US: Unseen Injury

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After his third deployment, Sgt. Matthew Pennington, 28, returned to his home in Dexter, Me., where he is recovering from both physical and psychological traumas.

Produced by Sarah Kramer, Meaghan Looram, Todd Heisler

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U.S.: Love on the Spectrum

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Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students living in Greenfield, Mass., discuss how autism affects their lives and relationship.

Produced by Sean Patrick Farrell

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The Choice Blog: As Jan. 1 Application Deadline Nears, an Argument for a Yearlong Breather

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AppId is over the quota

Robert Clagett is a former dean of admissions at Middlebury College and former senior admissions officer at Harvard College.

As the cultural significance that Americans attach to the college admissions process gets ratcheted up year after year, it can frequently seem as if where we go to college has become more important than what we actually do with the opportunity once we get there.? For some, getting into the perfect college has become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, and finally having the brass ring in hand can sometimes lead to a sense of letdown and even underachievement once they arrive on campus.

But there are a few positive trends happening out there that may help us refocus our attention on what should be the educational goals of going to college in the first place.? As was reported in September on The Choice, one of those is the burgeoning interest that some students are demonstrating in taking a gap year between high school and college, voluntarily removing themselves from the lock-step mentality that can too often characterize the high school experience.

It is by no means a new idea, and for university-bound students in some parts of the world, it is practically the norm.? But since the convention for most in this country is to graduate from high school in the spring, then head off to college the following fall, it has taken time for it to take root.

Gradually, however, this idea is catching on, and more and more students are stepping off the educational treadmill, pursuing interests, talents or jobs for reasons other than just helping them get into their college of choice, and reminding themselves in the process of what their education is really all about.?

There has also developed an industry of programs, books, gap year fairs, counseling services and sometimes even financial aid to help students pursue their passions during a year away from their formal education.

The reason for all of this interest is that much evidence has shown that students who take a gap year bring more to their college experiences and derive more from them as well.? What often happens is that students end up “reinventing” themselves during their gap year, discovering where their true interests and talents lie, and helping them bring a more mature outlook to their education in the future.

There is even good news on the academic performance front, with several studies showing that students who take a gap year end up doing better than their non-gap year classmates.? At Middlebury College in Vermont, for example, this was true even when controlling for the academic credentials that gap year students brought with them from their high schools.? On average, those students have shown a clear pattern of having higher G.P.A.’s than would otherwise have been predicted, and the positive effect lasts over all four years.

So here, for once, is a college admissions trend that is a win-win for everyone involved.? Most students who take a gap year still go through the college admissions process when they are seniors in high school, then request a deferral of their enrollment after they have decided where they would like to matriculate.? But as long as those students are proposing something worthwhile for their year off, most colleges are open to approving these requests, since they realize it can only lead to a more focused and mature student body.

And for many students, parents and colleges, that would be a welcome trend indeed.

Have you taken a gap year? Contemplated one? Please use the comment box below to let us know your thoughts.

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The next war: this Vision the reduced army Pentagon

Shift the fiscal reality and deal with the issue last summer, which are considered to be in the United States, its liabilities set forth in the doctrine of Mr. Panetta is expected to outline the plans for the armed forces by reducing the amount of care — and in doing so, to make clear that the Pentagon does not maintain the ability to fight two wars at the same time to be a good.

Instead, he said that the army be large enough to fight and win the one major conflict at the same time also have the opportunity to "ruin" the second part of the second enemy, while at the same time in the world with the intentions of the other smaller operations, such as for providing disaster relief or n: o the number of compliance with the air traffic control zone.

Pentagon officials have in the meantime, the final discussions about possible cuts almost every important area of military expenditure: the nuclear arsenal, to combat aircraft, warships, and salaries and pension and benefits. To end the war in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta is weighing how to significantly reduce the American ground forces.

There is broad agreement in left, right and center of the 450 billion dollars of that of the more than a decade — an amount that the White House and the Pentagon agreed last summer — is acceptable. That is about 8% of the Pentagon base budget. But there is a strong debate about $ 500 billion in cuts, which may have to be done, if Congress follows the deeper reductions.

Mr. Panetta and defense Hawks say, discount, $ 1 trillion, approximately 17% of the Pentagon base budget would be Cataclysmic in the field of national security. Democrats and a few Republicans to say that it would be painful, but manageable; They Add that the cold war and Korea, and Viet Nam after the war was more pronounced the military cuts.

Gordon Adams, who oversaw the military budgets to the Clinton White House and is now in the public interest research group in Washington to fellow Stimson Center "even a trillion dollars, where this is shallower build down than any of the last three weeks we have done," said. Most of the armed forces would still be "world. We should ask ourselves involved in Racing. "

Many of which are more concerned about the cuts, including Mr. Panetta accepts that the Pentagon personnel costs are unsustainable and generous retirement benefits may be back to Save a crucial weapons programs to scale.

"If we do not allow the current trend will continue," said Arnold l. Punaro, consultant, the Pentagon Advisory Group, the Defense Business Board, which changes have been inserted into a military pension system, "we are going to turn the benefits for the company, which kills some of the Ministry of defence in the terrorist attack."

Mr. Panetta will outline the guiding principles in his Kuroakseen plans news conference this week with the strategy and special cuts — now, the Pentagon has drawn up some 260 billion dollars of cuts over the next five years — the President's annual budget in accordance with the procedure set out at the Congress, where they discussed, and almost certainly in detail before approval is hereby amended as follows:. Although the proposals seem to budget cuts, more than a decade, in the future, the President proposes spending plan as an alternative to the Congress.

Within the scope of decisions looming cuts forces inevitably and in the future, the American army. If, say, the Pentagon save 7 billion dollars over a decade by reducing the number of aircraft carriers, there should be sufficient to force 10 to 11 in order to combat the increasingly bold Chinese Pacific? If the Pentagon saves over the next ten years, nearly 150 billion dollars by reducing the size of the army, said, sets of America manufactured for grinding, 483,000 Asia war from the ground long, 570,000?

Save more than 100 billion dollars what about reductions in the number of working-age for military retirees health care? That would break a promise to those who may in her country?

Calculations to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, which will move to the next, the cost of the wars of the Decade. After the war and the potential $ 1 trillion of that of the next decade down the winding, the Pentagon the annual budget, now 530 billion dollars, reduce the 472 billion dollars in 2013, or about the size of the budget in 2007.

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The Presidential Hopefuls, in the past, support the G.O.P. high-speed,

Newt Gingrich, former speaker to the House, is written in the books and the importance of the United States gave speeches, and he supported high speed research Atlanta, high-speed line in Riga, Latvia, Tenn., requested by local boosters, when he was Congress. .Gov Rick Perry of Texas saw his failed 175 billion dollars, the transport plan to build what is called the Trans-Texas corridor high-speed role.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a small up-government libertarian, signed a letter that several members of Texas ' U.s. delegation be sent to the Federal officials contacted the State money in 2009 in rail transport studies to help it build a "really ambitious and world-class high-speed network."

But Mr. Gingrich may be most outspoken Republican presidential candidate, when it comes to his aid high-speed. He has spoken and written in France and China, and how far the admiringly forward, they were, when the United States, it will be high-speed. He is a burden on the high-speed lines in the sense in Florida and California — to place the Obama administration tried to build it — and in conjunction with the Northeast. And he has spoken to the role of the Government to help build the national railway network.

"If you want to be the most competitive country in 2040, or 2050, you need to think big," Mr. Gingrich said 2009 videotaped the Governors of the national central banks in forum sponsored by the Association and the building of America in the future, the infrastructure advocacy group. Mr. Gingrich great idea was the United States of America to build a high-speed magnetic field levitation trains, because China is a.

"Now and really bold and go head with the development and implementation of maglev trains, which transmits the 280, 300, 320 miles per hour in China," Gingrich said in his speech, which Mr. Streetsblog.org transport Web site wrote about recently. "And you change all of a sudden all sorts of information about how this country is working equations."

Before the rail transport policy was the account ID over the last few years, rates of Republican support is not unusual. Recently, in 2004, the Republican Guard party platform stated that "Republicans support, if economically viable, the development of high-speed passenger railroad system as a tool for economic development and enhanced mobility."

But rail transport policy changed significantly after Mr. Obama convinced Democrats Congress include 8 billion u.s. dollars of passenger rail and high-speed his 787 billion dollar stimulus plan.

States originally competed fiercely money, but that the tonne-kilometres after the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans swept by the Congress and many statehouses. The new Governors of Ohio and Wisconsin Republican hundreds of millions of dollars was rejected by the Federal Republic of Germany, the aid which the States won their passenger-rail systems to build up to.

Then who won 2.4 billion dollars of federal money to build the nation's first True high-speed network between Orlando and Tampa, Florida after the money sent back to the new Republican Governor Rick Scott, said, is a boondoggle. Republicans Congress have since denied Obama administration requests more expenditure on the railway.

Against this background, it is a good idea to some rail traffic, it was some Republican said at the "Innocence" is to support high-speed history hopeful mark. "I hope that we can move in the process of partisan behavior speeds past — it was certainly not always this way," said Petra Todorovich, America 2050, the regional plan Association, an independent branch of research and advocacy group in the cities. "Even though politicians may vary depending on the design and management of both sides of the aisle on the speeds of the politicians in the United States, which this is recognized by the it makes sense to have certain corridors."

