The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I`m Gwen Ifill.

On the NewsHour tonight: the news of this Monday; then, a political holiday time-out for voters in Iowa and New Hampshire only goes so far, an update on what`s happening behind the scenes; a conversation about the effects of globalization, Paul Solman talks with the CEO of Ethan Allen furniture; an encore science report on Greenland`s melting icebergs; and a discussion with four scholars and religious leaders about the volatile mix of religion, politics and headlines.

(BREAK)

GWEN IFILL: Thousands of Christian pilgrims traveled to Bethlehem on this Christmas Eve for the first time in years. Celebrations in the biblical town had been muted since 2000 because of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Security was still tight for this year`s observances, but local leaders estimated 65,000 tourists were on hand, as renewed peace talks eased fears of trouble.

IBRAHIM FALTAS, Pastor, Jerusalem Church: In 10 years, I think Christmas wasn`t like this year. This year, it`s very different. We are very, very Christmas Day today.

GWEN IFILL: Amid the celebrations in Bethlehem, the peace talks resumed in Jerusalem. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have met twice since the process restarted last month in Annapolis, Maryland. But the Palestinians warned today there won`t be any progress until Israel stops building Jewish settlements near Jerusalem.

President Bush made holiday phone calls to U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf today. He telephoned 10 servicemembers from Camp David. A spokeswoman said he told them they`re serving a noble cause.

In Iraq, a car bomb destroyed a minibus in Baghdad, killing two people. It came near the end of a relatively peaceful Muslim holiday period.

Allies of Thailand`s exiled Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra maneuvered today to regain power. They won a near majority in Sunday`s parliamentary elections. Today, they recruited other parties to form a coalition. The military ousted Thaksin last year, but the army commander promised to accept the election results.

The effects of a fierce winter storm lingered in the upper Midwest today. Holiday travelers still faced icy conditions in parts of the region. Over the weekend, there were hundreds of traffic accidents in the plains and the Midwest. Power outages also spread, and wind-blown snow grounded hundreds of flights. The storm was also blamed for at least 19 deaths in six states.

Wall Street enjoyed some Christmas cheer in a half-day of trading today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 98 points to close at 13,549. The Nasdaq rose 21 points to close at 2,713.

Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson died Sunday in suburban Toronto where he lived. He`d suffered kidney failure. Starting in the 1940s, Peterson gained fame for his musical genius and quick fingers. He played with Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie, among other jazz greats. Peterson influenced generations of other musicians with his style, on display here in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1977. Oscar Peterson was 82 years old.

That`s it for the news summary tonight. Now: campaigning at Christmas, the candidates` new dilemma; a conversation about globalization; melting icebergs in Greenland; and mixing religion with politics.

(BREAK)

GWEN IFILL: `Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the states not a candidate was stirring; they`re taking a break. Judy Woodruff has our presidential campaign update.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All of the candidates are taking a holiday from politics, but most will be back campaigning the day after Christmas, with just 10 days to go before the first primary votes are cast in the Iowa caucuses.

We`re joined by two seasoned campaign-watchers who`ve been tracking the races. Adam Nagourney, he`s chief political reporter for the New York Times, he joins us from Washington. He`s just back from two weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he heads back to Iowa tomorrow.

Also back from Iowa is Mark Halperin, Time magazine`s senior political analyst and the author of "The Undecided Voter`s Guide to the Next President." Mark joins us from New York where he`s spending the holidays before trekking back to Iowa on Wednesday.

Gentlemen, good to see both of you. We`ve never had primary and caucus so close to Christmas and New Years. How are voters handling this, Mark? Are they irritated? Are they taking it in stride?

MARK HALPERIN, Senior Political Analyst, Time Magazine: Well, just based on being in Iowa and talking to voters, I think the people who are going to come out and caucus -- because, remember, we`re talking about a universe of no more than 250,000 people -- I think those people don`t mind the politicking. They know the caucuses are coming up.

You do, though, regularly in Iowa run into people who aren`t that aware of the caucuses, who aren`t planning to go and caucus. And I think they`re a little bit sick of the advertising. They`re a little bit sick of seeing the news accounts.

