Storms, Tornadoes Batter North Georgia
ATLANTA -- A tornado left two people dead Saturday in northwest Georgia, less than 24 hours after another tornado struck downtown Atlanta, cutting a 6-mile path of destruction through the city with winds gusting up to 130 miles per hour.

One person died after a tornado touched down in Polk County on the Alabama line, said Lisa Janak of the Georgia Emergency Management agency. They were in a structure in the Live Oak community when the storm hit. That's located in the northwest corner of Polk County near the Floyd County line. GEMA reports another person has died in Floyd County as a result of the tornado. Channel 2 has a crew on the way to the area and will have more information as soon as it is available.

Meanwhile in Atlanta, Mayor Shirley Franklin and Governor Sonny Perdue have declared a state of emergency in the city.

Franklin is urging people to stay indoors unless performing essential tasks such as checking on family or property. Her comments came as curious onlookers fanned out across the city taking pictures and surveying the damage in their neighborhoods today.

"Do not use this as an opportunity for sightseeing," Franklin said. "It is not as if something happened last night and everything is over. Our challenge is getting people to understand that this is a serious emergency response effort."

Earlier Saturday, weather officials were confirming it was a twister that hit downtown Atlanta and other neighborhoods Friday night. The storms aren't over either. New tornado warnings and watches were issued for most of north Georgia. A tornado watch remains in effect until 7 p.m. Saturday for northern Georgia.

The tornado that left behind extensive damage packed winds up to 130 mph and was rated an EF-2 storm, said Lance Rothfusz, the meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City.

"This was clearly a tornado," he said. "The path was about six miles long and about 200 yards wide."

Atlanta residents had about eight minutes warning before the twister hit Friday night, said Rothfusz. Rothfusz said the tornado warning was issued at about 9:30 p.m., and severe thunderstorm warnings had been in effect for the area earlier in the evening.

The funnel cloud first touched down at the intersection of "Simpson and Burbank and went right across the Georgia World Congress Center, right over CNN Center, (the) Omni, right over the Equitable Tower and from that point on went over I-85 and I-75 right at Edgewood and then to the Cotton Mill. The Cotton Mill sustained the F-2 damage, by far the strongest, but there was some near F-2 damage in the downtown Atlanta area," explained Rothfusz.

Crews hauled broken glass and furniture out of downtown streets Saturday and homeowners surveyed damage caused by a possible tornado that surprised many residents and basketball fans.

Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John Oxendine estimates damage from last night's tornado at $150 million to $200 million. He says at least $100 million of the damage was at the Georgia World Congress Center, a state convention center near CNN Center and the Georgia Dome.

He says the storm broke through the roof, sucking walls, glass and furnishings out like a vacuum.

"Had the building been occupied by a significant number of people, you would probably have had major injuries and loss of life," he said.

More thunderstorms headed across northern Alabama toward the city Saturday. "We're bracing for another round of whatever mother nature throws at us," said Lisa Janak of the state emergency management agency.

At least 27 people were hurt Friday night, though no injuries were believed to be life-threatening.

All downtown events scheduled for Saturday were canceled, including the St. Patrick's Day parade.

The storm smashed hundreds of skyscraper windows, blew furniture and luggage out of hotel rooms, crumbled part of an apartment building and rattled a packed sports arena.

Streets around the Georgia Dome, Phillips Arena, the CNN Center and Centennial Olympic Park were littered with broken glass, downed power lines, crumbled bricks, insulation and the occasional office chair. Billboards collapsed onto parked cars.

CNN said its headquarters building suffered ceiling damage that allowed water to pour into the atrium, and windows were shattered in the CNN.com newsroom and the company's library. A water line inside the building broke, turning a staircase into a waterfall.

"It was crazy. There was a lot of windows breaking and stuff falling," said Terrence Evans, a valet who was about to park a car at the Omni Hotel when the storm twister hit.

A tornado warning had been issued for downtown a few minutes before the violent weather hit.

However, there was no announcement of the approaching storm for the 18,000 fans inside the Georgia Dome for the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament. The first sign was rumbling and the rippling of the fabric roof. Catwalks swayed and insulation rained down on players during overtime of the Mississippi State-Alabama game, sending fans fleeing toward the exits and the teams to their locker rooms.

"I thought it was a tornado or a terrorist attack," said Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough, whose team won 69-67 after an hourlong delay under a roof with at least two visible tears. A later game between Georgia and Kentucky was postponed. SEC officials said the tournament's remaining games would be played at Georgia Tech.

"Ironically, the guy behind me got a phone call saying there was a tornado warning," fan Lisa Lynn said. "And in two seconds, we heard the noise and things started to shake. It was creepy."

A half-mile away, the sign of the Phillips Arena parking garage was mangled but basketball fans inside the arena noticed little disruption during an NBA game between the Atlanta Hawks and Los Angeles Clippers.

Power was knocked out to about 19,000 customers.

A loft apartment building, built in an old cotton mill, had severe damage to one corner and appeared to have major roof damage. Fire officials said they were uncertain whether all the occupants had escaped, but property manager Darlys Walker told WSB-TV there was one minor injury.

Four Georgia Search and Rescue teams continue their search Saturday morning for possible victims at the collapsed building. "Personnel from the DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett fire departments make up this specialty team," according to mayor Franklin in a release. "DeKalb K-9 units are also assisting in the search."

Taylor Morris, 29, who lives near the lofts, said he and his girlfriend took shelter in the bathroom when the storm passed over in a matter of 15 to 20 seconds.

"The whole house was shaking," he said. "We didn't know what was going on."

Fire Capt. Bill May said a vacant building also collapsed, with no apparent injuries.

Grady Memorial Hospital, the city's large public hospital where many of the injured were taken, had broken windows but was operating as usual. Kendra Gerlach, spokeswoman for Atlanta Medical Center, said late Friday the hospital emergency department treated about five patients for minor injuries.

