.” The one that passed, Proposition C in Missouri, encountered no serious opposition.

The ideological composition of the electorate, in fact, was almost identical to 2004. Liberals went from 21% in 2004 to 22%, and moderates were 45% four years ago versus 44%. Democrats enjoyed a small uptick in voters who label themselves Democrats, from 37% to 39%. So while Democrats added some new adherents, most of their new seven-point margin in party ID owes to an exodus from the GOP.

Right-leaning Bush Voters Swung to Obama

Two key right-leaning constituencies deserted Republicans: “Security Moms” and Catholics. Though the media has made the “gender gap” a household term, the more apt classification was a “marriage gap.” Single women were heavily Democrat, and married women leaned Republican. “Security Moms” became the label for married mothers attracted to the hawkishness of the GOP.

Security Moms
Almost 30% of the women who voted in this election were married with kids, and Obama won them 51%-47%. The same exit poll question was not asked four years ago, but most estimates are that Bush won that group handily in 2004. The demographic has become a key part of the GOP coalition. Highly respected Republican strategist Michael Meyers, president of TargetPoint Consulting, consulted the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and the Republican National Committee and he was among the pioneers of micro-targeting and crafting strategies to reach groups such as Security Moms. He says bluntly, “We cannot win without winning married moms. Period.”

Catholics
McCain also lost ground among religious voters, but not in the manner predicted. Confounding expectations from this spring, McCain performed just as well with white evangelical Christians as Bush did in 2004. Catholic voters, however, shifted in large numbers for Obama. Bush won the historically Democratic constituency 52%-47% four years ago. He did this by winning weekly church-going Catholics by a robust 56%-43%, while essentially splitting Catholics who attend church less often or not at all. McCain, on the other hand, roughly split weekly church-going Catholics with Obama, and trailed badly among less devout Catholics, 58-40%.

Falling from Bush’s 44% of the Latino vote to 31% clearly hurt McCain’s figures in the Catholic vote. But that drop alone could not account for much more than half of the loss he experienced overall among Catholics. The bulk of the remaining Catholic voters that switched from Bush in 2004 to Obama this year likely came from cultural conservatives, including so-called values voters and Reagan Democrats.

In perhaps his most honest moment of the campaign, Barack Obama in June told the New York Times, “I am like a Rorschach test.” Unlike most politicians who seek to define themselves sharply, Obama proudly defined himself as whatever different voters wanted him to be. Accomplishing this feat in a heated election was a tall order, but in governing, it becomes nearly impossible. In policy battles, there are winners and losers because lines are drawn, and sides must be taken.

For Obama to maintain the coalition that elected him, he needs to come down on the right side of that line more often than most in his party would like.

By Ross Eisenbrey
Vice President, Economic Policy Institute

Editor’s Note: The non-partisan Web site “Opposing Views” offers readers a look at all sides of the debate on a variety of issues. This is part of a series of posts from the Web site that will appear in the FOX Forum.

The problems of the Big Three are not the result of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, which has cut labor costs by billions of dollars.

AP

The problems are the result of the credit crisis, which has wrecked the market for auto loans and made it hard to borrow enough money to buy a car; the spike in gas prices earlier this year which wrecked sales for SUVs; and, the overall economic crisis, which has wrecked consumer confidence, shrunk payrolls by more than a million dollars and left more than 10 million Americans unemployed. All car sales are down, including Toyota’s and Honda’s.

The biggest competitive drag on the auto companies is the cost of a million retirees.

Labor costs are only 10% of the sales price of an average vehicle. But the UAW has done its part to ensure competitiveness. UAW contracts allow the Big Three to hire new workers at about half of Toyota’s $25-$30 an hour wage rate. The biggest competitive drag on the auto companies is the cost of a million retirees -– the result of being in business in the U.S. for the last 75 years.

