The Choice Blog: As Jan. 1 Application Deadline Nears, an Argument for a Yearlong Breather

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Robert Clagett is a former dean of admissions at Middlebury College and former senior admissions officer at Harvard College.

As the cultural significance that Americans attach to the college admissions process gets ratcheted up year after year, it can frequently seem as if where we go to college has become more important than what we actually do with the opportunity once we get there.? For some, getting into the perfect college has become an end in itself, rather than a means to an end, and finally having the brass ring in hand can sometimes lead to a sense of letdown and even underachievement once they arrive on campus.

But there are a few positive trends happening out there that may help us refocus our attention on what should be the educational goals of going to college in the first place.? As was reported in September on The Choice, one of those is the burgeoning interest that some students are demonstrating in taking a gap year between high school and college, voluntarily removing themselves from the lock-step mentality that can too often characterize the high school experience.

It is by no means a new idea, and for university-bound students in some parts of the world, it is practically the norm.? But since the convention for most in this country is to graduate from high school in the spring, then head off to college the following fall, it has taken time for it to take root.

Gradually, however, this idea is catching on, and more and more students are stepping off the educational treadmill, pursuing interests, talents or jobs for reasons other than just helping them get into their college of choice, and reminding themselves in the process of what their education is really all about.?

There has also developed an industry of programs, books, gap year fairs, counseling services and sometimes even financial aid to help students pursue their passions during a year away from their formal education.

The reason for all of this interest is that much evidence has shown that students who take a gap year bring more to their college experiences and derive more from them as well.? What often happens is that students end up “reinventing” themselves during their gap year, discovering where their true interests and talents lie, and helping them bring a more mature outlook to their education in the future.

There is even good news on the academic performance front, with several studies showing that students who take a gap year end up doing better than their non-gap year classmates.? At Middlebury College in Vermont, for example, this was true even when controlling for the academic credentials that gap year students brought with them from their high schools.? On average, those students have shown a clear pattern of having higher G.P.A.’s than would otherwise have been predicted, and the positive effect lasts over all four years.

So here, for once, is a college admissions trend that is a win-win for everyone involved.? Most students who take a gap year still go through the college admissions process when they are seniors in high school, then request a deferral of their enrollment after they have decided where they would like to matriculate.? But as long as those students are proposing something worthwhile for their year off, most colleges are open to approving these requests, since they realize it can only lead to a more focused and mature student body.

And for many students, parents and colleges, that would be a welcome trend indeed.

Have you taken a gap year? Contemplated one? Please use the comment box below to let us know your thoughts.

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The Choice Blog: A Short Winter Break on The Choice

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Josh Anderson/Associated Press

Like many of you, The Choice blog is going to take a few days off to spend time with family during the holidays. We’ll still publish any big admissions news should it break — and we’ll keep updating our early-admission acceptances chart, in the event any more data flows in. We’ve also got at least one essay scheduled for the week after Christmas, intended to provide some holiday food-for-thought for seniors who might be contemplating a gap year.

As to those of you scrambling to finish your applications in advance of Jan. 1 and Jan. 15 deadlines, we wish you well. We’ve enjoyed keeping you company (and hopefully calm, and well-informed) during this journey.

With that, we thank you for reading us throughout this academic year (and for all your comments and questions, too), and we look forward to picking up our admissions conversation early in the New Year.

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Sleeveless and V-Necked, Santorum’s Sweaters Are Turning Heads

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It’s just that in Iowa, he happens to like a smart, sleeveless V-neck number.

Crewnecks, with their neck-hugging collars, aren’t suitable for stuffy rooms crammed with voters who have little respect for personal space. Cardigans? Not his thing.

Mr. Santorum prefers the sweater vest, that sensible, traditional choice of grandfathers and college football coaches. He owns them in navy blue, gray and tan, which he sported here on Monday for a voter meet-and-greet. Sensing they were seeing a political fashion statement in the making, members of his staff recently ordered vests embroidered with the Santorum campaign logo.

The vests have inspired their own Twitter feed — @FearRicksVest — and a Web site, FearRicksVest.com, which redirects to a pro-Santorum Facebook page. There is also a music video, “Sleeves Slow Me Down,” on YouTube. The clip is loaded with catchy slogans like “Rick is getting ready to inVEST in you.”

Mr. Santorum’s rivals are biased toward sleeves. Mitt Romney likes his crisply pressed oxford shirts, often under a blazer. Ron Paul is partial to suits, albeit ill-fitting ones. And Michele Bachmann, who has said her fashion icons are Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Audrey Hepburn, is almost always carefully turned out, so much so that she once prohibited photographers from taking her picture when she was wearing cargo pants.

In an interview here on Monday, Mr. Santorum insisted that he was not anti-sleeve. He harbors no bigotry toward extra fabric, whether it’s cotton, cashmere or wool.

He said the vests started gaining notice after a forum in Des Moines a few weeks ago with Mike Huckabee. Most of the other candidates were in suits. Mr. Santorum chose a sweater vest and unwittingly made a fashion statement.

After that, he said, “It sort of took on a life of its own. So I started wearing more and more. My staff bought me a bunch more.”

He buys most of them from JoS. A. Bank. But he’s been known to splurge on a vest at Brooks Brothers.

On Twitter, the sweater has adopted its own persona and first-person voice, as in “Fear me ... and ... hear me! I’m ready to relocate to the White House,” and “@RickSantorum at 16% among Iowa R’s! Take off that sweater vest, Rick, it’s gettin hot in herre!”

He even fielded questions about the vests from Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk show host. “Maybe it’s a trend?” she asked.

He started to explain, saying, “One of the things I get all the time ...”

Ms. Ingraham interrupted. “Geek?” she joked.

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US: Unseen Injury

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After his third deployment, Sgt. Matthew Pennington, 28, returned to his home in Dexter, Me., where he is recovering from both physical and psychological traumas.

Produced by Sarah Kramer, Meaghan Looram, Todd Heisler

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U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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A Gathering Storm Over ‘Right to Work’ in Indiana

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The thunderclouds are gathering first here in Indiana. The leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature say that when the legislative session opens on Wednesday, their No. 1 priority will be to push through a business-friendly piece of legislation known as a right-to-work law.

If Indiana enacts such a law — and its sponsors say they have the votes — it will give new momentum to those who have previously pushed such legislation in Maine, Michigan, Missouri and other states. New Hampshire’s Republican-controlled Legislature was the last to pass a right-to-work bill in 2011, but it narrowly failed to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto by the Democratic governor; an Indiana law would re-energize that effort.

Right-to-work laws prohibit union contracts at private sector workplaces from requiring employees to pay any dues or other fees to the union. In states without such laws, workers at unionized workplaces generally have to pay such dues or fees.

