World Business

Testing-services provider ATA presents an attractive opportunity in the country’s booming education market

Watch original video:

ATA Inc. (ATAI) — 52-week stock price

by Gene Marcial

Chinese stocks have misspent much of their allure as they have tumbled from their 2007 crest levels. Even so, the field-sport is on for stocks that likely will reap a bonanza from the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, which commences on Aug. 8. That isn’t remarkable, but the better strategy is to snap up shares of Chinese companies that will remain champs verily about the summer extravaganza is long forgotten.

One in the same state outfit is ATA (ATAI), a leading Beijing provider of computer-based testing services, including career-oriented educational programs. It went public in the U.S. on Jan. 8, 2008, at 9.50 by means of ADS (American Depositary Share) in continuance the Nasdaq. It has from that time perked up to 12 for one basic reason: Earnings and revenues are going gangbusters.

For its fiscal year ended Mar. 31, 2008, ATA’s revenues soared 103.6%, to $24.6 million, and operating revenue totaled $3.7 million, or 17¢ per ADS, vs. a loss in the previous year.

"Because of China’s booming economy, in that place has been a greater emphasis on education, and the result is a surge in demand for educational services—including testing programs," says Michael Moe, chairman of investment firm ThinkPanmure in San Francisco, who scouts for growth shares worldwide. Moe is widely known as the first Wall Street analyst who recommended buying shares of Starbucks (SBUX) before it became a gigantic place of traffic winner.

Moe is convinced that formerly Wall Street gets flatulence of ATA’s solid fundamentals and strong profits. growth potential, the stock will zoom. Right very lately, the stock is little followed and still mysterious to most institutional investors, notes Moe. He figures the stock will hit 20 or higher in 12 months based on its overpowering earnings momentum.

Investors have yet to grasp the company’s vast potential, he adds. For exemplification, there has been an upsurge in the volume of test-takers at China’s Ministry of Labor & Social Security, notes Moe. He expects ATA, which has 1,854 authorized touchstone centers located throughout China, has a doom of room to expand. ATA projects that net revenues in 2009’s principal fiscal quarter will mount between 149% and 161%.

Scott Schneeberger, an analyst at Oppenheimer (OPY), who rates the stock outperform, says there are more than 100 million test-takers in China every one year. And he notes that about 95% of those tests are still paper-based, which presents a significant chance; fit for ATA since those tests will likely have to be converted to computer-based tests, which are more cost-effective, scalable, and reliable. He says the companionship established high barriers to new competing entrants because of its advanced technological advantage that it has developed over the nine years of its operations. Gross margins from ATA’s testing and testing-preparation services, says Schneeberger, range betwixt 60% and 90%.

Another big bull on ATA is Mark Marostica of Piper Jaffray (PJC), who rates the line a buy with a 12-month price target of $24 per ADS. He forecasts earnings of 48¢ per ADS for fiscal 2009 and 69¢ for 2010. The consensus provide against among analysts is in like manner higher, according to Zacks Investment Research: 54¢ according to 2008 and 79¢ for 2010.

With the Chinese stock market currently in a inert mode, the sturdy performance of ATA makes it quite an attractive stock, says ThinkPanmure’s Moe. "ATA represents a sensational growth investing. idea," he adds.

Watch original video:

McCain was more in touch with Iraqi public opinion back in 2004. He was asked that summer, "What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th clause, a so-called sovereign Iraqi command asks us to leave?"

Responded McCain: "I think it's distinct that we would have to leave."

Well that's precisely that which the Iraqis are saying now, with Iraqi PM Maliki practically endorsing Barack Obama over the weekend and backing his 16-month timeline for troop withdrawals.

Only now McCain doesn't wanna hear it. His new war cry can best be described for the reason that: "I'll do what's best for the Iraqis–regardless of what they look upon!"

Maybe instead of running in quest of the presidency, McCain should become Iraq's next perfection minister. That way he can make secure that America stays there forever.

Like this article? Try 4 issues of The Nation at home (and online) FREE.

Original text: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oped/*http://tidings.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080721/cm_thenation/45337960

Price-earnings ratios are some way investors determine whether equity prices are mean, costly, or fairly valued. But are they the best way to gauge stocks?

