Title	September 11 attacks
Caption	The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burning, pictured from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, around 10 minutes after the second impact.
Location	New York City; Arlington County, Virginia; and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Date	Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Time-begin
Time-end
Timezone	UTC-4
Type	Aircraft hijacking, mass murder, suicide attack, terrorism
Fatalities	Approximately 3,000 (including 19 hijackers)
Injuries	More than 6,000
Perps	Al-Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden(see also Responsibility and Hijackers)

The September 11 attacks (often referred to as September 11th or 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.

Nearly 3,000 victims and the 19 hijackers died in the attacks. According to the New York State Health Department, 836 responders, including firefighters and police personnel, have died as of June 2009. 184 people were killed in the attacks on the Pentagon. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries. In addition, there was at least one secondary death—one person was ruled by a medical examiner to have died from lung disease due to exposure to dust from the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terror, invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists, and enacting the USA PATRIOT Act. Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Some American stock exchanges stayed closed for the rest of the week following the attack, and posted enormous losses upon reopening, especially in the airline and insurance industries. The destruction of billions of dollars' worth of office space caused serious damage to the economy of Lower Manhattan.

The damage to the Pentagon was cleared and repaired within a year, and the Pentagon Memorial was built adjacent to the building. The rebuilding process has started on the World Trade Center site. In 2006, a new office tower was completed on the site of 7 World Trade Center. The new 1 World Trade Center is currently under construction at the site and, at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2013, it will become the tallest building in North America. Three more towers were originally expected to be built between 2007 and 2012 on the site. Ground was broken for the Flight 93 National Memorial on November 8, 2009, and the first phase of construction is expected to be ready for the 10th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2011.

Attacks

crashes into the south tower.]] footage of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon.]] Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C.. At 8:46 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 was crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.

Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m, after the passengers on board engaged in a fight with the hijackers. Its ultimate target was thought to be either the Capitol (the meeting place of the United States Congress) or the White House.

Some passengers were able to make phone calls using the cabin airphone service and mobile phones, and provide details, including that several hijackers were aboard each plane, that mace or other form of noxious chemical spray, such as tear gas or pepper spray was used, and that some people aboard had been stabbed. Reports indicated that during two of the flights, the hijackers stabbed and killed aircraft pilots, flight attendants and in at least one case, a passenger. The 9/11 Commission established that two of the hijackers had recently purchased Leatherman multi-function hand tools. A flight attendant on Flight 11, a passenger on Flight 175, and passengers on Flight 93 mentioned that the hijackers had bombs, but one of the passengers also mentioned he thought the bombs were fake. No traces of explosives were found at the crash sites, and the 9/11 Commission believed the bombs were probably fake. One of the hijackers gave the order to roll the plane once it became evident that they would lose control of the plane to the passengers. Soon afterward, the aircraft crashed into a field near Shanksville in Stonycreek Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11 a.m. local time (14:03:11 UTC).

In a September 2002 interview conducted by documentary-maker Yosri Fouda, an al Jazeera journalist, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, who are believed to have organised the attacks, stated that the fourth hijacked plane was heading for the United States Capitol, which they gave the codename "the Faculty of Law", not for the White House. They further stated that al-Qaeda initially planned to fly hijacked jets into nuclear installations rather than the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but it was decided not to attack nuclear power plants "for the moment" because of fears it could "get out of control".

Three buildings in the World Trade Center Complex collapsed due to structural failure on the day of the attack. The south tower (2 WTC) fell at approximately 9:59 a.m., after burning for 56 minutes in a fire caused by the impact of United Airlines Flight 175.

The attacks created widespread confusion among news organizations and air traffic controllers across the United States. All international civilian air traffic was banned from landing on U.S. soil for three days. Aircraft already in flight were either turned back or redirected to airports in Canada or Mexico. News sources aired unconfirmed and often contradictory reports throughout the day. One of the most prevalent of these reported that a car bomb had been detonated at the U.S. State Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Soon after reporting for the first time on the Pentagon crash, some news media also briefly reported that a fire had broken out on the National Mall. Another report went out on the Associated Press wire, claiming that a Delta Air Lines airliner—Flight 1989—had been hijacked. This report, too, turned out to be in error; the plane was briefly thought to represent a hijack risk, but it responded to controllers and landed safely in Cleveland, Ohio.

Casualties

until it crashed in Southern Pennsylvania on September 11]] {| class="bordered infobox" cellpadding="3" style="width:280px; font-size:90%;" |- !colspan="3"| Deaths (excluding hijackers) |- !rowspan="3"| New York City | World Trade Center | 2,606 |- | American 11 | 87 |- | United 175 | 60 |- !rowspan="2"| Arlington | Pentagon | 125 |- | American 77 || 59 |- ! Shanksville | United 93 | 40 |- !colspan="2"| Total | 2,977 |} There were a total of 2,996 deaths, including the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims. The victims were distributed as follows: 246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,606 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. All the deaths in the attacks were civilians except for 55 military personnel killed in the attack on the Pentagon.

More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office added Felicia Dunn-Jones to the official death toll from the September 11 attacks. Dunn-Jones died five months after 9/11 from a lung condition which was linked to exposure to dust during the collapse of the World Trade Center. Leon Heyward, who died of lymphoma in 2008, was added to the official death toll in 2009.

NIST estimated that about 17,400 civilians were in the World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks, while turnstile counts from the Port Authority suggest that 14,154 people were typically in the Twin Towers by 8:45 a.m. The vast majority of people below the impact zone safely evacuated the buildings, along with 18 people who were in the impact zone in the south tower and a number above the impact zone who evidently used the one intact stairwell in the south tower. At least 1,366 people died who were at or above the floors of impact in the North Tower and at least 618 in the South Tower, where evacuation had begun before the second impact. Thus over 90% of the workers and visitors who died in the Towers had been at or above impact.

According to the Commission Report, hundreds were killed instantly by the impact, while the rest were trapped and died after tower collapse. At least 200 people jumped to their deaths from the burning towers (as depicted in the photograph "The Falling Man"), landing on the streets and rooftops of adjacent buildings hundreds of feet below. Some of the occupants of each tower above its point of impact made their way upward toward the roof in hope of helicopter rescue, but the roof access doors were locked. No plan existed for helicopter rescues, and on September 11, the thick smoke and intense heat would have prevented helicopters from conducting rescues.

A total of 411 emergency workers who responded to the scene died as they attempted to rescue people and fight fires. The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) lost 341 firefighters and 2 FDNY paramedics. The New York City Police Department lost 23 officers. The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers, and 8 additional EMTs and paramedics from private EMS units were killed.

Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees, considerably more than any other employer. Marsh Inc., located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 93–101 (the location of Flight 11's impact), lost 355 employees, and 175 employees of Aon Corporation were killed. After New York, New Jersey was the hardest hit state, with the city of Hoboken sustaining the most deaths.

Weeks after the attack, the number of deaths was estimated to be over 6,000, but this turned out to be more than twice the number of actual confirmed dead. The city was only able to identify remains for about 1,600 of the victims at the World Trade Center. The medical examiner's office also collected "about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead". Bone fragments were still being found in 2006 as workers were preparing to demolish the damaged Deutsche Bank Building. That operation was completed in 2007. On April 2, 2010 a team of anthropology and archaeological experts began searching for human remains, human artifacts and personal items at the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island. The operation was completed in June 2010 with 72 human remains found, bringing the total human remains found to 1,845. The identities of 1,629 of the 2,753 victims have been identified. DNA profiling in an attempt to identify additional victims is continuing.

Damage

damaged by fire and partly collapsed.]] Along with the 110-floor Twin Towers of the World Trade Center itself, numerous other buildings at the World Trade Center site were destroyed or badly damaged, including 7 World Trade Center, 6 World Trade Center, 5 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, the Marriott World Trade Center (3 WTC), and the World Financial Center complex and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. The fall of the Twin Towers represented the only examples of total progressive collapse of steel-framed structures in history.

The Deutsche Bank Building across Liberty Street from the World Trade Center complex was later condemned due to the uninhabitable, toxic conditions inside the office tower, and is undergoing deconstruction. The Borough of Manhattan Community College's Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway was also condemned due to extensive damage in the attacks, and is slated for deconstruction.

Other neighboring buildings including 90 West Street and the Verizon Building suffered major damage, but have since been restored. World Financial Center buildings, One Liberty Plaza, the , and 90 Church Street had moderate damage. They have since been restored. Communications equipment on top of the North Tower, including broadcast radio, television and two-way radio antenna towers, was also destroyed, but media stations were quickly able to reroute signals and resume broadcasts. In Arlington County, a portion of the Pentagon was severely damaged by fire and one section of the building collapsed.

Rescue and recovery

The Fire Department of New York City (FDNY) quickly deployed 200 units (half of the department) to the site, whose efforts were supplemented by numerous off-duty firefighters and EMTs. The New York Police Department (NYPD) sent Emergency Service Units (ESU) and other police personnel, along with deploying its aviation unit. Once on the scene, the FDNY, NYPD, and Port Authority police did not coordinate efforts,

As conditions deteriorated, the NYPD aviation unit relayed information to police commanders, who issued orders for its personnel to evacuate the towers; most NYPD officers were able to safely evacuate before the buildings collapsed.

Attackers and their background

Within hours of the attacks, the FBI was able to determine the names and in many cases the personal details of the suspected pilots and hijackers. Mohamed Atta, from Egypt, was the ringleader of the 19 hijackers and one of the pilots. Atta died in the attack along with the other hijackers, but his luggage, which did not make the connection from his Portland flight onto Flight 11, contained papers that revealed the identities of all 19 hijackers and other important clues about their plans, motives, and backgrounds. By midday, the National Security Agency had intercepted communications that pointed to Osama bin Laden, as did German intelligence agencies.

On September 27, 2001, the FBI released photos of the 19 hijackers, along with information about the possible nationalities and aliases of many. Fifteen of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt (Atta), and one from Lebanon.

The FBI investigation into the attacks, code named operation PENTTBOM, was the largest and most complex investigation in the history of the FBI, involving over 7,000 special agents. The United States government determined that al-Qaeda, headed by Osama bin Laden, bore responsibility for the attacks, with the FBI stating "evidence linking al-Qaeda and bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable". The Government of the United Kingdom reached the same conclusion regarding al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's culpability for the 11 September attacks.

Author Laurie Mylroie, writing in the conservative political magazine The American Spectator in 2006, argues that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his family are the primary architects of 9/11 and similar attacks, and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's association with Osama bin Laden is secondary and that al-Qaeda's claim of responsibility for the attack is after the fact and opportunistic. Angelo Codevilla, of the same magazine, agrees with Mylroie, comparing Osama bin Laden to Elvis Presley. In an opposing point of view, former CIA officer Robert Baer, writing in Time magazine in 2007, asserts that George W. Bush Administration's publicizing of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's claims of responsibility for 9/11 and numerous other acts was a mendacious attempt to claim that all of the significant actors in 9/11 had been caught.

Al-Qaeda

The origins of al-Qaeda can be traced back to 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Soon after the invasion, Osama bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan where he helped organize Arab mujahideen and established the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) organization to resist the Soviets. During the war with the Soviet Union, Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding, with American and most Saudi funds funneled through the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service. In 1989, as the Soviets withdrew, MAK was transformed into a "rapid reaction force" in jihad against governments across the Muslim world. Under the guidance of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden became more radical. In 1996, bin Laden issued his first fatwā, which called for American soldiers to leave Saudi Arabia.