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By John Avlon
Author, “Independent Nation”

The Mumbai terror attacks remind a briefly slumbering world that we are in a war against Islamic supremacists. In recent months, the USA has been pre-occupied with an historic election and an historic financial crisis. But the war that was indelibly declared on September 11, 2001 continues unabated, not just against the U.S., but worldwide. So this is a moment for global solidarity — because this is ultimately a war between civilization and the terrorists.

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By Jack Cox
Publisher, AnalysisOnline/President, the Communications Institute

Ronald Reagan’s name was invoked throughout the presidential campaign by candidates from both political parties. In a 10-part series by Kenneth T. Walsh on “The Most Consequential Elections in History” that appeared on the U.S. News & World Report Web site earlier this year, political scientist Alvin Felzenberg observed, “of all who served as president of the United States, none came to office with a more clearly articulated vision of where he wanted to take the nation than Reagan.”

AP

In his article examining the 1980 election, Walsh writes that Reagan offered nothing less than a complete reversal in the direction in which the nation had been headed prior to his inauguration as president. On the domestic front, he sought major reductions in marginal tax rates and fewer regulations on the economy.

As our new president considers the proper role of government in assisting those in economic distress, it might be useful to have Reagan’s perspective.

He argued that such measures would unleash the creative entrepreneurial impulses of the American people. Under Reagan, the growth of government was slowed (though not stopped), taxes were reduced, the economy boomed, and the nation was at peace.

The idea of better control of government spending was also echoed in a speech given by then-Senator John F. Kennedy in February 4, 1957 a decade before Reagan became governor of California:

“However slowly, there is every sign that we will continue to move ahead. A major piece of unfinished business is the bill which passed the Senate unanimously last year, and which provides that our national budgets be based on the actual expenditures to be incurred by the Federal departments and agencies during the budget year, the cost-type budget. This bill is important not only in terms of the savings it will bring, but even more significantly, I believe, in terms of developing greater cost consciousness on the part of all citizens, employees of the Government and otherwise.”

The nation may well see new a direction in public policy with the election of Barack Obama. New perspectives from Ronald Reagan have surfaced in a never released interview with the former president during his run for governor in August, 1966. The Web site AnalysisOnline.org has released the interview I conducted as a reporter in 1966, in a private meeting with Reagan at his Pacific Palisades home in southern California. It has never been published before.

As our new president considers the proper role of government in assisting those in economic distress, it might be useful to have Reagan’s perspective:

“No one wants to deny or do any less than the limits of our capacity for those people who through age or disability must depend on their fellow man for help. I think we’re all proud of our ability to take care of those people. But the great problem, I think, has to do with, number one, our vast administrative overhead that has grown up due to the red tape imposed by Sacramento and, in part, by Washington. And the people closest to the scene, at the county level administering welfare have just recently with their CalFlex plan made public the fact that there are millions of dollars that could be saved by reducing this administrative overhead. That’s number one. Number two, the area of welfare that has to do with the able-bodied, the people who are supposed to be only temporary wards of government, until they can get back into the productive economy, instead, we have so altered the original philosophy that we now perpetuate poverty.

We have people in California who are the fourth generation of their families on welfare. Here I believe an overhaul is needed. I think there should be greater spending in education, that we should save on welfare and divert that money to education to head off potential welfare cases by training and education, and this I would seek to do. I think that there is a vast savings to be made.”

Reform of the welfare system later became a huge national issue. President Bill Clinton eventually signed welfare reform legislation into law. Reagan’s goal was accomplished 30 years after he made these comments by a Democratic president.