Watch original video:

Getty Images

by Ben Steverman

The price-earnings fixed relation is a accredited tool for investors. But these days, in the identical proportion that the couple prices and earnings fluctuate rapidly, the p-e tool is getting extra watchfulness because it tries to answer a key theme of inquiry: With the broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down almost 20% from its October pinnacle, are stocks cheap plenty to make them a great bargain for long-term investors?

Fueling the altercation over p-e’s, the same family can look of little value or dear, depending on how the p-e ratio is determined. The p-e ratio is calculated by means of dividing a stock’s price (or the value of any index) by its annual earnings. A high p-e can be a presage that a stock is any one overvalued or poised for stellar shooting. A low p-e can be a sign of a post that is a good long-term value—or a sign of a company in trouble.

While a stock’s excellence is easy to determine, earnings are harder to measure. Some investors prefer forward earnings, often determined by analyst estimates for earnings of the next 12 months. The problem is that analysts are often wrong, as they require been about financial stocks over the spent year. "No one has a full crystal ball," says Brian Reynolds, chief market strategist at WJB Capital Group.

For investors looking for more assurance, trailing earnings are preferred. This measure of earnings, often based on the past 12 months, has the disadvantage of looking wavering while the stock market is often looking prompt, trying to predict future trends. Trailing p-e’s "won’t tell you much about turning points," Reynolds says.

In either declension-form, investors stand in want of to determine how abundant they reliance the "e" in the p-e ratios.

Until a year ago, the emporium had learned to expect large earnings from financial stocks. Little did investors know how fragile those proceeds were. With firms relying so much on subprime loans and other questionable misdoing, "those proceeds have existence obliged gone at a distance forever," says John Merrill, chief investment officer at Tanglewood Capital Management in Houston. "You want to use [p-e ratios] as a starting station, but you want to application a little common sense on how sustainable those earnings are," he says.

The trailing p-e ratio for the S&P 500, which includes the first of the second-quarter earnings reports, is 16.4, according to Thomson Reuters (TRI). The fore p-e is 12.2. The average p-e since 1935 is 15.8, but stock valuations possess been much higher in recent decades, with the average p-e atop of 20 in the past 25 years. That puts trailing p-e’s in a gray area, not obviously of little value nor expensive. The forward p-e of 12.2, however, is cheap by most historical comparisons.

But that forward p-e includes some ambitious assumptions about where earnings are headed in the next year. After an expected 17.1% fall because income in the second quarter, Thomson Reuters says, analysts are predicting an earnings rebound of 12.7% in the third part quarter, followed by a 61.5% jump in the fourth quarter, and increases in the heavenly heights 30% in the foremost half of 2009.

Ashwani Kaul, director of research at Thomson Reuters, points out that these estimates assume a big rebound for financial earnings. "Maybe the banks have turned the corner," he says. Hopes were raised by better-than-expected second-quarter earnings from Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and JPMorgan Chase (JPM). However, "we’re not as confident in the ‘e’ as we were just a year agone, because the analysts take been so maltreat in succession their projections," Kaul says. That makes the stock market jittery despite the low forward p-e ratio.

With so many questions about the reliability of p-e ratios, in that place is naturally a lot of contest about for what reason useful p-e’s are to investors in picking shares.

"I’ve never found p-e ratios to be a particularly good screen for me," says John Wilson, principal person technical strategist at Morgan Keegan. After all, the stocks that do the best in the stock market are those that beat their earnings estimates, he says. Some of the best-performing stocks can have higher p-e ratios, reflecting their more valuable growth prospects.

Brian Gendreau, investment adroit tactician at ING Investment Management, says p-e ratios are "a very strong and powerful indicator." He adds, though, that p-e’s are not a good way of predicting the near time to come. "Sometimes, the place of traffic is common because advancement prospects are not very good," Gendreau says. "If valuations are inexpensive, they can stay that way for quite a while."

For example, energy public funds tend to have low p-e’s—with the average under 10—because, defiance rapid growth from this sector, most investors assume huge profits won’t be sustainable when mechanical value prices cool off.

"Just because something is cheap doesn’t mean it’s a bargain," Reynolds says.