Spokesmen for Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry did not respond to e-mail messages, make their views known, rail traffic from seeking comment. But Mr. Gingrich outlined their views on the 2008 paper, "Real change: From the world that fails to the World that Works" by saying that California, Florida and the Northeast corridor from Boston to Washington are all "very favourable this type of high-speed investment."

But he will take a different tack, Obama administration, and many Democrats, arguing that the development of rail transport in the Union work rules, "stymied" Amtrak, Washington politicians, who authorities an unprofitable routes, inefficiency and the "regulations and disputes involved in the large-scale construction in the United States."

Mr. Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said, via email, and that Mr. Paul "thinks rates is a very interesting idea and can be very valuable for the project, in many cases."

Mr. Benton, said that Mr. Paul believed that ideally should be left to the high-speed development of the private sector, but that he, by, on behalf of the federal tax rebates and shall be withdrawn in accordance with the regulations of its development. He said that Mr. Paul signed other 2009 Texas-the members of the delegation of the Federal — letters with which sought to raise money for the research, which it said would help "to attract high-quality private and public sector investors, which can be made, the key to the success of the large number of" — was intended to ensure that "a fair share of the money was spent in Texas to Texan taxpayers received some of their money back." In that letter announced the first in the Newsweek article in October about fiscal policy of the conservative party for their chips on the Federal Government.

But the rail projects will continue to be tough with the sell-to customer, many conservatives these days, such as Mr. Gingrich Hinted his 2009 remarks, Governors ' Forum. "Let me just close with I think is a central issue, that I am ready to debate both the Liberals and the Conservatives, but probably I'm a little more value with the v?ittelev?t of the conservative party," he said, speaking of the need to amend the federal funding process. "You cannot talk about the fundamental rights of the American national security in the long term without this country economically. redevelopment aid It is not possible. And competitive American economy without dramatically more reliable and modern infrastructure, it is not possible to talk about. "

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Suspect, hacking, 9 and 11 victims relatives await answers

Some of the sounds heard on the mysterious, home and mobile phones. One man, who died in the World Trade Center, taking her to his discussion of one of the snippets on listening. The husband of the victim is similar to the session, someone using a different remote through his home answering machine, which held a final, reassuring message left his wife before the Flight 93 crash. Others say they are, how the information about their loved ones looked fühlen British tabloids terrorist attacks during the day.

Ten years later, the world phone hacking scandal in London, the News attracted the suspicions held by relatives of the victims of the dozens of us Justice Services Department. Britannicassa 24 in eight of the Attorney General Eric h. holder Jr. met and asked him to determine whether their privacy was violated. As a first step, they asked him to see if Scotland Yard had their names or phone numbers from a private investigator, who among the hacked cellphone messages tabloid material record.

Four months later, they are still waiting to hear back, and the Law Department of silence blank.

"Is not that difficult to determine — is quite simple really, is it?" said Patricia Bingley, the Great Britain national, whose son, Kevin Dennis, 43-year-old trader is Cantor Fitzgerald worked at the World Trade Center North Tower 101st floor.

Ms. Bingley said he was stunned to see Sun, 18. disc 2001 issue, the photo of his son reading bedtime story to his two sons, of which he or she is not a paper. His son, that he said, none of his family had provided information also becomes one of the story included, "it never made sense to me," he said, adding that he doubts that the hacking or worse. "I would like to tell the Government, whether or not. Celebrities show is unable to resolve. "

July, such as announcements, information about a wide range of phone hacking, according to the tabloid newspaper the other capitalization were the British, the Daily Mirror, reported the private investigator, said that the world's suppliers of News had offered to pay him to retrieve the phone records the disk 11 of the victims. After the report, which is confirmed by other news organizations, the Department opened an investigation. So far, evidence has emerged publicly disk 11 victims were hacking objectives.

Iodine Westbrook flowers, a lawyer, South Carolina investment firm, which represents more than 6700 relatives of the victims, said he and the disc 11 of his colleagues was the British tabloids and find information about scoured scores of victims. Authorities were not certain how the tabloids so much so quickly found after the terrorist attacks.

One of the relatives, whom he refused to be identified, said that five days after the publication of the Sun disk 11, left his mobile phone, his son, which was used by one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center the voice mail message from the words. (The British authorities are also investigating whether hacking took place in the Sun, which is owned by the news of the world, such as News Corporation.)

At the end of September, the band the flowers of Ms Rice law firm sent ... Mr. holder's victims, the relatives of the two dozen telephone numbers, and requested that Scotland Yard carries out them from home, Glenn Mulcaire seized 12,000, most of the world now l?p?ll? news of hacking is responsible for the private investigator through the documents page. He said at least 100 of his clients in the United States and Britain, now you want to.

Nov 3, on the basis of the Vida (G) the Department of Justice Chief down. public corruption unit, wrote a number of lawyers, saying, "the F.B.I. is committed to assess the veracity of these claims, the preliminary examination."

Ms. flowers said he was disappointed by the response to the ep?m??r?isyytt?. "We have asked the simple question, and we got to the threshold-nonanswer, basically," he said.

Ms. flowers added, "If there was no hacking, it is wildly coincidence that so many people describe the corresponding."

Two Justice Department officials in the knowledge of the inquiry, even so, said they did not expect much to come into contact with in the study. Officials, who declined to identify because they were not allowed to discuss the continuing criminal inquiry, said the investigation remained open in case Scotland Yard found evidence of suspicions of relatives of disk 11. They both said they were uncertain that such evidence so far.

Tracy Schmaler, a legal Department spokesman said only, "in the ongoing investigation."

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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Many Iowa voters are uncertain liquidity brigades

Try to understand why so many voters are uncommitted to this reporter spoke of some Iowa Republicans, as they made their choices — if indeed they are.

TWICE, A BROKEN

-Ames straw poll, that at an early stage, for the purpose of non-formal competition leading up to the summer days, Jason Anderson, the President of the competitors was "fully pumped, ' as he put it, Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota that seemed promising candidate for the Republican nomination.

"He gave me such a good feeling that six or seven of my friends, all of the fans we drove out of the query for the root user for Tim to him," said Mr. Anderson, 35, to the right, two to the North of Ankeny, a small town father of Des Moines. "It was like a rock concert, we were so excited."

Mr. Anderson feelings were different on the next day, when Mr. Pawlenty, finishing out of the race in the third place, fell a disappointment.

"I felt lucky," Mr. Anderson said.

His mood brightened again only when Herman Cain candidacy took off two months later. Mr. Cain business-minded School Department and opeista Mr. Anderson, who is employed in the auto insurance industry, freedom of thought, he had found another good match. But when Mr. Cain to suspend his campaign in the face of accusations of sexual misconduct, has been tense at the beginning of December, Mr. Anderson felt that sinking feeling again. The Frustration Edicomiin.

In an interview in mid-December, Mr. Anderson vented out: "I hate wavering back and forth. It has been a rollercoaster as. "

But what was he to do? Mr. Anderson said, he found a Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts Governor, "too large". .Gov Rick Perry of Texas was "without a clue." Representative Michele Bachmann appeared not to know his facts, he said, and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, smacked of old news.

It was not, before Christmas, when the family of the guest collection asked, "have you looked at the Ron Paul?", that Mr. Anderson realized he was not.

"Cannot explain the why it had not occurred to me, but the more I learned about him, the more I liked Ron Paul," he said. "Of course, but not all, ever, you are going to find the perfect candidate. And this is not just about jumping on the trend, even if you want someone who is on Tuesday to win back. "

"My wife and I we have a small government and less spending, and he is about that," Mr. Anderson said, 6.4.2004 some of Mr. Paul more controversial positions such as his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve as the "of course, highly unlikely."

"I vote for him, and I do not see any changes," Mr. Anderson said. "Two weeks ago, I was confused and distraught about the whole thing. Now I am happy. "

SUPPORTERS? MAKE SURE THAT THE. THE FANS? BIT MUCH.

When Arthur and Norma Doenecke semiretirement, while leaving it to the busy lives on the East Coast, went behind the move for nearly 10 years ago and a new life in rural Iowa, one of the national policy was the ability to take a look at the closeup of perk, this favorite pastime. And last year, they were almost in the whole of the candidates were: picnics and sudden upward through dinners and forums and discussions. Open the magazine Time March 21 issue, the attention of the Newt Gingrich campaign and see the rapt adjusted photo.

"Standing behind him, but Was, as I said to my friends, this does not mean that he was standing," Dr. Doenecke, family physician was careful to note sly smile. Moderate Republican Guard, he takes his responsibility with a view to caucusgoer than the democratic process so seriously that the founding fathers of swoon.

Mrs. Doenecke, former advertising Executive is no different. "We believe that if it is not indicated and if you don't vote for the right to criticize the country or do not have to be the case," he said.

Yet this political season, the couple, most of the below has been unsure to whom aid, more than any Republican competitors, diagnose problems, which arise from tension in the reader or by multiplying with. The process of elimination rather than raw or cooked, in their decision making and, ultimately, was to remain one of the man. But barely.