In a second fatwā issued in 1998, bin Laden outlined his objections to American foreign policy towards Israel, as well as the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War. Bin Laden used Islamic texts to exhort violent action against American military and citizenry until the stated grievances are reversed, noting "ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries." At that point, Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were in a period of transition, having just relocated back to Afghanistan from Sudan. The 1998 African Embassy bombings and Bin Laden's 1998 fatwā marked a turning point, with bin Laden intent on attacking the United States.

In late 1998 or early 1999, bin Laden gave approval for Mohammed to go forward with organizing the plot. A series of meetings occurred in spring of 1999, involving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy Mohammed Atef. because "there was not enough time to prepare for such an operation".

Bin Laden provided leadership for the plot, along with financial support, and was involved in selecting participants for the plot. Bin Laden initially selected Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, both experienced jihadists who fought in Bosnia. Hazmi and Mihdhar arrived in the United States in mid-January 2000, after traveling to Malaysia to attend the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit. In spring 2000, Hazmi and Mihdhar took flying lessons in San Diego, California, but both spoke little English, did not do well with flying lessons, and eventually served as "muscle" hijackers.

In late 1999, a group of men from Hamburg, Germany arrived in Afghanistan, including Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah, and Ramzi Binalshibh. Bin Laden selected these men for the plot, as they were educated, could speak English, and had experience living in the west. New recruits were routinely screened for special skills, which allowed Al Qaeda leaders to also identify Hani Hanjour, who already had a commercial pilot's license, for the plot.

Hanjour arrived in San Diego on December 8, 2000, joining Hazmi. They soon left for Arizona, where Hanjour took refresher training. Marwan al-Shehhi arrived at the end of May 2000, while Atta arrived on June 3, 2000, and Jarrah arrived on June 27, 2000. Binalshibh applied several times for a visa to the United States, but as a Yemeni, he was rejected out of concerns he would overstay his visa and remain as an illegal immigrant. Binalshibh remained in Hamburg, providing coordination between Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The three Hamburg cell members all took pilot training in south Florida.

In spring 2001, the muscle hijackers began arriving in the United States. In July 2001, Atta met with Binalshibh in Spain, where they coordinated details of the plot, including final target selection. Binalshibh also passed along Bin Laden's wish for the attacks to be carried out as soon as possible.

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden's declaration of a holy war against the United States, and a fatwā signed by bin Laden and others calling for the killing of American civilians in 1998, are seen by investigators as evidence of his motivation to commit such acts.

Bin Laden initially denied, but later admitted, involvement in the incidents. On September 16, 2001, bin Laden denied any involvement with the attacks by reading a statement which was broadcast by Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." This denial was broadcast on U.S. news networks and worldwide.

In November 2001, U.S. forces recovered a videotape from a destroyed house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in which Osama bin Laden is talking to Khaled al-Harbi. In the tape, bin Laden admits foreknowledge of the attacks. The tape was broadcast on various news networks from December 13, 2001. His distorted appearance on the tape has been attributed to tape transfer artifact. The detailed timeline of Bin Laden's having prior knowledge were revealed in a September 2002 interview documentary-maker Yosri Fouda conducted with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh: the decision to launch a "martyrdom operation inside America" was made by Al Qaeda's military committee in early 1999; Atta, after deciding on the date (9/11/01) for the attacks, informed Binalshibh of this date on August 29, 2001, and Bin Laden was given this information on September 6, 2001.

On December 27, 2001, a second bin Laden video was released. In the video, he states, "Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people", but he stopped short of admitting responsibility for the attacks.

Shortly before the U.S. presidential election in 2004, in a taped statement, bin Laden publicly acknowledged al-Qaeda's involvement in the attacks on the U.S. and admitted his direct link to the attacks. He said that the attacks were carried out because "we are free...and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours." Osama bin Laden says he had personally directed his followers to attack the World Trade Center

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

after his capture in Pakistan]] The journalist Yosri Fouda of the Arabic television channel Al Jazeera reported that in April 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted his involvement, along with Ramzi Binalshibh, in the "Holy Tuesday operation".

Mohamed Atta shared this motivation. Ralph Bodenstein, a former classmate of Atta described him as "most imbued actually about... U.S. protection of these Israeli politics in the region". Abdulaziz al-Omari, a hijacker aboard Flight 11 with Mohamed Atta, said in his video will, "My work is a message those who heard me and to all those who saw me at the same time it is a message to the infidels that you should leave the Arabian peninsula defeated and stop giving a hand of help to the coward Jews in Palestine."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was also an adviser and financier of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He is also the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, the lead bomber in that attack.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested on March 1, 2003 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan by Pakistani security officials working with the CIA, and is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. During U.S. hearings in March 2007 Sheikh Mohammed again confessed his responsibility for the attacks, saying "I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z." Mohammed made the confession after being subject to waterboarding. In November 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Mohammed and four accused co-conspirators will be transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to stand trial in civilian court near Ground Zero in New York. No trial date was given. Holder expressed confidence that the defendants would get a fair trial that was "open to the public and open to the world".

Other al-Qaeda members

In "Substitution for Testimony of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed" from the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, five people are identified as having been completely aware of the operation's details. They are Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Turab al-Urduni and Mohammed Atef. To date, only peripheral figures have been tried or convicted for the attacks. Bin Laden has not yet been formally indicted for the attacks.

On September 26, 2005, the Spanish high court directed by judge Baltasar Garzón sentenced Abu Dahdah to 27 years of imprisonment for conspiracy on the 9/11 attacks and being a member of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. At the same time, another 17 al-Qaeda members were sentenced to penalties of between six and eleven years. On February 16, 2006, the Spanish Supreme Court reduced the Abu Dahdah penalty to 12 years because it considered that his participation in the conspiracy was not proven.

Motives

The motives for the attacks include the presence of the U.S. in Saudi Arabia, the support of Israel by the U.S., and the sanctions against Iraq. These motives were explicitly stated by Al-Qaeda in proclamations before the attacks, including the fatwā of August 1996, and a shorter fatwā published in February 1998. After the attacks, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri published additional video tapes and audio tapes, some of which repeated those reasons for the attacks. Two particularly important publications were bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America", and a 2004 video tape by bin Laden. In addition to direct pronouncements by bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, numerous political analysts have postulated motivations for the attacks.

The continued presence of U.S. troops after the Gulf War in Saudi Arabia was one of the stated motivations behind the September 11th terrorist attacks, Bin Laden interpreted the Prophet Muhammad as banning the "permanent presence of infidels in Arabia". In 1996, Bin Laden issued a fatwā, calling for American troops to get out of Saudi Arabia. In the 1998 fatwā, Al-Qaeda wrote " for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples." In the December 1999 interview with Rahimullah Yusufzai, bin Laden said he felt that Americans were "too near to Mecca" and considered this a provocation to the entire Muslim world.

In his November 2002 "Letter to America", Bin Laden described the United States' support of Israel as a motivation: "The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily." In 2004 and 2010, Bin Laden again repeated the connection between the September 11 attacks and the support of Israel by the United States. Several analysts, including Mearsheimer and Walt, also claim a motivation for the attacks was the support of Israel by the United States.

In the 1998 fatwā, Al Qaeda identified the Iraq sanctions as a reason to kill Americans: "despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation....On that basis, and in compliance with Allah's order, we issue the following fatwā to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim..." Another speculated motive was the desire to provoke the U.S. into a broader war against the Islamic world, with the hope of motivating more allies to support Al Qaeda.

Aftermath

George W. Bush is briefed on the World Trade Center attack.]]

Immediate response

The 9/11 attacks had immediate and overwhelming effects upon the American people. Many police officers and rescue workers elsewhere in the country took leaves of absence to travel to New York City to assist in the process of recovering bodies from the twisted remnants of the Twin Towers. Blood donations across the U.S. also saw a surge in the weeks after 9/11.

Over 3000 children were left without one or more parents. Children's reactions both to these actual losses, yet also to feared losses of life and a protective environment in the aftermath of the attacks are well-documented, as were their effects on surviving caregivers.

For the first time in history, SCATANA was invoked forcing all non-emergency civilian aircraft in the United States and several other countries including Canada to be immediately grounded, stranding tens of thousands of passengers across the world. Any international flights were closed to American airspace by the Federal Aviation Administration, causing about five hundred flights to be turned back or redirected to other countries. Canada received 226 of the diverted flights and launched Operation Yellow Ribbon to deal with the large numbers of grounded planes and stranded passengers.

Military operations following the attacks

At 2:40 p.m. in the afternoon of September 11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by senior policy official Stephen Cambone. "Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H." — meaning Saddam Hussein — "at same time. Not only UBL" (Osama bin Laden), Cambone's notes quoted Rumsfeld as saying. "Need to move swiftly — Near term target needs — go massive — sweep it all up. Things related and not."

The NATO council declared that the attacks on the United States were considered an attack on all NATO nations and, as such, satisfied Article 5 of the NATO charter. Upon returning to Australia having been on an official visit to the U.S. at the time of the attacks, Australian Prime Minister John Howard invoked Article IV of the ANZUS treaty. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the Bush administration announced a war on terror, with the stated goals of bringing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to justice and preventing the emergence of other terrorist networks. These goals would be accomplished by means including economic and military sanctions against states perceived as harboring terrorists and increasing global surveillance and intelligence sharing.

The second-biggest operation of the U.S. Global War on Terrorism outside of the United States, and the largest directly connected to terrorism, was the overthrow of the Taliban rule of Afghanistan by a U.S.-led coalition. The United States was not the only nation to increase its military readiness, with other notable examples being the Philippines and Indonesia, countries that have their own internal conflicts with Islamic terrorism.

Domestic response

on September 20, 2001]] Following the attacks, President Bush's job approval rating soared to 90%. On September 20, 2001, the U.S. president spoke before the nation and a joint session of the United States Congress, regarding the events of that day, the intervening nine days of rescue and recovery efforts, and his intent in response to those events. In addition, the highly visible role played by New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani won him high praise nationally and in New York.

Many relief funds were immediately set up to assist victims of the attacks, with the task of providing financial assistance to the survivors of the attacks and to the families of victims, such as the Coalition of 9/11 Families. By the deadline for victim's compensation, September 11, 2003, 2,833 applications had been received from the families of those who were killed.

Contingency plans for the continuity of government and the evacuation of leaders were also implemented almost immediately after the attacks.

Within the United States, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, creating the Department of Homeland Security, representing the largest restructuring of the U.S. government in contemporary history. Congress also passed the USA PATRIOT Act, stating that it would help detect and prosecute terrorism and other crimes.

Civil liberties groups have criticized the PATRIOT Act, saying that it allows law enforcement to invade the privacy of citizens and eliminates judicial oversight of law-enforcement and domestic intelligence gathering. The Bush Administration also invoked 9/11 as the reason to initiate a secret National Security Agency operation, "to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications between the United States and people overseas without a warrant".

Hate crimes

Numerous incidents of harassment and hate crimes were reported against Middle Easterners and other "Middle Eastern-looking" people in the days following the 9/11 attacks. Sikhs were also targeted because Sikh males usually wear turbans, which are stereotypically associated with Muslims. There were reports of verbal abuse, attacks on mosques and other religious buildings (including the firebombing of a Hindu temple and assaults on people, including one murder: Balbir Singh Sodhi was fatally shot on September 15, 2001. He, like others, was a Sikh who was mistaken for a Muslim.