But, again, that`s not the people that the campaigns are targeting, so they don`t mind offending those few who don`t like it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Adam, how do you see people reacting to this campaigning right into the holiday?

ADAM NAGOURNEY, Chief Political Correspondent, New York Times: I don`t think people mind. It`s a complication for the candidates, though, because they have had to sort of figure out how to sort of tune their message.

Normally at this point in the campaign, you`d be probably doing in a race this tight at least some sort of attack ads or some sort of ways to draw contrasts, and that`s really tough to do now. And if you turn on TV in Iowa or New Hampshire these days, you see these sort of really gauzy commercials with candidates sitting in front of Christmas trees, and opening gifts, and saying how much they love the world, and that`s probably not what they want to be talking about right now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to ask you both about Republicans first, because there seems to be more movement there. This is a really unsettled race, not just Huckabee and McCain up; it`s Romney and Giuliani having problems. Adam, what are you seeing and hearing in both of these states?

ADAM NAGOURNEY: In Iowa, all polls show -- let me back up for one second. Mitt Romney`s basic strategy has been, the former governor of Massachusetts, has been to win Iowa and New Hampshire. It`s a traditional strategy, and it makes a lot of sense.

In Iowa, he has been, to say the least, disrupted by the rise of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who at least polls suggest is getting all kinds of support. I think the big question to watch out for is whether, you know, the sort of groundswell of support that we think is building for Governor Huckabee can be matched by the organization that Governor Romney has very, very diligently put together over the past year.

The additional problem for Governor Romney is that in New Hampshire John McCain is showing all kinds of rise and increase in support as it comes to the New Hampshire primary. And a lot of the people think that if Mitt Romney loses in Iowa, he`s going to be in even worse shape going into New Hampshire. So it`s very, very complicated.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, what are you seeing in the Republican race?

MARK HALPERIN: Well, I think, in the end, probably the best thing that happened to Mitt Romney was Mike Huckabee`s rise, because he had to win Iowa before, in all likelihood, in order to get the strategy that he had put in place -- Adam referred to -- worked out. He needed to win Iowa.

Now, if he does win Iowa -- and I think there`s a good chance that he will -- he will get credit for it from the press, from the voters for having fought back and won it. That will be a big news story.

He`s competing in Iowa with one of the best stories any of us have ever covered, this three-way down-to-the-wire race on the Democratic side. So I think it is true that it is a two-person contest, without a doubt, in Iowa between Huckabee and Romney. Either one could win it, I believe.

And I think third place could go to any number of people. I`m not sure how much it will be worth.

As Adam said, the problem for Romney right now is he is fighting a two-front war, and he will for the next two weeks, Huckabee in Iowa and McCain in New Hampshire. He has to worry about the fact that McCain is clearly going to focus his time, as he did in 2000, not on Iowa, but on New Hampshire. And Romney has to worry about both states.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Adam, just quickly, why is John McCain doing better in New Hampshire? That sort of came out of nowhere, didn`t it?

ADAM NAGOURNEY: You know, John McCain`s always had a sort of connection with New Hampshire. Remember, he won there in 2000 by 18 points. You know, normally I would say that he appeals to independent voters there who can vote in either party, though the Boston Globe survey over the weekend suggested that he wasn`t even getting that many independent voters` support.

But he has been out over the past couple of weeks, and he`s been very diligently doing town hall meetings. And people, I think, will respond to him.

I think the war, believe it or not, is helping him. Remember that he was a supporter of increased troops in Iraq from the beginning, and he`s in a position now where he can say, "I told you so."

But most of all, something about his personality I think works well in Iowa -- excuse me, in New Hampshire, not in Iowa.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And just very quickly, that very negative editorial in the Concord Monitor against Romney.

ADAM NAGOURNEY: I`ve never seen anything like that in my life. The Monitor wrote an editorial on Sunday. It basically -- it was clearly (inaudible) "Do not vote for Romney under any circumstances" editorial. It was devastating.

And even though I think the Concord Monitor tends to be read or have influence more with Democratic voters and maybe independent voters, who I don`t think were going to vote for Romney anyway, it still was pretty damning.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, back to the Democrats here. It`s still tightly bunched in Iowa. What are these candidates doing? Who are they targeting and how are they getting their vote out?