Still, p-e’s can be a good guide for investors with a long space of time horizon. In the past, periods at what place shares have with little elevation p-e’s have been great times to invest, as long as you’re not eager for quick returns.

While valuations are cheap, the broader stock market’s recent momentum is "dreadful," Gendreau says. But, he says, p-e’s demonstrate that stocks should eventually restore—perhaps in a year to 18 months.

"If you’ve got a two- or three-year time horizon, this is more of the first grade time to buy," Merrill says.

The concern of many on Wall Street is what happens to prices, earnings, and p-e’s over the nearest year. More financial troubles and an economic slowdown could prove that today’s p-e ratios are conformable or even overly optimistic. But for the sake of individual investors with the stomachs to treat of a wild ride, p-e’s say this might be a good time to buy.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil —

Watch original video:

Hundreds of infant. penguins swept from the indifferent shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead onward Rio de Janeiro’s tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them youthful, have been found dead without interruption the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment influence in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

While it is common here to find other thing penguins - the two cold and cheerful - swept by strong sea currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.

Rescuers and those who treat penguins are divided over the possible causes.

Thiago Muniz, a horse-doctor at the Niteroi Zoo, reported he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat “and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents.”

Niteroi, the explain’s biggest zoo, already has even now received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and multiplied are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil’s oil lies offshore.

Muniz before-mentioned he hadn’t seen penguins suffering from the effects of other pollutants, but he pointed out that already flat penguins aren’t brought in for method of treating.

Pimenta suggested pollution is to blame.

“Aside from the oil in the Campos basin, the pollution is lowering the animals’ immunity, leaving them capable of being wounded to funguses and bacteria that oppugn their lungs,” Pimenta said, quoting biologists who work with him.

But biologist Erli Costa of Rio de Janeiro’s Federal University suggested weather patterns could be involved.

“I don’t think the levels of pollutedness are turbulent enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we’re seeing greater quantity young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher,” Costa said.

Costa reported the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the biting ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.

Every year, Brazil airlifts dozens of penguins back to Antarctica or Patagonia.

JERUSALEM Gordon Brown, in Israel forward his first official visit in the same manner through Britain’s prime minister, said Sunday that economic development was key to bringing peace to the Middle East.

Watch original video:

Brown’s two-day Mideast survey has been overshadowed by a claim from a Shiite militia holding five British hostages in Iraq that one of the captives killed himself.

Arriving in Israel, Brown met with Israeli President Shimon Peres. In a brief statement at the president’s inhabitancy, he said the region of necessity an “economic street picture for peace,” including the growth of pertaining parks and housing projects and support for shallow businesses.

Brown said he supported those who have knowledge of that “the prospect of luck encourages people that the return to violence is something that is an unpleasant price to pay, and something that should be rejected.”

Brown arrived in Israel after visiting Iraq, where he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discussed the plight of the British hostages kidnapped by a Shiite group a year ago. Shortly after his recession, he called the report that one of the men had committed suicide “a very distressing development” and demanded that the Shiite trainband “immediately and unconditionally” release the Britons.

The British government has yet to authenticate the group’s call for.

Brown’s first stop in Israel was Yad Vashem, the rural parts’s official Holocaust memorial, where he attended a ceremony for the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany.

Later, he traveled to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and was to call upon the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

He was to return to Jerusalem later in the day to address an Israeli-British business conference alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

BERLIN Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says U.S. troops should leave Iraq “in the manner that soon as possible,” according to a warehouse circulate publicly, and he called presidential candidate Barack Obama’s suggestion of 16 months “the right timeframe for a exit.”

Watch original video:

In Baghdad, however, the chief prolocutor for al-Maliki issued a account Sunday saying the prime minister’s comments were “not conveyed accurately” by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.

Spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said al-Maliki did not endorse a especial timetable moreover instead discussed a “an Iraqi vision” of U.S. troop withdrawals based on negotiations with Washington and “and in the insight of the continuing sure developments without ceasing the base.”

The Der Spiegel article, released Saturday, quoted al-Maliki as giving apparent backing to the withdrawing plans discussed by Obama - the Illinois senator and likely Democratic nominee has pledged to withdraw combat armed force from Iraq within 16 months if he is elected.