Buzz Weiss, spokesman for Georgia Emergency Management Agency, said state officials and the American Red Cross were setting up a shelter for displaced residents at a senior center.

In East Atlanta, downed trees, debris and power lines were strewn in the streets.

Melody and Brad Sorrells were home in their living room with their two children when the storm hit, and the huge pine in their front yard crash into their house.

"I saw it falling and we ran into the back bedrooms in the closet," Melody Sorrels said. "I feel sick."

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the most recent tornado to hit a major city's downtown was on Aug. 12, 2004, in Jacksonville, Fla. Downtown tornadoes have also struck Fort Worth, Texas; Salt Lake City; Little Rock, Ark.; and Nashville, Tenn., in the past decade.

If confirmed, the tornado would be the first on record in downtown Atlanta, said Smith, the meteorologist. The last tornado to strike inside the city was in 1975, and it hit the governor's mansion north of downtown, he said.

The Atlanta Police Department reported numerous injuries in downtown Atlanta area. At least 30 people were taken to Atlanta area hospitals -- one of them was a firefighter. One person is suffering life threatening injuries. No fatalities have been report

WSB TV Report

Dade rolling out massive parks plan
BY CURTIS MORGAN AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI
aviglucci@MiamiHerald.com
Scraggly canal banks transformed into scenic public pathways. Tree-shaded, pedestrian-friendly ''greenways'' replacing barren streetscapes. Bikeways and walkways linking far-flung neighborhoods to local, state and national parks. An inviting public space -- park, natural area, cultural or recreational facility -- within a safe, five-minute walk of every resident.
Miami-Dade County on Friday will roll out an extraordinarily ambitious parks and open-space master plan that aims over the next half-century to re-green and reconnect a community that has spent much of the previous 50 years carving up and paving over the natural landscape.
''This is probably the single most important thing that Miami-Dade Parks and Recreation has been involved in in decades,'' said county parks director Jack Kardys. ``It really is about leaving a legacy for the community.''
The plan, approved last month by the County Commission, reaches well beyond traditional park concepts to what planners call ''the public realm'' -- laying out new principles to guide not only how the county plans parks and public places, but also how it builds and designs streets and sidewalks to encourage more people to walk and bicycle. It calls for what amounts to a massive makeover of Miami-Dade's asphalt look and, planners hope, its increasingly congested quality of life.
''The idea is to create a community in a garden,'' said Maria Nardi, special projects administrator for the parks department. ``The moment you step out of your house, you're in the parks system.''
Among its most ambitious elements: a 40-mile-plus bikeable loop connecting Biscayne and Everglades national parks along Southwest 328th and 344th streets at the southern end of the county, and a vast north-to-south recreational and ecological zone along the eastern edge of the Everglades, most of it on land already under public control.
The plan will be the focus of a county parks summit Friday at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, in which experts from across the country will discuss how parks and public spaces act as catalysts for community revitalization.
Will Rogers, president of The Trust for Public Land, which has worked with Miami and Miami-Dade on greenways and access plans along the Miami River and Biscayne Bay, said communities across the country have seen similar park initiatives improve not just the quality of life for residents, but the economy.
Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago and Chattanooga, Tenn., are just a few of the cities that have poured billions into improving open spaces, he said, in part to attract or keep major employers and development.
''The cities that follow through are far more competitive economically. There is absolutely a payoff in this investment,'' Rogers said. ``If you don't do it, you risk not being a first-class city.''
Park planners acknowledge considerable challenges to executing a plan of such scope. It will require development of new guidelines and rules for the design of streets and other public facilities, as well as close coordination with individual cities and county agencies that now often work separately. The county has jurisdiction over only unincorporated areas, but it has formed a joint city-county committee to help encourage municipalities to adopt the plan's strategies.
While millions of dollars were set aside for county parks in the massive 2004county bonds issue, there is no specific budget attached to the new blueprint. The plan would be executed gradually, as opportunity arises -- for instance, when parks, streets and public facilities such as libraries are built or renovated, or in new developments.
The department must draw up an implementation plan within a year.
''It's not impossible,'' said Nardi, lead county planner for the blueprint. ``It's a 50-year vision. We have to start somewhere. We have to start now.''
Where the planners started two years ago was with the county's vast but scattered system of parks -- the third-largest in the nation, with a $100 million budget and 250 parks and recreational facilities encompassing nearly 13,000 acres. The agency also manages 12,000 acres of publicly owned land designated as environmentally sensitive.
The county's premier parks -- including dazzling gems like Crandon Park on Key Biscayne and the Charles Deering Estate in South Miami-Dade -- are in many cases underused, often reachable only by car, and unevenly distributed. Some neighborhoods lack so much as a local playground.
In addition, public spaces often seem ill-designed or poorly placed. Nardi made reference to some examples: a tot-lot jammed next to a parking lot; an unshaded sidewalk along a retention pond.
The plan embraces the idea of interconnecting links as a way of reshaping the community, much as the famed Emerald Necklace of parks shapes the city of Boston. The blueprint identifies the rough location for new community centers and local parks in areas now lacking them. It also identifies publicly owned ecological lands, now largely inaccessible, that could serve as hubs of new Eco-Zones -- networks of small parks and greenways linked to surrounding neighborhoods.
It also delineates canals, paths and roadway corridors that would form a larger network of green and blue connections all across Miami-Dade.
In doing so, the parks department is coming full circle to its original 1929 mission to beautify local roadways, a time when the county's winter population peaked at just 143,000. Fifty years from now, that number could hit four million.
As the county grew, the department's mission rapidly evolved. Founding Superintendent A.D. Barnes oversaw the development of Crandon Park, Matheson Hammock and other regional parks that today form the backbone of the system. But relatively little parkland has been added during the past 25 years, even as suburban development exploded to the west, eating away at open space and stripping the landscape of shade.
One result, Kardys said, is that parks in western suburbs are focused on athletic fields, leaving outlying communities disconnected and isolated from natural areas more easily accessible along the coast.
But with land increasingly unavailable or unaffordable, the parks department had to develop a strategy other than building sprawling new regional parks, Nardi said. One solution increasingly being adopted across the country, partly in response to increasing demand for places to walk and bicycle, is the linear park or greenway -- a landscaped path, usually paved, that links parks or runs along roadways and waterways.
The aim is to reduce the need to drive while bringing attractive spaces and pathways closer to people.
''If they're designed properly, if you put the right stuff in place, they're going to use it,'' Kardys said. ``Everybody is oriented toward the car. It's the model we have followed for too long.''
The county's vast network of drainage canals, now typically gated or otherwise cut off from surrounding neighborhoods, also provides great opportunities, Nardi said, and not just for paths and watercraft, but also for mixed-use development on their banks, à la Amsterdam, that would attract people -- and thus users and security.
The plan suggests examples of where that concept could easily be applied, such as the Snapper Creek canal running behind Dadeland Mall.
Some of the first projects will cater to bicyclists, who have been among the plan's biggest supporters.
A key element is the loop that would link the county's two national parks by converting rocky canal and road rights-of-way to accommodate both bikers and hikers.
The county has set aside $4.5 million for the first 3.7-mile leg leading from Old Cutler Road to the entrance of Biscayne National Park, a route already popular with weekend cyclists. Work is expected to begin in the next few years.
The entire loop, estimated at $49 million, will likely need funding from a range of public and private sources, from the city of Homestead to the South Florida Water Management District and the National Park Service.
Everglades National Park Superintendent Dan Kimball already has staff studying whether a bike path could be extended into the park along its main road all the way to Flamingo. That would create a 60-mile trail from Biscayne Bay to Florida Bay, with stops to rest and eat along the way.
''One of the things we've always talked about is trying to get a seamless system of parks and protected areas,'' Kimball said. ``This really figures out a way of linking the two parks with gateway communities.''