That man is Mitt Romney.

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Mt Rainier was found in the body is part of the Shooting the suspect ... Ranger

F.B.I. and other law enforcement authorities had spent a hard search for a man, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, within the previous 24 hours, this rugged 368-square-scour-the Park's steep and Snowy Mountain snowshoes and aircraft.

Ed Troyer, Pierce County Sheriff Department spokesman Mr. Barnes was spotted creek air: 45 pm, about 10 on Monday, said. He was found, wearing a t-shirt, Jeans, and a sneaker. Her neck was is tattooed, "pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust." Mr. Troyer said officers had found they believed two of Mr. Barnes was guns, but that he did not use them for yourself.

"He will be, no other than the weather has been a victim of violence," Mr. Troyer said. Temperatures were in the low 30s overnight. Approximately two metres of snow had fallen in recent times.

Chuck Young, the Park's Chief ranger, said Mr. Barnes was found a mile or one-and-a-half-mile information from Kids to flat, Park Road, where officials say he shot and killed ranger, Margaret Anderson, 34, when he tried to bring his vehicle to a halt in a corner.

Mr. Barnes had failed to stop when park rangers on top of the you tried to drag him Sunday morning. Ms. Anderson, to respond to radio calls, used his patrol vehicle creates a blockade, as in the case of Mr. Barnes his way towards the center of the visitor's Paradise reserved for recreation and the fresh snow, been unfairly induced method if the match was to go sledding and snowshoeing people. Gunma is believed to have his shot of a vehicle type with regard to the tread and the Ms. Anderson, before he could react.

"There is nothing he could do," Mr. Troyer said.

Ms. Anderson had two daughters ages 3 and 1, and was married to another ranger at the Park. He joined the Park Service seasonal ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park Utah than in 2000. The couple had worked in the Mount Rainier since 2008.

No one was injured, even though Mr. Barnes is believed to have shot off another ranger who responded to the windscreen.

Randy King, Park Superintendent, said, "They made aware of the decision to do this, stop the paradise to which we were one of the busiest weekends in the winter day, year, hereinafter referred to as".

Tactical group was followed by Mr. Barnes of the tracks on the canyons, where he was believed to be hiding. Airplane and helicopter was also to prove to him.

Spokesman in Seattle, Ayn Dietrich F.B.I. said law enforcement believed, Mr. Barnes was also involved in earlier Skyway city, Wash house, bileiss?., Sunday Shooting four people who were injured, two critically.

Mr. Barnes had served in the armed forces and the armed forces joint Base Lewis-was McChord, but do not appear to be to combat veteran, Steven Dean, was the Assistant special agent of the F.B.I. Seattle Office

Park officials and law enforcement authorities had said they found ammunition, body armor, and a survivalist law lifting gear Mr. Barnes in a vehicle, that he might concern elude authorities and hurt others in the Park. But Mr. Dean said Mr. Barnes "had not been trained in special forces solider" and "found dead Hill, unequipped."

Mr. Young said that the law enforcement authorities of more than 80 people in the visitor's Center of the terminal building overnight, the Convoy, as was the safer for Monday to remain in the Park.

"The alternative is, and the parking lot surrounds the building sits," Mr Young said.

Although most of the Park was removed from the visitors, the three groups was backcountry. Red Sox hiked import them.

The last time the Tigers had died of the Mount Rainier was in 1995, when the two climbing Tigers died during rescue Ms. Anderson is ninth in the National Park Service ranger killed in the line of duty, in view of the parks was founded in 1916. Park ranger the last was killed in 2002, at the Organ pipes national monument in Arizona, Cactus of the drug cartel's hit squad.

Ms. Anderson was among 1,000 law enforcement Rangers at parks throughout the country. Law enforcement Rangers is a vartioitava national parks since 1916. Tigers are trained at the Federal law enforcement Training Center in Georgia to carry out the gun.

The Park is about 85 miles southeast Seattle, and on your income a designated Wilderness consists of almost entirely.

Mr. King, Superintendent, said, the Park is likely to be closed Tuesday for further investigation.

"National parks are places, we should continue to go and be familiar with the situation as safe," said Mr. F.B.I. Dean "this is the enforcement powers. This is something that does not happen. "

William Yardley declared at Mount Rainier National Park, c. and Isolde Raftery, Seattle.

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A Gathering Storm Over ‘Right to Work’ in Indiana

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The thunderclouds are gathering first here in Indiana. The leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say that when the legislative session opens on Wednesday, their No. 1 priority will be to push through a business-friendly piece of legislation known as a right-to-work law.

If Indiana enacts such a law — and its sponsors say they have the votes — it will give new momentum to those who have previously pushed such legislation in Maine, Michigan, Missouri and other states. New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled Legislature was the last to pass a right-to-work bill in 2011, but it narrowly failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto by the Democratic governor; an Indiana law would re-energize that effort.

Right-to-work laws prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to the union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees.

Many right-to-work supporters say it is morally wrong to force unwilling workers to contribute to unions, while opponents argue that it is wrong to allow “free riders” not to support the unions that represent them in negotiations and arbitrations.

Right-to-work is also a potent political symbol that carries serious financial consequences for unions. Corporations view such laws as an important sign that a state has policies friendly to business. Labor leaders say that allowing workers to opt out of paying any money to the union that represents them weakens unions’ finances, bargaining clout and political power.

Organized labor has vowed to fight the Indiana bill, which it says would turn the state into the “Mississippi of the Midwest.” If the legislation passes, Indiana would become the first state to have such a law within the traditional manufacturing belt, a union stronghold that stretches from the Midwest to New England. Right-to-work laws exist in 22 states, almost all in the South and West, with Oklahoma the most recent to pass one, in 2001.

Right-to-work supporters say they can win quick passage because Indiana’s Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, backs the bill and Republicans have large majorities in the House and Senate.

Democratic and union leaders say they hope to block the legislation, in part by flooding the statehouse with thousands of protesters — exactly as unions did last year in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana in an attempt to defeat legislation that limited bargaining rights for public sector workers. Democratic lawmakers in Indiana have also hinted that they might once again flee to Illinois, as they did last year, to block votes on anti-union bills.

Indiana’s Republican leaders are eager to pass the bill — and end any related commotion — before Feb. 5, when the national spotlight turns to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

In heading the legislative push, Brian C. Bosma, the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, argues that not being right-to-work is a big handicap when Indiana competes for jobs.

“Local economic development officers testified that 25 to 50 percent of companies looking to create employment, whether through expansion or locating a new facility, just took Indiana and other non-right-to-work states off the table,” he said in an interview. “This is stopping employers from coming to Indiana. We need to deal with that.”

Kevin Brinegar, president of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, praised the bill as a low-cost way to improve the business climate. “It’s not like we’re going to spend a billion dollars on tax incentives,” he said. “It’s free.”

But opponents say the talk of improving Indiana’s business climate is just a pretext.

“It’s a political attack on what the Republicans see as one of their main opponents — organized labor,” said Jim Robinson, the top United Steelworkers official in Indiana. “They want to weaken unions to help assure continued Republican majorities.”

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4Th L.A., an arrest warrant to fires on car-evening

The man, Harry Burkhart, 24, around 3: 00 a.m. morning night, was taking children into custody save in properly with Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, on the outskirts of drug store and gas station. He was charged with arson around the clock and was held without detention.

"A series of Venezuelan, I think, was detected," the Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles-County, which in front of the television cameras, the Bank said, standing in the news conference, which took part in the parade elected officials.

Sheriff Baca is suspected to be "perhaps the most dangerous Venezuelan, the county name of Los Angeles that I can remember."

Chief Charlie Beck Los Angeles Police Department said, Mr. Burkhart was a German national; some additional information on the case, should be provided now, he added.

Chief Beck said he hoped that the suspect was alone, but he refused to rule out the possibility that the other users. "That is the exact moment of our huge concerns about this," the Chief Beck said. "We have every hope that she did. But we do not know that yet. "

Civil process was subject to a Mr. Burkhart in the House, Chief Beck said, and the data from these would help to determine how many people were involved in the setting of the fire officials.

Still other officials, including Mayor Antonio r. Villaraigosa. this warrant, appeared more optimistic would solve. And they said that there had been more starts when Mr. Burkhart, who was driving the van, which contained some of the posting was made for routine maintenance.

The arrest brought the episode, which is dominated by the new year weekend, this at least a temporary anottua. The terrorist attacks began Friday morning and continued on the following three nights. Cars were set on fire., in the end, 52 Because many of the cars were carports or garages, the number of apartment buildings suffered serious injury.

Random attacks aroused neighborhoods anxiety city. But there were no significant injuries in the fires, authorities said.

Mr. Burkhart arrest came after another night of Chaotic, as the cars began exploding into flames after dusk. The streets were again the police officers, Detective and fire investigators.

Chief Beck said the case has been resolved without the use of a videotape will be shown, leaving the parking lot of the release of the suspect on Sunday.

Shervin Lalezary, reserve deputy sheriff, that $ 1 a year, is spotted the suspect and stopped him in the Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. He was introduced to major applause news conference Monday night, he is described in the End. "As soon as you put my lights and initiated a traffic Stop of a suspect vehicle, I had the L.A.P.D.-at the rear of the vehicle we ready to play," he said.