Many right-to-work supporters say it is morally wrong to force unwilling workers to contribute to unions, while opponents argue that it is wrong to allow “free riders” not to support the unions that represent them in negotiations and arbitrations.

Right-to-work is also a potent political symbol that carries serious financial consequences for unions. Corporations view such laws as an important sign that a state has policies friendly to business. Labor leaders say that allowing workers to opt out of paying any money to the union that represents them weakens unions’ finances, bargaining clout and political power.

Organized labor has vowed to fight the Indiana bill, which it says would turn the state into the “Mississippi of the Midwest.” If the legislation passes, Indiana would become the first state to have such a law within the traditional manufacturing belt, a union stronghold that stretches from the Midwest to New England. Right-to-work laws exist in 22 states, almost all in the South and West, with Oklahoma the most recent to pass one, in 2001.

Right-to-work supporters say they can win quick passage because Indiana’s Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, backs the bill and Republicans have large majorities in the House and Senate.

Democratic and union leaders say they hope to block the legislation, in part by flooding the statehouse with thousands of protesters — exactly as unions did last year in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana in an attempt to defeat legislation that limited bargaining rights for public sector workers. Democratic lawmakers in Indiana have also hinted that they might once again flee to Illinois, as they did last year, to block votes on anti-union bills.

Indiana’s Republican leaders are eager to pass the bill — and end any related commotion — before Feb. 5, when the national spotlight turns to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

In heading the legislative push, Brian C. Bosma, the Republican speaker of the Indiana House, argues that not being right-to-work is a big handicap when Indiana competes for jobs.

“Local economic development officers testified that 25 to 50 percent of companies looking to create employment, whether through expansion or locating a new facility, just took Indiana and other non-right-to-work states off the table,” he said in an interview. “This is stopping employers from coming to Indiana. We need to deal with that.”

Kevin Brinegar, president of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, praised the bill as a low-cost way to improve the business climate. “It’s not like we’re going to spend a billion dollars on tax incentives,” he said. “It’s free.”

But opponents say the talk of improving Indiana’s business climate is just a pretext.

“It’s a political attack on what the Republicans see as one of their main opponents — organized labor,” said Jim Robinson, the top United Steelworkers official in Indiana. “They want to weaken unions to help assure continued Republican majorities.”

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National Briefing | Midwest: Ohio: Sites of Two Earthquakes Nearly Identical

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The 4.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Youngstown on Saturday occurred at an almost identical location to one a week before, a seismologist who studied the quakes said Monday. Both earthquakes occurred close to the bottom of a 9,200-foot-deep disposal well where for months, brine and other liquid waste from natural-gas wells had been injected under pressure. They were the 10th and 11th earthquakes to occur near the well since March, but the first to be precisely located. The finding provides further evidence to support what some scientists had suspected: that the waste, from the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing that is used to unlock natural gas from shale rock, might have migrated from the disposal well into deeper rock formations, allowing an ancient fault to slip. Similar links between hydraulic-fracturing disposal wells and earthquakes have been suspected in recent years in Texas and Arkansas. John Armbruster, a seismologist with Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, said that the epicenter of the quake Saturday was about 100 meters, or 110 yards, from that a 2.7-magnitude quake on Dec. 24. There were a few reports of minor damage from the earthquake on Saturday, but none from any of the earlier quakes. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reached an agreement last week with the owner of the disposal well, D&L Energy, to halt operations indefinitely and issued a moratorium on further development of disposal wells in the area until the analysis of the 4.0 quake was completed.

A blog about energy and the environment.

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National Briefing | South: Florida: Inquiry Into Abortion Clinic Fire Grows

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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ChicagoShovels Web Site Gives Lowdown on Snow

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But this year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration will announce on Tuesday, Chicagoans may test their theories about clout on their computers. Using GPS technology, a new city Web site, ChicagoShovels.org, will provide a map of Chicago’s approximately 300 snowplows, making their way in real time through the neighborhoods. Anyone will have a clear view of who gets what first, and whether plows really sweep more rapidly beside the homes of the mayor, powerful aldermen — or even just the neighbor everyone hates.

“If that’s happening, you’ll see it,” Mr. Emanuel’s chief technology officer, John Tolva, said.

The snowplow tracker, which city officials expect to debunk the belief that routes are politically motivated, is but one element of a new computer package focused exclusively on snow — a fact of life in a city that prides itself on its stoic response to winter weather, but was clobbered last year by a blizzard that stranded scores of motorists on a thoroughfare along Lake Michigan.

In part, Mr. Tolva said, the idea to incorporate more technology into the city’s official answer to snow grew out of that blizzard, which dumped more than 21 inches and essentially closed down the city in early February. On their own, residents bonded over shoveling alleys, clearing sidewalks and even being trapped together on Lake Shore Drive, he said, so why not encourage all that bonding in advance online?

Among other elements of the new Web site: organization of a “Snow Corps,” which will match volunteers with mounds to shovel; winter-related computer applications to guide people when two inches of snow has fallen, alerting them to parking bans on city streets or, if it is too late, telling them where their car has been towed to; and an “adopt-a-sidewalk” program that will soon allow residents to share shoveling tools and claim shoveling responsibilities on a map.

It remains to be seen whether Chicagoans really wish to officially stake out shoveling responsibilities on sidewalks — even the ones right outside their homes. And ChicagoShovels.org offers no elegant computer solution to the age-old debate in this city: how to find a more dignified, efficient manner for claiming “dibs,” the long-established practice of placing chairs, cones, boxes or other junk to reserve a cleared parking space.

Still, Chicagoans will surely watch the snowplow tracker, which will share data the city was already collecting. The information is monitored in the city’s snow command center, where supervisors also track the slickness of bridges, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather maps and driving conditions captured by 1,000 cameras mounted around the city.

Oddly, though, in a winter season that some experts predicted would bring heavy snow, little has arrived so far. Like other cities in the Midwest, Chicago has spent millions of dollars less — $5.5 million less, in its case — because it needed tens of thousands of tons less road salt in December than it had the year before.

Thanks to superstition or history or both, no one here seemed willing to declare a trend. “I’m not calling this a mild winter yet,” Mr. Tolva said. And on Monday, Chicagoans awoke to snow.

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Autism, Grown Up

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As planned, he arrived that morning with a portfolio of his comic strips and charcoal sketches, some of which were sold through a Chelsea gallery. Kate Stanton-Paule, the teacher who had set up the meeting, accompanied him. But his first words upon entering the office were, like most things involving Justin, not in the script.

“Hello, everybody,” he announced, loud enough to be heard behind the company president’s door. “This is going to be my new job, and you are going to be my new friends.”