Mutual Contempt The long history of the McCain-Obama grudge.
Michael Crowley, The New Republic
Though they differ in many ways, John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common: Each sees the other as a posturing phony. When McCain talks about Obama on the stump, he trades his typical graciousness for sarcasm and contempt. When McCain lectured Obama about the future of Iraq last week, he did so with what The New York Times called "a tone of belittlement in his voice." McCain has also called Obamamania a swindle. "America is not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history," he said in Wisconsin last month. And he has huffed that "I don't seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with personal greatness." After Obama issued a press release last May noting that conditions were still dangerous enough in Iraq that McCain had been forced to wear a "flack jacket" during a public tour of a Baghdad market, a McCain release taunted Obama for his inexperience, adding, "By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket." For good measure, an unnamed McCain aide drove home the point to the Politico, saying that "Obama wouldn't know the difference between an RPG and a bong."
Obama has swung back in similar, if somewhat milder, fashion. Noting that McCain had changed his position on the Bush tax cuts, Obama joked last month that "the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels." Later, he cracked in a Democratic debate that McCain "traded his principles for his party's nomination." Snickering at the idea that McCain is a scourge of lobbyists, Obama recently said that "he takes their money and has put them in charge of his campaign."
It's little wonder that Obama and McCain would be casting each other as fakers. At the core of each man's political identity is the image of a reformer determined to take on and reshape the corrupt culture of Washington, D.C. To Obama, McCain is a fixture of that system, one whose reform talk belies his debts to the GOP establishment and its lobbyist machine. McCain, meanwhile, sees Obama as an upstart self-promoter whose talk about reform isn't matched by a record of hard work to achieve it. "In a weird sort of way, they're fighting over a change-and-reform mantle from two ends of the same argument," says Dan Schnur, a former senior aide to McCain. And that was never more obvious than in a 2006 clash between the men, well before Obama was even a candidate. That episode revealed the importance of reform to both men, but also the pitfalls they're finding as they walk the high ground.