Two hours in the area was roped and police helicopters rumbled overhead.

Although the police declined to rule out the possibility of accomplices, they said, two other men were arrested last week and set up in the same area in the context of the fires were not charged with arson related to Mr. Burkhart or these latest attacks.

Chief Beck said, officials released little information, although research continues.

"This is an ongoing investigation," he said. "For more information about the alleged offender cannot be extradited tonight. Many of the questions go to the sharing. "That is not, because the investigation is a dormant."

Ian Lovett contributed reporting.

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U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan

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AppId is over the quota
Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Uusien lakien arvioinut mahdollisuuksia luoda työpaikkoja

When the American Public Transportation Association seeks more federal money, it argues that the "public transit projects put people to work." In particular, it says, "every 1 billion dollar we invest in public transport means 36.000 jobs."

When Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter lobbies F-35, it says, a new level of reaffirming the economy by creating a "direct and indirect jobs 127,000 Americans" in 47 States.

Health-care lobbyists argue that Medicare and Medicaid cuts away from the work of nurses and other hospital workers. Tree farmers argue that cutting forest conservation programs to destroy "a good paying job in rural areas."

Stubbornly high unemployment, it seems, can be used to justify anything and everything. But some economists and other critics say that the figures be misleading, because it is a good idea to cook up an estimates themselves.

David card, economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, which is the Labor economists society, the President said "many economists think that the most is pretty stupid." "It is just selling point. You can not say anything, regardless of what, you need to create jobs. I do not think people should be paid much attention. "

In some cases, the results of their opposite pages provide only primary opposition, should be good jobs, logic defying. For example, to criticize a new Republican Guard legislators, environmental law, as the work of the United States clean air rules that are more stringent than the jets, but supporters say they will create tens of thousands of jobs, pollution control industries.

Estimates of job creation or destruction of the economic consultants hired by lobbying from frequently for or opposition to the proposal. The effect of the increase, including a proposal for a directive of the indirect effects on other parts of the economy.

Prof. John m. Abowd, Labor Economist at Cornell, said that "the labour market are the coordinating centre the dynamic" has a lot of jobs are created and destroyed, even when the total employment level will remain approximately the same. For this reason, he said, it is often difficult to know whether the expenditure directly for a particular purpose creates jobs.

The wireless industry wants more to consumer demand, the Government of the radio spectrum necessary for the cellular data Release. If you must use these frequencies, the wireless companies say they spend billions of dollars creating wireless networks more than half a million jobs.

Similar arguments were made with regard to the law of the foreign Web sites that sell counterfeit and illegally copied music, movies, TV shows and books to crack.

Copyright, trademark and intellectual property rights in the context of the work may seem obscure problems. But large companies, the Creative Coalition, the United States of America, so that the frames in the message Congress politicians Note: "Stop the foreign Internet criminals from our jobs."

The rules for coal industry group attacks the power plant proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, says they "destroy more than 180,000 jobs a year." Estimate comes from American coalition for clean coal electricity, coal producers such as Peabody energy belonging to the members and Arch Coal on behalf of the research.

Outdone, in order to ensure that undertakings which conclude scrubbers and other pollution control devices have their own trade association, Institute of Clean Air companies. It supports many standards established by the clean air E.P.A. And they say that the 1.5 million jobs will be created over the next five years in accordance with the new requirements.

"These are good-paying American jobs, taksiautoilijat, welding equipment and engineers," the Institute said.

The National Association of letter carriers, combat to eliminate Saturday mail delivery, the proposal says, it does not only affect customer service, but is also directly to Marketers, printing and publishing companies and other companies mailing millions of jobs in the industry. The new taxes are in the image, and the killers, even if the tax breaks are defended the job creators.

To help reduce the deficit to President Obama recently proposed a new fees and taxes, which would raise the 36 billion dollar more than 10 years for airlines and passengers. Industry opposition to four words: "insert sums up the taxes. Will lose their jobs. "

Air Transport Association, trade group for the carriers ' proposed airline ticket taxes are in the unemployment line 181,000 Americans, "says.

The Association says Congress higher energy taxes for the Manufacturers will lead to higher prices and the "millions of jobs will be lost."

The new health care law, many of the export levies and charges on new taxes. Erik Paulsen, a Republican of Minnesota, the representative of the lead to one of certain medical devices. The tax, he says, "would eliminate more than 40 000 well-paying jobs."

The President of the candidates in the Republican Guard, said the law in many employers of the health of the insurance operations, or benefits, to improve its claim millions of full-time jobs at-fault.

On the contrary, the Obama administration officials say, the law to keep and create jobs in a variety of ways: by providing tax credits for small businesses to make insurance affordable; by increasing the demand for health-care goods and services; and by providing billions of dollars to build a community health centers and school clinics.

People often try to keep the central agency jobs tax breaks for their favorite.

The national farmers ' Union, the extension of the renewable energy tax credits in lobbying says, "wind energy creates jobs." Farmers receive the lease payments often wind energy companies that put the wind turbines on their land.

American Wind Energy Association, trade group, commissioned a new study says that the extension of the corporate tax wind energy "creates and saves a 54,000 jobs" at the end of the tax at the same time as the 2012 expiration to break would result in the loss of 37,000 jobs is scheduled.

Even the tree farmers and their opinion of the Advocate General, the American Forest Foundation's ' the case, arguing the trees mean jobs.

M??r?tietoisemmat Congress cut the forest conservation programs 2012 Farm Bill, the Foundation says the legislators, "every square mile of private forest land in support of the five American jobs."

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Firepower

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Alan Simons, left, and his family were riding their bikes in Asheville, N.C., when a driver, Charles Diez, pulled up next to him and started berating him. Mr. Diez, who had a permit for a concealed weapon, fired at Mr. Simons.

By MICHAEL LUO

As states ease concealed weapon laws, some of the permits are ending up in the wrong hands.

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ChicagoShovels Web-site unohtuvat Snow

But this year, the Administration made public on Tuesday, Mayor, Rahm Emanuel will be able to test their theories about the weight of the Chicagoans value on their computers. GPS technology to new city site, ChicagoShovels.org, provides a map of Chicago about 300 snowplows, way in real time through the neighborhoods. Anyone have a clear view of who gets what, and whether the Director of the city next to a faster sweep plows really effective Mayor's homes — or even just all hate neighbor.

"If that happens, you can see it," Mr. Emanuel the Chief Technology Officer, John Tolva, said.

Snowplow tracker, which city officials expect the routes are politically motivated belief, debunk is only one new computer Suite exclusively focuses on the quality of life in the snow — which in itself is Stoic in response to the winter weather in La, but it was a blizzard that stranded motorists thoroughfare along the Lake Michigan scores clobbered last year.

Part of the idea of an official response to snow in the city include more technology grew by Mr. Tolva said that blizzard that dumped more than 21 inches, and the city essentially closed at the end of February. Their own residents over a roadway clear, shall be bonded in shoveling alleys, and even together with Lake Shore Drive, the gradient color, he said, so why not encourage all the communication skills in advance of the network?

Among the other parts of the new Web-site: "the Snow Corps," which are responsible for the volunteers with mounds of shovel; Organization to guide people with computer linked to the Winter, when the two inches of snow has fallen on the streets of the city, alerting services, parking prohibitions, or if it is too late, to get their car towed and "take-the-sidewalk"-a program that allows people to share shoveling tools, and as soon the responsibility on the map claim shoveling.

It is still unclear whether the Chicagoans really want to officially cards out shoveling responsibilities outside of their homes as a roadway to the right — even ones. And ChicagoShovels.org offers this city's Ancient chat solution, this elegant computer: how to find more effective ways Department under normal conditions, "DIB", "chairs, t?tter?t, check boxes, or other junk e-mail filter to allocate cleared parking space are placed on the well established policy.

Are you sure you want to view the Snowplow monitoring continues to Chicagoans, which share in the city was already in the collection of data. The information must be accompanied by the city's snow command Center, where they also keep track of the slickness of bridges, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather maps and captured the city, around 1,000 cameras driving conditions.

Uusi半缠 3000, although, in the winter season, that some experts predicted would bring heavy snow, little has arrived so far. Other cities, the Midwest, such as Chicago spent millions of dollars less — 5.5 million dollars less, its case — because it needed salt for road tonne less tens of thousands of December as it was before the year.

Thank you, superstition, or history, or both, no one seemed to finish the renovation of the trend. "I am not calling this a mild yet in the winter," Mr. Tolva said. And on Monday, Chicagoans awoke the snow.

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National Briefing | Southwest: Texas: Man Detained at Airport Is a Green Beret

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Eve vote, ' 12, Iowa last Pitch

Mitt Romney

DAVENPORT, IOWA — the size of the standing stages and the size of the crowds in her marveling, Iowa, Mitt Romney says this election "is a dramatic choice between two different paths to the United States of America." November contest, he argues, "is about the American election of the soul."

Bus Tour last week over Mr. Romney must be considered to be the State of his focus on the staff policy, President Obama made two starkly different visions we are unable to the future of the country and the best equipped in the hope of the White House itself, the painting from Mr. Obama this fall.