As the employees exchanged nervous glances that morning in January 2010, Ms. Stanton-Paule, the coordinator of a new kind of “transition to adulthood” program for special education students at Montclair High School, wondered if they were all in over their heads.

Justin, who barely spoke until he was 10, falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum of social impairments that characterize autism, which affects nearly one in 100 American children. He talks to himself in public, has had occasional angry outbursts, avoids eye contact and rarely deviates from his favorite subject, animation. His unabashed expression of emotion and quirky sense of humor endear him to teachers, therapists and relatives. Yet at 20, he had never made a true friend.

People with autism, whose unusual behaviors are believed to stem from variations in early brain development, typically disappear from public view after they leave school. As few as one in 10 hold even part-time jobs. Some live in state-supported group homes; even those who attend college often end up unemployed and isolated, living with parents.

But Justin is among the first generation of autistic youths who have benefited throughout childhood from more effective therapies and hard-won educational opportunities. And Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program here is based on the somewhat radical premise that with intensive coaching in the workplace and community — and some stretching by others to include them — students like Justin can achieve a level of lifelong independence that has eluded their predecessors.

“There’s a prevailing philosophy that certain people can never function in the community,” Ms. Stanton-Paule told skeptics. “I just don’t think that’s true.”

With some 200,000 autistic teenagers set to come of age in the United States over the next five years alone, little is known about their ability to participate fully in public life, or what it would take to accommodate them. Across the country, neighbors, employers, colleagues and strangers are warily interacting with young adults whose neurological condition many associate only with children.

Some advocates of “neurodiversity” call this the next civil rights frontier: society, they say, stands to benefit from accepting people whose brains work differently. Opening the workplace to people with autism could harness their sometimes-unusual talents, advocates say, while decreasing costs to families and taxpayers for daytime aides and health care and housing subsidies, estimated at more than $1 million over an adult lifetime.

But such efforts carry their own costs. In this New York City suburb, the school district considered scrapping Ms. Stanton-Paule’s program almost as soon as it began, to save money on the extra teaching assistants who accompanied students to internships, the bank, the gym, the grocery store. Businesses weighed the risks of hiring autistic students who might not automatically grasp standard rules of workplace behavior.

Oblivious to such debates, many autistic high school students are facing the adult world with elevated expectations of their own. Justin, who relied on a one-on-one aide in school, had by age 17 declared his intention to be a “famous animator-illustrator.” He also dreamed of living in his own apartment, a goal he seemed especially devoted to when, say, his mother asked him to walk the dog.

“I prefer I move to the apartment,” he would say, reluctantly setting aside the notebook he spent hours filling with tiny, precise replicas of every known animated character.

“I prefer I move to the apartment, too,” his father, Briant, a pharmaceutical company executive, replied on hard days.

Over the year that a New York Times reporter observed it, the transition program at Montclair High served as a kind of boot camp in community integration that might also be, for Justin, a last chance. Few such services are available after high school. And Justin was entitled to public education programs, by federal law, until only age 21.

Ms. Stanton-Paule had vowed to secure him a paid job before he left school — the best gauge, experts say, of whether a special needs student will maintain some autonomy later in life. She also hoped to help him forge the relationships, at work and beyond it, that form the basis of a full life.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 25, 2011

An article last Sunday about a young man with autism and his struggle for independence misspelled the surname of a Manhattan teenager. She is Paloma Kalisch, not Kalish.

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For 2012, Signs Point to Little Gain in Consumer Spending

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As the weak economy has trudged on, they have leaned on credit cards to pay for holiday gifts, many bought at discounts. They are dipping into savings to cover spikes in gas, food and rent. They are substituting domestic vacations for international trips, squeezing more life out of their washing machines and refrigerators and switching to alternatives as meat prices have risen.

That leaves little room for a big increase in spending in 2012, economists say, a shaky foundation for the most important pillar of the American economy.

“The consumer is far from healthy,” said Steve Blitz, senior economist for ITG Investment Research.

Even the seemingly robust holiday shopping season is raising concern. After a strong start on Thanksgiving weekend, a pronounced lull followed, causing retailers to mark down products heavily in the week before Christmas. While final numbers for the season are not in, analysts say they are worried that retailers had to eat into profits to generate high revenues.

Consumer spending makes up 70 percent of the economy, so until it ignites, general growth is likely to be sluggish.

Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting company, projects growth of around 2 percent for the first half of this year, down from an estimate of 3.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and just 1.8 percent in the third quarter.

For consumers, the reasons for the sluggishness are clear: incomes are essentially flat, job growth is modest, and more than 40 percent of the new jobs in the last two years have been in low-paying sectors like retail and hospitality.

While consumer spending is not “going to collapse,” said Joel Prakken, senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers, “there are some headwinds there.”

Sarah M. Manley, a marketing consultant with two young sons in Waconia, Minn., has developed coping strategies in the last few years. Laid off in 2008, she started a business. She and her husband can make their mortgage payments and are paying off debts from when a storm damaged their roof.

“It’s not necessarily that I’m saving more money, but I’m paying off some of the debts that were amassed during the last three years, just trying to make headway,” Ms. Manley said.

To do that, she has changed habits. She uses the app GasBuddy to check prices at nearby stations before she buys gas for her car. She buys seasonal food on sale and freezes it — for Valentine’s Day, she plans to prepare crab legs she bought and froze last summer — and she is stocking up on holiday hams. She has switched from buying milk in gallon containers to buying it for less in plastic bags from the local gas station.

For big purchases, like the laptop she bought last summer, Ms. Manley still relies on credit, but is careful. She opens credit card accounts offering an introductory rate of no interest, then closes them just before the annual percentage rate kicks in.

“Everybody’s learned how to be frugal in the last two or three years,” she said.

Economic indicators suggest that, while things may not get worse for consumers this year, they will not get much better. In the third quarter of 2011, the most recent period for which figures are available, consumer spending rose slightly more than 1 percent, according to the Commerce Department.

Although housing sales have recently shown signs of recovery, prices are still falling and mortgage lenders are cautious. In November, contracts represented by 33 percent of members of the National Association of Realtors did not close, up from just 9 percent a year ago.

And with more than one in every five borrowers still owing more than their homes are worth, many homeowners feel too pressed to spend on much more than the essentials.

The stock market did not help consumers, either. Because of turmoil in the markets in the late summer and early fall, household wealth declined by $2.4 trillion in that period, a contraction likely to make people think twice about big purchases.

Adding to the uncertainty, financial weakness in Europe, and the potential expiration of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits in two months, could further soften spending.

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Political Memo: Frenetic Push for Votes as Iowa Campaign Wraps Up

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Mitt Romney signed campaign pins for supporters at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds in Davenport, Iowa. More Photos ?