In February 2006, Washington was reeling from a wave of corruption scandals. Indictments had come down on Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and Republican Representative Duke Cunningham. Congress polices itself as willingly as a child cleans his room, but the scandals had jolted both parties into action. Democrats saw ethics reform as a partisan issue that could help win back the House and Senate that November. Republicans, meanwhile, battled furiously to cast corruption as a nonpartisan story about the culture of Washington, not just their party.
At the center of this frenzy were McCain and Obama. McCain had held months of committee hearings about the Abramoff scandal, which he capped with an ethics reform bill cracking down on congressional travel at lobbyists' expense, discounted trips on corporate jets, and his overriding pet obsession, earmark spending.
Obama, meanwhile, had been tapped by then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid as the Democrats' point man on ethics reform. Still several months from signaling a run for president, Obama was a perfect reform messenger--a Washington newcomer sullied by few past transactions with lobbyists. He had also co-sponsored a strong reform measure with Mr. Ethics himself, Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Obama had also led a lobbying reform push in the Illinois state legislature about a decade earlier (for which he was "literally hooted and catcalled" by colleagues, as one recently told The New York Times).
Senate Republicans had little genuine interest in clamping down on their Gucci-loafered friends. But they also knew feigning concern before the voters was a must. Democrats weren't interested in teaming up, rejecting overtures from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and instead holding their own rally for reform at the Library of Congress. So Frist chose his colleague Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania to develop an alternative bill that Republicans could tout. Santorum assembled a group of senators from both parties, among them John McCain. Though personally disliked by many of his GOP colleagues, McCain offered a gold seal of reform credibility thanks to his past battles on campaign finance and pork barrel spending.
On February 1, McCain invited Obama to a meeting of Santorum's working group. Obama accepted, explaining in a press conference that day that he would let the Republicans there know that "I am prepared to work across the aisle and make some things happen." That evening, he joined several other attendees--including Republicans Trent Lott, Susan Collins, David Vitter, and Johnny Isakson, and Democrats Mark Pryor and Joe Lieberman--in Santorum's office. Munching on grapes and other finger food, the senators and their aides had what one participant described as a long and substantive discussion of arcane ethics issues, such as what exact price constitutes a proper reimbursement for travel on a corporate jet. One Democratic aide who attended another meeting with Obama on this subject calls him completely fluent in the topic and better informed than virtually all of his colleagues. But Santorum found Obama off-putting: After showing up late and receiving a "syrupy" welcome from McCain, Santorum says, Obama began preaching down to his colleagues. "He went on and on about how ethical his life is and how he does things more ethically than everybody and on and on and on," Santorum says. "And, when we tried to come back to substance, we heard more about how he does things. Which is all really interesting but not particularly productive in terms of trying to find common ground to get things done." (Though Santorum has obvious partisan reasons to bad-mouth Obama, his response suggests there could be limits to a President Obama's ability to charm D.C. Republicans.)
A day after attending the confab, Obama sent McCain a letter thanking him for the invitation but also indicating that he preferred a reform bill championed by Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders, which had no Republican sponsors.
McCain went ballistic. "I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere," he wrote back in a letter. McCain said Democratic leaders were simply using ethics as a political club in the fall elections, and he hinted that Obama had decided to carry Reid's water rather than negotiate a bipartisan bill. "I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us."
In McCainland, the episode had revealed Obama as a mere Democratic partisan masquerading as a bridge-builder. "There was all this chest-pounding about how he was going to reach across the aisle and work in a bipartisan manner to solve all America's problems," says former longtime McCain adviser John Weaver. "And up comes an issue which seems perfectly suited for him, and he met Senator McCain, who has correctly long been the champion of this ... [and] he decided for whatever reason he was going to take the more partisan position."
"It was evident to me from day one that Obama's instructions were to make sure this doesn't happen," Santorum adds. "I'm not blaming Obama here--he was Harry Reid's surrogate."

McCain had a point. Obama seemed to have chosen his party's interests over the bipartisan approach to reform he had touted--an interpretation conceded to me by another pro-reform Democrat close to the process. Though Obama was genuinely committed to the issue, in this case, with some Republicans pursuing bad-faith stall-tactic strategies, reform and true bipartisanship probably didn't go hand in hand. Nor was it likely that Obama, a newcomer to the Senate with presidential ambitions, was keen for Democratic leaders to see him as overly willing to deal with the enemy.
In the face of McCain's broadside, Obama kept his signature cool. The same day, he responded to McCain with a letter of his own saying that he was "puzzled" by his colleague's fiery response, as he intended the Democratic bill to be "the basis for a bipartisan solution." "I confess that I have no idea what has prompted your response," Obama calmly added.
Meanwhile, the episode revealed two essential qualities about McCain. One is his delicate sense of honor. McCain felt that Obama had committed the cardinal sin of insincerity by talking about bipartisanship and then retreating to the safety of his caucus. He was also clearly enraged that Obama had released his first letter to the press before McCain had had a chance to read it himself. (Obama's letter was actually e-mailed to reporters by Reid's office, fueling McCain's suspicions that Obama was acting as a partisan tool.) Moreover, Obama's first letter had also implied that McCain supported creating an ethics "task force," a Republican proposal widely viewed as a Potemkin stalling tactic; Obama, in other words, had doubted McCain's sincerity as a reformer, something the Arizonan could not countenance.
The other, less appealing, quality that McCain had exposed was his temper. McCain has long battled the charge that he employs a self-destructive anger--earlier this year, Mitt Romney compiled for the press a list of famous McCain outbursts. So McCain never sent Obama a letter in response, and, in public, he cooled his rhetoric. (Many people suggest that McCain's tempestuous chief of staff, Mark Salter, helped stoke the affair--or at least failed to save McCain from himself. "Sometimes it's not just John's temper, it's the staff's temper, too," explains Weaver, without naming names. "After that letter was sent, I threatened to take the 'send' button off the sender's computer.") The following night, February 7, "Hardball" host Chris Matthews described McCain's letter on his show as "brilliantly angry," but he also asked McCain twice whether "you stand by your letter." McCain said he did, but assiduously tried to resist the anger narrative. "I wasn't angry," he insisted.
Ultimately, McCain and Obama defused the tension. As it happened, they were both scheduled to testify before a committee hearing on reform later that week. Obama cracked up the room by opening his testimony with a reference to "my pen pal, John McCain." It was an early glimpse of Obama's skill, so evident in the primaries, at shrugging off shots from his opponents. "It reminds me a bit of the way he has handled attacks from Hillary in the debates," says a Senate Democratic aide.
Before long, each man was back at work trying to reclaim the moral high ground. That March, the Senate voted on a broad reform bill that had come out of multiple committee hearings. It passed overwhelmingly, 90-8, but the bill was not nearly as tough as government-watchdog groups had hoped. Both Obama and McCain voted against it. Obama insisted any reform needed to restrict the use of corporate jets and also transfer ethics enforcement out of Congress and into a new separate commission. McCain, meanwhile, focused on earmarking, a subject dear to fiscal conservatives, and one he emphasized as he geared up his presidential campaign. ("The good news is there will be more indictments, and we will be revisiting this issue," McCain noted.)
That bill stalled in the House, and it wasn't until 2007 that the new Democratic majority passed reform into law. Though he still had qualms, Obama voted for it. McCain, however, held his ground. Each man got something he wanted. Obama issued press releases bragging that he'd played a central role in a major legislative feat. And McCain maintained a reformist high ground while dismissing the Democratic achievement as an empty gesture. Still, for all their talk of bipartisanship, neither man had demonstrated much of it.
All the more reason why both are determined to prove their reform bona fides. After the initial blowup the previous winter, Obama had assured reporters there would be no lasting hard feelings. "[M]oving forward," he said, "I think what's clear is there's probably more in common between myself and Senator McCain on a lot of this stuff than some of our other colleagues." But that may be precisely the problem. Small differences make for big fights.