A report by South Asian American advocacy group SAALT documented media coverage of 645 bias incidents against Americans of South Asian or Middle Eastern descent between September 11 and September 17, including vandalism, arson, assault, shootings, harassment, and threats.

Muslim American reaction

Top Muslim organizations in the United States were swift to condemn the attacks on 9/11 and called "upon Muslim Americans to come forward with their skills and resources to help alleviate the sufferings of the affected people and their families". Top organizations included the Islamic Society of North America, American Muslim Alliance, American Muslim Council, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Islamic Circle of North America, and the Shari'a Scholars Association of North America. Along with monetary donations, many Islamic organizations launched blood drives and provided medical assistance, food, and shelter for victims.

International response

looks up at the remains of the South Tower.]] The attacks were denounced by mass media and governments worldwide. Across the globe, nations offered pro-American support and solidarity. Leaders in most Middle Eastern countries, and Afghanistan, condemned the attacks. Iraq was a notable exception, with an immediate official statement that "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity".

Tens of thousands of people attempted to flee Afghanistan following the attacks, fearing a response by the United States. Pakistan, already home to many Afghan refugees from previous Afghan conflict, closed its border with Afghanistan on September 17. Approximately one month after the attacks, the United States led a broad coalition of international forces in the removal of the Taliban regime for harboring the al-Qaeda organization. Pakistani authorities moved reluctantly to align themselves with the United States in a war against the Taliban. Pakistan provided the United States a number of military airports and bases for its attack on the Taliban regime and arrested over 600 suspected al-Qaeda members, whom it handed over to the United States.

Numerous countries, including Canada, China, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, India and Pakistan introduced anti-terrorism legislation and froze the bank accounts of businesses and individuals they suspected of having al-Qaeda ties. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies in a number of countries, including Italy, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines arrested people they labeled terrorist suspects for the stated purpose of breaking up militant cells around the world.

In the U.S., this aroused some controversy, as critics such as the Bill of Rights Defense Committee argued that traditional restrictions on federal surveillance (e.g. COINTELPRO's monitoring of public meetings) were "dismantled" by the USA PATRIOT Act. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Liberty argued that certain civil rights protections were also being circumvented.

The United States set up a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to hold inmates they defined as "illegal enemy combatants". The legitimacy of these detentions has been questioned by, among others, the European Parliament, the Organization of American States, and Amnesty International.

The international events and reactions immediately after the attacks affected the impact of the World Conference against Racism 2001, which had ended in discord and international recriminations just three days before.

As in the United States, the aftermath of the attacks saw tensions increase in other countries between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theorists question the accepted version of the attacks, the motivations behind them, and the parties involved. Some of the conspiracy theories see the attacks as a casus belli through a false flag to bring about increased militarization and police power.

Some proponents of 9/11 conspiracy theories have speculated that individuals inside the United States possessed detailed information about the attacks and deliberately chose not to prevent them, or that individuals outside of al-Qaeda planned, carried out, or assisted in the attacks. Some conspiracy theorists claim the World Trade Center did not collapse because of the crashing planes but was instead demolished with explosives. This controlled demolition hypothesis is rejected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who, after their research, concluded that the impacts of the airliners at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires caused the collapse of both Towers.

Long-term effects

Economic aftermath

The attacks had a significant economic impact on the United States and world markets. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and NASDAQ did not open on September 11 and remained closed until September 17. When the stock markets reopened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) stock market index fell 684 points, or 7.1%, to 8921, a record-setting one-day point decline.

By the end of the week, the DJIA had fallen 1,369.7 points (14.3%), its then-largest one-week point drop in history, though later surpassed in 2008 during the global financial crisis. U.S. stocks lost $1.4 trillion in value for the week. The city's GDP was estimated to have declined by $27.3 billion for the last three months of 2001 and all of 2002. The Federal government provided $11.2 billion in immediate assistance to the Government of New York City in September 2001, and $10.5 billion in early 2002 for economic development and infrastructure needs.

The 9/11 attacks also hurt small businesses in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center, destroying or displacing about 18,000 of them. Assistance was provided by Small Business Administration loans and federal government Community Development Block Grants and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.

Many wondered whether these jobs would return, and the damaged tax base recover. Studies of the economic effects of 9/11 show that the Manhattan office real-estate market and office employment were less affected than initially expected because of the financial services industry's need for face-to-face interaction.

North American air space was closed for several days after the attacks and air travel decreased upon its reopening, leading to nearly a 20% cutback in air travel capacity, and exacerbating financial problems in the struggling U.S. airline industry.

Health effects

The thousands of tons of toxic debris resulting from the collapse of the Twin Towers contained more than 2,500 contaminants, including known carcinogens. This has led to debilitating illnesses among rescue and recovery workers, which many claim to be directly linked to debris exposure. For example, NYPD Officer Frank Macri died of lung cancer that spread throughout his body on September 3, 2007; his family contends the cancer is the result of long hours on the site and they have filed for line-of-duty death benefits, which the city has yet to rule on.

Health effects have also extended to some residents, students, and office workers of Lower Manhattan and nearby Chinatown. Several deaths have been linked to the toxic dust caused by the World Trade Center's collapse and the victims' names will be included in the World Trade Center memorial. There is also scientific speculation that exposure to various toxic products in the air may have negative effects on fetal development. Due to this potential hazard, a notable children's environmental health center is currently analyzing the children whose mothers were pregnant during the WTC collapse, and were living or working near the World Trade Center towers. A study of rescue workers released in April 2010 found that all the workers studied had impaired lung functions, and that 30% to 40% of workers were reporting persistent symptoms that started within the first year of the attack with little or no improvement since.

Legal disputes over the attendant costs of illnesses related to the attacks are still in the court system. On October 17, 2006, federal judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected New York City's refusal to pay for health costs for rescue workers, allowing for the possibility of numerous suits against the city. Government officials have been faulted for urging the public to return to lower Manhattan in the weeks shortly following the attacks. Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the EPA in the aftermath of the attacks, was heavily criticized for incorrectly saying that the area was environmentally safe. President Bush was criticized for interfering with EPA interpretations and pronouncements regarding air quality in the aftermath of the attacks. In addition, Mayor Giuliani was criticized for urging financial industry personnel to return quickly to the greater Wall Street area.

Some Americans became alarmed at the prospect of using planes for travel, using automobiles instead. This resulted in an estimated 1,595 "excess" highway deaths in the ensuing year.

Investigations

FBI investigation

Immediately after the attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation started PENTTBOM, the largest criminal inquiry in the history of the United States. The FBI told the U.S. Senate that there is "clear and irrefutable" evidence linking Al Qaida and Bin Laden to the attacks.

9/11 Commission

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission), chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, was formed in late 2002 to prepare a thorough account of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, including preparedness for, and the immediate response to, the attacks. On July 22, 2004, the 9/11 Commission issued the 9/11 Commission Report. The commission and its report have been subject to criticism.

Collapse of the World Trade Center

A federal technical building and fire safety investigation of the collapses of the Twin Towers and 7 WTC has been conducted by the United States Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The goals of this investigation were to determine why the buildings collapsed, the extent of injuries and fatalities, and the procedures involved in designing and managing the World Trade Center. The investigation into the collapse of 1 WTC and 2 WTC was concluded in October 2005, and the investigation into the collapse of 7 WTC concluded in August 2008.

The report concluded that the fireproofing on the Twin Towers' steel infrastructures was blown off by the initial impact of the planes and that, if this had not occurred, the towers would likely have remained standing. A study published by researchers of Purdue University confirmed that, if the thermal insulation on the core columns were scoured off and column temperatures were elevated to approximately , the fire would have been sufficient to initiate collapse.

W. Gene Corley, the director of the original investigation, commented that "the towers really did amazingly well. The terrorist aircraft didn’t bring the buildings down; it was the fire which followed. It was proven that you could take out two thirds of the columns in a tower and the building would still stand." The fires weakened the trusses supporting the floors, making the floors sag. The sagging floors pulled on the exterior steel columns to the point where exterior columns bowed inward. With the damage to the core columns, the buckling exterior columns could no longer support the buildings, causing them to collapse. In addition, the report asserts that the towers' stairwells were not adequately reinforced to provide emergency escape for people above the impact zones. NIST concluded that uncontrolled fires in 7 WTC caused floor beams and girders to heat and subsequently "caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down".

In May 2007, senators from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party drafted legislation that would openly present an internal CIA investigative report. One of the backers, Senator Ron Wyden stated "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.... I am going to bulldog this until the public gets it." The report investigates the responsibilities of individual CIA personnel before and after the 9/11 attacks. The report was completed in 2005, but its details have never been released to the public.

Rebuilding

On the day of the attacks, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaimed, "We will rebuild. We're going to come out of this stronger than before, politically stronger, economically stronger. The skyline will be made whole again." The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, tasked with coordinating rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site, was criticized for doing little with the enormous funding directed to the rebuilding efforts.

Aside from construction of 7 World Trade Center, adjacent to the main site and completed in 2006, and the PATH station, which opened in late 2003, work on rebuilding on the main World Trade Center site was delayed until late 2006 when leaseholder Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey came to an agreement on financing of the new buildings. The 1 World Trade Center is currently under construction at the site and at 1,776 ft (541 m) upon completion in 2011, will become one of the tallest buildings in North America, behind only the CN Tower in Toronto.

Three more towers were expected to be built between 2007 and 2012 on the site, and will be located one block east of where the original towers stood. After the late-2000s recession, the site's owners said that construction of new towers could be delayed until 2036. The damaged section of the Pentagon was rebuilt and occupied within a year of the attacks.

Memorials

In the days immediately following the attacks, many memorials and vigils were held around the world. In addition, people posted photographs of the dead and missing all around Ground Zero. A witness described being unable to "get away from faces of innocent victims who were killed. Their pictures are everywhere, on phone booths, street lights, walls of subway stations. Everything reminded me of a huge funeral, people quiet and sad, but also very nice. Before, New York gave me a cold feeling; now people were reaching out to help each other.”

viewed from Jersey City on the anniversary of the attacks in 2004]] One of the first memorials was the Tribute in Light, an installation of 88 searchlights at the footprints of the World Trade Center towers which projected two vertical columns of light into the sky. In New York, the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was held to design an appropriate memorial on the site. The winning design, Reflecting Absence, was selected in August 2006, and consists of a pair of reflecting pools in the footprints of the towers, surrounded by a list of the victims' names in an underground memorial space. Plans for a museum on the site have been put on hold, following the abandonment of the International Freedom Center in reaction to complaints from the families of many victims.

The Pentagon Memorial was completed and opened to the public on the seventh anniversary of the attacks, September 11, 2008. It consists of a landscaped park with 184 benches facing the Pentagon. When the Pentagon was repaired in 2001–2002, a private chapel and indoor memorial were included, located at the spot where Flight 77 crashed into the building.

At Shanksville, a permanent Flight 93 National Memorial is planned to include a sculpted grove of trees forming a circle around the crash site, bisected by the plane's path, while wind chimes will bear the names of the victims. A temporary memorial is located from the crash site. New York City firefighters donated a memorial to the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Department. It is a cross made of steel from the World Trade Center and mounted on top of a platform shaped like the Pentagon. It was installed outside the firehouse on August 25, 2008.

Many other permanent memorials are being constructed elsewhere, and scholarships and charities have been established by the victims' families, along with many other organizations and private figures.

On every anniversary, in New York City, the names of the victims who died at that location are read out against a background of somber music. The President of the United States also attends a memorial service at the Pentagon. Smaller services are held in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, which are usually attended by the President's spouse.

