By this time next week, we should know a lot more about the state of the Democratic presidential primary race. Every time I look at my cell phone, I see the countdown.  Every time I check in at the Edwards web site, I see the countdown.  When it went from 'more than a week away' to '7 days', I about flipped.  Then a little while ago, as time marches on, it become less than a week away.  Yow-za!  Brain freeze! (and hence the 'unnamed' edition of tonight's EENR)

So, let's all take a moment to do something very very important....

breathe.

That's right - oxygen is very important to our ability to tolerate the stresses that are coming up over the next 6+ days and beyond as the Edwards Express rolls through Iowa and on to New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, and February 5th.  So, whether you're stuck behind your computer screen or getting ready to head out for another round of snowy canvassing or dialing another phone number to another undecided voter, here's a very good exercise for the next month or so:

You know me -- on Thursdays, my favorite day of the week since I started helping out with EENRS, I try to put together an eclectic round-up of what's happening with the news out of the Edwards campaign.  I've had a few of these with a theme, but mostly, the campaign is so positive and so filled with energy that we can go all over the map -- from Iowa to Nevada, from South Carolina to New Hampshire, from health care to education to a myriad of other issues.  It's always great, always fun, always uplifting.

Tonight, I'm back to a theme but you may need a few tissues for this one because the personal stories that are coming from Edwards supporters around the country tell all the reason in the world why this man should be our next President of the United States.  So, let's get to it.

Welcome to the Thurday edition of the Edwards Evening News Round-Up (the title will become obvious shortly!).  As usual with this campaign, it's been a rollicking day: from a new union endorsement to a 1,000 student rally, from a blast at the Bush mortgage plan to volunteering for Ohio's 5th District special election, with a little global warming thrown in for good measure. Here are tonight's stories:

• Des Moines Register Debate Wrap-up
• Call for an independent investigation of the CIA tapes destruction
• Interesting Diaries to Consider

Almost two and a half years ago, two disasters struck the beautiful city of New Orleans: one an act of nature, the other the fault of man.  Although we all refer to this combination as Hurricane Katrina, in fact, the city might have withstood that Category 5 wind and water storm were it not for the failure of the levees that were to protect the city from the grinding and powerful surge of water following the hurricane.

Almost two and a half years later, large portions of this once-great city of the Delta remain in ruins, abandoned by the federal government and the national news media.

This must stop.

From Southwest Iowa comes the news that a daily newspaper not usually in the political endorsement game has stepped up for John Edwards.  Over in South Carolina, the Edwards team spoke with a number of key African-American leaders on Edwards' "PLAN FOR OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL AMERICANS."  In other words, it's just past noon on the East Coast and the Edwards campaign continues to build steam.

So follow me over the fold for the details and some discussion of the importance this broad support has for the upcoming caucuses and primaries, as well as the overall picture.

Welcome to the Thurday edition of the Edwards Evening News Round-Up (the title will become obvious shortly!).  As usual with this campaign, it's been a rollicking day: from a new union endorsement to a 1,000 student rally, from a blast at the Bush mortgage plan to volunteering for Ohio's 5th District special election, with a little global warming thrown in for good measure. Here are tonight's stories:

• CWA Nevada
• Global Warming: Al Gore vs. Lieberman-Warner
• Homeownership
• Ohio's 5th
• More Support and a bit of Walking for Edwards

Like any other holidays, Christmas in New Orleans is one of many traditions--filled with music and food and wonderful good cheer.  Frankly, of all the cities in this country, I think New Orleans has every one of them beat when it comes to celebrating.  Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve, Halloween, Easter--each has a special twist in this beautiful old city.  A dash of Southern, a lot of Cajun, some old French and Spanish thrown in.  You just haven't lived until you spent at least one major holiday New Orleans-style.

New Orleans has always celebrated the holiday season with brightly burning Yule logs, scarlet poinsettias, mistletoe "kissing balls" and, of course, lavishly decorated Christmas trees in French Quarter townhouses and River Road plantations alike. These traditional seasonal symbols are still on display--from the natural pine garlands that drape the chandeliers and stairwells of Gallier House in the French Quarter to the poinsettias that encircle the fountains at Longue Vue House and Gardens, just west of the city. link

[Updated with full video below]

We've heard those words before in a different context -- Tear Down That Wall!  For those of us old enough to have lived most of our lives with the Berlin Wall up, the day it came down still rings in our ears.  But for all of us, the wall around Washington has been up for a long time as well -- and John Edwards wants that wall to come down now as well.

Today, at the DNC Fall 2007 meeting, John Edwards made that the theme of his speech:

There’s a wall around Washington and we need to take it down. The American people are on the outside. And on the other side, on the inside, are the powerful, the well-connected and the very wealthy. That wall didn’t build itself or appear overnight. For decades, politicians without convictions and powerful interests gathered their bricks and their stones and their mortar, and they went to work. They went to work to protect their interests, to block the voice of the American people, and to stop our country’s progress. They went to work to protect, defend, and maintain the status quo.

Saturdays aren't my usual day for the Edwards Evening News, and so I was excited to have an opportunity to host a weekend edition.  Excited until I noticed that there isn't much news out of the campaign today.  So I put my thinking cap on and here's what I came up with.

There's a lull often right before a storm, that eerily quiet period before the weather changes dramatically--almost as if nature is saying "get ready, here I come."  That's what this feels like a bit to me.  On this holiday weekend, many of us have family visiting or are off visiting family; there was the big shopping day yesterday (I did my part by continuing my own tradition of not spending as much as a penny yesterday).  We've spent time giving thanks and hopefully many of us have done our fair share of giving.

