The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Monday, October 27, 2008 - 3A
NEWS BRIEFS
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
Major paper in
Palin's home state
endorses Obama
The Anchorage Daily News,
Alaska's largest newspaper, has
endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for
president.
The newspaper said yesterday
the Democrat "brings far more
promise to the office. In a time of
grave economic crisis, he displays
thoughtful analysis, enlists wise
counsel and operates with a cool,
steady hand."
The Daily News said since the
economic crisis has emerged,
Republican presidential candidate
John McCain has "stumbled and
fumbled badly" in dealing with it.
DAMASCUS, Syria
Witnesses say
U.S. military has
attacked Syria
Syria's state-run television and
witnesses say U.S. military heli-
copters have attacked an area
along the country's border with
Iraq, causing casualties.
The report quoted unnamed
Syrian officials and said the area
is near the Syrian border town
of Abu Kamal. It gave no other
details on Sunday's attack.
Local residents told The Asso-
ciated Press by telephone that two
helicopters carrying U.S. soldiers
raided the village of Hwijeh, 10
miles inside Syria's border, killing
seven people and wounding five.
WASHINGTON
Candidates
campaign hard in
last week
Republican JohnMcCain de-
clared "I'm going to win it," dis-
missing polls showing him behind
with little more than a week to go
in the presidential race. Democrat
Barack Obama rolled out a new
TV ad asserting his rival is "out of
ideas, out of touch, and running
out of time."
Heading into the final nine days
oT the~'2008 contesf;~ifi"~Whiite~
House competitors campaigned
in key battlegrounds that Presi-
dent Bush won four years ago as
the state-by-state Electoral Col-
lege map tilts strongly in Obama's
favor. Democrats and Republicans
alike say it will be extraordinarily
difficult for McCain to change the
trajectory of the canmpaign before
the Nov. 4 election.
"Unfortunately, I think John
McCain might be added to that
long list of Arizonans who ran for
president but were never elected,"
McCain's fellow senator from Ari-
zona, Republican Jon Kyl, told the
Arizona Daily Star editorial board
in an interview published Sunday.
WASHINGTON
U.S. experiencing
nuclear decline
The mighty U.S. arsenal of nu-
clear weapons, midwived by World
War II and nurtured by the Cold
War, is declining in power and
purpose while the military's com-
petence in handling the world's
most dangerous arms has eroded.
At the same time, international ef-
forts to contain the spread of such
weapons look ineffective.
DefenseSecretaryRobertGates,
for one, wants the next president
0 to think about what nuclear mid-
dle-age and decline means for na-
tional security.
Gates joins a growing debate
about the reliability and future
credibility of the American arse-
nal with his first extensive speech
on nuclear arms Tuesday. The de-
bate is attracting increasing atten-
tion inside the Pentagon even as
the military is preoccupied with
fighting insurgencies in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The unconventional
tools of war there include co-
vert commandos, but not nuclear
weapons.
- Compiled from
Daily wire reports
i
.m4,186
Number of American service
members who have died in the
war in Iraq, according to The
Associated Press. There were no
deaths identified yesterday.
OFFICE
From Page1A
"We had to tell people 'You can
schlep down to Main or come to
our Thursday meetings,' but this is
an office that is open 16 hours a day,
that's a lot more accessible," she
said. "We're beinga lot more effec-
tive in the area because of this."
About 20 students came to the
opening.
"Itwasobviouslyalittlelastmin-
ute," Miars said. "It was kinda cool.
I've never been handed a building
and told. 'you can do whatever you
want with this."'
College Democrats Chair
Nathaniel Eli Coats Styer, a Public
Policy junior, said it was the cam-
paign field organizer assigned to
coordinating with the College Dem-
ocrats, Brian Straw, who asked the
campaign to open the office within
a few blocks of Central Campus.
"It's only because of everything
we've been doing on campus that
the campaign was willing to give us
this office to amplify those efforts,"
Straw told a group of student vol-
unteers yesterday.
The College Democrats have
held multiple registration drives
and canvassing efforts for their
candidate. Between the start of the
school year and the Oct. 6 registra-
tion deadline, they registered more
than 4,000 voters.
Straw said the next step is get-
ting those people they registered to
show up at the polls next week.
The office was leased by the
Obama campaign for two weeks at
a cost of about $1,000, Styer said.
Obama campaign officials were not
available for comment.
When the College Democrat vol-
unteers got to the new storefront
RODRIGUEZ
From Page 1A
Friday, though,theyhad theirwork
cut out for them.
"This place was a dump," Styer
said of the former jewelry store. "It
was basicallytrashed."
Cronyn said when they first
arrived atthe buildingthere was no
lighting, the walls were covered in
Brillo pads and pennies, there were
rust stains on the floors and walls
and glass shards scattered around.
"It was a very bizarre space to
step into it," she said. "I guess you
can't be too picky when you're try-
ing to rent an office for 13 days."
Tenpeople worked whilelistening
to Bruce Springsteen for about eight
to 10 hours Friday to clean, organize
and decorate the space, Styer said.
Three coats of primer later, a
five-foot diameter Obama cam-
paign logo was painted on one of
the walls. On the adjacent wall, a
makeshift calendar made of tape
and spanning about 10 feet.
That calendar, which has space
for each of the final nine days lead-
ing up to Nov. 4, will serve to coor-
dinate the group's canvassing and
Get Out the Vote efforts.