Since Mr. Romney may be aware of his are considered to be Iowa at arm's length, second place at the end of the month, despite investing heavily in State there in 2008. But as the Republican field remained fractured, he made a late play to win. And gain a firm in Iowa to win the battle forward to her Catapult, the query after the next Contest New Hampshire caucuses a week as candidate in place, giving him or her in commanding lead.

You can sharpen a contrast with the Chairman, he tells Iowa voters that at the same time, he offers a "merit-based" and "to society," Mr. Obama is taking the country's "support for law in society."

"We have the opportunity to the nation, I believe that the President wants to take us to the European-style welfare State, the right-the role of the Board of Directors of the nation, which is not to provide freedom of expression and the opportunities, but on the other hand, the Government on behalf of some to give the other the role of the take," Mr. Romney said here on Monday morning. "I do not want to receive the European welfare state. Europe does not work there — the track never here. "

Mr. Romney "closing argument" speech is usually patriotism long — landing Iowa because he has taken from the time-"American Beautiful" — and a brief practice. On Monday, however, he offered a few details of what he would as President.

Mr. Romney said he will negotiate trade agreements to open markets for American goods more. And he said he cut the budget to balance the Government's programmes, which are not absolutely critical, such as subsidies to Amtrak and the public broadcasting Service.

"I'm going to say that these programs strictly we have?" Mr. Romney said. "Is this program as an important American, which our borrowing from China to pay for it, it should be?"

Added Mr. Romney, his fail-safe applause with one line, "in this way, the first in the list to get rid of the Obamacare."

ASHLEY PARKER

Rick Santorum

PERRY, Iowa — Rick Santorum, whose candidacy once seemed lost the reason that he found the campaign event in which one person showed up, spent a day before voters, declares that he does not, try only to win the Republican nomination, but against President Obama win in November, voters of the need to carry Iowa caucuses.

"Who's who in this race has proved to be the conservative record they were able to attract non-attached Members and the Democrats?" he told the crowd of about 100 (including no news media hordes) people, who are packed shoulder shoulder inside this hotel lobby must meet and greet for the voter.

"Mitt Romney done that?", he added. "No thank you. Never ran to the intent and tried to persuade any of the votes. Is one of the running for the conservative congressmen of the United States showed that the circuits? No thank you. Is the Governor Perry, which was carried out in Texas conservative? I mean, how hard is that? "

Mr. Santorum from the sudden change in luck — in practice with the pleading voters shall give him an opportunity now tells the user groups is more electable than his rivals — was a sign of how quickly his campaign has risen in recent days. Number of votes you've put him in Iowa, at the top of the Republican field again near. enumeration

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The Choice Blog: A Short Winter Break on The Choice

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AppId is over the quota
Josh Anderson/Associated Press

Like many of you, The Choice blog is going to take a few days off to spend time with family during the holidays. We’ll still publish any big admissions news should it break — and we’ll keep updating our early-admission acceptances chart, in the event any more data flows in. We’ve also got at least one essay scheduled for the week after Christmas, intended to provide some holiday food-for-thought for seniors who might be contemplating a gap year.

As to those of you scrambling to finish your applications in advance of Jan. 1 and Jan. 15 deadlines, we wish you well. We’ve enjoyed keeping you company (and hopefully calm, and well-informed) during this journey.

With that, we thank you for reading us throughout this academic year (and for all your comments and questions, too), and we look forward to picking up our admissions conversation early in the New Year.

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National Briefing | Midwest: Ohio: Sites of Two Earthquakes Nearly Identical

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The 4.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Youngstown on Saturday occurred at an almost identical location to one a week before, a seismologist who studied the quakes said Monday. Both earthquakes occurred close to the bottom of a 9,200-foot-deep disposal well where for months, brine and other liquid waste from natural-gas wells had been injected under pressure. They were the 10th and 11th earthquakes to occur near the well since March, but the first to be precisely located. The finding provides further evidence to support what some scientists had suspected: that the waste, from the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing that is used to unlock natural gas from shale rock, might have migrated from the disposal well into deeper rock formations, allowing an ancient fault to slip. Similar links between hydraulic-fracturing disposal wells and earthquakes have been suspected in recent years in Texas and Arkansas. John Armbruster, a seismologist with Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, said that the epicenter of the quake Saturday was about 100 meters, or 110 yards, from that a 2.7-magnitude quake on Dec. 24. There were a few reports of minor damage from the earthquake on Saturday, but none from any of the earlier quakes. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reached an agreement last week with the owner of the disposal well, D&L Energy, to halt operations indefinitely and issued a moratorium on further development of disposal wells in the area until the analysis of the 4.0 quake was completed.

A blog about energy and the environment.

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National Briefing | South: Florida: Inquiry Into Abortion Clinic Fire Grows

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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For 2012, Signs Point to Little Gain in Consumer Spending

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As the weak economy has trudged on, they have leaned on credit cards to pay for holiday gifts, many bought at discounts. They are dipping into savings to cover spikes in gas, food and rent. They are substituting domestic vacations for international trips, squeezing more life out of their washing machines and refrigerators and switching to alternatives as meat prices have risen.

That leaves little room for a big increase in spending in 2012, economists say, a shaky foundation for the most important pillar of the American economy.

“The consumer is far from healthy,” said Steve Blitz, senior economist for ITG Investment Research.

Even the seemingly robust holiday shopping season is raising concern. After a strong start on Thanksgiving weekend, a pronounced lull followed, causing retailers to mark down products heavily in the week before Christmas. While final numbers for the season are not in, analysts say they are worried that retailers had to eat into profits to generate high revenues.

Consumer spending makes up 70 percent of the economy, so until it ignites, general growth is likely to be sluggish.

Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting company, projects growth of around 2 percent for the first half of this year, down from an estimate of 3.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and just 1.8 percent in the third quarter.

For consumers, the reasons for the sluggishness are clear: incomes are essentially flat, job growth is modest, and more than 40 percent of the new jobs in the last two years have been in low-paying sectors like retail and hospitality.

While consumer spending is not “going to collapse,” said Joel Prakken, senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers, “there are some headwinds there.”

Sarah M. Manley, a marketing consultant with two young sons in Waconia, Minn., has developed coping strategies in the last few years. Laid off in 2008, she started a business. She and her husband can make their mortgage payments and are paying off debts from when a storm damaged their roof.

“It’s not necessarily that I’m saving more money, but I’m paying off some of the debts that were amassed during the last three years, just trying to make headway,” Ms. Manley said.

To do that, she has changed habits. She uses the app GasBuddy to check prices at nearby stations before she buys gas for her car. She buys seasonal food on sale and freezes it — for Valentine’s Day, she plans to prepare crab legs she bought and froze last summer — and she is stocking up on holiday hams. She has switched from buying milk in gallon containers to buying it for less in plastic bags from the local gas station.

For big purchases, like the laptop she bought last summer, Ms. Manley still relies on credit, but is careful. She opens credit card accounts offering an introductory rate of no interest, then closes them just before the annual percentage rate kicks in.

“Everybody’s learned how to be frugal in the last two or three years,” she said.

Economic indicators suggest that, while things may not get worse for consumers this year, they will not get much better. In the third quarter of 2011, the most recent period for which figures are available, consumer spending rose slightly more than 1 percent, according to the Commerce Department.

Although housing sales have recently shown signs of recovery, prices are still falling and mortgage lenders are cautious. In November, contracts represented by 33 percent of members of the National Association of Realtors did not close, up from just 9 percent a year ago.

And with more than one in every five borrowers still owing more than their homes are worth, many homeowners feel too pressed to spend on much more than the essentials.

The stock market did not help consumers, either. Because of turmoil in the markets in the late summer and early fall, household wealth declined by $2.4 trillion in that period, a contraction likely to make people think twice about big purchases.

Adding to the uncertainty, financial weakness in Europe, and the potential expiration of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits in two months, could further soften spending.

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Autism, Grown Up

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As planned, he arrived that morning with a portfolio of his comic strips and charcoal sketches, some of which were sold through a Chelsea gallery. Kate Stanton-Paule, the teacher who had set up the meeting, accompanied him. But his first words upon entering the office were, like most things involving Justin, not in the script.

“Hello, everybody,” he announced, loud enough to be heard behind the company president’s door. “This is going to be my new job, and you are going to be my new friends.”

As the employees exchanged nervous glances that morning in January 2010, Ms. Stanton-Paule, the coordinator of a new kind of “transition to adulthood” program for special education students at Montclair High School, wondered if they were all in over their heads.

Justin, who barely spoke until he was 10, falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum of social impairments that characterize autism, which affects nearly one in 100 American children. He talks to himself in public, has had occasional angry outbursts, avoids eye contact and rarely deviates from his favorite subject, animation. His unabashed expression of emotion and quirky sense of humor endear him to teachers, therapists and relatives. Yet at 20, he had never made a true friend.

People with autism, whose unusual behaviors are believed to stem from variations in early brain development, typically disappear from public view after they leave school. As few as one in 10 hold even part-time jobs. Some live in state-supported group homes; even those who attend college often end up unemployed and isolated, living with parents.

But Justin is among the first generation of autistic youths who have benefited throughout childhood from more effective therapies and hard-won educational opportunities. And Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program here is based on the somewhat radical premise that with intensive coaching in the workplace and community — and some stretching by others to include them — students like Justin can achieve a level of lifelong independence that has eluded their predecessors.