Final resting place for WTC victims

Following the attacks, the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was temporarily reopened to receive and process much of the debris from the destruction of the World Trade Center. The debris contained the remains of many of the victims; much of it in the form of dust and small fragments. In August 2005, 17 plaintiffs, claiming to have support from 1,000 other relatives, filed a case in court to have the City of New York move nearly one million tons of material from the Fresh Kills landfill to another location where it would be sifted and placed in a cemetery. Norman Siegel, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, stated "It comes down to this: Are we prepared to leave hundreds of body parts and human remains on top of a garbage dump?" James E. Tyrrell, a lawyer representing the city, argued "You have to be able to particularize and say it's your body part. All that's left here is a bunch of undifferentiated dust."

On March 26, 2010, families of 9/11 victims received notice that the city will conduct a sifting operation for World Trade Center remains at the Fresh Kills landfill. The operation is scheduled to take three months at an estimated cost of $1.4 million. Anthropologists and other trained professionals will carefully evaluate and search the material, and potential remains will be sent for further testing to the laboratories of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

On October 4, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected an appeal by some families of 9/11 victims to require a more thorough examination of material from the WTC site to check for human remains before disposal. They claimed that some of the material (223,000 tons out of approximately 1.65 million) had either not been screened or not screened adequately, and that a landfill was not a proper resting place for material that may still contain remains of victims. (According to court records, the remains of approximately 1,100 of the 2,752 people killed at the site were never recovered or identified.) City officials said that they spent 10 months carefully examining the material for human remains before sending it to the landfill. Lower federal courts had already rejected the lawsuit by the families against the City of New York.

See also

Families of September 11

Flight 93 (TV film)

Legal issues related to the September 11 attacks

List of terrorist incidents, 2001

Survivor registry

United 93 (film)

References

External links

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States official commission website

September 11, 2001, Documentary Project from the U.S. Library of Congress, Memory.loc.gov

September 11, 2001, Web Archive from the U.S. Library of Congress, Minerva

September 11 Digital Archive: Saving the Histories of September 11, 2001 from the Center for History and New Media and the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning

, From WikiSource

Sept. 11 Co-Conspirators from the U.S. Defense Department on Military Commissions including case documents on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al.

Statistics from September 11 Numbers of victims, deaths, other information

CNN September 11 Memorial – List of victims, and photos.

Multimedia

CNN.com – Video archive, including the first and second planes.

Inside 9/11 – National Geographic Society

Time.com – 'Shattered: a remarkable collection of photographs', James Nachtwey

September 11, 2001 Screenshot Archive – Database of 230 screenshots from news sites around the world.

Wikileaks">9/11 tragedy pager intercepts. from Wikileaks

Aerial photos of 9/11 released photo gallery on MyNorthwest.com

Category:Airliner hijackings Category:September 11 attacks Category:Terrorist incidents in New York Category:Terrorist incidents in the United States Category:Terrorist incidents in the United States in 2001

Category:2001 murders in the United States Category:Airliner hijackings resulting in crashes

Name	Jesse Ventura
Order	38th
Office	Governor of Minnesota
Term start	January 8, 1999
Term end	January 6, 2003
Lieutenant	Mae Schunk
Predecessor	Arne Carlson
Successor	Tim Pawlenty
Office2	Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota
Term start2	1991
Term end2	1995
Birthname	James George Janos
Birth date	July 15, 1951
Birth place	Minneapolis, Minnesota
Spouse	Terry Ventura
Children	Tyrel VenturaJade Ventura
Profession	US Navy UDTProfessional WrestlerColor commentatorActorTalk Show hostPoliticianAuthor
Party	Reform Party (1999–2000)Independence Party of Minnesota (2000–present)
Branch	United States Navy
Serviceyears	1969–1975
Rank	Petty Officer
Unit	Underwater Demolition Team 12United States Navy
Awards	National Defense Service MedalVietnam Service Medal

James George Janos (born July 15, 1951), better known as Jesse Ventura, is an American politician, the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, Navy UDT veteran, actor, and former radio and television talk show host. As a professional wrestler, he is best known for his nickname, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and tenure in the World Wrestling Federation as a combatant and color commentator. In 2004, he was inducted into the company's Hall of Fame. Ventura has described himself as Slovak. Ventura (then still using his legal name of Janos) attended the now-closed Cooper Elementary School and graduated from Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School in 1969.

Navy career

From September 11, 1969, to September 10, 1975, during the Vietnam War era, Ventura served in the United States Navy. While on active duty, Ventura was part of Underwater Demolition Team 12 (UDT). The UDTs were merged with the US Navy SEALs in 1983, 8 years after Ventura had left the Navy.

Bill Salisbury, an attorney in San Diego and a former Navy SEAL officer, accused Ventura of "pretending" to be a SEAL and wrote that Ventura would be blurring an important distinction by claiming to be a SEAL when he was actually a frogman with the UDT. Compared to SEAL teams, UDTs saw less combat and took fewer casualties. Following that, Governor Ventura's office confirmed that Ventura was never a member of the SEALs. His spokesman stated that Ventura has never tried to convince people otherwise. He was criticized by hunters and conservationists for stating in an interview with the Minneapolis StarTribune in April 2001, "Until you have hunted men, you haven't hunted yet."

In January 2002, Ventura, who had never specifically claimed to have fought in Vietnam, disclosed for the first time that he did not see combat. He did not receive the Combat Action Ribbon, which was awarded to those involved in a firefight or who went on clandestine or special operations where the risk of enemy fire was great or expected.

In the fall of 1974, Ventura left the bike club to return to Minnesota. Shortly after leaving, the Mongols entered into open warfare with their rivals the Hells Angels.

Professional wrestling career

Name	Jesse Ventura
Names	Jesse "The Body" Ventura Years later, as a broadcaster, Ventura made a running joke out of claiming that Graham stole all of his ring attire ideas from him.
Show name	Jesse Ventura's America
Caption	Ventura on his MSNBC talk show Jesse Ventura's America
Starring	Jesse Ventura
Location	Saint Paul, Minnesota,
Network	MSNBC
First aired	October 4, 2003
Last aired	December 26, 2003
Italic title	no

Ventura was succeeded in his office by Republican Tim Pawlenty. He began a cable television show in October 2003, on MSNBC called Jesse Ventura's America. The show was broadcast once a week, on Saturdays, unlike many MSNBC shows which are on five nights a week (this show was originally planned for five nights a week as well, but MSNBC executives changed their minds). At the time of its airing, Jesse Ventura's America was the only national television show filmed in Minnesota. Among his guests were Charles Barkley, Gray Davis, Arianna Huffington, Rob Kampia, and Kathy McKee.

In 2004, fellow Navy veteran and Harvard graduate student Christopher Mora promoted the idea that the academic establishment had failed to reach out to citizens experienced in public service, but who did not fit the traditional idea of a politician. He successfully lobbied for the selection of Ventura, who started teaching a study group at Harvard University for the Spring 2004 semester as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics (IOP). His 90-minute study group focused on third party politics, campaign finance, the war on drugs, and other relevant political issues. Ventura scheduled multiple famous friends to appear for his seminars including Dean Barkley and Richard Marcinko.

On October 22, 2004, with Ventura by his side, former Maine Governor Angus King endorsed John Kerry for President at the Minnesota state capitol building. Ventura did not speak at the press conference. When prodded for a statement, Governor King responded, "He plans to vote for John Kerry, but he doesn't want to make a statement and subject himself to the tender mercies of the Minnesota press".

In November 2004, an advertisement began airing in California featuring Ventura. In it, Ventura voices his opposition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's policies regarding Native American casinos. Like Hogan, Schwarzenegger at one point was also a close friend of Ventura as well, but since Schwarzenegger's victory in California, Ventura has not reportedly given him any praise; Schwarzenegger didn't even mention Ventura's name in an interview with Fox News in 2005, where reporter Chris Wallace asked him if he was "the next Jesse Ventura". Ventura is serving as an advisory board member for a new group called Operation Truth, a non-profit organization set up "to give voice to troops who served in Iraq." “The current use of the National Guard is wrong....These are men who did not sign up to go occupy foreign nations”.

In August 2005, Ventura became the spokesperson for BetUS, an online Sportsbook. In 2005, Ventura repeatedly discussed leaving the United States. In September 2005, Ventura announced on The Mike Malloy Show that he was leaving the U.S. and planned to "have an adventure". In late October 2005, he went on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch and reiterated that he was leaving the U.S. due to, among other things, censorship. He has since moved to Baja California, Mexico.

In September 2006, Ventura endorsed and campaigned with independent Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, and Independence Party of Minnesota's gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson and Team Minnesota. He revealed he now spends much of his time surfing near his home in Mexico.

In April 2008, a book authored by Ventura, titled Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, was released. In it, Ventura describes a hypothetical campaign in which he is a candidate for President of the United States in 2008, running as an independent. In an interview with the Associated Press at the time of the book's release, however, Ventura denied any plans for a presidential bid, stating that the scenario is only imaginary and not indicative of a "secret plan to run". On MinnPost.com, Ventura's agent, Steve Schwartz, describes the book thus: "[Ventura is revealing] why he left politics and discussing the disastrous war in Iraq, why he sees our two-party system as corrupt, and what Fidel Castro told him about who was really behind the assassination of President Kennedy."

However, in an interview on CNN's The Situation Room on April 7, Ventura hinted that he was considering entering the race for the United States Senate seat then held by Norm Coleman, his Republican opponent in the 1998 Gubernatorial race. A poll commissioned by Twin Cities station Fox 9 put him at 24 percent, behind Al Franken at 32 percent and Norm Coleman at 39 percent in a hypothetical three-way race. However, Ventura announced on Larry King Live on July 14, 2008 that he would not run.

He spoke at former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's "Rally for the Republic", organized by the Campaign for Liberty, on September 2, 2008. At the event, Ventura implied a possible future run at the U.S. Presidency. Ventura stated before a live audience that "If America proves itself worthy, in 2012 we'll give them a race they'll never forget!"

TV Week is reporting that Ventura is in negotiations with 20th Television to host a half-hour court show that would debut in the fall of 2009.

Bush/Cheney administration and torture

In a May 11, 2009 interview with Larry King, Ventura twice stated that George W. Bush was the worst president of his lifetime, adding "President Obama inherited something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You know? Two wars, an economy that's borderline depression." On the issue of waterboarding, Ventura added:

I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders. ... If it's done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. [It] could do a whole bunch of stuff to you. If it's done wrong orit's torture, Larry. It's torture. Ventura also expressed interest in being appointed ambassador to Cuba should U.S. relations with Cuba continue to improve. On a May 18, 2009 appearance on The View, Ventura asked Elisabeth Hasselbeck if waterboarding is acceptable, why were not Oklahoma City bombers, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols waterboarded. "We only seem to waterboard Muslims." Comparing the waterboarding of detainees to the North Vietnamese torture of American P.O.W.s, Ventura asserted, "We created our own Hanoi Hilton in Guantánamo. That's our Hanoi Hilton."

Questions regarding 9/11

In April and May 2008, Jesse Ventura, in several radio interviews for his new book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, expressed concerns about what he described as some of the unanswered questions of the September 11 attacks. His remarks about the possibility that the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives were also repeated in newspaper and television stories following some of the interviews.