MARK HALPERIN: Well, look, it is a very small group relative to the whole country and even Iowa. Only about 160,000 maximum will turn out.

You`ve got to, though, try to reach everybody. So you`re seeing all sorts of efforts. Bill Clinton has gone to Waterloo, Iowa, twice in the last week, once with Magic Johnson and then to a Sunday church service with his wife, the candidate, yesterday. It`s an incredible focus on one town, a pretty reasonable sized city by Iowa standards.

But they`re trying to turn everybody out. The Clinton campaign focusing on women, particularly older women; the Obama campaign focusing on young people and independent Democrats who maybe haven`t caucused in the past.

The Edwards campaign -- and, again, we must caution people to not think this is a two-person race. John Edwards has the most reliable base of support. Both Obama people and Clinton people will tell you that, if it`s bad weather, if it turns out to be a relatively low turnout, John Edwards has a real good chance to win this and shake the race up even more.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Adam, what I saw when I was in Iowa about a week ago is that Edwards is trying to lock down and has locked down a lot of those people who`ve been to caucuses faithfully in the past. Why is that so important?

ADAM NAGOURNEY: Well, Mark is totally right about this. The caucusing system is, a, difficult; and, b, requires a certain level of commitment.

And the big difference between Edwards and Obama and Clinton is that most of his supporters have voted before. Excuse me, they have caucused before. They know what they`re doing. They`re more likely to turn out.

I think that what keeps Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama up at night is the fact that they are trying to expand the universe. Mark was talking about 160,000 number. I agree with him; that`s a large number. And that counts on Mrs. Clinton being able to get older women out who have never voted before and Senator Obama getting out college students who have never voted before.

That`s the big difference between the two. And I agree: It`s a mistake not to look at this as a three-way race. Edwards could absolutely win in Iowa.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, Mark, I know some people watching are going to say, "Wait a minute. We haven`t talked about the issues. We`ve only been focusing on the horse race and on logistics and organization"...

ADAM NAGOURNEY: I mentioned the war. Don`t forget that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You`re right. You did.

But, Mark, how much of it at this point is about organization?

MARK HALPERIN: Well, a lot of it is. I mean, the appeals to get new people involved is certainly the case. There is a big undecided, and those people will be affected by organization, but also by the message.

It`s always important to talk about issues and not just the horse race. At the same time, there are not that many key differences between the candidates. They`ve tried to accentuate them in some cases.

Between the parties, there certainly are differences. But between Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and the major Republican candidates on the other side, if you look at the big issues the voters care about, there are differences, but they aren`t fundamental.

And I think voters are a lot more focused on electability, on personality. Who would be the kind of president they`re looking for, rather than a checklist of issue positions?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, I hope both of you at least get a little bit of a break before you head back on the trail tomorrow and Wednesday. Thank you both, Mark Halperin, Adam Nagourney. Great to see both of you. Thanks.

MARK HALPERIN: Thank you, Judy.

(BREAK)

GWEN IFILL: Now, the consequences of globalization in the United States and elsewhere. Tonight, an encore conversation on that subject from our economics correspondent, Paul Solman.

PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour Economics Correspondent: Ethan Allen furniture, how much more American can you get? The green mountain boy himself was a hero of the American Revolution. For decades, the colonial facade and furniture named after him were, for Ethan Allen`s customers, early Americana incarnate.

And the company is still the state of Vermont`s biggest employer. And, yet, Ethan Allen is about as global a company as you`re likely to find, though world headquarters are here in Danbury, Connecticut.

FAROOQ KATHWARI, CEO, Ethan Allen Interiors, Inc.: The product is made in the Philippines, but all the upholstery is done right here in the United States.