“There’s a prevailing philosophy that certain people can never function in the community,” Ms. Stanton-Paule told skeptics. “I just don’t think that’s true.”

With some 200,000 autistic teenagers set to come of age in the United States over the next five years alone, little is known about their ability to participate fully in public life, or what it would take to accommodate them. Across the country, neighbors, employers, colleagues and strangers are warily interacting with young adults whose neurological condition many associate only with children.

Some advocates of “neurodiversity” call this the next civil rights frontier: society, they say, stands to benefit from accepting people whose brains work differently. Opening the workplace to people with autism could harness their sometimes-unusual talents, advocates say, while decreasing costs to families and taxpayers for daytime aides and health care and housing subsidies, estimated at more than $1 million over an adult lifetime.

But such efforts carry their own costs. In this New York City suburb, the school district considered scrapping Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program almost as soon as it began, to save money on the extra teaching assistants who accompanied students to internships, the bank, the gym, the grocery store. Businesses weighed the risks of hiring autistic students who might not automatically grasp standard rules of workplace behavior.

Oblivious to such debates, many autistic high school students are facing the adult world with elevated expectations of their own. Justin, who relied on a one-on-one aide in school, had by age 17 declared his intention to be a “famous animator-illustrator.” He also dreamed of living in his own apartment, a goal he seemed especially devoted to when, say, his mother asked him to walk the dog.

“I prefer I move to the apartment,” he would say, reluctantly setting aside the notebook he spent hours filling with tiny, precise replicas of every known animated character.

“I prefer I move to the apartment, too,” his father, Briant, a pharmaceutical company executive, replied on hard days.

Over the year that a New York Times reporter observed it, the transition program at Montclair High served as a kind of boot camp in community integration that might also be, for Justin, a last chance. Few such services are available after high school. And Justin was entitled to public education programs, by federal law, until only age 21.

Ms. Stanton-Paule had vowed to secure him a paid job before he left school — the best gauge, experts say, of whether a special needs student will maintain some autonomy later in life. She also hoped to help him forge the relationships, at work and beyond it, that form the basis of a full life.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 25, 2011

An article last Sunday about a young man with autism and his struggle for independence misspelled the surname of a Manhattan teenager. She is Paloma Kalisch, not Kalish.

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Political Memo: Ridiculous Push votes as Iowa campaign Wraps

Mitt Romney signed the supporters of Davenport, Iowa Mississippi campaign pins Valley at amusement parks. More photos?

DES MOINES — Mitt Romney has grown to rely on his Iowa prospects that Monday evening, he will be all submissive pretense and proclaimed, "We going to win this thing." At the same time, Rick Santorum claimed that the profit of his momentum runs within its own whiff.

One-stop-shop in the country of destination for political News — The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, voting, campaign data, and video.

Both may be correct.

Iowa caucuses curious political ritual, which opens yet another race of the House of representatives on Tuesday, is the second part completes the profits of the knack turns to you. And they are the only one likely to produce losers — or to deal with surprises — they are the winner of the Conference of interpreter coronate.

To the attention of all of the Republican field in the frenzied burst, paid to the "Innocence" on the last day of campaigning seemed as if political Washington — of weight and the creation of the media here on Monday — the race only now, landed.

They recited as gospel, Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum by Representative Ron Paul of Texas and at the top of the pack. If these statements are true, for each of the three rush submit New Hampshire go to the contest, as the profit.

Iowa caucuses results set up competition in the ring after the yearlong prelude, which has been off the charts for the influenza viruses.

Remember Sarah Palin bus travel when prompted to indicate with certainty that he runs the television pundit class?

Who's who, five months ago, is to predict the Herman Cain was going to hold the lead to a vote before evaporating? Newt Gingrich was on the up, down and then up again; now he is down again.

And Rick Santorum? Two weeks ago, he tried to get the reluctant insurance company for a group of employees in the middle of the city of Des Moines office building stick with him, when he spoke during a lunch break. He was in the room had a sweater vest, which is the only heat came to define him. Monday's events were so entangled in the overcrowded during the campaign Stop save supporter.

His campaign said it was now looking more than Iowa to strengthen support and given Mr. Romney, is a long time sought to fill the party the evangelical base, the position of the viable alternative to the conservative.

Four years ago, Mr. Paul was political Punch-line. What would be a rapid withdrawal of Afghanistan and the Republican Guard the Pentagon cuts? Appears to be the type who will take part in the Iowa caucuses, polls, which have shown that Mr. Paul or near the top in this field.

So one must be a fool to go too much out of the part to predict with certainty what will happen on Tuesday, and any outside — or expected does not have consequences is wrong. (Imagine that). Is still limited, a number of k??nteit?, which specifies whether the Republicans go to internal differences between the previous and tuoteuttamisesta President Obama soon.

Here is a look at some of the possibilities of Tuesday evening, as Republicans gathered at caucuses, 1,774 airport services wherever the President as a candidate in Iowa voters declared their primary meetings.

Iowa at the end of the Second Chance

Iowa was Mitt Romney gamble. And even if it does not pay the Conference interpreter in, his advisors already crowing that they were in better shape than they were once the item is expected to be in the nominating contest. There are two chief reasons: Mr. Gingrich and .gov Rick Perry in Texas, whose candidates are substantially was wounded.

It's not as if still Mr. Romney horizon does not have the warning signs — many conservatives see him hold my nose-front-runner — but her organization has always built stumbles along the way-cushion. As he was in the final days of the campaign crisscrossing Iowa in standby brigades, to extract the response forms were in Florida, absentee to his supporters highlight the Organization's depth and design of the mailboxes in any of his rivals is not able to match.

"We going to win this thing," Mr. Romney told the overflowing crowd Monday night during one of his stops dawn dusk day Iowa campaigning.

If he wins the caucuses in a firm, his immediate challenge is to avoid overconfidence. New Hampshire, voters all over the past year elevating [1] and the results of the Iowa-punishing lessons in the transition. But Mr. Romney lead is New Hampshire, so important to him, voting, that his rivals to be able to defeat him in the primary, the next Tuesday, only if they consolidate their support of the long string.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Patch: 2 January 2012

Earlier versions of this article incorrectly in Polk City, Iowa, the name of the Reising Sun-Cafe.

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Tank tops and V-Necked, Santorum's Sweaters are turning heads

In Iowa, he is just that, such as smart tags, the number of the tank tops V-neck.

With their neck collars, Crewnecks, are incompatible with the hugging crammed on respect for the voters, with a little personal space stuffy rooms. Wool Coats? Does his thing.

Mr. Santorum, rather the sweater vest, two grandfathers-College football selection of the rational, conventional. He owns the navy blue, gray and tan, in which he sported a voter on this on Monday, meet and greet. Means of identification, they had to see his or her staff, a newly appointed members of the political fashion statement in the Santorum campaign logo embroidered vests.

Singlets has inspired their own Twitter feed — @ FearRicksVest — and the Web site, FearRicksVest.com, which controls access to the Pro, Santorum Facebook page. YouTube also has a music video of "Sleeves Slow Me Down,". The clip is downloaded to the contagious slogans such as "get ready to invest in you, is Rick."

Mr. Santorum rivals sided sleeves. Mitt Romney's rules of procedure in his crisply pressed, Oxford shirts, often under the Blazer. Ron Paul is a partial costumes, although ill-fitting found. And Michele Bachmann, who has said his fashion icons are the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Audrey Hepburn, almost always carefully turned off, so much that he once banned photographers take his picture while he was wearing a cargo pants.

In an interview here on Monday, Mr. Santorum insisted that he did not have anti-sleeve. He harbors no bigotry towards extra fabric, cotton, cashmere or wool is.

He said after the announcement, vests began receiving a Des Moines Forum a few weeks ago Mike Huckabee. Other candidates the most were the costumes. Mr. Santorum chose the sweater vest and made unwittingly fashion statement.

After that, he said, "it sort of took their own lives. So began wearing more and more. My staff bought me a bunch more. "

He bought most of them. A. Bank. But he has been known as the splurge vest Brooks Brothers at.

Twitter, the sweater has given his own persona and the first person voice, such as "fear of me ... and ... hear me! I am prepared to relocate their White House "and" @ RickSantorum 16% of Iowa R! This sweater vest, Rick flight, gettin herre hot! "

Starting from Laura Ingraham, and he even fielded a conservative radio talk show host to some common questions about singlets. "Perhaps is the trend?" he asked.

He began to explain, saying, "One of the things I get all the time ..."

Ms. Ingraham paused. "Geek?" he joked.

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The Choice Blog: A Short Winter Break on The Choice

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AppId is over the quota
Josh Anderson/Associated Press

Like many of you, The Choice blog is going to take a few days off to spend time with family during the holidays. We’ll still publish any big admissions news should it break — and we’ll keep updating our early-admission acceptances chart, in the event any more data flows in. We’ve also got at least one essay scheduled for the week after Christmas, intended to provide some holiday food-for-thought for seniors who might be contemplating a gap year.