Ventura was interviewed on the Alex Jones radio show on April 2, 2008 where he said that he felt that many unanswered questions remain, and he believes that World Trade Center Building 7, which was not struck by a plane, collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11 in a manner which resembled a controlled demolition Ventura stated:

}}

He also states the Twin Towers appeared to be pulverized to dust, that they fell at virtually free-fall speed, and that no other massive steel-framed buildings had ever collapsed in this manner due to fire before.

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura

In August 2009, it was announced that Ventura would host TruTV's new show Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. "Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces," truTV said in a statement. On the program, which debuted on December 2, 2009, Ventura travels the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory's validity. According to TruTV, the first episode drew 1.6 million viewers, a record for a new series on the network.

American Conspiracies

American Conspiracies is a book Ventura wrote with Dick Russell, published by Skyhorse Publishing in 2010 which discusses conspiracy theories related to several notable events in United States history.

Personal life

In 1975, Ventura married his wife Terry. The couple have two grown children: a son, Tyrel (b. 1980), who is a movie and television director and producer, and a daughter, Jade (b. 1983).

During his wrestling days, Ventura used anabolic steroids. He admitted this after retiring from competition, and went on to make public service announcements and appear in printed ads and on posters warning young people about the potential dangers and potential health risks of abusing steroids.

In 2002, Ventura was hospitalized for a severe blood clot in his lungs, the same kind of injury that ended his wrestling career.

Currently, Ventura and his wife live in Mexico, "There are no newspapers down where I live. Where I live, I'm an hour from pavement and an hour from electricity..I'm completely off the grid."

Religion

In a Playboy interview, he said, "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business." In his 1999 best-selling memoir I Ain't Got Time to Bleed, Ventura responded to the controversy sparked by these remarks by elaborating on his views concerning religion: "I’d like to clarify [my comments published in Playboy] about religious people being weak-minded. I didn’t mean all religious people. I don’t have any problem with the vast majority of religious folks. I count myself among them, more or less. But I believe because it makes sense to me, not because I think it can be proven. There are lots of people out there who think they know the truth about God and religion, but does anybody really know for sure? That’s why the founding fathers built freedom of religious belief into the structure of this nation, so that everybody could make up their minds for themselves. But I do have a problem with the people who think they have some right to try to impose their beliefs on others. I hate what the fundamentalist fanatics are doing to our country. It seems as though, if everybody doesn’t accept their version of reality, that somehow invalidates it for them. Everybody must believe the same things they do. That’s what I find weak and destructive."

Ventura endorsed equal rights for religious minorities, as well as people who don't believe in God, by declaring July 4, 2002, "Indivisible Day". Ventura proclaimed October 13–19, 2002 as "Christian Heritage Week" in Minnesota.

In 2010, regarding the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, Ventura argued, "Excuse me, the Constitution says they can do it, it ends there! You cannot subject the Constitution to a popularity poll," in reference to the opposition of the mosque. In a separate interview on CNN, when told that the victims' families needed to be respected, Ventura replied, "But what's the problem? I mean, Timothy McVeigh, I assume, was a Christian and he did an act of terrorism. Would they then remove all Christian churches from around Oklahoma City, because it happened to have been a Christian that did it? You know, it's ridiculous."

Electoral history

1998 election for Governor

*Jesse Ventura (Ref.), 37%

*Norm Coleman (R), 34%

*Hubert H. Humphrey III (DFL), 28%

Books

I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up ISBN 978-0-451-20086-0

Do I Stand Alone?: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals ISBN 978-0-7434-0587-4

Jesse Ventura Tells It Like It Is: America's Most Outspoken Governor Speaks Out About Government (co-authored with Heron Marquez) ISBN 978-0-8225-0385-9

Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (co-authored with Dick Russell) ISBN 978-1-60239-273-1

American Conspiracies (March 2010, co-authored with Dick Russell) ISBN 978-1602398023

Notes

References

deFiebre, Conrad. "Record-high job approval for Ventura; Many Minnesotans like his style, don't mind moonlighting." Star Tribune 22 July 1999: 1A+.

deFiebre, Conrad. "Using body language, Ventura backs Kerry." Star Tribune 23 October 2004: 1A+.

Kahn, Joseph P. "The Body Politic." The Boston Globe 25 February 2004. Accessed April 28, 2004.

Olson, Rochelle and Bob von Sternberg. "GOP demands equal time; Wellstone aide apologizes; Ventura upset." Minneapolis Star-Tribune 31 October 2002: 1A+.

External links

WWE Hall of Fame Profile

Ventura "on the issues"

Analysis of Jesse Ventura's Playboy interview by Aubrey Immelman

Jesse Ventura – Media Man Australia profile

Election Of Bonapartist Figure Ventura In Minnesota Is Danger To Working People – article in The Militant 1998.

Radiotapes.com Recordings of Jesse Ventura for Governor commercials from 1998 (scroll down to Misc Recordings).

Larry King Live: Jesse Ventura CNN April 1, 2008

"Jesse's back! New Ventura book 'Revolution' will cover political waterfront" from Minnpost.com

The Jesse Ventura Forums

Jesse Ventura on Wrestling-Radio.com

Jesse Ventura interview, Diaday.com

Jesse Ventura on The Young Turks Show.

Category:Actors from Minnesota Category:American actor-politicians Category:American athlete-politicians Category:American film actors Category:American memoirists Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War Category:American professional wrestlers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television sports announcers Category:American actors of German descent Category:American sportspeople of German descent Category:Governors of Minnesota Category:Mayors of places in Minnesota Category:Mongols (motorcycle club) Category:Radio personalities from Minneapolis, Minnesota Category:Professional wrestling announcers Category:Reform Party of the United States of America politicians Category:Minnesota Vikings broadcasters Category:Tampa Bay Buccaneers broadcasters Category:United States Navy sailors Category:WWE Hall of Fame Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Independence Party of Minnesota politicians Category:American sportspeople of Slovak descent Category:American politicians of Slovak descent Category:American actors of Slovak descent

{| style="float:right;" |

Name	Joe Biden
Office	47th Vice President of the United States
Term start	January 20, 2009
Predecessor	Dick Cheney
President	Barack Obama
Order2	Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Term start2	January 4, 2007
Term end2	January 3, 2009
Predecessor2	Richard Lugar
Successor2	John Kerry
Term start3	June 6, 2001
Term end3	January 3, 2003
Predecessor3	Jesse Helms
Successor3	Richard Lugar
Term start4	January 3, 2001
Term end4	January 20, 2001
Predecessor4	Jesse Helms
Successor4	Jesse Helms
Order5	Chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus
Term start5	January 4, 2007
Term end5	January 3, 2009
Predecessor5	Chuck Grassley
Successor5	Dianne Feinstein
Order6	Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Term start6	January 6, 1987
Term end6	January 3, 1995
Predecessor6	Strom Thurmond
Successor6	Orrin Hatch
Jr/sr7	United States Senator
State7	Delaware
Term start7	January 3, 1973
Term end7	January 15, 2009
Predecessor7	Caleb Boggs
Successor7	Ted Kaufman
Office8	Member of the New Castle County Council
Term start8	January 4, 1971
Term end8	January 3, 1973
Birth date	November 20, 1942
Birth place	Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Spouse	Neilia Hunter (1966–1972)Jill Jacobs (1977–present)
Children	Beau BidenRobert BidenNaomi BidenAshley Biden
Party	Democratic Party
Residence	Number One Observatory Circle (Official)Wilmington, Delaware (Private)
Alma mater	University of DelawareSyracuse University College of Law
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature	Joe Biden Signature.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Website	whitehouse.gov/vicepresident}}

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Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (; born November 20, 1942) is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. He was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 14th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the race. Barack Obama selected Biden to be the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Biden is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to become Vice President of the United States. As Vice President, Biden has been heavily involved in Obama's decision-making process and has held the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package aimed at counteracting the late-2000s recession.

Early life and education

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Finnegan (1917–2010). He was the first of four siblings He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens. His great-grandfather, Edward F. Blewitt, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.

Biden's father had been very well-off earlier in his life, but had suffered several business reverses by the time Biden was born, and for several years the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans. In 1953, the Biden family moved to an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for a few years before moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont, where he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year. He played on the baseball team as well. He played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team, He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965,

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.

Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War. In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager. Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".

Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Joe Biden becoming a teetotaler. Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties; he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.

Family and early political career

On August 27, 1966, Biden, then a law student, married Neilia Hunter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York and had attended Syracuse University. They had met in 1964 while on spring break in the Bahamas, and he had overcome her parents' initial reluctance for her to be dating a Roman Catholic. They had three children, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971). He ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburban area.

His entry into the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware presented Biden with a unique circumstance. Longtime Delaware political figure and Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell, Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support. No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs. the small size of the state and lack of a major media market made the approach feasible. Biden's two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries. The accident left Biden filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight ... I had not known I was capable of such rage ... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."

To be at home every day for his young sons, Biden began the practice of commuting every day by Amtrak train for 1½ hours each way from his home in the Wilmington suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do throughout his Senate career. A single father for five years, Biden left standing orders that he be interrupted in the Senate at any time if his sons called. his younger son, Hunter, became a Washington attorney and lobbyist.

In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania and would become a teacher in Delaware. Biden would credit her with renewing his interest in both politics and life. On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs married.

United States Senator

John F. Kennedy once occupied the desk in the U.S. Senate.]] and President of Egypt Anwar El Sadat after signing Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, 1979]] in the Oval Office]] When Biden took office on January 3, 1973, at age 30 (the minimum age to become a U.S. Senator), he became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. In 1974, freshman Senator Biden was named one of the 200 Faces for the Future by Time magazine.

Biden was subsequently elected to six additional terms, in the elections of 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008, usually getting about 60 percent of the vote. Biden spent 28 years as a junior senator due to the two-year seniority of his Republican colleague William V. Roth, Jr.. After Roth was defeated for re-election by Tom Carper in 2000, Biden became Delaware's senior senator. He then became the longest-serving senator in Delaware history. In May 1999, Biden set the mark for youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes.

In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to correct an intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking; the situation was serious enough that a priest had administered last rites at the hospital. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, which represented a major complication. The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden from his duties in the U.S. Senate for seven months. Biden has had no recurrences or effects from the aneurysms since then. At the close, Biden won praise for conducting the proceedings fairly and with good humor and courage, as his 1988 presidential campaign collapsed in the middle of the hearings. Rejecting some of the less intellectually honest arguments that other Bork opponents were making, Thomas later wrote that despite earlier private assurances from the senator, Biden's questions had been akin to a beanball. The nomination came out of the committee without a recommendation, with Biden opposed. Biden said he was striving to preserve Thomas's right to privacy and the decency of the hearings. Congress reauthorized VAWA in 2000 and 2005. Biden has said, "I consider the Violence Against Women Act the single most significant legislation that I’ve crafted during my 35-year tenure in the Senate." In 2004 and 2005, Biden enlisted major American technology companies in diagnosing the problems of the Austin, Texas-based National Domestic Violence Hotline, and to donate equipment and expertise to it in a successful effort to improve its services.

Biden was critical of the actions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Lewinsky scandal investigations, and said "it's going to be a cold day in hell" before another Independent Counsel is granted the same powers. Biden voted to acquit on both charges during the impeachment of President Clinton.

As chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus, Biden wrote the laws that created the U.S. "Drug Czar", who oversees and coordinates national drug control policy. In April 2003, he introduced the controversial Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act, also known as the RAVE Act. He continued to work to stop the spread of "date rape drugs" such as flunitrazepam, and drugs such as Ecstasy and Ketamine. In 2004, he worked to pass a bill outlawing steroids like androstenedione, the drug used by many baseball players.