DES MOINES — Mitt Romney has grown so confident of his Iowa prospects that on Monday night he dropped all humble pretense and proclaimed, “We’re going to win this thing.” At the same time, Rick Santorum insisted that his momentum carried its own whiff of victory.

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Both might be right.

The Iowa caucuses, the curious political ritual that will open yet another race for the White House on Tuesday, have a knack for turning second-place finishes into victories. And they are just as likely to produce losers — or deal surprises — as they are to coronate a clear-cut winner.

For all of the attention paid to the field of Republican presidential candidates on the final day of a frenzied burst of campaigning — it felt as if the weight of the Washington political and media establishment landed here on Monday — the race is only now beginning.

The polls have been recited as gospel, with Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum joining Representative Ron Paul of Texas at the top of the pack. If those findings hold true, each of the three will rush to claim victory as the contest moves to New Hampshire.

The outcome of the Iowa caucuses will set the tone for the race after a yearlong prelude that has been off the charts in its unpredictability.

Remember when Sarah Palin’s bus tour prompted the television pundit class to announce with certainty that she would run?

Who, five months ago, would have predicted that Herman Cain was going to hold a lead in the polls before evaporating? Newt Gingrich was up, then down, then up again; now he is down again.

And Rick Santorum? Two weeks ago, he struggled to get a group of reluctant insurance company employees at a downtown Des Moines office building to stick with him as he spoke during their lunch break. The only warmth he received in the room was from the sweater vest that has come to define him. By Monday, his events were so jammed that a supporter fainted during an overcrowded campaign stop.

His campaign said it was now looking beyond Iowa to consolidate support and emerge as the viable conservative alternative to Mr. Romney, a position the party’s evangelical base has long been seeking to fill.

Four years ago, Mr. Paul was a political punch line. What kind of Republican would call for a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan and for Pentagon cuts? Apparently the kind who attends caucuses in Iowa, according to polls that have shown Mr. Paul at or near the top of the field here.

So one would have to be a fool to go too far out on a limb to predict what happens on Tuesday and beyond with any certainty — or assume there are no consequences for getting it wrong. (Imagine that.) Yet there is a finite set of twists and turns that can determine whether Republicans move past their internal differences and confront President Obama quickly.

Here is a look at some of the possibilities for Tuesday evening as Republicans gather at the caucuses, a series of meetings in 1,774 precincts across Iowa where voters declare their preferred presidential candidate.

Second Chance in Iowa

Iowa was a gamble for Mitt Romney. And even if it does not pay off in a clear-cut victory, his advisers were already crowing that they were heading into the rest of the nominating contest in better shape than they had once expected. There are two chief reasons: Mr. Gingrich and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, whose candidacies have been significantly wounded.

It is not as if there are no warning signs still on the horizon for Mr. Romney — many conservatives view him as a hold-your-nose front-runner — but his organization has always been built with a cushion for stumbles along the way. Even as he was crisscrossing Iowa in the final days of the caucus campaign, absentee ballots were landing in the mailboxes of his supporters in Florida, highlighting a depth of organization and planning that none of his rivals can match.

“We’re going to win this thing,” Mr. Romney told an overflowing crowd on Monday evening during one of his stops in a dawn-to-dusk day of Iowa campaigning.

If he wins the caucuses decisively, his most immediate challenge is avoiding overconfidence. The voters of New Hampshire, after all, have spent years elevating underdogs and dealing punishing lessons to offset the Iowa results. But Mr. Romney’s lead is so significant in New Hampshire, according to a long string of polls, that his rivals may be able to defeat him in the primary next Tuesday only if they consolidate their support.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 2, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Reising Sun Cafe in Polk City, Iowa.

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On 4th Night of Car Fires in L.A., an Arrest

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The man, Harry Burkhart, 24, was taken into custody without incident around 3 a.m. on Sunset Boulevard on the outskirts of Hollywood, close to a drug store and a gas station. He was charged with arson around 6 a.m. and was being held without bail.

“A serial arsonist has, I believe, been caught,” Sheriff Lee Baca of Los Angeles County, standing in front of a bank of television cameras, said at a news conference attended by a parade of elected officials.

Sheriff Baca called the suspect “perhaps the most dangerous arsonist in the county of Los Angeles that I can recall.”

Chief Charlie Beck of Los Angeles Police Department said Mr. Burkhart was a German national; few additional details about the case would be provided for now, he added.

Chief Beck said he hoped that the suspect was acting alone, but he refused to rule out the possibility of other people being involved. “That is our huge concern at this exact moment,” Chief Beck said. “We have every hope that he did. But we do not know that yet.”

Search warrants were being executed at Mr. Burkhart’s house, Chief Beck said, and information from those searches would help officials determine how many people were involved in setting the fires.

Still other officials, including Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, seemed more optimistic that this arrest would resolve the case. And they said that there had been no more fires after Mr. Burkhart, who was driving a van that contained some incendiary material, was taken into custody.

The arrest brought at least a temporary reprieve in an episode that dominated the New Year’s weekend here. The attacks began early Friday morning and continued the next three nights. In the end, 52 cars were set on fire. Since many of the cars were in carports or garages, a number of apartment buildings sustained serious damage as well.

The random attacks stirred anxiety in neighborhoods across the city. But there were no significant injuries in connection with the fires, the authorities said.

Mr. Burkhart’s arrest came after another chaotic night, as cars began exploding into flames after dusk. The streets were again flooded with police officers, detectives and fire investigators.

Chief Beck said the case would not have been solved without the release on Sunday of a videotape showing the suspect leaving a parking lot.

Shervin Lalezary, a reserve sheriff’s deputy who works for $1 a year, spotted the suspect and stopped him at Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. He was introduced to considerable applause at the news conference on Monday evening as he described the stop. “As soon as I put on my lights and initiated a traffic stop of the suspect vehicle, I had an L.A.P.D. vehicle behind me ready to go,” he said.

For the next two hours, the area was roped off and police helicopters rumbled overhead.

Although the police declined to rule out the possibility of accomplices, they said two other men arrested last week and charged with arson in connection with fires set in the same area were not related to Mr. Burkhart or these latest attacks.

Chief Beck said officials would release only limited information while the investigation continues.

“This is an ongoing investigation,” he said. “Details about the suspect will not be released tonight. Many questions will go unanswered. That is not because the investigation is dormant.”

Ian Lovett contributed reporting.

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For High-Speed Rail, Support in the Past From G.O.P. Presidential Hopefuls

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Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, has written books and given speeches about the importance of high-speed rail in the United States, and he supported a study for a high-speed line from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tenn., sought by local boosters when he was in Congress. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas saw a role for high-speed rail in his failed $175 billion transportation plan to build what would have been called the Trans-Texas Corridor.