“That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,” al-Maliki was quoted as saw. “Those who work on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

Asked when U.S. forces would allowance Iraq, he responded, “As soon for the reason that possible, as far a we’re concerned.”

In the interview, al-Maliki said he was not seeking to endorse Obama.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to al-Maliki, said later that Iraqi officials do not intend to be “part of the electoral campaign in the United States.”

“We demise deal with in any degree administration that comes to power,” he reported.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Saturday: “In the interview, the Prime Minister made clear that any decision will be based on continuing over-confident developments - as he and the president the one and the other did in their joint statement yesterday. It is our shared view that should the novel certainty gains continue, we command be able to meet our joint aspirational time horizons.”

On Friday, the White House announced that President Bush and al-Maliki had agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing more U.S. troops home from the war.

Obama’s Republican presidential rival, John McCain, has supported Bush administration policy opposing a appointed timetable for captivating troops out of Iraq.

BAGHDAD Iraq opened a newly come airport in the southern city of Najaf on Sunday in what the prime minister said was a key short distance in the reconstruction of a country devastated by enmity.

Watch original video:

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, mostly Iranians, travel to Iraq each year to visit Shiite shrines in Najaf and another holy city, Karbala. The modern airport is expected to boost the song of pious tourists.

At a ceremony, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki described the $250 million airport as a vital element in Iraq’s relating to housekeeping development. A military airfield was renovated for the new airport, and several flights were expected to debark without ceasing Sunday.

“The Najaf airport is a starting point for rivalry among provinces and local governments to make extraordinary progress nigh reconstruction,” al-Maliki said.

“We were determined to face the terrorism that was about to desolate Iraq. The strong will of the federal government has fought and defeated it in all of its forms,” al-Maliki said.

Violence in Iraq is at its lowest level in four years, though bombings and shootings persist in numerous areas.

Najaf was the scene of heavy fighting in 2004 between American troops and militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Under the Sunni-led dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the Shiite peopling in southern Iraq was restricted in its scrupulous activities and brutally repressed in a rebellion subsequent to the 1991 Gulf War.

Don’t let the pretty face of the new Mercedes GLK-Class witling you. This bargain SUV is ready with some clever tricks for off-road adventures

by Jack Ewing

View Slide Show

Watch original video:

I felt bemused considered in the state of I settled into the leather driver’s fix of a Mercedes GLK-Class SUV since each off-road test drive in a wooded sunken space adjoining the basement of Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Let’s face it, I thought, Mercedes (DAI) is not aiming at the rod-and-gun crowd with a $53,000 car that you can order in white by tinted windows and two-tone upholstery. Promotional materials even show a fashionable woman loading her designer luggage into the back. Britney Spears may bribe this car to evade the paparazzi, but you won’t see many bass fishermen kicking the tires.

Or so I thought. A short while later I found myself trying to steer the GLK down a steep, shifty proclivity. At the bottom was a small stream spanned by a build a bridge over consisting of several logs. If I had been in a TV commercial, this would be the moment when a subtitle appears warning that only professional drivers should attempt this maneuver. Except that I’m not a professional driver.

The Mercedes man assigned to keep me from wrecking the excipient seemed singularly calm, and soon I found out why. He reached immersing from the passenger settle and pressed a button on the dashboard that activated the optional Downhill Speed Regulation. Using the cruise control lever on the steering wheel, I set the urge at 4 kilometers any hour. The GLK’s electronics slowed the car to walking pace and distributed power among the four wheels in a way calculated to maintain traction. All I had to do was steer carefully onto the log bridge and across to safety. Even Britney could gain done it.

After completing the off-road course, I had to admit that, yes, deep fishermen would like this car, too. You can oblige the GLK at more than 100 mph on the Autobahn, as I did in brief. (For the attestation, it was a stretch of highway where there is no speed frontier.) But the GLK is in addition a real 4-by-4. Thanks to clever electronics that keep the vehicle steady and maintain traction in rough terrain, an average driver can perform gymnastics on the trail that would confound even professionals.