Retail Retrenchment Hurts Malls
ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
The signs that smaller retailers are struggling are unavoidable at malls across America: "Going out of business" sales at many Wilsons Leather stores. "Up to 70 percent off" at KB Toys.
At the once-sizzling Paradise Valley Mall in Phoenix, the space once occupied by Bombay Co., the furniture chain that went bankrupt last year, is empty. Wilsons just finished liquidating its inventory. KB Toys, AnnTaylor and American Eagle feature bold posters advertising steep discounts.
"I don't think it brings much business when all these stores are closed," said Michelle Green, a sales clerk at Fred Meyer Jewelers.
Around the country, mall centers are starting to feel the recoil from a rapid expansion in recent years that allowed retailers to aim stores at almost every niche, from shoppers who wanted Talbots clothes for their children to those who craved Bombay's little wood tables.
Now, consumers who are closing their wallets amid rising gasoline prices and a housing slump are forcing specialty retailers to pare back their brands. While still healthy overall, mall centers in areas hardest hit by the housing downturn _ like Paradise Valley _ are suffering the most store shutdowns.
Retailers including AnnTaylor Stores Corp., Talbots Inc. and Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. have closed hundreds of stores so far this year. Gadget seller Sharper Image Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection last month and plans to shutter nearly half of its 184 stores.
That retrenchment, along with the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of catalog retailer Lillian Vernon Corp., marks the beginning of a wave of retail bankruptcies that's expected to go well beyond the home furnishings stores hurt by the housing malaise.
"This is economic Darwinism," said Dan Ansell, a partner at Greenberg Traurig LLP and chairman of its real estate operations division. "Those retailers and businesses that have a product that is desired by consumers will survive, and those who do not will not."
Unless the economy dramatically improves, Ansell believes retail bankruptcies this year could reach the highest level since the 1991 recession. More closings could leave gaping holes in the nation's retail centers, which have already seen average vacancy rates creep up to between 7 percent and 8 percent from 5 percent over the last six months, according to data from NAI Global, a commercial real estate services firm.
David Solomon, president and CEO of ReStore, NAI Global's retail division, expects the vacancy rate could hit 10 percent by the end of the year. Suzanne Mulvee, senior economist at Property & Portfolio Research, figures that vacancies could rise as high as 12.5 percent this year. Her figure includes retail spaces where tenants have defaulted on their rents.
Part of the problem, according to Mulvee, is that more retail space is coming to the market just as consumer demand is falling. Another 130 million square feet of retail space will become available this year, she predicts, on top of last year's 143 million. That is well above the average 100 million square feet added per year earlier in the decade.
As a result, markets like Phoenix, which had a retail boom, are expected to see the most dramatic increases in vacancies. Phoenix's rate is expected to more than double to 10 percent by the end of 2009 from 4.4 percent late last year, according to Property & Portfolio. In Kansas City, Mo., rates could rise to almost 17 percent by the end of 2009 from last year's 13.5 percent. In San Antonio, experts say the figure may hit 20.5 percent next year from last year's 17.4 percent.
Still, Solomon doesn't think the situation will be as dire as in 1991, when the savings and loan crisis hurt the entire country. Experts also say merchants are weathering downturns better because of new systems to control inventory and costs.
Nevertheless, consumers are seeing fewer stores that focus on specific niches, like apparel for women baby boomers or clothing for surf fans. That would differ from 17 years ago, when it was the department stores that felt the major shakeup as leveraged buyouts and fierce competition led to the demise of names like Carter Hawley Hale Stores and Woodward & Lothrop. But there's one common theme: the power of national discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which helped seal the eventual demise of regional discount chains last time around. Now, the discounters' clout is hurting consumer electronics stores like CompUSA, which is closing most of its stores, and Circuit City Stores Inc., which posted dismal holiday sales.
Christina Avila, shopping at the Oak Park Mall in Kansas City, Mo. _ which had more than half a dozen store vacancies _ said she's cutting back because of the economy and spending more at places like Wal-Mart and Target.
"I'm more interested if they have clearance items," she said.
Michele Lipovitch of Phoenix said she only goes to the Paradise Valley mall twice a month.
"We have two kids. I have credit card debt I'm trying to pay off," said Lipovitch. "It's kind of scary because we keep hearing that it looks like we're going into a recession."
The industry pullback follows several years of rapid expansion and experimentation with a range of new store formats as retailers enjoyed robust consumer spending fueled by rising home values. But the sharp spending drop has made stores rethink how to expand their businesses.
Jewelry retailer Zale Corp. announced more closings last month, meaning it now plans to shutter almost 5 percent of its stores by the end of July. In January, Pacific Sunwear said it will close all 154 remaining Demo stores, which sell urban fashions. AnnTaylor is shutting down 13 percent of its stores and delaying a new store concept aimed at women boomers, while Talbots is closing its 78 children's and men's apparel stores to focus on its core middle-aged female customer. Macy's also has said it will close nine stores.
And Wilsons The Leather Expert is closing a majority of its 260 mall locations.
Analysts say they're watching to see if Circuit City closes any stores after posting a third-quarter loss and cutting its full-year profit outlook. Analysts also expect more store cutbacks at Sears Holdings Corp., which operates Kmart and Sears stores.
Some shoppers are not going to miss the casualties.
"They have nice clothes, nice urban wear, but their prices (are) a little high," said Tasha Burts, 35, of Demo at the Dolphin Mall west of downtown Miami. She walked out empty-handed.
Mall operators Taubman Centers Inc. and Simon Property Group say their top tenants _ the department stores and other big chains that anchor most shopping centers _ are in good financial shape.
Bill Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers, predicts more store closings and bankruptcies than last year, but doesn't think they will reach historic highs.
That will still mean a more limited selection for consumers, who until a few months ago had a plethora of choices, particularly when it came to furniture. Recent home furnishings casualties included Bombay and Levitz Furniture, which filed for bankruptcy in November and has been liquidating its inventory. Clothing stores, in a malaise since consumers see fashion spending as discretionary, could see widespread closures this year.
While the industry overall is experimenting less with new formats, Janet Hoffman, managing partner of the North American retail division of Accenture, expects the mood to be temporary.
"There is this undying belief in the retail industry that they have an idea that will work," Hoffman said, citing Abercrombie & Fitch Co.'s new lingerie chain Gilly Hicks. "A year or 18 months from now you will see new ones at play."___
Associated Press Writers David Twiddy in Kansas City, Mo., Terry Tang in Phoenix and Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami contributed to this report.