PAUL SOLMAN: That`s Ethan Allen`s CEO, Farooq Kathwari, born and raised in Kashmir, an area both India and Pakistan have claimed for decades. Kathwari emigrated to the U.S. in 1965; he sold Kashmiri handicrafts to, among others, Ethan Allen, while getting an MBA at NYU, has been president and part-owner of the company since 1985.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: As we get into, say, this area, this is somewhat more of the classic 18th-century traditional.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ethan Allen now makes furniture all over the world, global styles, global sourcing.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: And if you look, for instance, at a chair like this, the frame, the metal frame is made in the United States. This leather is cut and sewn in Mexico, and it is upholstered in our plant here in North Carolina. This is Appalachian cherry, solid cherry. And these chairs are made in China.

PAUL SOLMAN: Where`s the American flag pillow made?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Well, most American flags are made in China, as you know.

PAUL SOLMAN: Most American flags are...

FAROOQ KATHWARI: ... are made in China, but I would say let`s give the benefit of the doubt it was made in America, because it`s an American sofa.

PAUL SOLMAN: So what does Farooq Kathwari think of globalization? For starters, he defines the term very broadly.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Globalization is more than the issue of just buying products cheaper from one country and marketing them in another country.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, if it`s more than that, what is it?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Globalization to me means the world has now become smaller. You know, I`d never seen television until I left Kashmir. Today, 40 years later, the information that is in Kashmir, the young kids, they`ve got more channels than we do right here. They get channels from the east and the west and the north and the south.

So globalization, from that perspective, has created expectations, the expectations to do better. They want to have a better life; they see it all over the place.

PAUL SOLMAN: They see it on television.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: They see it on television; they see it on the Internet. They also see the need for better governance, the rule of law we are talking about.

PAUL SOLMAN: So that the expectation, "Hey, most of the world," someone sees in Kashmir, "they govern themselves. That looks like a good thing. Gee, we ought to try it." "It`s very hard to do that. Our expectations are dashed. We get angry." That`s what you mean?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Absolutely. You know, Kashmir also teaches you something else. When I was young, I used to climb mountains and going to school was a hike. When you climb to 15,000, 20,000 feet, if you go too fast, you can get water in your lungs and you die.

So globalization is that kind of a change. You`re going up a mountain. And if you go too fast -- and, unfortunately, today, around the world, we see a lot of changes are being made fast -- people are getting water in their lungs. And, you know, a lot of them, unfortunately, are dying because they are also not understanding another factor of a mountain: To save yourself, you`ve got to come down.

PAUL SOLMAN: Go slow, says Kathwari. Globalization is inexorable, but it can kill. And yet, to its American workers, it must seem Ethan Allen has globalized at a break-neck pace.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Six years back, we were operating 23 manufacturing plants in the United States. They were all busy, 100 percent capacity. Six years later, due to many factors, we have had to consolidate 13 plants, 13 plants we`ve had to close.

And we today have 40 percent of our products now coming from offshore, many countries -- China, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and other places. If we had not done those things, we would not be competitive, because we would be dragged down by our plants that were not operating as efficiently as today you need to do.

PAUL SOLMAN: But the question is, it seems to me, that if America follows the Ethan Allen model and moves more and more of its manufacturing overseas, it could be that America loses so many jobs that, for most Americans, the impact is negative?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Well, let me tell you, the Ethan Allen model, actually, is the opposite of what you`ve just said. We are in a business where there is a higher labor content, where we could say that we should not be making any products in the United States. So one would say, the hard-nosed person would say, "Why don`t you just close everything and go overseas?"

PAUL SOLMAN: Yes, a couple of trips to China, sign somebody up. They`ll make the stuff for you. You show them exactly what you want.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: It doesn`t work that way. In our industry, we are most probably the only one which has made the amount of change we have made and maintained profitability. Almost everybody in our industry -- I`m talking public companies, larger companies who have gone overseas -- they have lost profitability, yet their reasoning was to increase their margins.

PAUL SOLMAN: What did they not figure in? Where were the costs, people stealing from them?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Again, I`ll use nature, because I`m a farmer, a part- time farmer. I grow -- I have an apple orchard up in upstate New York. And one of the farmers that worked there, who taught me pruning trees, said, "You know, when you prune this tree, don`t prune it at one time. You`re going to kill the tree."

American manufacturers, American industries, have closed their plants too fast. It is like pruning that tree. And what they`ve done is, in many cases, they have killed the tree. So we don`t want to kill our tree.