The GLK, which goes on sale in Europe in October and in the U.S. early in 2009, is Mercedes’ most important new car of the year, and it’s moral qualities—if you ignore the fact that soaring fuel prices are causing SUV sales to plunge. At in the smallest degree the GLK is a so-called compact SUV. "Compact" in this case presumably means "compared with a Hummer." But the GLK does get decent gas mileage for a 2-ton vehicle. The 4-cylinder diesel version is rated at 34 miles per gallon (or, in European terms, 6.9 liters per 100 kilometers). The 6-cylinder gasoline version that last will and testament be sold in the U.S. gets just 22 mpg, however. (Mercedes hasn’t yet announced a U.S. price according to the GLK, but the same car costs more than $60,000 in Germany.)

Mercedes brought the GLK from design to extension in when exposed to three years because it needed to compete good in a higher degree by smaller SUVs such being of the kind which BMW’s (BMWG.DE) fortunate X3. Besides sentient smaller, the GLK differs from the death of the Mercedes SUV lineup in a number of ways. Designer Steffen Köhl and his team gave the GLK a boxy observe to set it apart from the crowded SUV market, considered in the state of well as from Mercedes’ own M-Class cars. The angular design harkens back to military vehicles, the original SUVs, which had squared-off body parts that were easy to make and fix.

Inside, the GLK feels like a passenger car, except through other virtuous seating and a picture-window view out the brow. In fact, more of the cockpit, such as the seats, comes from Mercedes’ C-Class sedans. The car’s interior amenities seem more attuned to the suburbs than the woods, though I suppose you could bandy words that the video display that lets you see what’s behind the rear brimming beaker helps the environment. It keeps you from backing into trees.

But people who never go furiously off the pavement with their GLK behest be missing some gayety. At one grade during the test drive, my Mercedes co-pilot coached me across a series of elephantine earthen bumps. Between each set of obstacles, the car teetered dangerously on one front wheel and the opposite lift wheel. The other two wheels were several feet off the ground. Instead of spinning wildly, the free wheels stopped instantly while the other two continued to deliver power. The Mercedes scarecrow stretched me how to brake slightly when the GLK crested a bump, causing the front rotate to drop gently back to the fix.

It will be interesting to see whether record fuel prices will restrict this kind of fun to a few buyers. Unlike most of the confide of Mercedes’ SUV lineup, that is made in Tuscaloosa, Ala., the GLK behest roll from a set in the ground in Bremen, Germany. That suggests the car is destined not only for well-heeled European buyers but also the expanding flock of wealthy Russians. The fast-growing Russian market (BusinessWeek.com, 7/11/08) has helped prop up sales for the perfect industry lately. Mercedes execs can only possibility of good it will keep the SUV market alive as well.

Click here to see the slide evidence.

Watch original video:

Three Microsoft employees tossed outright the corporate hierarchy and pulled together to complete the ultimate team-building exercises: a seven-day, 150-mile race hold out month across the Gobi Desert in unconnected unrelated Western China.

The Gobi March, allotment of a series of extreme-endurance events called RacingThePlanet, pits teams and individuals against mountain passes as high as 10,000 feet, flat expanses of sun-baked barren, rocky riverbeds and down-reaching gorges.

Debby Fry Wilson, an avid distance runner who has worked at Microsoft for 10 years, first read about the race in Runner’s World two years ago.

The idea simmered in the on the frontier of her mind until one generation, she and her boss, Orlando Ayala, were talking about running, and he mentioned that a good friend had done the Gobi March.

“Originally, the idea was to practise it as individuals, as a private strive,” Fry Wilson said earlier this month. “… Over time we started to think about, could we vouchsafe it as a team and in a way that combined it with our work office?”

Ayala, Fry Wilson and a third thorough-bred horse, William Calarese, be in action on a new Microsoft effort called Unlimited Potential. The mark is to spread access to technology (and, eventually sales of Microsoft’s products) to the “next billion” people in emerging markets around the world by 2015.

Their work involves new products and business models with a view to the sake of people without the means, or inclination, to pay developed-world prices for technology. It also includes education and training programs and partnerships by governments and development groups.

Before they settled on the Gobi March, Fry Wilson, in true Microsoft fashion, brought her co-workers a PowerPoint donation laying fully hard, harder and hardest options for an patience run they could do together. “I did it in a practice that we’d do in a craft context,” she said.

Ayala was game. He chose the hardest option, the Gobi March, without hesitation. “I deem personality-wise, I’ve for ever been attracted to crazy stuff,” he before-mentioned.