Smoke on the Water
by David Remnick (The New Yorker)
Alexander II, before liberating the serfs, liberated the smokers. (To indulge his own habit, he lifted the imperial ban on tobacco.) Alexander III played the French horn. Nicholas II was a photography buff. Catherine the Great was a passionate equestrienne. Maybe it has something to do with the vastness of Russia’s geography or with the bloody absolutism of its history, but it’s always been easier to contemplate a new master of the Kremlin by seizing on homey anecdotes.
Trivia domesticated even the worst Soviet-era résumés. When Leonid Brezhnev died, in 1982, and the K.G.B. chief, Yuri Andropov, became General Secretary of the Communist Party, the Western press did not skip lightly over the new man’s role in crushing the Hungarian uprising, in 1956, and the Prague Spring, in 1968, but it also greeted him with bonbons of wishful description. The Times reported that Andropov’s “intense gaze and donnish demeanor gave him the air of a scholar.” According to Time, he was a “witty conversationalist,” who listened to the song stylings of Miss Peggy Lee. And an article in the Washington Post Outlook section called him “a perfect host,” who occasionally invited “leading dissidents to his home for well-lubricated discussions that sometimes extended to the wee hours of the morning.”
Now comes Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the next President of Russia. Five feet four. Forty-two years old. Lawyer. Friend and longtime protégé of Vladimir Putin. Husband (wife: Svetlana). Father (son: Ilya, age eleven). Nickname in the Kremlin: the Grand Vizier. Favorite book as a boy: “The Soviet Encyclopedia.” Understands “Olbanian,” the term of art for Russian Internet slang. Practices yoga. Swims each morning and evening. Big fan of seventies schlock bands. “I’ve loved hard rock since my school days,” he told an interviewer not long ago. “Today, for example, I can boast that I have the entire collection of Deep Purple.” And, if you’re still curious, Medvedev keeps an aquarium in his office at the Kremlin. He alone is permitted to feed the fish.
When Vladimir Putin came to power, on New Year’s Eve, 1999, we learned that he was a judo expert, that he had a poodle named Toska, and that his grandfather had been a cook for Lenin. But the most salient fact about him was that he was a career K.G.B. agent. And, in eight years as President of the Russian Federation, Putin has been as true to his school as any Old Etonian. According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a well-regarded sociologist in Moscow, who studies the biographies of the Russian élites, Putin has filled the leadership ranks with former officials from the K.G.B. and the F.S.B. As he once told an assembly of officers at Lubyanka, “There is no such thing as a former agent.”
The most salient fact about Medvedev is not that he will have been elected by the Russian people to be their President but that he was selected by Putin to be his junior partner. Medvedev, of course, understands his role. In the speech in which he announced his candidacy, he thrilled the spies, bureaucrats, and corporate barons who depend on Putin for their status and their wealth by declaring that, if, perchance, he was lucky enough to win, he would make Putin his prime minister. It was at that moment that Dmitry Medvedev became five feet three.
During the depressing simulacrum of an election campaign, Medvedev has been promoted assiduously on state television as a loyal and competent young man who will respond reliably to his master’s voice and thereby insure that the Russian economy, buoyed by global oil prices that have quintupled in six years, will continue to flourish. Putin’s popularity is the popularity of the autocrat––to oppose him is to risk marginalization, prison, or worse––and the ostensible stability of the country is based on a kind of national pact: as long as ordinary people stay clear of opposition politics, they are free to pursue their private lives.
If there is a marked difference between the two men, it is one of style, particularly in matters of language. Putin, as befits his lifelong profession, is wary, steely, aggressive. No small part of his appeal has been his capacity to dismiss his foes––foreign and domestic, real and imagined––in an earthy Russian argot. Recently, at a bravura multi-hour press conference, he was asked about media reports that, while living in the Kremlin, he had become the richest man in Europe. His response, as translated by the Kremlin, was “They just made it up and included it in their papers.” What he actually said was “They just picked it out of their noses and smeared it on their little papers.”
Medvedev is more soft-spoken, and, partly as a result, he has acquired a worldlier, more liberal image than some of his peers. In recent weeks, he has even ventured some critical and liberal-sounding comments about the state. “Russia is a country of legal nihilism,” he said. “No European country can boast such a universal disregard for the rule of law.”
But it makes no more sense to count on Medvedev’s “liberalism” than it does to be cheered by his affection for tropical fish and “Smoke on the Water.” He was chosen for his loyalty to and compliance with a President who has found a way not to retire. And that is reassuring to all who depend on the arrangements of the status quo. “Medvedev has such a weak personality that he would be raped by lobbyists right on his table on the second day of his Presidency, and Putin knows this,” Mikhail Delyagin, a former aide to Boris Yeltsin, remarked recently to the Moscow Times. “Unlike Putin—who understands that rage is a big part of the Russian nature and aptly manages this knowledge—Medvedev is a refined and pleasant nobleman’s son who can’t force his will on anyone.”
With time, Medvedev may become his own man, but there is no real sign that he will alter Putin’s legacy. The record of increased prosperity is clear, but so is the fact that Putin has eliminated or co-opted all other centers of political influence. There is a puppet legislature, a weak judiciary, and a neutered press. The Russian Orthodox Church has become a tool of the state. Symbols of empire and the Soviet past, including the anthem, have been restored. And, as in Soviet times, the leadership is constantly telling the people that they are threatened by foreign enemies—Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, the United States—as well as by internal rebels. “There will undoubtedly be attempts to overthrow the government. But they will fail,” Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s deputy chief of staff, told Der Spiegel in 2005.
When Yeltsin resigned, eight years ago, he begged his country’s forgiveness, and for good reason. There had been many failures committed in his name, especially as he became older and more remote from the democratic processes that he had helped begin. Vladimir Putin, at a moment when he, too, should be stepping into the shadows, has only a sense of self-regard—even a little self-pity—and certainly no self-doubt. “I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning till night, and I have given all I could to this work,” he said. “I am happy with the results.” ♦