Even Representative Ron Paul of Texas, a small-government libertarian, signed a letter that several members of Texas’ Congressional delegation sent to federal officials in 2009 urging them to give the state money for rail studies to help it build “a truly ambitious and world-class high-speed rail network.”

But Mr. Gingrich may be the most outspoken Republican presidential candidate when it comes to his support of high-speed rail. He has spoken and written admiringly of China and France, and how far ahead of the United States they were when it comes to high-speed rail. He has opined that high-speed train lines would make sense in Florida and California — places the Obama administration sought to build them — and in the Northeast, among other places. And he has spoken of a role for government to help build a national rail network.

“If you want to be the most competitive country in the world in 2040 or 2050, you have to think large,” Mr. Gingrich said in 2009 at a videotaped forum sponsored by the National Governors Association and Building America’s Future, an infrastructure advocacy group. Mr. Gingrich’s large thought was for America to build high-speed magnetic levitation trains, as China has.

“Let’s go ahead and be really bold, and go head to head with the Chinese in developing and implementing maglev trains that move at 280, 300, 320 miles an hour,” Mr. Gingrich said in his speech, which Streetsblog.org, a transportation Web site, wrote about recently. “And you suddenly change all sorts of equations about how this country operates.”

Before the politics of rail was scrambled in recent years, Republican support for high-speed rail was not unusual. As recently as 2004, the Republican Party platform stated that “Republicans support, where economically viable, the development of a high-speed passenger railroad system as an instrument of economic development and enhanced mobility.”

But the politics of rail changed considerably after Mr. Obama persuaded Democrats in Congress to include $8 billion for passenger rail and high-speed rail in his $787 billion stimulus plan.

States initially competed fiercely for the money, but that shifted after the 2010 midterm elections swept Republicans into power in Congress and in many statehouses. New Republican governors in Ohio and Wisconsin rejected hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid that their states had won to build up their passenger rail systems.

Then Florida, which won $2.4 billion in federal money to build the nation’s first true high-speed rail system between Orlando and Tampa, sent back the money after its new Republican governor, Rick Scott, said it would be a boondoggle. Republicans in Congress have since blocked the Obama administration’s requests for more rail spending.

Against that backdrop, some rail advocates said it was a hopeful sign that some Republican presidential candidates have a history of supporting high-speed rail. “I hope that we can move past high-speed rail being a partisan issue — it certainly wasn’t always that way,” said Petra Todorovich, the director of America 2050, a branch of the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban research and advocacy group. “While politicians may differ over how to structure and manage high-speed rail, politicians on both sides of the aisle have recognized that there are certain corridors in the United States where this makes sense.”

Spokesmen for Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry did not respond to e-mails seeking comment about their views on rail. But Mr. Gingrich outlined his views in his 2008 book, “Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works,” saying that the California, Florida and the Northeast Corridor from Boston to Washington are all “very conducive to this kind of high-speed train investment.”

But he does take a different tack from the Obama administration and many Democrats by arguing that development of rail has been stymied by “union work rules,” the inefficiency of Amtrak, politicians in Washington who subsidize uneconomic routes and “the regulations and litigation involved in large-scale construction in the United States.”

A spokesman for Mr. Paul, Jesse Benton, said in an e-mail that Mr. Paul “thinks high-speed rail is a very exciting idea and could be a very worthwhile project in many cases.”

Mr. Benton said that Mr. Paul believed that development of high-speed rail should ideally be left to the private sector, but that he would favor providing federal tax credits and rolling back regulations to promote its development. He said the letter Mr. Paul signed with other members of the Texas delegation in 2009 — which sought federal money for studies that it said would help “attract the large number of high quality private and public sector investors that will be key to making this project a success” — was an effort to ensure that “an equitable portion of the money was spent in Texas so Texan taxpayers received some of their money back.” That letter was first reported by Newsweek in an article in October about fiscal conservatives seeking federal spending for their districts.

But rail projects are still a tough sell with many conservatives these days, as Mr. Gingrich hinted in his 2009 remarks at the governors’ forum. “Let me just close with what I think is the central issue, that I’m prepared to debate both with liberals and conservatives, but probably I’m of somewhat greater value in debating it with conservatives,” he said, speaking of the need to change the federal financing process. “You can’t talk about American national security in the long run without a fundamental redevelopment of this country economically. It is not possible. And you can’t talk about a competitive American economy without a dramatically more robust and more modern infrastructure.”

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National Briefing | Southwest: Texas: Man Detained at Airport Is a Green Beret

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Competing histories across the Strait of Gibraltar contribute to its peculiar exclaves.

Medicare should demand evidence that a costly cancer treatment is more effective than cheaper options.

In Nigeria, designating Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist group will only inflame anti-Americanism among Muslims.

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Body Found at Mt. Rainier Belongs to Ranger Shooting Suspect

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The F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies had spent the previous 24 hours in an intense search for the man, Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, using snowshoes and aircraft to scour the steep and snowy terrain of this rugged 368-square-mile park.

Mr. Barnes’s body was spotted in the creek by aircraft about 10:45 a.m. Monday, said Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was found wearing a T-shirt, jeans and one sneaker. On his neck was tattooed, “Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust.” Mr. Troyer said officers had found two guns they believed had belonged to Mr. Barnes, but that he did not use them on himself.

“He appears to have not been a victim of any kind of violence other than the weather,” Mr. Troyer said. Temperatures were in the low 30s overnight. About two feet of snow had fallen recently.

Chuck Young, the park’s chief ranger, said Mr. Barnes was found about a mile or a mile and a half from Barn Flat, a bend in a park road where officials say he shot and killed the ranger, Margaret Anderson, 34, after she tried to stop his vehicle.

Mr. Barnes had failed to stop when park rangers tried to pull him over Sunday morning. Ms. Anderson, responding to radio calls, used her patrol vehicle to create a blockade as Mr. Barnes made his way toward the busy Paradise visitor center and recreational area, where fresh snow had lured people to go sledding and snowshoeing. The gunman is believed to have stepped out of his vehicle and shot Ms. Anderson before she could react.

“There’s nothing she could have done,” Mr. Troyer said.

Ms. Anderson had two daughters, ages 3 and 1, and was married to another ranger at the park. She joined the Park Service as a seasonal ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah in 2000. The couple had worked at Mount Rainier since 2008.

No one else was injured, though Mr. Barnes is believed to have shot out the windshield of another ranger who responded.

“They made a conscious decision to make this stop below Paradise, where we were on one of the busiest winter-day weekends of the year,” said Randy King, the park superintendent.

A tactical team had followed Mr. Barnes’s tracks to canyons where he was believed to be hiding. An airplane and helicopter also worked to pinpoint him.