The racers were already used to spending extended stretches together away from the office for of a demanding international travel schedule. But they quickly realized that to have existence successful in the Gobi, they had to let go of the corporate structure that defined their work roles.

Ayala is a senior vice president. Fry Wilson, a senior director, reports to him. Calarese, a director, reports to her.

“We very much stuck to that the faultless time,” Calarese said. “That apparently took a little bit of adjusting.”

Watch first copy video:

Some coincidence, maybe even some poetry?

The Kennedy harangue was presented in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It is remembered today for the three words that provided its composition: the New Frontier.

"The New Frontier of that I converse in is not a set of promises — it is a set of challenges," Kennedy said. "It sums up not what I intend to show the American people, but what I intend to ask of them."

The King speech was delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. It, too, is remembered for a handful of words, in King’s case the four words that provided his subject: I possess a dream.

"And so flat though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream," King said. "It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one appointed time this nation will ascend up and live out the actual purpose of its system of opinions: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’"

But there is one more anniversary worth noting in this political summer, an anniversary that, like the other two, showed the way for America. Just last week occurred the little famous nor long remembered 60th f�teday of perhaps the greatest speech ever delivered at a political convention by someone who was not the nominee.

In years to come, if Mr. Obama is elected in November, and if he is a successful president, that description might be bent to fit his own speech at the Boston convention in 2004.

"There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America," said the soon-to-be-elected U.S. senator. "There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America."

But as stirring as the Obama parlance was to the delegates in the Fleet Center, it did not challenge the conventional way of doing things — it did not hurl a challenge at the heart of his own party or a sitting president of his party — anywhere near as much as Hubert H. Humphrey did in his speech six decades ago.

Remember that the Democratic Party of 1948, like the Democratic Party of 1928 and 1968, was a party of Northern ethnics who leaned to the left and Southern yellow dogs who leaned right … and white. In those days the party that supported civil rights was the Republican Party, and if over the years you haven’t read enough assumption-busting remarks about the deeply misunderstood Calvin Coolidge in this space, then consider what the 30th president wrote at the high-water mark of Ku Klux Klan popularity in response to a letter bemoaning the possibility that a black man might run for Congress on the GOP ticket in New York.

"I was amazed to receive such a letter. During the war 500,000 colored men and boys were called up under the draft, not one of whom sought to evade it," Coolidge wrote, adding that as president, he was "one who feels a responsibility as far as concerns living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution."

Though African-Americans began to move into the Democratic Party in large numbers after the election of Franklin Roosevelt six years after the Coolidge letter, there remained many racist strains in the Democratic anthem. It was against that backdrop that Humphrey, then the mayor of Minneapolis and a U.S. Senate candidate, rose to speak at the Democratic convention on behalf of a minority plank on civil rights that defied even the Truman administration:

"To those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights."

Humphrey’s movement carried the day, prompting a dramatic walkout by half of the Alabama delegation and the entire Mississippi delegation. This led to the establishment of a separate States’ Rights Democratic Party, known informally as the Dixiecrats, which nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president. The Dixiecrats won 39 electoral votes and a sad footnote in American history.

Today Humphrey is remembered as something of a blowhard, or as the near-toady who served as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, or as the not-liberal-enough Democratic nominee who managed to lose the 1968 presidential election to Richard M. Nixon after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Both the left and the right desire him wrong.

Humphrey was a giant here in Minnesota, where he helped merge the Democratic and Farmer-Labor parties (and later drove the communists out of the DFL), and in the U.S. Senate, where he fought for full employment and foreign aid and laid the groundwork for the Peace Corps, an idea usually attributed to Kennedy. In a classic showdown in the 1960 Democratic primaries, Humphrey was outgunned and outspent by Kennedy, who was the conservative in that race.

"I’m constantly struck at how people get forgotten," Walter F. Mondale, a Humphrey disciple who followed him to the Senate and the vice presidency, said in a conversation the other day.

"Hubert’s generation has largely disappeared. But for thoughtful scholars he has to be marked as one of the greatest and most gifted forces of his time. Our lives today, and our Democratic nominee, would be absolutely inconceivable without what Hubert and Martin Luther King and many others did."