Pointing out federal earmarks or “pork” in legislation was a key element in speeches made by Senator John McCain and other candidates. Reagan was asked about the practice of cities applying for federal grants in this 1966 interview. President-elect Obama is now talking about providing more direct aid to state and local governments. I asked Reagan about the federal aid to states in my 1966 interview and he responded:

Well, I’ve made that statement publicly up to now in the campaign a number of times. My quarrel is not with federal aid, but the federal government by usurping the taxing authority from the local communities and states has made federal aid necessary. My quarrel is with the federal control that goes with it and yes, in the council of governors I would support such things as the legislation proposed by the Governor of Washington in the last council of governors who wants money earmarked left at the local level for spending without it going first to Washington and then coming back with regulations attached. “

Four years after this Reagan made these comments then-President Richard Nixon proposed the creation of Revenue Sharing and the Reorganization of the Federal Government based in part on ideas that harkened back to Reagan’s one-time-hero President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Federal Grant program has grown dramatically since then with literally billions more than spent than were ever envisioned in campaigns of the sixites. Perhaps, one of the goals of the new administration should be to revisit the issue of Federalism and begin to return more taxing authority and sources to state government.

The final question to Ronald Reagan in this new released interview focused on what he considered to be the important challenge facing California:

Well, I think there are a number of vitally important issues. I’ve several times said that I think all of them could be roughly classified under one umbrella and that umbrella actually is morality. I think there has been an erosion of morality. I think it’s found in our willingness to accept state government employees being used in political campaigning, such as a member of the Board of Regents at the University of California serving as campaign manager for the incumbent. I think it is to be found in the bureaus and agencies of government, putting out material that can only be classified as campaign material, in the appointments, nepotism, the appointment of political hacks, the creation of unnecessary jobs for them. “

But all of this has this kind of moral overtone. To get down to specifics, I suppose that many of the problems could be summed up under the excessive cost of government and the size of our state government because, from this, comes not only the problems of taxation, but our forcing some industries to leave our state, the property tax that is now making it impossible for people on retirement incomes to live out their lives in their own homes. But the size of the state government has resulted in the preemption of law enforcement powers from the local communities and I think is directly responsible for our runaway crime rate.

So, all in all, I would think if you had to put it into one sentence, we need to reduce the size, the cost and the power of the state government. We need to restore more autonomy to the citizens at their local, living level, which is the only way that we’ll make this system work.

Reagan was not opposed to the government serving an important role in service to the public. His quarrel was with the inefficiency of government and the waste of the people’s money.

Nearly a half century has gone by since Ronald Reagan made these comments, as well as those of by the young Senator from Massachusetts. Government today is larger and the federal government has more control over every aspect of society than either man envisioned. The present Governor of California has declared his state is on an economic precipice and has asked for billions of dollars in federal aid or loans to avoid financial collapse. The near dysfunctional California state legislature couldn’t even create budget on time. Major programs are being slashed. Other states are experiencing similar economic catastrophes including Arizona and Florida.

The federal government is now bailing out banks and nearly the entire financial structure of the nation with hundreds of billions of dollars that may become trillions. The once venerable corporate giants of GM, Ford, and Chrysler now want billions of dollars from the government to avoid collapse. The economic travails of America are huge and the new president has a big job ahead.

Finally, President Kennedy provided great words of wisdom on global leadership responsibility of the United States in a speech that should be heeded by future Presidents. Unfortunately that speech for the afternoon of November 22, 1963 in Dallas was never delivered as his young life was cut short. His prophetic words are important to consider as the world confronts difficult economic times and international terrorism:

“We in this country, in this generation, are–by destiny rather than choice–the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

Perhaps the perspectives of two of the Twentieth Century’s great presidents, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, should be vital reading for president-elect Obama and every political official in America. Both men were statesmen who worked in a bipartisan manner for the best interests of the nation. John Kennedy’s close relationship with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Tip O’Neill might also serve as a bipartisan role model for today’s political leaders.

Let us hope at this time of year, as we give thanks for our great nation, that our leaders will follow the leadership of these two great American presidents who were devoted more to country and less to political party.

Jack Cox is a former California broadcast journalist who covered Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966. He later served as Representative Barry Goldwater, Jr’s Chief of Staff and as CEO of the nation’s largest non-partisan educational institution for journalists focused on public policy issues. He is currently CEO of The Communications Institute in Los Angeles and publisher of AnalysisOnline.org.