PAUL SOLMAN: There are, Kathwari insists, long-term economic advantages to keeping production domestic. For example...

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Our factories, our wood factories have been located in the Appalachian Mountain range, where there`s an abundant, renewable supply of wood, in cherry, oak, birch, maple. So we said, "This is great resource." China, Vietnam, and many of those countries have hardly any resource left. In fact, they`re importing a lot of their products.

Secondly, we have no idea what is going to take place due to increase of costs in China. Energy costs are increasing; transportation costs are increasing. So there are a lot of these things that one is concerned about.

PAUL SOLMAN: Among them: terrorism abroad; protectionist import restrictions; major investments Ethan Allen has made for decades in American plants; American workers in revolt or terminally unmotivated, if they think no jobs will be left here at all. On the other hand, globalization has palpable plusses for America, says Kathwari.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: We have 17 Ethan Allen design centers in China. The 18th is opening in two weeks. And the interesting thing is that over 50 percent of the product that we are selling there is shipped from our plants in the United States to China, because we are one of the few companies in our industry shipping products, American-made products to China.

PAUL SOLMAN: But globalization is still costing America middle-class jobs, isn`t it?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: I`m concerned about the loss of American middle class.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right, and you`re contributing to it, I mean, the loss of the middle class, at least in part.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: But on the other hand, what we have done is also -- let me just tell you the other side. At Ethan Allen, we have actually added jobs at the middle and upper levels almost as much as we have lost at the factory level. We have added almost 1,200 new people in the last 15 months.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ethan Allen employs 3,000 interior designers alone, boasts Kathwari, employs its own architects, makes its own ads. But every one of those people you`re hiring, I`m betting, has a college degree. Is that right?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: They do, yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: Twenty-seven percent of the people in the United States get a college degree, and that number is going down, for the first time I think in recorded history.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Well, you know, that`s a problem. This is where our leadership should pay attention to. I`m talking of our national leadership. Our education in this country is a disaster.

PAUL SOLMAN: As you can see, Kathwari is no Pollyanna. Indeed, he thinks of himself as a realist determined to make the best of life, perhaps because he`s seen the worst, and not only in Kashmir. In 1992, his 19- year-old son died, fighting in Afghanistan.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: The loss of my son helped me understand that conflicts are not good. Conflicts need to be resolved. That`s a responsibility of leadership.

PAUL SOLMAN: And globalization is conflict?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Globalization is the biggest conflict that we can think of. Environmental conflicts, trade conflicts, rule of law conflicts, expectations conflicts, all of those, to me, are part of globalization.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, finally, how does Kathwari think they should be resolved? With caution.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: I think that we should establish standards, that are international standards, that are enforceable standards about minimum wage overseas, environmental issues, health issues.

PAUL SOLMAN: If you impose wage standards on the rest of the world by American standards, the hard-nosed economist would say, then you`re denying those people the right to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, by working inexpensively, the same way Americans did when we started out?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Yes, I`m not talking of American standards. I`m talking about decent working conditions.

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you think it`s possible that, when people look back historically at this period, of the last few hundred years, they might say globalization was not a good thing? That is, is it clear that the post- globalization Kashmiri is better off than the pre-globalization Kashmiri?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: They certainly are better. They`re certainly better, even though there may be more suffering. They`re better because they understand their rights better. They want to improve themselves. They also are less -- they are less tolerant of oppression or injustice.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so, for you, globalization is that potential to realize yourself that wasn`t there in most of the world before this?

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Absolutely. My only concern has been, and is, that this is such a major change, it`s a monumental change. But I think, whether we like it or not, we are living in a small world, and we`ve got to help everybody get up. If we don`t do that, we`re going to have more and more conflicts. So we have to help people get up and not to feel that somehow globalization means that we`re going to do better and everybody else is going to stay down.

PAUL SOLMAN: Farooq Kathwari, thanks very much.

FAROOQ KATHWARI: Well, Paul, it`s good to share our thoughts together.

