Candid Obama urges Hispanic voters to flex their muscles With New Mexico among the Democrats' key target states, campaigners know a strong turnout from traditional voters is crucial to success on November 4 Dan Glaister in Las Vegas, New Mexico The Guardian, Thursday October 2 2008Article history Residents of Las Vegas, New Mexico, discuss the presidential candidates
Link to this video Barack Obama's appeal was unusually direct. "I want you to start voting your numbers," the Democratic presidential candidate urged the crowd of 10,000 gathered in the New Mexican town of Española. "Start flexing your muscles."Obama's entreaties reflect a cause for optimism and concern in the Democratic camp in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. All are targets for Obama, and all are states in which a large Hispanic population could make the difference. But turnout is the key. If the Democrats in New Mexico fail to get people out to vote, the party could see a repetition of recent history.In 2000 New Mexico voted for Al Gore by the tightest of margins: 366 votes. In 2004, George Bush and Karl Rove engineered a 6,000-vote Republican win. This time, polls show Obama with an 8-point lead over his Republican rival.Sitting in the Spic & Span Bakery, a breakfast institution in the northern New Mexican Democratic stronghold of Las Vegas, local party chairman Martin Suazo has a theory. "The reason we lost New Mexico in 2004 is because the Republicans had a better strategy," he says. "They ignored strong Democratic counties. While we were getting 63% turnout among registered Democrats, they were in the 70s. We spent a lot of time trying to win over voters we didn't have.…

  Moises Saman for The New York Times Fitting In in a Military Life Alongside Men By STEVEN LEE MYERS American military women have changed the way the United States goes to war, without the disruption of discipline and unit cohesion that some feared.    "As a precaution, women are advised to travel in pairs, particularly in smaller bases populated with Iraqi troops and civilians. Capt. Margaret D. Taafe-McMenamy, commander of the intelligence analysis cell at Warhorse, carries a folding knife and a heavy, ridged flashlight — a Christmas gift from her husband, whom she lives with here — as a precaution when she is out at night on the base."      

 Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left Ideology at Work  "The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors."   

 Flying has become a nightmare thanks to the CIA, not al-Qaeda The world's largest intelligence agency is always one step behind. By Con Coughlin
Published:08 Jan 2010Comments 43 | Comment on this article Closing the stable door: body scanners are the latest tit-for-tat security measure against terrorists Photo: Phil Noble  For the millions of Britons who will soon be obliged to submit to the indignity of full body scans every time they take a flight, the overwhelming temptation will be to curse the al-Qaeda masterminds responsible for the increased disruption to our normal travel routines.If it weren't for the terrorists' obsession with targeting transatlantic aircraft, the public would not be subjected to these tiresome, and increasingly intrusive, checks on their persons and belongings before boarding a flight. The last vestiges of glamour were removed from air travel after al-Qaeda operatives hijacked a number of American aircraft on September 11. Since then, they have proved to be an extremely convenient means of attacking the West, in increasingly ingenious fashion. There was Richard Reid, who made a failed attempt to detonate his shoes on an American Airlines flight in December 2001, which resulted in passengers being required to remove their belts and footwear at security. Then there were the severe restrictions imposed on bringing fluids on board after the failed 2006 Heathrow bomb plot, in which Islamist terrorists tried to smuggle liquid explosives on to 10 transatlantic flights, which would have killed an estimated 3,000 people.Our enemies' latest brainwave again involved flights into the US, with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempting to detonate explosives sewn into his underpants. The authorities have responded by promising to introduce body scanners, the electronic equivalent of conducting a strip search on every passenger boarding a flight out of the…