Ayn Dietrich, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Seattle, said law enforcement officials believed Mr. Barnes was also involved in a shooting at a house party earlier Sunday in the town of Skyway, Wash., in which four people were injured, two critically.

Mr. Barnes had served in the Army and been stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, but did not appear to have been a combat veteran, according to Steven Dean, the assistant special agent in charge of the Seattle office of the F.B.I.

Park officials and law enforcement agencies had said they found ammunition, body armor and survivalist gear in Mr. Barnes’s vehicle, raising concerns that he might elude the authorities and hurt others in the park. But Mr. Dean said Mr. Barnes “was not a Special Forces-trained solider” and “was found dead on a hill, unequipped.”

Mr. Young said that law enforcement officers escorted more than 80 people from the visitor center overnight Monday in a convoy, determining that to do so was safer than having them remain in the park.

“The alternative is they are sitting in a building surrounded by a parking lot,” Mr. Young said.

Although most of the park had been cleared of visitors, three groups remained in the backcountry. Rangers hiked out to bring them in.

The last time rangers died at Mount Rainier was in 1995, when two climbing rangers died during a rescue. Ms. Anderson is the ninth National Park Service ranger killed in the line of duty since the parks were founded in 1916. A park ranger was last killed in 2002, at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, in pursuit of a drug cartel hit squad.

Ms. Anderson was among the 1,000 law enforcement rangers at parks across the country. Law enforcement rangers have patrolled the national parks since 1916. The rangers are trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia to carry a handgun.

The park is about 85 miles southeast of Seattle, and almost entirely made up of federally designated wilderness.

Mr. King, the superintendent, said the park would most likely remain closed on Tuesday while the investigation continued.

“National parks are places we should continue to go and feel safe,” said Mr. Dean of the F.B.I. “This is an anomaly. This is something that doesn’t happen.”

William Yardley reported from Mount Rainier National Park, and Isolde Raftery from Seattle.

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Relatives of 9/11 Victims, Suspecting Hacking, Await Answers

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Some heard mysterious clicking sounds on their home and mobile phones. The fiancée of one man who died at the World Trade Center remembers listening to snippets of someone else’s conversation on her line. A husband of another victim recalls hearing somebody remotely accessing his home answering machine, which still held the final, reassuring message left by his wife shortly before the crash of Flight 93. Others say they are baffled as to how details about their loved ones appeared in British tabloids within days of the attacks.

Ten years later, their long-held suspicions aroused by The News of the World phone-hacking scandal in London, dozens of relatives of victims contacted the Justice Department. On Aug. 24, eight of them met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and asked him to determine whether their privacy had been violated. As a first step, they asked him to see whether Scotland Yard had a record of their names or phone numbers among the material seized from a private investigator who hacked cellphone messages for the tabloid.

Four months later, they are still waiting to hear back and are frustrated by the Justice Department’s silence.

“It’s not that hard to find out — it’s quite a simple thing, really, isn’t it?” said Patricia Bingley, a British citizen whose son, Kevin Dennis, a 43-year-old trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, worked on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower.

Ms. Bingley said she was stunned to see, in the Sept. 18, 2001, issue of The Sun, a photograph of her son reading a bedtime story to his two sons, which she did not give to the paper. The story also contained details about her son that she said no one from her family had provided to The Sun. “It never made sense to me,” she said, adding that she suspects hacking or worse by the paper. “I’d like very much for the government to tell us whether this happened or not. Celebrities seem to have no trouble finding out.”

In July, as revelations about widespread phone hacking by the tabloid were spilling out, another British newspaper, The Daily Mirror, reported that a private investigator said that News of the World reporters had offered to pay him to retrieve phone records of Sept. 11 victims. After the report, which was not confirmed by other news organizations, the Justice Department opened an investigation. To date, no evidence has emerged publicly that Sept. 11 victims were hacking targets.

Jodi Westbrook Flowers, a lawyer at a South Carolina firm that represents more than 6,700 relatives of Sept. 11 victims, said she and her colleagues had scoured the British tabloids and found scores of details about the victims. Relatives were not certain how the tabloids found out so much so quickly after the attacks.

One of the relatives, whom she declined to identify, said that five days after Sept. 11, The Sun published the words from a voice mail message left on his cellphone by his son, who was aboard one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. (British authorities are also investigating whether hacking occurred at The Sun, which, like The News of the World, is owned by News Corporation.)

In late September, Ms. Flowers, of the Motley Rice law firm, sent Mr. Holder phone numbers of two dozen relatives of victims and asked that Scotland Yard run them through the 12,000 pages of documents seized from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator responsible for most of the hacking by the now-shuttered News of the World. She said at least 100 of her clients, in both the United States and Britain, now want similar information.

On Nov. 3, Vida G. Bottom, chief of the Justice Department’s public corruption unit, wrote to the lawyers, saying, “The F.B.I. has undertaken a preliminary review to assess the veracity of those allegations.”

Ms. Flowers said she was disappointed by the vagueness of the response. “We asked a simple threshold question, and we basically received a nonanswer,” she said.

Ms. Flowers added, “If there was no hacking, it is wildly coincidental that so many people describe similar experiences.”

Even so, two Justice Department officials with knowledge of the inquiry said they did not expect much to come of the investigation. The officials, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss a continuing criminal inquiry, said the investigation remained open in case Scotland Yard discovered evidence confirming the suspicions of the Sept. 11 relatives. They both said they were doubtful such evidence would emerge.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said only, “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

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New Laws Evaluated by Job-Creation Potential

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When the American Public Transportation Association seeks more federal money, it argues that “public transit projects will put people to work.” Specifically, it says, “Every $1 billion we invest in public transportation means 36,000 jobs.”

When Lockheed Martin lobbies for the F-35 joint strike fighter, it says the new plane will strengthen the economy by “creating direct and indirect jobs for 127,000 Americans” in 47 states.

Health care lobbyists argue that cuts in Medicare and Medicaid take jobs away from nurses and other hospital employees. Tree farmers argue that cutting forest conservation programs will destroy “good-paying rural jobs.”

With unemployment stubbornly high, jobs, it seems, can be used to justify anything and everything. But some economists and other critics say that the figures can be misleading as advocates cook up inflated estimates to make their case.

“Many economists think most of that is pretty silly,” said David Card, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is president of the Society of Labor Economists. “It’s just a selling point. You can say anything, no matter what, creates jobs. I don’t think people should pay much attention to it.”

Sometimes opposing sides offer the logic-defying claim that only their preferred outcome would be good for jobs. Republican lawmakers, for example, criticize new environmental regulations as job destroyers, but supporters of tougher clean air rules say they will create tens of thousands of jobs in pollution control industries.

Estimates of job creation or destruction often come from economic consultants hired by groups lobbying for or against a proposal. The impact can be magnified by including the indirect effects of a proposal on other parts of the economy.