In six weeks, we will be on the other side of the "Iowa storm," heading off to New Hampshire.  For now, let's take this moment to gear up -- get out your maps for the drive and canvassing, get out your pen and paper to write letters, get out your cellphone to make calls, get everything you can -- we've got some caucuses to win!

Tonight, at 9:00 pm ET, PBS's award-winning show FRONTLINE will air On Our Watch, a moving and disturbing look at the failure of the international community to live up to its promise at the end of World War II -- Never Again:

The world invoked the vow "never again!" after the genocide in Rwanda and atrocities in Srebrenica. Then came Darfur. Over the past four years, at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes, and mass rapes have once more been used as a weapon of war in a brutal campaign by Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese government against civilians in Darfur. FRONTLINE producer Neil Docherty asks why the international community and the United Nations have once again failed to stop the slaughter.

Usually by Thursday, I have a theme in mind for EENR but this week, one is eluding me. Maybe it's because I can feel the excitement building as we gain momentum less than 2 months away from Iowa's caucuses or because the Edwards campaign has so much on its plate from the new TV ad in South Carolina to John Edwards's swing through Nevada and on to the highly anticipated League of Conservation Voters forum on Saturday afternoon in LA.

Whatever the reason, so much going on that I will simply try to hit some of the recent highlights as we settle in for tonight's CNN-hosted debate out of Las Vegas.

1. Pre-Debate Thoughts

2. Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne in Iowa with Edwards

3. CWA Elects Not to Make Early National Endorsement

4. Power to the American People

5. Marching in Iowa

6. JRE Action

In a major foreign policy speech in Iowa City today, Senator John Edwards will outline his strategy to contain Iran, leading with the repudiation and replacement of the neocon doctrine of 'preventive war' used by BushCo in its justification for invading and occupying Iraq.

The legacy of John L. Lewis lives in the daily lives of the people of Appalachia. This legendary labor unionist was not the first president of the United Mine Workers of America, but he is perhaps the best known.  It is John L. Lewis and the UMWA you should thank today for the health and pension benefits you enjoy, whether you are a union member or not, for it was in the 1946 mine workers contract with the federal government that such benefits became established.

Today, in the hills of Kentucky and southern West Virginia, the hospitals and facilities founded by John Lewis and the Mine Workers remain the primary health care facilities for most communities. These UMWA Fund operations are now run by a so-called "not-for-profit" company, under the name of the Appalacian Regional Healthcare (ARH) system.  ARH could not be further from the purpose and intent of the hospitals' founders.  In contrast, the staff nurses working at ARH are a testament to the legacy of John L. Lewis and all the miners who lived and died in the mines of Appalachia.

I have a few heroes in my life.  My mother is one.  She was a divorced single mother in Georgia over 60 years ago, at a time when that simply wasn't done.  Even after she married my father and they combined their two families, she continued working full time.  When I was a teenager, she went back to school and got a degree in accounting.  Because of her, and at times to her dismay, I grew up a strong and independent woman.

Another hero is my son.  He has grown into a strong dependable adult and is married to the girl he fell in love with as a sophomore in high school 21 years ago. His steadiness is something I admire more than anything, and his commitment to his children.

To others, perhaps, neither my mother nor my son are extraordinary people.  These aren't people who have changed the world in dramatic ways, but they are my heroes. Every day, when my mother was alive and my son now, they remain true to their values of honest work, family, and leaving a better world for their children than they inherited.

According to Friends of the Earth, global warming legislation proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CN) and John Warner (R-VA) will provide corporate polluters with a windfall of new subsidies should it become law.  FoE issued a new analysis of the legislation today, entitled Windfalls in Lieberman-Warner Global Warming Bill: Quantifying the Fossil Fuel Industry Giveaways --

In the attempt to set the United States on a course to mitigate our global warming emissions, Senators’ Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Warner (R-Va.) America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 gives hundred of billions of dollars away to corporate polluters. All in all, nearly a half a trillion dollars is allocated directly to the fossil fuel industry, over half of which goes to coal. In addition, approximately $324 billion in auction revenue is given away to the coal industry. In total, the fossil fuel industry receives approximately $800 billion through in America’s Climate Security Act of 2007.

A conservative president who is deeply unpopular with Americans. A country facing profound economic and security challenges. New technologies upending old media. A cohort of new immigrants and a bulging generation of young people ready to transform the political calculus.

This is the setting laid out in the latest from Simon Rosenberg and Peter Leyden in their article for the November/December edition of Mother Jones entitled: The 50 Year Strategy: A New Progressive Era (No, Really!).

For most of the country, this has been a week like any other; on Capitol Hill, well let's not go there just yet. But in Southern California, it's been hell. So I want to start tonight's edition of EENR with a call to arms of sorts--the kind of call in which we can and should all participate no matter our politics or candidate choices.

At the John Edwards website, you can learn different ways to help here. Also, check with your local One Corps chapters to see what they are doing as many are actively working to help.

Later in this diary, I have information from Democrats Work about other ways to help.

Now, I'm going to do things a little bit differently tonight, so hang on!
+ It's Been 5 Years: Paul Wellstone
+ Stop Enabling Bush on Iran
+ Stand Strong
+ "Humanity"
+ Democrats Work

What is it with Thursdays and the Edwards campaign?  It is definitely not the "slow" day for John Edwards! Between his statement on Republicans blocking health insurance for children and the new "True Blue Majority" 50-state strategy campaign, we have a lot of ground to cover tonight.

So let's see what we have today:
1. True Blue Majority
2. Mass SEIU, Iowa Postal Workers Endorse Edwards
3. Edwards on Republicans Sustaining SCHIP Veto
4. Edwards in Western Iowa - a video treat
5. Speed Matters

Hang on for the jump...