TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

POLITICAL REFORM

* Tucsonans should decide how city is run - Our view: Local elections should be nonpartisan, but change should be made by voters here, not at the Legislature (Arizona Star)

POLITISOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS

• * Rich and Rick: A Post-Partisan Parable (By: Diana Butler Bass, Beliefnet) The challenge for progressive religious people is this:  Will we continue to stand in the story of the modernist-fundamentalist rift, or will we accept the invitation to pray with those whose views may offend us?
  
• * Obama Team Takes Two Shapes (By GERALD F. SEIB, Wall Street Journal Online) The Obama transition is putting a new twist on that idea. The president-elect is giving the country two administrations for the price of one.
  

NEW YORK POLITICS/INDEPENDENCE PARTY

• * Bloomberg Leaning Toward Independent In '09 (Elizabeth Benjamin, NY Daily News/Daily Politics) The mayor hasn't ruled out seeking the Independence Party line again, either, although he might face a challenge there from Lenora Fulani, who is mulling her own run for mayor.
  
• * Fulani vs. Bloomberg? (Elizabeth Benjamin, NY Daily News/Daily Politics) Last summer, Fulani launched an exploratory committee for a 2009 potential mayoral run. As an enrolled member of the Independence Party, all she has to do is circulate petitions; she needs no permission to run from Indy leaders. Not so for Bloomberg. Since the state's highest court has sided with Fulani and her supporters in their legal fight with state Independence Party Chairman Frank MacKay, a Bloomberg ally, over who controls Wilson Pakulas in citywide races, they would have to grant him the right to run on the line.
  

BOOK REVIEW

* In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third Party Movements in the United States by Omar Ali (An Ordinary Person) I also found insightful the later accounts of African-American political participation in the post-segregation era. Martin Luther King Jr. warned of the perils of over-reliance and dependency on one major political party (in this case, the Democrats) and to pin all of one’s hopes and political efforts in that arena.