Foreign Relations Committee

Biden was also a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1997, he became the ranking minority member and chaired the committee from June 2001 through 2003. When Democrats re-took control of the Senate following the 2006 elections, Biden again assumed the top spot on the committee in 2007. He collaborated effectively with important Republican Senate figures such as Richard Lugar and Jesse Helms and sometimes went against elements of his own party. A partial list covering this time showed Biden meeting with some 150 leaders from nearly 60 countries and international organizations. Biden held frequent hearings as chair of the committee, as well as holding many subcommittee hearings during the three times he chaired the Subcommittee on European Affairs. When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I Treaty loosely in order to allow the Strategic Defense Initiative to proceed, Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty's terms.

Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serbian abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991. Biden related that he told Milošević, "I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one." In 1998, Congressional Quarterly named Biden one of "Twelve Who Made a Difference" for playing a lead role in several foreign policy matters, including NATO enlargement and the successful passage of bills to streamline foreign affairs agencies and punish religious persecution overseas. siding with 45 of the 55 Democratic senators; he said the U.S. was bearing almost all the burden in the anti-Iraq coalition. Biden was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying "Whatever it takes, we should do it." The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Senator Richard Lugar to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts. In October 2002, Biden voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, justifying the Iraq War. In November 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq. Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way": federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions. In September 2007, a non-binding resolution passed the Senate endorsing such a scheme. In May 2008, Biden sharply criticized President George W. Bush for his speech to Israel's Knesset in which he suggested that some Democrats were acting in the same way some Western leaders did when they appeased Hitler in the runup to World War II. Biden stated: "This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement." Biden later apologized for using the expletive. Biden further stated, "Since when does this administration think that if you sit down, you have to eliminate the word 'no' from your vocabulary?"

Delaware matters

Biden was a familiar figure to his Delaware constituency, by virtue of his daily train commuting from there,

In 1975, Biden broke from liberal orthodoxy when he took legislative action to limit desegregation busing.

Since 1991, Biden has served as an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law, Delaware's only law school, where he has taught a seminar on constitutional law.

Biden was a sponsor of bankruptcy legislation during the 2000s, which was sought by MBNA, one of Delaware's largest companies, and other credit card issuers.

Biden sits on the board of advisors of the Close Up Foundation, which brings high school students to Washington for interaction with legislators on Capitol Hill.

Characteristics as senator

With a net worth between $59,000 and $366,000, and almost no outside income or investment income, he was consistently ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the Senate. Biden stated that he was listed as the second poorest member in Congress, a distinction that he was not proud of, but attributed to being elected early in his career. Biden realized early in his senatorial career how vulnerable poorer public officials are to offers of financial contributions in exchange for policy support, and he pushed campaign finance reform measures during his first term. He has been a strong speaker and debater and a frequent and effective guest on the Sunday morning talk shows. According to political analyst Mark Halperin, he has shown "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things"; as permitted by Delaware state law. On November 4, 2008, Biden was re-elected as senator, in addition to winning the vice presidency.

Having won both races, Biden made a point of holding off his resignation from the Senate so that he could be sworn in for his seventh term on January 6, 2009. He became the youngest senator ever to be sworn in for a seventh full term, and said, "In all my life, the greatest honor bestowed upon me has been serving the people of Delaware as their United States senator." Biden resigned from the Senate later that day; in emotional farewell remarks on the Senate floor, where he had spent most of his adult life, Biden said, "Every good thing I have seen happen here, every bold step taken in the 36-plus years I have been here, came not from the application of pressure by interest groups, but through the maturation of personal relationships."

Delaware's Democratic governor, Ruth Ann Minner, announced on November 24, 2008, that she would appoint Biden's longtime senior adviser Ted Kaufman to succeed Biden in the Senate. Biden's son Beau ruled himself out of the 2008 selection process due to his impending tour in Iraq with the Delaware Army National Guard. He was a possible candidate for the 2010 special election, but in early 2010 said he would not run for the seat.

Political positions

A method that political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Biden has a lifetime liberal 72 percent score from the ADA through 2004, while the ACU awarded Biden a lifetime conservative rating of 13 percent through 2008. Using another metric, Biden has a lifetime average liberal score of 77.5 percent, according to a National Journal analysis that places him ideologically among the center of Senate Democrats. The Almanac of American Politics rates congressional votes as liberal or conservative on the political spectrum, in three policy areas: economic, social, and foreign. For 2005–2006, Biden's average ratings were as follows: the economic rating was 80 percent liberal and 13 percent conservative, the social rating was 78 percent liberal and 18 percent conservative, and the foreign rating was 71 percent liberal and 25 percent conservative. This has not changed much over time; his liberal ratings in the mid-1980s were also in the 70–80 percent range. Biden received a 91 percent voting record from the National Education Association (NEA) showing a pro-teacher union voting record. Biden opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and supports governmental funding to find new energy sources. Biden believes action must be taken on global warming. He co-sponsored the Sense of the Senate resolution calling on the United States to be a part of the United Nations climate negotiations and the Boxer-Sanders Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, the most stringent climate bill in the United States Senate. Biden cites high health care and energy costs as two major threats to the prosperity of American businesses, and believes that addressing these issues will improve American economic competitiveness. Biden was given a 100 percent approval rating from AFL-CIO indicating a heavily pro-union voting record. Biden is opposed to the privatization of Social Security and was given an 89 percent approval rating from the Alliance for Retired Americans (ARA), an organization of retired union members.

Presidential campaigns

Biden has twice run for the Democratic nomination for President, first in 1988, and again in 2008. He first considered running in 1984, after he gained notice for giving speeches to party audiences that simultaneously scolded and encouraged Democrats. He chose not to run in 1992 in part because he had voted against the resolution authorizing the Gulf War. In May 2004, Biden urged Republican Senator John McCain to run as vice president with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, saying the cross-party ticket would help heal the "vicious rift" in U.S. politics. During this time, Biden was also widely discussed as a possible Secretary of State in a Democratic administration.

1988

In 1987, Biden ran as a Democratic presidential candidate, formally declaring his candidacy at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987. When the campaign began, Biden was considered a potentially strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability on the stump, his appeal to Baby Boomers, his high profile position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his fundraising appeal. Biden received considerable attention in the summer of 1986 when he excoriated Secretary of State George P. Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the Reagan administration's support of South Africa, which continued to practice the apartheid system.

By August 1987, Biden's campaign, whose messaging was confused due to staff rivalries, had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis and Dick Gephardt, although he had still raised more funds than all candidates but Dukakis, and was seeing an upturn in Iowa polls. In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that had been made by Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party. Kinnock’s speech included the lines:

"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?"

While Biden’s speech included the lines:

"I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Then pointing to his wife in the audience] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?"

Though Biden had cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation many times before, he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 Iowa State Fair debate in question or in another appearance. While political speeches often appropriate ideas and language from each other, Biden's use came under more scrutiny because he somewhat distorted his own family's background to match Kinnock's.

The Kinnock and school revelations were magnified by the limited amount of other news about the nomination race at the time, when most of the public were not yet paying attention to any of the campaigns; Biden thus fell into what The Washington Post writer Paul Taylor described as that year's trend, a "trial by media ordeal". Biden lacked a strong demographic or political group of support to help him survive the crisis. He withdrew from the nomination race on September 23, 1987, saying his candidacy had been overrun by "the exaggerated shadow" of his past mistakes. After Biden withdrew from the race, it was revealed that the Dukakis campaign had secretly made a video highlighting the Biden–Kinnock comparison and distributed it to news outlets. Also later in 1987, the Delaware Supreme Court's Board of Professional Responsibility cleared Biden of the law school plagiarism charges regarding his standing as a lawyer, saying Biden had "not violated any rules".

2008

house party, July 2007]] Biden declared his candidacy for president on January 31, 2007, although he had discussed running for months prior, and first made a formal announcement to Tim Russert on Meet the Press on January 7, stating he would "be the best Biden I can be." In January 2006, Delaware newspaper columnist Harry F. Themal wrote that Biden "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party." Themal concludes that this is the position Biden desires, and that in a campaign "he plans to stress the dangers to the security of the average American, not just from the terrorist threat, but from the lack of health assistance, crime, and energy dependence on unstable parts of the world." Biden rejected the notion of accepting the position of U.S. Secretary of State, focusing only on the presidency. At a 2007 campaign event, Biden said, "I know a lot of my opponents out there say I'd be a great Secretary of State. Seriously, every one of them. Do you watch any of the debates? 'Joe's right, Joe's right, Joe's right.'" Other candidates' comments that "Joe is right" in the Democratic debates were converted into a Biden campaign theme and ad. In mid-2007, Biden stressed his foreign policy expertise compared to Obama's, saying of the latter, "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." Biden also said that Obama was copying some of his foreign policy ideas. Biden was noted for his one-liners on the campaign trail, saying of Republican then-frontrunner Rudy Giuliani at the October 30, 2007, debate in Philadelphia, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11." Overall, Biden's debate performances were an effective mixture of humor and sharp and surprisingly disciplined comments. This comment undermined his campaign as soon as it began and significantly damaged his fund-raising capabilities; it later took second place on Time magazine's list of Top 10 Campaign Gaffes for 2007. Biden had earlier been criticized in July 2006 for a remark he made about his support among Indian Americans: "I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." Biden later said the remark was not intended to be derogatory.

Overall, Biden had difficulty raising funds, struggled to draw people to his rallies, and failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; he never rose above single digits in the national polls of the Democratic candidates. In the initial contest on January 3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less than one percent of the state delegates. Biden withdrew from the race that evening, saying "There is nothing sad about tonight.... I feel no regret."

Despite the lack of success, Biden's stature in the political world rose as the result of his campaign. and Obama having viewed Biden as garrulous and patronizing. Now, having gotten to know each other during 2007, Obama appreciated Biden's campaigning style and appeal to working class voters, and Biden was convinced that Obama was "the real deal". Biden declined Obama's first request to vet him for the vice presidential slot, fearing the vice presidency would represent a loss in status and voice from his senate position, but subsequently changed his mind. In early August, Obama and Biden met in secret to discuss a possible vice-presidential relationship, The New York Times reported that the strategy behind the choice reflected a desire to fill out the ticket with someone who has foreign policy and national security experience—and not to help the ticket win a swing state or to emphasize Obama's "change" message. Other observers pointed out Biden's appeal to middle class and blue-collar voters, as well as his willingness to aggressively challenge Republican nominee John McCain in a way that Obama seemed uncomfortable doing at times. In accepting Obama's offer, Biden ruled out to him the possibility of running for president again in 2016

, while presidential nominee Barack Obama listens]] in Denver, Colorado.]] After his selection as a vice presidential candidate, Biden was criticized by his own Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington Bishop Michael Saltarelli over his stance on abortion, which goes against the church's pro-life beliefs and teachings. The diocese confirmed that even if elected vice president, Biden would not be allowed to speak at Catholic schools. Biden was soon barred from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his original hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because of his support for abortion rights; however, Biden did continue to receive Communion at his local Delaware parish. Biden said he believed that life began at conception but that he would not impose his personal religious views on others. Bishop Saltarelli had previously stated regarding stances similar to Biden's: "No one today would accept this statement from any public servant: ‘I am personally opposed to human slavery and racism but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena.’ Likewise, none of us should accept this statement from any public servant: ‘I am personally opposed to abortion but will not impose my personal conviction in the legislative arena.'" During one week in September 2008, for instance, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Biden was only included in five percent of the news coverage of the race, far less than for the other three candidates on the tickets. Biden nevertheless focused on campaigning in economically challenged areas of swing states and trying to win over blue-collar Democrats, especially those who had supported Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On October 2, 2008, Biden participated in the campaign's one vice presidential debate with Palin. Polling from CNN, Fox and CBS found that while Palin exceeded many voters' expectations, Biden had won the debate overall. On October 5, Biden suspended campaign events for a few days after the death of his mother-in-law. During the final days of the campaign, Biden focused on less-populated, older, less well-off areas of battleground states, especially in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where polling indicated he was popular and where Obama had not campaigned or performed well in the Democratic primaries. He also campaigned in some normally Republican states, as well as in areas with large Catholic populations. Privately, Obama was frustrated by Biden's remarks, saying "How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?" Publicly, Obama strategist David Axelrod said that any unexpected comments had been outweighed by Biden's high popularity ratings. Nationally, Biden had a 60 percent favorability rating in a Pew Research Center poll, compared to Palin's 44 percent. The Obama-Biden ticket won 365 Electoral College votes to McCain-Palin's 173, and had a 53–46 percent edge in the nationwide popular vote.