Prof. John M. Abowd, a labor economist at Cornell, said that “labor markets are hugely dynamic,” with large numbers of jobs being created and destroyed even when the total level of employment stays roughly the same. For this reason, he said, it is often difficult to tell whether spending for a specific purpose directly creates jobs.

The wireless industry wants the government to free up more radio frequencies to meet consumer demand for mobile broadband. If allowed to use those frequencies, wireless companies say, they will spend billions of dollars on wireless networks, creating more than a half-million jobs.

Similar arguments are made for legislation to crack down on foreign Web sites that sell counterfeit goods and illegally copied music, movies, television shows and books.

Copyright, trademark and intellectual property rights may sound like obscure issues in the context of jobs. But a coalition of big companies, Creative America, frames its message to Congress in a way that politicians notice: “Stop foreign Internet criminals from stealing our jobs.”

A coal-industry group, attacking power-plant rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, says they would “destroy over 180,000 jobs per year.” The estimate comes from a study commissioned by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, whose members include coal producers like Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.

Not to be outdone, companies that make scrubbers and other pollution-control equipment have their own trade association, the Institute of Clean Air Companies. They support many E.P.A. clean air standards. And they say that 1.5 million jobs will be created in the next five years as a result of the new requirements.

“These are good-paying American jobs for electricians, welders and engineers,” the institute says.

The National Association of Letter Carriers, fighting a proposal to eliminate Saturday mail delivery, says it would not only degrade customer service, but also threaten millions of jobs at direct marketers, printing and publishing companies and other businesses in the mailing industry. New taxes are portrayed as job-killers, while tax breaks are defended as job creators.

To help reduce the deficit, President Obama recently proposed new fees and taxes that would raise $36 billion over 10 years from airlines and air passengers. The industry sums up its opposition in four words: “Add Taxes. Lose Jobs.”

“Proposed airline taxes are a one-way ticket to the unemployment line for 181,000 Americans,” says the Air Transport Association, a trade group for air carriers.

The National Association of Manufacturers tells Congress that higher energy taxes will lead to higher prices and “millions of lost jobs.”

The new health care law levies many new taxes. Representative Erik Paulsen, Republican of Minnesota, is leading efforts to repeal one, on certain medical devices. The tax, he says, would “eliminate more than 40,000 well-paying jobs.”

Republican candidates for president say the health law, with its requirement for many employers to provide insurance or improve benefits, puts millions of full-time jobs at risk.

On the contrary, Obama administration officials say, the law will preserve and create jobs in several ways: by providing tax credits to small businesses to make insurance more affordable; by increasing the demand for health care goods and services; and by providing billions of dollars to build community health centers and school clinics.

People often cite jobs in trying to keep their favorite tax breaks.

The National Farmers Union, lobbying for extension of tax credits for renewable energy, says, “Wind energy creates jobs.” Farmers often receive lease payments from wind energy companies that place wind turbines on their land.

A new study commissioned by the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, says that extending a tax credit for wind energy would “create and save 54,000 jobs,” while expiration of the tax break as scheduled at the end of 2012 would cause the loss of 37,000 jobs.

Even tree farmers and their advocate, the American Forest Foundation, buttress their case by arguing that trees mean jobs.

Fearing that Congress will cut forest conservation programs in the 2012 farm bill, the foundation tells lawmakers, “Every square mile of private forest land supports five American jobs.”

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U.S.: Love on the Spectrum

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Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students living in Greenfield, Mass., discuss how autism affects their lives and relationship.

Produced by Sean Patrick Farrell

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Many Iowa Caucus Voters Are Undecided

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To try to understand why so many voters are uncommitted, this reporter talked to some Iowa Republicans as they made their choices — if, indeed, they have made choices.

TWICE BROKEN-HEARTED

In the summer days leading up to the Ames Straw Poll, that early, informal contest for presidential contenders, Jason Anderson was “totally pumped up,” as he put it, for Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota who seemed to be a promising candidate for the Republican nomination.

“He gave me such a good feeling that six or seven of my buddies, all Tim fans, we drove out to the poll to root for him,” said Mr. Anderson, 35, right, a father of two from Ankeny, a small town north of Des Moines. “It was like a rock concert, we were so excited.”

Mr. Anderson’s emotions were different the next day, when Mr. Pawlenty, finishing in a disappointing third place, dropped out of the race.

“I felt it in a big way,” Mr. Anderson said.

His mood brightened again only when Herman Cain’s candidacy took off two months later. In Mr. Cain’s business-minded philosophies, Mr. Anderson, who works in the auto insurance industry, thought he had found another good match. But when Mr. Cain suspended his campaign in the face of escalating accusations of sexual misconduct in early December, Mr. Anderson felt that sinking feeling again. Frustration ensued.

In an interview in mid-December, Mr. Anderson vented: “I hate wavering back and forth. It’s been like a rollercoaster.”

But what was he to do? Mr. Anderson said he found Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, “too fake.” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas was “without a clue.” Representative Michele Bachmann did not seem to know her facts, he said, and Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, smacked of old news.

It was not until Christmas, when a guest at a family gathering asked, “Have you looked at Ron Paul?” that Mr. Anderson realized he had not.

“I can’t explain why it hadn’t occurred to me, but the more I learned about him, the more I liked Ron Paul,” he said. “Not everything, of course, but you’re never going to find the perfect candidate. And this is not just about jumping on a bandwagon, although I do want to back someone who has a chance to win on Tuesday.”

“My wife and I are for small government and less spending, and he’s all about that,” Mr. Anderson said, dismissing some of Mr. Paul’s more controversial positions, like his goal of eliminating the Federal Reserve, as “obviously highly unlikely.”

“I’ll be voting for him, and I don’t see anything changing,” Mr. Anderson said. “Two weeks ago, I was confused and distraught about the whole thing. Now I’m happy.”

SUPPORTERS? SURE. FANS? THAT’S A BIT MUCH.

When Arthur and Norma Doenecke went into semiretirement, leaving their busy lives on the East Coast behind almost 10 years ago and moving to rural Iowa, one perk of their new life was the ability to indulge in a close-up look at national politics, a favorite pastime. And last year, they were almost everywhere the candidates were: at picnics and rallies, dinners and forums and debates. Open the March 21 issue of Time magazine and see them in a photograph paying rapt attention to Newt Gingrich at a campaign stop.

“I was standing behind him but, as I told my friends, that didn’t mean I was standing for him,” Dr. Doenecke, a family physician, was careful to note with a sly smile. A moderate Republican, he takes his responsibility as a caucusgoer in the democratic process so seriously that the founding fathers would swoon.