Obama Wins Wyoming Caucuses
By JULIE BOSMAN
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Senator Barack Obama continued his string of victories in caucus states on Saturday, beating Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Wyoming by a wide margin.
The victory, while in a state with only 18 delegates, was welcome news for the Obama campaign as it sought to blunt Mrs. Clinton’s momentum coming off her victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton had campaigned here Friday, a day after her husband and daughter, signaling the stakes every contest holds in the fierce battle for the Democratic nomination.
Party officials reported extremely high turnout at caucus sites across the state. More than 1,500 residents of Laramie County came to cast votes at the caucus site in downtown Cheyenne, filling the auditorium. Hundreds more waited outside for hours until they could enter and vote.
Wyoming Democrats, usually a lonely bunch in an overwhelmingly Republican state, basked in their moment in the spotlight.
“Wyoming, this is our 15 minutes,” Kathy Karpan, a former Wyoming secretary of state who supported Mrs. Clinton, said on Saturday morning.
With 96 percent of the precincts reporting, Mr. Obama was leading Mrs. Clinton by 19 percentage points.
While both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama pushed hard to win the state, the Obama campaign’s early organizing here appeared to have paid off. The campaign set up shop two weeks before Mrs. Clinton’s did, opening five offices in the state to two for Mrs. Clinton. And Mr. Obama went on the air with television and radio commercials this week, and Mrs. Clinton had two radio ads running.
Mrs. Clinton’s decision to focus on Wyoming was a tactical departure for a campaign that had played down the importance of such caucus states, essentially ceding many of them to Mr. Obama, while deriding the caucus process as undemocratic. But as Mr. Obama collected 11 victories in these contests, and with Mrs. Clinton determined to cut into her opponent’s stubborn lead in delegates, the Clinton campaign deployed Chelsea Clinton and Bill Clinton on Thursday, with a final campaign sprint by Mrs. Clinton on Friday.
The newfound attention by the candidates and the national media drew to the Saturday caucuses many newly registered Democrats — officials said there were more than 2,000 registrations recently — and lifelong Democrats who have never caucused before.
Vernice Sack, 80, and her husband, Paul Sack, 83, counted themselves among the first-time caucusgoers. They both supported Mr. Obama, they said. “He’s got the right ideas,” Mr. Sack said.
The campaign now moves to Mississippi, which holds its primary Tuesday. Mr. Clinton campaigned there Saturday, striking a theme his wife has been repeating on the campaign trail: that Mr. Obama would make a good running mate (but as second fiddle.)
Wyoming, with its half-million residents, is the least populated state. It will award 12 delegates based on the results of the caucuses, with 6 others who could go to the convention uncommitted.
Instead of the traditional caucus format, most of Wyoming’s 23 counties held caucuses conducted by paper ballots, where participants simply placed a check mark next to the name of their chosen presidential candidate and put the slip into a ballot box.
Most of the attention focused on the most heavily Democratic towns situated in the southern half of the state, where the Union Pacific railroad was built in the late 1800s, leaving a strong union tradition.
In Natrona County, where Mrs. Clinton was endorsed by two local state representatives, Mr. Obama won by seven votes. Mr. Obama also won a lopsided victory in Laramie County, the most populous county in the state, where 1,532 people cast ballots and where Mr. Obama did not even campaign.
The first caucus to report results, in Niobrara County, reported a tie between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. Fredda Lou Kilmer and her husband, Everett, hosted the caucus at their home in Lusk, in east central Wyoming. There are 101 registered Democrats in the county, she said, and 20 participated in the caucus on Saturday.
“Nobody will admit to being a Democrat here,” Mrs. Kilmer said.
First-time caucusgoers included Judy Dunn, of Cheyenne, her husband, Ted Dunn, and their daughter, Pam Pafford.
Leaving the auditorium in Cheyenne, all three said they had cast their votes for Mr. Obama. “Wyomingites are pretty independent,” Mrs. Dunn said. “We like somebody who speaks like him.”