As to those of you scrambling to finish your applications in advance of Jan. 1 and Jan. 15 deadlines, we wish you well. We’ve enjoyed keeping you company (and hopefully calm, and well-informed) during this journey.

With that, we thank you for reading us throughout this academic year (and for all your comments and questions, too), and we look forward to picking up our admissions conversation early in the New Year.

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Michele Bachmann Makes as the Real Conservative

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AppId is over the quota

“Don’t you love new beginnings?” she said from the altar. “Hold on, things will get better.”

Outside the church after the service, it was time for the hard sell of a closing argument to the socially conservative Christian voters upon whom the hopes of her once-ascendant candidacy have rested. “I am not a politician,” she insisted despite having held the House seat for the Sixth District of Minnesota since 2007. “I am not an establishment person. I am a real, authentic Iowan.”

For Mrs. Bachmann, it may be too late. Just over four months since her surprise victory in the Iowa straw poll, a contest that typically rewards the candidate with the strongest field organization, Mrs. Bachmann, a founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, has tumbled far from the top tier of candidates. A state poll published by The Des Moines Register the day before Mrs. Bachmann announced her candidacy in June showed her and Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, with significant leads over other candidates. By August, she was on the cover of Newsweek.

But according to the latest Des Moines Register poll, published on Saturday, Mrs. Bachmann now has the support of just 7 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers, ahead of only John M. Huntsman Jr., who has stopped campaigning in the state. In contrast, Mrs. Bachmann has devoted most of her early efforts to Iowa, so a defeat here could raise questions about the viability of her candidacy.

It is unclear what, if any, grass-roots lift she gained from her recent 10-day tour of all 99 counties. And in this last crucial week of campaigning, Mrs. Bachmann suffered from negative publicity that came when her top adviser left for the rival campaign of Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Her response — in which she accused the Paul campaign of essentially bribing her aide, a charge he denied — struck some voters as overly defensive.

And some in her home district have begun to wonder whether Mrs. Bachmann’s presidential aspirations, and the scrutiny that has come with them, have cost her some popularity in Minnesota, where she is expected to run for re-election if she does not become the presidential nominee. Over the course of her campaign in Iowa and in debates, Mrs. Bachmann has made several mistakes that have raised questions about her grasp of certain facts.

There have been other last-minute distractions. On Saturday, just before she was to make one of her final campaign appearances, Occupy the Caucus protesters blocked the entrance to her headquarters when she was scheduled to give her phone bank callers a pep talk and speak with reporters. Some of her supporters got caught in the ruckus.

Inside, her headquarters was packed, but many of the people there were students from Oral Roberts University who had come for the academic experience of watching a campaign in action. Some were receiving college credit. Several of the students were not even Republicans, said Jonathan Townsend, 22, president of the college’s Young Democrats club, who was there.

Still, Mrs. Bachman used the backdrop of young faces to reinforce her message. “I’m a very unique candidate who draws strong support from young people,” she said to a throng of television cameras.

Outside the church on Sunday, Mrs. Bachmann seemed to be making a final argument pitched to social conservatives and evangelicals who have struggled to find an acceptable candidate this election cycle. She stressed that she was the candidate who would fight for “faith, marriage and the protection of life from conception to natural death,” because “it matters what’s true. It matters what’s right.”

When a reporter asked if the recent rise in support for Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, had to do with social conservatives finding him the more electable candidate, she said Iowans should not pay attention to polls or a candidate’s stature so much as character. “Who stands for marriage between a man and a woman?” she said. “Who stands for life, and the protection of human life from conception to natural death? Not just to be politically popular, but who really means it, and who’s going to do something about it?”

Then she called herself “the complete package.”

The pastor of Jubilee Family Church, Bill Tvedt, had all but endorsed Mrs. Bachmann from the altar, stopping short of telling the faithful whom to vote for but extolling her in the most flattering religious language as “a great expositor of the word of God.”

“I’m very moved by her story,” said Suzy King, 53, of Oskaloosa. “I think more Iowans need to pay attention, as the pastor was saying, to a person’s character.”

Ms. King said she found Mrs. Bachmann’s poor poll results “disappointing.”

“I think she’ll place well,” she said. “I’d love to see her come in first place, but if she doesn’t, I’ll accept that.”

For her part, Mrs. Bachmann believes that there are many undecided Iowa voters who will show up to the caucuses and decide, at the last moment, to support her. Before boarding her bus after the church service, she said, “We feel very confident.”

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In Iowa, Romney Fights to Become Caucus Favorite

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AppId is over the quota
Mitt Romney in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Seen as the strongest challenger to President Obama, he is still struggling to solidify his lead.

DES MOINES — Mitt Romney sought to convert his tentative standing atop the polls into a first-place finish in the caucuses here, telling Iowans on Sunday that he had the “capability to go the full distance” against President Obama, as his rivals beseeched voters not to settle on a candidate lacking full commitment to their conservative values.

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Representative Ron Paul was in a dead heat with Mitt Romney in a poll released Saturday night.

Just as confidence had been rising among Mr. Romney and his aides that they could pull off a win here on Tuesday night, they were faced with a new challenge from Rick Santorum, who emerged as the latest in a rotating cast of surging alternatives, ebullient about his rising standing in the polls and support from excited crowds on Sunday in Sioux City and Rock Rapids.

“Don’t put forward somebody who isn’t good enough to do what’s necessary to change this country,” Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Sioux City, feeding off his new status as a real contender here. “Put forward someone that you know has the vision, the trust, the authenticity, the background, the record to make that happen.”

Still decidedly in the mix was Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning congressman from Texas, whose dedicated followers could still propel him into the lead on Tuesday night and in the nominating contests that will unfold in the coming months.

Even though the Republican race remained fluid, the Democratic Party stepped up its involvement in the opposing contest, and several aides to the president’s re-election team arrived here to open a war room at a downtown hotel. The prime target was Mr. Romney.

They held a news conference to highlight Mr. Romney’s record as chief executive of the private equity firm Bain Capital, introducing an Indiana worker who was laid off in the early 1990s when his company was bought by Bain.

Iowa’s caucuses do not have an especially good record of predicting Republican nominees. But the result here could be an indicator of whether Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, is succeeding in rallying conservatives behind him or whether he faces months of struggle to win delegates and resolve the rifts within the party.

After months of campaigning, a long series of debates and the rise and fall of one challenger after another, no one has yet shown that they can knock off Mr. Romney. Despite running a largely mistake-free campaign, Mr. Romney has yet to prove that he can break through the ceiling of support of about 25 percent in many polls that has defined his candidacy in a fractured field.

Mr. Romney’s campaign aides were watching Mr. Santorum’s new strength carefully. They said that while they were satisfied that Mr. Santorum’s rise was further fracturing the anti-Romney vote among him, Mr. Paul, Newt Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, they could take nothing for granted when only half of likely Iowa caucusgoers say they have committed to a candidate.

And on a day when all but the most politically involved Iowans were at home celebrating the new year and watching football, Mr. Romney’s campaign workers were calling the homes of potentially supportive caucusgoers they have been recruiting for months, wishing a happy new year to their families and offering a gentle reminder to attend the caucuses.

Mr. Romney’s campaign had been optimistic enough about a possible victory here that it decided over the weekend to keep him in Iowa through Tuesday night to be in place for nationally televised interviews from Des Moines on Wednesday morning — a sign that they expected him to be talking about good news here.

But a senior aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, played down the importance of a first-place showing, saying that “our strategy was never based on a win in Iowa” and that the campaign would be “happily surprised” if he were to secure one.

Preparing for a potentially longer fight, Mr. Romney’s strategists in Boston were increasingly turning their focus on New Hampshire, South Carolina and the biggest January primary state, Florida, where voters are receiving absentee ballots this week. The campaign has been aggressively working to get out the early vote there, and Mr. Romney’s advertising team has begun to inquire about ad rates across the state.

Reporting was contributed by Jill Abramson from Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Michael Barbaro and Sarah Wheaton from Des Moines.

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Catholic Church Unveils Order for Ex-Episcopalians

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AppId is over the quota

Converts who join the new entity will be full-fledged Catholics, expected to show allegiance to the pope and oppose contraception and abortion. But they will be allowed to preserve revered verses from the Book of Common Prayer. And, in what one Catholic leader called “an act of generosity,” priests who are married will be exempted from the Catholic requirement of celibacy, though they may not become bishops.

The new grouping, called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, will have its headquarters in Houston and be led by Jeffrey N. Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop and father of three who left the church in 2007 and became a Catholic priest in 2009, under an existing exemption for converting Anglicans.

With the title of ordinary, Father Steenson will be a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and will report directly to the Vatican, church officials said.

Catholic leaders and some former Episcopalians are celebrating the announcement as a small but notable event in an often tortuous history of relations between the Vatican and the Anglican Church, which includes the Episcopalians, after their break in the 16th century.

The Episcopal Church is the main American branch of the Anglican Communion, a loose global body whose symbolic head is the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. It has been shaken by discord from conservatives who object to the ordination of female priests, the acceptance of bishops with homosexual partners and changes in the liturgy.

While it involved only a small fraction of the Episcopal Church in the United States, which has more than 7,000 priests and two million members, dozens of entire parishes have broken away to join alternative Anglican branches. Many do not want to become Catholics but a share of disaffected Episcopalians are seeking to convert, something they say they have long dreamed about.