Mrs. Doenecke, a former advertising executive, is no different. “We believe that if you aren’t informed and if you don’t vote, you really don’t have a right to criticize your country or your government,” she said.

Yet for most of this political season, the couple, below, has been undecided about whom to support, finding more faults with the Republican contenders than anything that would spark excitement. Their decision-making boiled down to a rather crude process of elimination, and in the end, there was one man standing. But barely.

That man is Mitt Romney.

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On Eve of First Voting of ’12, a Last Pitch in Iowa

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Mitt Romney

DAVENPORT, IOWA — Standing on stages across Iowa and marveling the size of his crowds, Mitt Romney says this election “is a dramatic choice between two different paths for America.” The November contest, he argues, “is an election about the soul of America.”

On a bus tour through the state over the past week, Mr. Romney has kept his focus squarely on President Obama, presenting two starkly different visions for the future of the country, and painting himself as the candidate best equipped to wrest the White House from Mr. Obama this fall.

For months Mr. Romney kept Iowa at arm’s length, perhaps mindful of his second-place finish there in 2008 despite investing heavily in the state. But as the Republican field remained fractured, he made a late play to win. And a victory in Iowa would catapult him decisively into the position of the candidate to beat in the fight ahead, as polling for the next contest, in New Hampshire a week after the caucuses, gives him a commanding lead there.

To sharpen the contrast with the president, he tells voters in Iowa that while he offers a “merit-based” and “opportunity society,” Mr. Obama is turning the country in an “entitlement society.”

“We’re an opportunity nation, I think the president wants to turn us into a European-style welfare state, an entitlement nation, where the role of government isn’t to provide our freedom and opportunity, but instead the role of government is to take from some to give to others in the name of equality,” Mr. Romney said here Monday morning. “I don’t want to become a European welfare state. Europe doesn’t work there — it’ll never work here.”

Mr. Romney’s “closing argument” speech is generally long on patriotism — since landing in Iowa, he’s taken to quoting from “American the Beautiful” — and short on policy specifics. On Monday, however, he offered a few details of what he would do as president.

Mr. Romney said he would negotiate trade agreements to open more markets to American goods. And he said he would balance the budget by cutting government programs that are not absolutely critical, such as subsidies for Amtrak and the Public Broadcasting Service.

“I’m going to say, which of these programs do we absolutely have to have?” Mr. Romney said. “Is this program so critical to America that it’s worth our borrowing from China to pay for it?”

Mr. Romney added, deploying one of his fail-safe applause lines, “By the way, the first on the list to get rid of is Obamacare.”

ASHLEY PARKER

Rick Santorum

PERRY, Iowa — Rick Santorum, whose candidacy once appeared to be such a lost cause that he held a campaign event where one person showed up, spent the day before the Iowa caucuses trying to convince voters that he could not only win the Republican nomination, but would unite voters against President Obama to win in November.

“Who in this race has proven that with a conservative record they were able to attract independents and Democrats?” he told a crowd of about 100 people (not including hordes of news media) who packed shoulder to shoulder inside a hotel lobby here for a voter meet-and-greet.

“Has Mitt Romney done that?” he added. “Nope. Never ran as a conservative and tried to attract any votes. Have any of the congressmen running from conservative Congressional districts proven that? Nope. Has Governor Perry, who ran as a conservative in Texas? I mean, how hard is that?”

Mr. Santorum’s sudden change in fortune — from practically pleading with voters to give him a chance to now telling overflow audiences that he is more electable than his rivals — was a sign of how rapidly his campaign has climbed in the last few days. Several polls have put him near the top in Iowa, reordering the Republican field once again.

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The Next War: Pentagon to Present Vision of Reduced Military

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In a shift of doctrine driven by fiscal reality and a deal last summer that kept the United States from defaulting on its debts, Mr. Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military — and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once.

Instead, he will say that the military will be large enough to fight and win one major conflict, while also being able to “spoil” a second adversary’s ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other smaller?operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-flight zone.

Pentagon officials, in the meantime, are in final deliberations about potential cuts to virtually every important area of military spending: the nuclear arsenal, warships, combat aircraft, salaries, and retirement and health benefits. With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, Mr. Panetta is weighing how significantly to shrink America’s ground forces.

There is broad agreement on the left, right and center that $450 billion in cuts over a decade — the amount that the White House and Pentagon agreed to last summer — is acceptable. That is about 8 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget. But there is intense debate about an additional $500 billion in cuts that may have to be made if Congress follows through with deeper reductions.

Mr. Panetta and defense hawks say a reduction of $1 trillion, about 17 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget, would be ruinous to national security. Democrats and a few Republicans say that it would be painful but manageable; they add that there were steeper military cuts after the Cold War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

“Even at a trillion dollars, this is a shallower build-down than any of the last three we’ve done,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw military budgets in the Clinton White House and is now a fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “It would still be the world’s most dominant military. We would be in an arms race with ourselves.”

Many who are more worried about cuts, including Mr. Panetta, acknowledge that Pentagon personnel costs are unsustainable and that generous retirement benefits may have to be scaled back to save crucial weapons programs.

“If we allow the current trend to continue,” said Arnold L. Punaro, a consultant on a Pentagon advisory group, the Defense Business Board, who has pushed for changes in the military retirement system, “we’re going to turn the Department of Defense into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist.”

Mr. Panetta will outline the strategy guiding his spending plans at a news conference this week, and the specific cuts — for now, the Pentagon has prepared about $260 billion in cuts for the next five years — ?will be detailed in the president’s annual budget submission to Congress, where they will be debated and almost certainly amended before approval. Although the proposals look to budget cuts over a decade, any future president can decide to propose an alternative spending plan to Congress.

The looming cuts inevitably force decisions on the scope and future of the American military. If, say, the Pentagon saves $7 billion over a decade by reducing the number of aircraft carriers to 10 from 11, would there be sufficient forces in the Pacific to counter an increasingly bold China? If the Pentagon saves nearly $150 billion in the next 10 years by shrinking the Army to, say, 483,000 troops from 570,000, would America be prepared for a grinding, lengthy ground war in Asia?

What about saving more than $100 billion in health care cutbacks for working-age military retirees? Would that break a promise to those who risked their lives for the country?

The calculations exclude the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will go down over the next decade. Even after the winding down of the wars and the potential $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, the Pentagon’s annual budget, now $530 billion, would shrink to $472 billion in 2013, or about the size of the budget in 2007.

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Firepower

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Alan Simons, left, and his family were riding their bikes in Asheville, N.C., when a driver, Charles Diez, pulled up next to him and started berating him. Mr. Diez, who had a permit for a concealed weapon, fired at Mr. Simons.

By MICHAEL LUO

As states ease concealed weapon laws, some of the permits are ending up in the wrong hands.

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