A Man of Incessant Labor; Remembering W. F. Buckley

Christopher Hitchens
"At his desk," wrote Christopher Buckley in his email to friends, "in Stamford this morning." Well, one had somehow known that it would have to be at his desk. The late William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of incessant labor and productivity, with a slight allowance made for that saving capacity for making it appear easy. But he was driven, all right, and restless, and never allowed himself much ease on his own account. There was never a moment, after taping some session at Firing Line, where mere recourse to some local joint was in prospect. He was always just about to be late for the next plane, or column, or speech, or debate. Except that he never was late, until last Wednesday.
Ahh, Firing Line! If I leave a TV studio these days with what Diderot termed l'esprit de l'escalier, I don't always blame myself. If I wish that I had remembered to make a telling point, or wish that I had phrased something better than I actually did, it's very often because a "break" was just coming up, or the "segment" had been shortened at the last minute, or because the host was obnoxious, or because the panel had been over-booked in case of cancellations but at the last minute every egomaniac invited had managed to say "yes" and make himself available. But on Buckley's imperishable show, if you failed to make your best case it was your own damn fault. Once the signature Bach chords had died away, and once he'd opened with that curiously seductive intro ("I should like to begin .  .  . "), you were given every opportunity to develop and pursue your argument. And if you misspoke or said anything fatuous, it was unlikely to escape comment. In my leftist days, if I knew I was going on the box with Buckley, I would make sure to do some homework (and attempt to emulate him by trying to make sure it didn't show).
He was in so many ways the man to beat. Facing him, one confronted somebody who had striven to take the "cold" out of the phrase "Cold War"; who had backed Joseph McCarthy, praised General Franco, opposed the Civil Rights Act, advocated rather than merely supported the intervention in Vietnam, and seemed meanwhile to embody a character hovering somewhere between Skull-and-Bones and his former CIA boss Howard Hunt. On the other hand, this was the same man who had picked an open fight with the John Birch Society, taken on the fringe anti-Semites and weirdo isolationists of the old Right, and helped to condition the Republican comeback of 1980. Was he really, as he had once claimed, yelling "stop" at the locomotive of history, or was he a closet "progressive"?
The Roman Catholicism that was always so central might seem to have offered a clue here, but this element also dissolved into ambiguities and approximations. "Faith" surely helped explain his solidarity with the Sovietized "captive nations" like Poland and Hungary and Latvia and Croatia, and even his sympathy for McCarthy and for the Diem family regime in Saigon (the last two allegiances being among the few that he shared with the Kennedy family). Yet it was in the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal that he also declared in 1952 that he was in favor of "Big Government for the duration" of the struggle against communism, and in favor of this, moreover, even if it meant Democratic party stewardship. There were times when National Review seemed almost to be published by some legate of the Spellman archdiocese (one of James Burnham's successors as chief Cold War columnist, I remember, was actually named Crozier). But then, you never knew when you might be surprised. Buckley once teamed up with Clare Booth Luce to opine that dogmatic opposition to contraception ran the risk of discrediting moral abhorrence of abortion.
Scott Fitzgerald's old observation, about the need to be able to manage contradiction within oneself, is obviously germane here. One of the most startling discoveries to be made--it occurs in John Judis's excellent early biography of Buckley--is that Whittaker Chambers himself beseeched Buckley to have nothing to do with Senator McCarthy. In spite of such advice, and from such a source, Buckley went ahead and published McCarthy and His Enemies, a book that by no means erred on the critical side.
To take another example from a quite different point of the compass, Buckley was willing to be immensely friendly with figures from the gay Right, like the doomed congressman Bob Bauman of Maryland or the flamboyant Marvin Liebman, but nonetheless wrote a column in the early 1980s saying that promiscuous homosexuals with AIDS should be tattooed on the buttocks as a sort of health-warning. There was too much detail in that proposal, and it showed how hard it can be to reconcile conservatism--one of his self-definitions--with libertarianism (one of his alternate ones).
In devotional matters he could oscillate as well: He justified an interview with Playboy in 1970 by saying dryly that he wanted to be able to communicate with his son, but devoted a passage of one of his many books on sailing to the revelation that doctrinal and baptismal disputes might perforce keep him from seeing his own grandchildren.
Buckley's vivid and energetic career (try reading his memoir Overdrive without experiencing vertigo) may be read as a registry or working-out of precisely this sort of tension. And, I would add, an honest working-out. I think I was once privileged to see the process in action.
Some years ago, Peter Robinson invited us both to be guests on his show Uncommon Knowledge, which had been tipped as a sort of successor to Firing Line. The subject was a retrospective of "The Sixties," and the question to each of us was: What did we most regret about the positions we had held then? I won't bore you with my answers. Buckley said that he now wished that the United States had never become involved in Vietnam to begin with, and added that he would still oppose the passage of the Civil Rights Act but not in the same terms or for the same reasons as he had then. (His updated view was that the legislation had caused more trouble than it was worth--"like the Civil War.")
At the time I was a little stunned by both admissions, but I can also see how they make sincere self-critical sense. Vietnam was too much of that "big government" that he had reluctantly accepted, and state-enforced civil rights took too little account of the libertarian principles that were dear to him. In a sort of coda to the sixties, it was National Review that published the first major symposium calling for the decriminalization of at least the "softer" narcotics.
Buckley's return to a version of rightist isolationism in the matter of Iraq in the last few years can be fairly easily analyzed in the same terms, of profound skepticism if not indeed pessimism about large state-sponsored or state-sponsoring schemes. (I recall teasing him about his famous 1968 debate with Gore Vidal, and pointing out that this angry joust was actually between two former young enthusiasts for Charles Lindbergh and "America First." The irony here is also at Vidal's expense.) Bill's gift for friendship with some liberals--John Kenneth Galbraith most notably--was the counterpart of his challenge to their monopoly on the word "intellectual."
His slightly affected distaste for modernity did not inhibit him from becoming an early star in the meretricious world of television. Having inaugurated his show in 1966, and eventually wondering how to wind it up, he closed it in 1999 thus giving it the magic lifetime (or so I suspect) of what the old hymn calls "three-and-thirty years." And he decided to go out in a blaze of tedium, with a debate on the campus of "Ole Miss" at Oxford, on the propriety or otherwise of taxing Internet commerce! I was honored to be invited and, as always, stayed up the night before to do my homework. William F. Buckley Jr. was never solemn except or unless on purpose, and seldom if ever flippant where witty would do, and in saying this I hope I pay him the just tribute that is due to a serious man.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography.
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