Students will be able to come in
and make phone calls for Obama,
even if they only have 15 minutes,
she said. Volunteers can stop in and
pick up a canvassing packet with a
list of registered voters if they have
even a three-hour break between
classes to knock on doors.
At the opening of the office,
State Sen. Liz Brater (D - Ann
Arbor) praised the College Demo-
crats' efforts to turn out voters
near campus and encouraged them
to continue.
"U of M and Ann Arbor have
always been ground zero for tak-
ing the state of Michigan for Dem-
ocrats," Brater said. "I don't want
anybody to be lulled by the polls."
is similar to Rodriguez's terms
with former employer West Vir-
ginia University, which demanded
MSU game yields 111 police incidents
Police contact was
most since 1997
Ohio State game
By LISA HAIDOSTIAN
Daily News Editor
Police made contact with 111
people at Saturday's football
game, the highest number on a
game day since the 1997 game
against Ohio State, when there
were 138.
FELDMAN
From Page 1A
worst in at least 41, the Spartans
should have beaten Michigan.
More important, their coach,
Mark Dantonio, had to defeat the
Wolverines. This game meant
more to Dantonio than it did to
anybody.
He came to East Lansing
two years ago as a disciplined
leader who would establish a
foundation for the program. He
circled the Michigan game as
the stage to show the Spartans
weren't the same old Michigan
State.
But two days after his team
blew a 10-point lead with seven
minutes leftlast season in a very
Spartan manner - a phrase Dan-
tonio used to describe his team's
effort Saturday - he sat in front of
a group of reporters and went off
the deep end. Michigan and Mike
Hart's "little brother" remarks
had clearly gotten to him. He
jabbed at Hart's height, said the
Wolverines "need to check them-
selves sometimes"rand uttered
the most-repeated phrase of his
meltdown:
"Pride comes before the fall,"
Dantonio said.
That wasn't what happened Sat-
Of the 111 run-ins, 13 resulted
in arrests. Police arrested eight
people for minor in possession of
alcohol, two for domestic violence,
one for assaulting a police officer,
one for retail fraud - a person was
charged with stealing merchan-
dise from an MDen store - and
one for resisting and obstructing a
police officer. The rest of the sub-
jects were either cited or ejected
from the game.
In an e-mail, University Police
spokeswoman Diane Brown said
the high volume of police contact
urday, and Dantonio knows it.
"This was not the fall of Michi-
gan football," Dantonio said.
"That's not what this is about.
Michigan has a good football
team. They're a very well-coached
football team. They play with
toughness and have a greattradi-
tion. What this was about was
Spartan pride."
The game won't have a tre-
mendous effect on the Wolverine
program, not like it could for the
Spartans, for whom Dantonio said,
"This one counts a little more than
one."
For the fourth week in a row,
a lengthy winning streak was
snapped. Six straight against
Illinois, 24 against teams in the
Mid-American Conference, nine
straight Penn State and now six
against Michigan State - all
ended. This loss might hurt a
little more because it's a rivalry
game, but by this point, every-
body realizes this is a rebuilding
year.
But Dantonio needed this.
How could he justify his message
if he was 0-2 against Michigan?
Instead, Dantonio became just the
fourth of the Spartans' 24 football
coaches to beat Michigan in one of
his first two tries. He now has the
credibility to challenge the Wol-
verines for in-state recruits.
was "mostly due to the late after-
noon game, which led to heavy
alcohol abuse, and an intense
rivalry with a large number of
MSU fans in attendance."
Brown said the department
adds a few more patrols for rivalry
games. She also said that because
officers were busy, some law-
breakers might have been eject-
ed or given a citation instead of
arrested.
"Some people might have gotten
off a little easier than they normal-
ly would have," she said.
"I guess I can look in their eyes
and say, 'It could happen for you,'"
Dantonio said.
Shortly after yells of "Go Green!
Go White!" overtook Michigan
Stadium, Dantonio walked into
the Spartan locker room with the
the Paul Bunyan Trophy tucked
under his right arm.
But how secure is his grip? Con-
trol of the rivalry is in limbo right
now, but both players think their
team has it.
"(Offensive coordinator Don)
Treadwell talked about it before
the game," Hoyer said. "We need-
to make a change. We need to
make a change in this rivalry.
We need to makea change in this
state. I think the state is probably
a little more green than it was
yesterday."
Said Graham: "They've got a
lot to prove to Michigan. They've
got a couple more games to win to
start talking."
And they both could be right.
Michigan State has today, and
there's no denyingthat.
But the Spartans don't have
control. Neither does Michigan,
though. The rivalry is up for grabs,
and at this point, that's a credit to
Dantonio.
- Dan Feldman can be reached
at danfeld@umich.edu.
that the coach pay $4 million to
ly higher than Indiana's Terry cancel his contract and leave for
Hoeppner, though, who earned Michigan. After a long legal battle,
$600,000 in non-performance Rodriguez and the University of
based compensation in 2007. Michigan decided to pay the buy-
Rodriguez's contract includes out. Rodriguez paid $L5 million of
an initial $4 million buyout clause the buyout and the University of
if Rodriguez prematurely termi- Michigan paid the remaining $2.5
nates the agreement. The letter million.
of intent specified that the buyout University Athletic Director
would decrease by $500,000 ayear, Bill Martin said in a statement at
but the contract does not decrease the time, "Rich and the rest of us
the buyout amountuntil 2011. felt that it would be best to get this
The contract's buyout clause distracting issue behind us."
NW-,,m
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