Vice Presidency

at Number One Observatory Circle, November 13, 2008]] , January 20, 2009]] Biden became the 47th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 2009, when he was inaugurated alongside President Barack Obama. He succeeded Dick Cheney. Biden is the first United States Vice President from Delaware and the first Roman Catholic to attain that office. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens administered the oath of office to Biden.

As Biden headed to Delaware's Return Day tradition following the November 2008 election, and the transition process to an Obama administration began, Biden said he was in daily meetings with Obama and that McCain was still his friend. The U.S. Secret Service codename given to Biden is "Celtic", referencing his Irish roots.

Biden chose veteran Democratic lawyer and aide Ron Klain to be his vice-presidential chief of staff, and Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney to be his director of communications. Biden intended to eliminate some of the explicit roles assumed by the vice presidency of Cheney, who had established himself as an autonomous power center. Biden said he had been closely involved in all the cabinet appointments that were made during the transition. As his last act as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Biden went on a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan during the second week of January 2009, meeting with the leadership of those countries.

In the early months of the Obama administration, Biden assumed the role of an important behind-the-scenes counselor. One role was to adjudicate disputes between Obama's "team of rivals". His skeptical voice was still considered valuable within the administration, by this time he had become the administration's point man in delivering messages to Iraqi leadership about expected progress in the country. Biden was in charge of the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package intended to help counteract the ongoing recession, and stressed that only worthy projects should get funding. By September 2009, Biden was satisfied that no major instances of waste or corruption had occurred. The remark revived Biden's reputation for gaffes, and led to a spate of late-night television jokes themed on him being a loose-talking buffoon. In the face of persistently rising unemployment through July 2009, Biden acknowledged that the administration had "misread how bad the economy was" but maintained confidence that the stimulus package would create many more jobs once the pace of expenditures picked up. The same month, Secretary of State Clinton quickly disavowed Biden's remarks disparaging Russia as a power, but despite any missteps, Biden still retained Obama's confidence and was increasingly influential within the administration. On March 23, 2010, a microphone picked up Biden telling the president that his signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was "a big fucking deal" during live national news telecasts. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replied via Twitter "And yes Mr. Vice President, you're right..." Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett said that Biden's loose talk "[is] part of what makes the vice president so endearing ... We wouldn't change him one bit."

Biden's most important role within the administration has been to question assumptions and playing a contrarian role. Another senior Obama advisor said Biden "is always prepared to be the skunk at the family picnic to make sure we are as intellectually honest as possible."

Biden campaigned heavily for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, maintaining an attitude of optimism in the face of general predictions of large-scale losses for the party. Following large-scale Republican gains in the elections and the departure of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Biden's past relationships with Republicans in Congress became more important. He led the administration effort to gain Senate approval for the New START treaty. Saint Joseph's University (1981), Widener University School of Law (2000), Emerson College (2003), his alma mater the University of Delaware (2004), Suffolk University Law School (2005), and his other alma mater Syracuse University (2009).

Biden received the Chancellor Medal from his alma mater, Syracuse University, in 1980. In 2005, he received the George Arents Pioneer Medal—Syracuse's highest alumni award

In 2008, Biden received the Best of Congress Award, for "improving the American quality of life through family-friendly work policies," from Working Mother magazine. Also in 2008, Biden shared with fellow Senator Richard Lugar the Hilal-i-Pakistan award from the Government of Pakistan, "in recognition of their consistent support for Pakistan." In 2009, Biden received The Golden Medal of Freedom award from Kosovo, that region's highest award, for his vocal support for their independence in the late 1990s.

Biden is an inductee of the Delaware Volunteer Firemen's Association Hall of Fame. He was named to the Little League Hall of Excellence in 2009.

Almanac

U.S. Senators are popularly elected and take office January 3 for a six year term (except when appointed to fill existing vacancies).

{|class="wikitable" style="width:100%; text-align: center;" |- ! colspan="7" | Public offices |- ! Office ! Type ! Location ! Began office ! Ended office ! notes |- |County Council |Legislature |Wilmington |January 4, 1971 |January 3, 1973 |New Castle County |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 1973 |January 3, 1979 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 1979 |January 3, 1985 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 1985 |January 3, 1991 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 1991 |January 3, 1997 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 1997 |January 3, 2003 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 3, 2003 |January 3, 2009 | |- |U.S. Senator |Legislature |Washington, D.C. |January 6, 2009 |January 15, 2009 |resigned to be sworn in as Vice President |- |Vice President |Executive |Washington, D.C. |January 20, 2009 | — || — |}

{|class="wikitable" style="width:100%; text-align: center;" |- ! colspan="7" style="background:#ccf;"| United States Congressional service |- ! Dates ! Congress ! Majority ! President ! Committees ! Class/District |- |1973–1975 |93rd |Democratic |Richard M. NixonGerald R. Ford |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1975–1977 |94th |Democratic |Gerald R. Ford |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1977–1979 |95th |Democratic |Jimmy Carter |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1979–1981 |96th |Democratic |Jimmy Carter |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1981–1983 |97th |Republican |Ronald W. Reagan |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1983–1985 |98th |Republican |Ronald W. Reagan |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1985–1987 |99th |Republican |Ronald W. Reagan |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1987–1989 |100th |Democratic |Ronald W. Reagan |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1989–1991 |101st |Democratic |George H. W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1991–1993 |102nd |Democratic |George H. W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1993–1995 |103rd |Democratic |William J. Clinton |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1995–1997 |104th |Republican |William J. Clinton |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1997–1999 |105th |Republican |William J. Clinton |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |1999–2001 |106th |Republican |William J. Clinton |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |2001–2003 |107th |RepublicanDemocratic |George W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |2003–2005 |108th |Republican |George W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |2005–2007 |109th |Republican |George W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |2007–2009 |110th |Democratic |George W. Bush |Judiciary, Foreign Relations |class 2 |- |2009 |111th |Democratic |George W. Bush | |class 2 |} Even though at the time he was the Vice President-elect, Biden was sworn in for his seventh term in office as the senior senator from Delaware on January 6, 2009. Fourteen days later he was sworn in as Vice President of the United States. Although the 111th Congress' President is Barack Obama, Biden did not serve as a Senator under Obama due to him serving as Vice President instead.

{|class="wikitable" style="width:100%; text-align: center;" |- ! colspan="12" | Election results |- !Year !Office !Election !Votes for Biden !% !Opponent !Party !Votes !% |- |1970 |County Councilman |General | |10,573 | |55% | |Lawrence T. Messick | |Republican | |8,192 | |43% |-|- |1972 |U.S. Senator |General | |116,006 | |50% | |J. Caleb Boggs | |Republican | |112,844 | |49% |- |1978 |U.S. Senator |General | |93,930 | |58% | |James H. Baxter, Jr. | |Republican | |66,479 | |41% |- |1984 |U.S. Senator |General | |147,831 | |60% | |John M. Burris | |Republican | |98,101 | |40% |- |1990 |U.S. Senator |General | |112,918 | |63% | |M. Jane Brady | |Republican | |64,554 | |36% |- |1996 |U.S. Senator |General | |165,465 | |60% | |Raymond J. Clatworthy | |Republican | |105,088 | |38% |- |2002 |U.S. Senator |General | |135,253 | |58% | |Raymond J. Clatworthy | |Republican | |94,793 | |41% |- |2008 |U.S. Senator |General | |257,484 | |65% | |Christine O'Donnell | |Republican | |140,584 | |35% |- |2008 |Vice President |General | |69,456,897 | |53% | |Sarah Palin | |Republican | |59,934,786 | |46% |}

Writings by Biden

, January 2007 ]]

Also paperback edition, Random House 2008, ISBN 978-0-8129-7621-2.

See also

USA Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia

References

Books referenced

External links

White House biography

Vice Presidential campaign website, via barackobama.com

Senate campaign website (archived)

In the Words of Joe Biden - slideshow by Life magazine

Category:1942 births Category:21st-century vice presidents of the United States Category:American legal scholars Category:American politicians of Irish descent Category:American Roman Catholic politicians Category:Delaware Democrats Category:Delaware Fighting Blue Hens football players Category:Delaware lawyers Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:Democratic Party Vice Presidents of the United States Category:Living people Category:People from New Castle County, Delaware Category:People from Scranton, Pennsylvania Category:Recipients of the Order of the Three Stars, 2nd Class Category:Syracuse University College of Law alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 1988 Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:United States Senators from Delaware Category:United States vice-presidential candidates, 2008 Category:University of Delaware alumni Category:Vice Presidents of the United States Category:Widener University faculty

Name	Cass Sunstein
Birth date	September 21, 1954
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Fields	Constitutional law, Administrative Law
Workplaces	Harvard Law School
Alma mater	Harvard CollegeHarvard Law School
Known for	choice architecture, cyberbalkanization, animal rights
Signature

Cass R. Sunstein (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.

Early life and education

Sunstein was born on September 21, 1954 into a Jewish-American family. He graduated in 1972 from the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1975 from Harvard College, where he was a member of the varsity squash team and the Harvard Lampoon. In 1978, Sunstein received a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was executive editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and part of a winning team of the Ames Moot Court Competition. He served as a law clerk first for Justice Benjamin Kaplan of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (1978–1979) and later for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court (1979–1980).

Career

Sunstein worked in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department as an attorney-advisor (1980–1981) and then took a job as an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School (1981–1983), where he also became an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science (1983–1985). In 1985, Sunstein was made a full professor of both political science and law; in 1988, he was named the Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School and Department of Political Science. The university honored him in 1993 with its "distinguished service" accolade, permanently changing his title to Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law School and Department of Political Science.

Sunstein was the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in the fall of 1986 and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in the spring 1987, winter 2005, and spring 2007 terms. He teaches courses in constitutional law, administrative law, and environmental law, as well as the required first-year course "Elements of the Law", which is an introduction to legal reasoning, legal theory, and the interdisciplinary study of law, including law and economics. In the fall of 2008 he joined the faculty of Harvard Law School and began serving as the director of its Program on Risk Regulation:

The Program on Risk Regulation will focus on how law and policy deal with the central hazards of the 21st century. Anticipated areas of study include terrorism, climate change, occupational safety, infectious diseases, natural disasters, and other low-probability, high-consequence events. Sunstein plans to rely on significant student involvement in the work of this new program. That news generated controversy among progressive legal scholars and environmentalists.