“I’m excited about the opportunity for those who, for the most part, are already with the Catholic Church in their hearts,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, said in an interview. The cardinal supervised planning of the ordinariate.

Since the Vatican’s grant of an exemption from celibacy in 1980, scores of Episcopal priests have joined the Catholic priesthood, remaining married. The new ordinariate will allow priests and their existing congregations to switch en masse, establishing new parishes with an Anglican flavor. Unmarried Anglican priests who join the ordinariate will not be allowed to marry later on.

So far, more than 100 priests and groups of members totaling more than 1,320, including six congregations of 70 or more, have asked to join the ordinariate, said Father Scott Hurd, a Catholic priest in Washington, D.C., and a former Episcopalian who helped design the new system.

Father Steenson said he expected more former Episcopalians to join after they saw how the new group operated. He said that he personally had always longed for closer ties with the Catholics, a feeling that only intensified as the Episcopal Church broke with tradition on female priests and acceptance of homosexuality, dividing the churches further. But he is also overjoyed to preserve elements of the Anglican liturgy, he said. The expectation is that this parallel structure will continue indefinitely.

When the Vatican authorized creation of these entities in 2009, some Anglican leaders, especially in England, expressed concern that it was trying to take advantage of their turmoil. In England, where a similar grouping was formed last year, about 60 priests and more than 1,000 members have joined so far.

But Cardinal Wuerl and Father Hurd said that the system was developed in response to a growing demand.

“There have been Anglican groups requesting this for 30 years,” Father Hurd said. “This is not an effort at poaching or sheep-stealing.”

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The Hard Road Back | Unseen Injury: Acting Helps Soldier Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

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AppId is over the quota

In the months after checking out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he found himself easily frustrated and, his wife said, perpetually angry. Envisioning threats in grocery stores and shopping malls, he stopped leaving his house and started drinking heavily. His marriage was near collapse when, in a fit of alcohol-fueled despair, he drove his car into a brick wall, emerging so dazed that he thought he was back in Iraq.

“With a physical injury — three months, six months, whatever — your cuts will heal,” he said. But post-traumatic stress “is more difficult because people don’t see it.”

Like Mr. Pennington, many veterans injured in combat are finding that their invisible psychological and neurological wounds are proving more debilitating than their obvious physical ones.

About 1,700 American service members have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, most in roadside bombings that seared skin, shattered bones and damaged internal organs as well. Most of those troops also came home with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, which in many cases were not recognized for months.

While advances in prosthetics have made it possible for many lower-limb amputees to regain full mobility, the track record for overcoming brain injuries and chronic P.T.S.D. — both capable of altering personality and hampering mental functioning — is more spotty, experts acknowledge.

“I think the limiting factor for these people going back to their lives is not having lost a limb,” said Dr. Douglas Cooper, a neuropsychologist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. “The P.T.S.D. symptoms and post-concussive symptoms are the ones that seem to get in the way.”

For Mr. Pennington, medications seemed to worsen his depression and therapy did not ease his anxiety. He seemed headed for divorce, isolation and perhaps alcoholism. And there his story might have ended, a case study on the intransigence of war’s psychological scars. But it did not end there.

In 2009, an unexpected opportunity landed in his e-mail inbox: a casting call, forwarded by a friend in Nashville, from an undergraduate filmmaker looking for someone to play a combat veteran who had lost a leg, had post-traumatic stress disorder and lived in Maine.

This is my life, Mr. Pennington thought.

So on a lark, Mr. Pennington — whose last appearance on stage was in middle school and who had become nervous in crowds and, indeed, avoided most human contact — decided that fixing his life depended on performing before a camera.

“I thought acting would be so out of the normal that it would force me to deal with things,” he recalled. “I wanted my life back.”

The struggle by wounded veterans like Mr. Pennington to reclaim their lives is the unfolding next chapter in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, 46,000 American service members have been injured in combat, perhaps a third or more seriously. Those veterans now face years of rehabilitation at a cost of billions of dollars annually.

In the coming weeks, The New York Times will profile a few of those veterans. Their cases say much about the critical importance of high-quality health care and loving families. But as with Mr. Pennington, they also underscore the individuality of recovery, where the most effective therapies are often discovered by the veterans themselves.

Mr. Pennington, 28, grew up in central Maine and Fort Worth, Tex., toggling across the continent between divorced parents. He was a talkative boy who loved the outdoors and was good in school, but bad at keeping the jobs that helped support him after he said he had problems with his alcoholic father. When he turned 17, he joined the Army.

He fell in love with the life immediately. His first deployment to Afghanistan in 2002 with the XVIII Airborne Corps was uneventful, so he volunteered to go to Iraq almost as soon as he returned home. He lost a dear friend during that tour, but it did little to sour him on the adventure of war. He raised his hand a third time.

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Let’s Start Paying College Athletes

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AppId is over the quota

Mark Emmert, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the almighty overseer of American college sports, likes to think of himself as a reformer. A few months ago, after he’d been on the job for a little more than a year, he pushed through a series of improvements, including slightly higher academic standards for college athletes, a full-scale review of the N.C.A.A.’s fat rule book and a new provision giving universities the option of offering four-year scholarships. The current one-year deals are, believe it or not, renewable at the discretion of coaches, who can effectively cut injured or underperforming “student athletes,” as the N.C.A.A. likes to call them.

And one other thing: With Emmert’s backing, the N.C.A.A.’s board of directors, composed of college and university presidents (Emmert himself is a former president of the University of Washington), agreed to make it permissible for Division I schools to pay their athletes a $2,000 stipend. When I saw Emmert in November, shortly after the new rule went into effect, I told him that the stipend struck me as a form of payment to the players. He visibly stiffened. “If we move toward a pay-for-play model — if we were to convert our student athletes to employees of the university — that would be the death of college athletics,” Emmert retorted. “Then they are subcontractors. Why would you even want them to be students? Why would you care about their graduation rates? Why would you care about their behavior?” No, he insisted, the extra $2,000 was an effort to increase the value of the scholarships, which some studies estimate falls on average about $3,500 short of the full cost of attending college annually.

At the time I spoke to Emmert, high-school athletes were signing binding letters of intent to attend a university — letters that said they would get the $2,000. But over the next month, college athletic directors and conference commissioners began protesting the new stipend, claiming they couldn’t afford it. Within a month, more than 125 of them had signed an “override request.” And so it was that just a few weeks ago, the N.C.A.A. decided to suspend the payment. For legal reasons, those athletes who were already promised the $2,000 will most likely still get it. But any athlete granted a scholarship after the stipend was canceled may not. (The N.C.A.A. plans to review the issue on Jan. 14.) In other words, some lucky handful of incoming freshmen will be handed $2,000 without jeopardizing their status as amateurs. Yet any other college athlete who manages to get his hands on an extra $2,000 — by taking money from an overenthusiastic booster, say, or selling some of their team paraphernalia, as a few Ohio State football players did — will be violating the N.C.A.A.’s rules regarding amateurism and will probably face a multigame suspension. Behold the logic of the N.C.A.A. at work.

The hypocrisy that permeates big-money college sports takes your breath away. College football and men’s basketball have become such huge commercial enterprises that together they generate more than $6 billion in annual revenue, more than the National Basketball Association. A top college coach can make as much or more than a professional coach; Ohio State just agreed to pay Urban Meyer $24 million over six years. Powerful conferences like the S.E.C. and the Pac 12 have signed lucrative TV deals, while the Big 10 and the University of Texas have created their own sports networks. Companies like Coors and Chick-fil-A eagerly toss millions in marketing dollars at college sports. Last year, Turner Broadcasting and CBS signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal for the television rights to the N.C.A.A.’s men’s basketball national championship tournament (a k a “March Madness”). And what does the labor force that makes it possible for coaches to earn millions, and causes marketers to spend billions, get? Nothing. The workers are supposed to be content with a scholarship that does not even cover the full cost of attending college. Any student athlete who accepts an unapproved, free hamburger from a coach, or even a fan, is in violation of N.C.A.A. rules.

This glaring, and increasingly untenable, discrepancy between what football and basketball players get and what everyone else in their food chain reaps has led to two things. First, it has bred a deep cynicism among the athletes themselves. Players aren’t stupid. They look around and see jerseys with their names on them being sold in the bookstores. They see 100,000 people in the stands on a Saturday afternoon. During the season, they can end up putting in 50-hour weeks at their sports, and they learn early on not to take any course that might require real effort or interfere with the primary reason they are on campus: to play football or basketball. The N.C.A.A. can piously define them as students first, but the players know better. They know they are making money for the athletic department. The N.C.A.A.’s often-stated contention that it is protecting the players from “excessive commercialism” is ludicrous; the only thing it’s protecting is everyone else’s revenue stream. (The N.C.A.A. itself takes in nearly $800 million a year, mostly from its March Madness TV contracts.) “Athletes in football and basketball feel unfairly treated,” Leigh Steinberg, a prominent sports agent, says. “The dominant attitude among players is that there is no moral or ethical reason not to take money, because the system is ripping them off.”

Joe Nocera is an Op-Ed columnist for The Times and the co-author of “All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.”

Editor: Dean Robinson

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