In his research on risk regulation, Professor Sunstein is known for developing, together with Timur Kuran, the concept of availability cascades, wherein popular discussion of an idea is self-feeding and causes individuals to overweight its importance. Professor Sunstein's books include After the Rights Revolution (1990), The Partial Constitution (1993), Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (1993), Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (1996), Free Markets and Social Justice (1997), One Case at a Time (1999), Risk and Reason (2002), Why Societies Need Dissent (2003), Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (2005), Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America (2005), Are Judges Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary (2005), Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (2006), and, co-authored with Richard Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008).

Sunstein's 2006 book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, explores methods for aggregating information; it contains discussions of prediction markets, open-source software, and wikis. Sunstein's 2004 book, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever, advocates the Second Bill of Rights proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Among these rights are a right to an education, a right to a home, a right to health care, and a right to protection against monopolies; Sunstein argues that the Second Bill of Rights has had a large international impact and should be revived in the United States. His 2001 book, Republic.com, argued that the Internet may weaken democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups that share their own views and experiences, and thus cut themselves off from any information that might challenge their beliefs, a phenomenon known as cyberbalkanization.

Sunstein co-authored Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale University Press, 2008) with economist Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. Nudge discusses how public and private organizations can help people make better choices in their daily lives. Thaler and Sunstein argue that

People often make poor choices – and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself.

The ideas in the book proved popular with politicians such as U.S. President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and the British Conservative Party in general. The "Nudge" idea has not been without criticism. Dr Tammy Boyce of public health foundation The King's Fund has said:

We need to move away from short-term, politically motivated initiatives such as the 'nudging people' idea, which are not based on any good evidence and don't help people make long-term behaviour changes.

Sunstein is a contributing editor to The New Republic and The American Prospect and is a frequent witness before congressional committees. He played an active role in opposing the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998.

In recent years, Sunstein has been a guest writer on The Volokh Conspiracy blog as well as the blogs of law professors Lawrence Lessig (Harvard) and Jack Balkin (Yale). He is considered so prolific a writer that in 2007, an article in the legal publication The Green Bag coined the concept of a "Sunstein number" reflecting degrees of separation between various legal authors and Sunstein, paralleling the Erdős numbers sometimes assigned to mathematician authors.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1992) and the American Law Institute (since 1990).

Sunstein's confirmation had been long blocked because of controversy over allegations about his political and academic views. On September 9, 2009, the Senate voted for cloture on Sunstein's nomination as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget. The motion passed in a 63–35 vote. The Senate confirmed Sunstein on September 10, 2009 in a 57–40 vote.

Views

Legal philosophy

Sunstein is a proponent of judicial minimalism, arguing that judges should focus primarily on deciding the case at hand, and avoid making sweeping changes to the law or decisions that have broad-reaching effects. Some view him as liberal, despite Sunstein's public support for George W. Bush's judicial nominees Michael W. McConnell and John G. Roberts, as well as providing strong theoretical support for the death penalty. Much of his work also brings behavioral economics to bear on law, suggesting that the "rational actor" model will sometimes produce an inadequate understanding of how people will respond to legal intervention.

In recent years Sunstein has collaborated with academics who have training in behavioral economics, most notably Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, and Christine M. Jolls, to show how the theoretical assumptions of law and economics should be modified by new empirical findings about how people actually behave.

The interpretation of federal law should be made not by judges but by the beliefs and commitments of the U.S. president and those around him, according to Sunstein. "There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him," argued Sunstein.

Sunstein (along with his coauthor Richard Thaler) has elaborated the theory of libertarian paternalism. In arguing for this theory, he counsels thinkers/academics/politicians to embrace the findings of behavioral economics as applied to law, maintaining freedom of choice while also steering people's decisions in directions that will make their lives go better. With Thaler, he coined the term "choice architect."

Military Commissions

In 2002, at the height of controversy over Bush's creation of military commissions without Congressional approval, Sunstein stepped forward to insist that "[u]nder existing law, President George W. Bush has the legal authority to use military commissions" and that "President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground." Sunstein scorned as "ludicrous" the argument from Law Professor George Fletcher that the Supreme Court would find Bush's military commissions without any legal basis. Four years later—in its Hamdan ruling—the Supreme Court, with Justice Stevens in the majority, held that Bush lacked the legal authority to create military commissions without approval from Congress, i.e., the Court (and Stevens) found Bush lacked exactly the "legal authority" which Sunstein vehemently insisted Bush possessed.

First Amendment

In his book Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech Sunstein says there is a need to reformulate First Amendment law. He thinks that the current formulation, based on Justice Holmes' conception of free speech as a marketplace “disserves the aspirations of those who wrote America’s founding document.” The purpose of this reformulation would be to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” He is concerned by the present “situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,” and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.” He proposes a “New Deal for speech [that] would draw on Justice Brandeis' insistence on the role of free speech in promoting political deliberation and citizenship.” “Every reasonable person believes in animal rights,” he says, continuing that "we might conclude that certain practices cannot be defended and should not be allowed to continue, if, in practice, mere regulation will inevitably be insufficient—and if, in practice, mere regulation will ensure that the level of animal suffering will remain very high."

Sunstein's views on animal rights generated controversy when Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) blocked his appointment to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs by Obama. Chambliss objected to the introduction of Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, a volume edited by Sunstein and his then-partner Martha Nussbaum. On page 11 of the introduction, during a philosophical discussion about whether animals should be thought of as owned by humans, Sunstein notes that personhood need not be conferred upon an animal in order to grant it various legal protections against abuse or cruelty, even including legal standing for suit. For example, under current law, if someone saw their neighbor beating a dog, they currently cannot sue for animal cruelty because they do not have legal standing to do so. Sunstein suggests that granting standing to animals, actionable by other parties, could decrease animal cruelty by increasing the likelihood that animal abuse will be punished.

Taxation

Sunstein has argued, “We should celebrate tax day.” Sunstein argues that since government (in the form of police, fire departments, insured banks, and courts) protects and preserves property and liberty, individuals should happily finance it with their tax dollars:

In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency.

"Conspiracy Theories" and government infiltration

Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled "Conspiracy Theories," in which they wrote, "The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be." They go on to propose that, "the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups", where they suggest, among other tactics, "Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action." who argue that it would violate prohibitions on government propaganda aimed at domestic citizens.

Personal

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Sunstein was married to Lisa Ruddick, whom he met as an undergraduate at Harvard. She is now associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, specializing in British modernism. Their marriage ended not long after the birth of their daughter, Ellyn. He then began seeing Martha Nussbaum, philosopher, classicist, and professor of law at the University of Chicago.

On July 4, 2008, Sunstein married Samantha Power, professor of public policy at Harvard, whom he met when they worked as advisors to Sunstein's friend, and former colleague at the University of Chicago Law School, President Barack Obama, on his presidential campaign. The wedding took place in County Kerry in Power’s native Ireland.

Sunstein had a pet Rhodesian ridgeback, Perry. During the Clinton impeachment hearings, Sunstein grew tired of appearing on news programs, and agreed to appear on Greta Van Susteren's CNN program only if he could bring Perry on the show with him; she agreed. Perry died in the fall of 2008. The University Of Chicago Law School has created the Perry/Sunstein fund in Perry's memory, a scholarship fund for a student with an interest in animal welfare.

Publications

Books

Law and Happiness (The University of Chicago Press 2010) ISBN 9780226676005

On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done (Macmillan Publishers 2009)

Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness with Richard Thaler (Yale University Press, 2008)

Worst-Case Scenarios, (Harvard University Press 2007)

Republic.com 2.0 (Princeton University Press 2007)

Are Judges Political? An Empirical Investigation of the Federal Judiciary with David Schkade, Lisa Ellman, and Andres Sawicki, (Brookings Institution Press 2006)

Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, (Oxford University Press 2006)

The Second Bill of Rights: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever, (Basic Books 2006)

Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America (Basic Books 2005)

Constitutional Law 5th ed. with G. Stone, L.M. Seidman, P. Karlan, and M. Tushnet, (Aspen 2005)

The Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (based on the Seeley Lectures 2004 at Cambridge University), (Cambridge University Press 2005)(Trad. esp.: Leyes de miedo, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores S.A, 2009, ISBN 9788496859616)

The Second Bill of Rights: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever (Basic Books 2004)

Why Societies Need Dissent, (Harvard University Press 2003).

Animal Rights: Current Controversies and New Directions edited with Martha Nussbaum, (Oxford University Press 2004)

Risk and Reason, (Cambridge University Press 2002) (Trad. esp.: Riesgo y razón, Buenos Aires/Madrid, Katz editores S.A, 2006, ISBN 8460983501)

The Cost-Benefit State, (American Bar Association 2002)

Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide with Reid Hastie, John Payne and David Schkade, (University of Chicago Press 2002)

Republic.com, (Princeton University Press 2002)

Administrative Law and Regulatory Policy with Stephen Breyer, Richard B. Stewart, and Matthew Spitzer, (1999; new edition 2002)

Free Markets and Social Justice, (2002)

Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do (Oxford University Press 2001)

The Vote: Bush, Gore & the Supreme Court with Richard Epstein, (University of Chicago Press 2001)

Constitutional Law 4th ed. with Stone, Seidman, and Tushnet, (2001)

Behavioral Law and Economics, (editor, Cambridge University Press 2000)

One Case At A Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court (Harvard University Press 1999)

The Cost of Rights with Stephen Holmes, (1999, W.W. Norton paperback 2000)

Clones and Clones: Facts and Fantasies About Human Cloning with Martha Nussbaum, (W.W. Norton 1998)

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, (Oxford University Press 1996)

Free Markets and Social Justice, (Oxford University Press 1997)

Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech, (The Free Press 1993)

The Partial Constitution, (Harvard University Press 1993)

After the Rights Revolution: Reconceiving the Regulatory State, (Harvard University Press 1990)

Constitutional Law, (Little, Brown & Co. 1st edition 1986; 2d edition 1991; 3d edition 1995)

The Bill of Rights and the Modern State co-editor with Geoffey R. Stone and Richard A. Epstein, (University of Chicago Press 1992)

Feminism and Political Theory, (editor, University of Chicago Press 1990)

See also

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates

Choice architecture

List of U.S. executive branch 'czars'

References

External links

White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs biography

CPAT Articles

Sunstein's articles for The New Republic

Experts Guide profile at The University of Chicago

Faculty profile at The University of Chicago Law School

Cass Sunstein discusses Why Societies Need Dissent, at the Carnegie Council

Sunstein blogging at Balkinization

Sunstein blogging at the Oxford University Press blog

Sunstein on wikipedia

Podcast featuring Sunstein Sunstein discusses Infotopia on EconTalk

Nudge web page

Nudge blog

Video interview, September 2004 The Chicago Judges Project,

Video interview, December 2004 The Greatest Speech of the Century: FDR's Second Bill of Rights

Video Interview/Discussion from June 2008 with Eugene Volokh on Bloggingheads.tv

Video debate with Sunstein and Henry Farrell on Bloggingheads.tv

"Catching up with Cass" interview in the Harvard Law Record

Report on Sunstein's Harvard Law chair lecture reported in the Harvard Law Record

Green nudges: An interview with Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein interview on Grist.org

Sunstein author page and article archive fromThe New York Review of Books

Category:1954 births Category:American bloggers Category:American Jews Category:American legal scholars Category:American legal writers Category:American political writers Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Harvard Law School faculty Category:Harvard Lampoon members Category:Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States Category:Living people Category:University of Chicago faculty Category:Scholars of constitutional law