(BREAK)

GWEN IFILL: And now another encore report, this one on how warmer temperatures are affecting icy Greenland. It was co-produced with Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Polar-Palooza. That`s an international polar year project funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, which also funds the NewsHour`s Science Unit.

NewsHour correspondent Spencer Michels narrates the report.

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour Correspondent: On Greenland`s west coast, residents of the town of Ilulissat -- the name means "among the icebergs" - - say they are already feeling some results of global warming. Climbing temperatures have affected the fishing and tourism industries, the lifeblood of the town`s 4,500 residents, sometimes for good, sometimes not.

OLE HANSEN HOF, Crane Operator: Some people say it`s OK because it`s warmer. Some people, they worry about the future, what might happen if the ocean is changed and the fish move out.

SPENCER MICHELS: Changing ocean temperatures mean some species of fish have left, but others have arrived from the south. Fishing now takes place year-round.

GREENLAND RESIDENT: What most people are afraid of, of fishermen, the cold water fish is disappearing, and their equipment is to fish cold water fish, so they`re going to have a big bill in the future if they want to change the gear.

SPENCER MICHELS: Dog-sledding, a major tourist activity, used to run through April. Now it`s limited to mid-winter. The implications of a warming climate go far beyond Ilulissat.

LARS KRISTIAN, Dock Worker: Because the water, it`s getting bigger and bigger, maybe the islands of the Atlantic, it`s getting drowned.

GREENLAND RESIDENT: You don`t have to be a scientist to see the changes. They`re big changes.

SPENCER MICHELS: But you do need to be a scientist to know just how big the changes are, how fast they`ll come, and what they mean. That`s why researchers are focusing on the Jakobshavn glacier, one of the world`s largest. It is so large that the icebergs that break off from it, a process called calving, are sometimes more than 40 stories high and three city blocks wide.

Glaciers are slowly moving rivers of ice. The Jakobshavn used to creep along at a pace that could truly be called glacial. Then, in 1997, it doubled its speed. It`s now moving more than the length of a football field each day, making it the world`s fastest glacier.

Its ice also thinned, and the calving front -- the place where the icebergs break off -- has retreated inland. When these icebergs reach the ocean and eventually melt, they raise sea level. But not enough is known scientifically about the reasons for these changes, or their impact, or how fast they will happen in the future, here and elsewhere.

Even a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC, couldn`t answer those questions. It said scientists simply did not have enough understanding of the melting process to make solid predictions of future sea level rise. That`s where researchers like New York University`s David Holland come in.

DAVID HOLLAND, Oceanographer, New York University: So the IPCC report, there are two headlines from it. One is that, in the next century, the air temperature is going to increase. That is solid science, totally credible, believable, good observations, good models.

The second headline is that sea level will rise between 20 and 60 centimeters. That`s totally incredible and unbelievable. That`s just a guess based on past behavior, how much sea level has risen in the past century. We cannot predict yet sea level change, and we`re stuck, and we`re stuck because we aren`t able to model processes that we have not observed.

SPENCER MICHELS: To make those observations, oceanographer Holland and a team of scientists headed this summer to the Jakobshavn glacier, which, because of publicity it has received, has become a poster child for global warming.

DAVID HOLLAND: The fact of it is, is that the water and the depth of this fjord are not known, and yet this receives a lot of media attention as a reason why sea level will go up. So it`s fundamental research, and basically the reason it`s not measured is because it`s just hard to get to.

SPENCER MICHELS: Just how hard Holland learned first-hand. His first night, he was stranded on the ice without half his gear after fog grounded his supply helicopter. The next day, the rest of his team was able to get just one more flight out, so they tried to cram their scientific instruments onto that aircraft. Then it was a 40-minute flight to their observation post. The scientists had just a week to do all their work. It was Holland`s first visit to Greenland.

DAVID HOLLAND: It makes one breathless. It`s just absolutely stunning. And to think, also, that this is a place where important consequences of climate change occur not in theory but in fact, these are the kinds of places we`re talking about. If climate change is going to have an impact on populations in the future, it`s what happens in these kind of places that matter.

SPENCER MICHELS: He has one basic question to answer.

DAVID HOLLAND: Are the ocean waters in this fjord warm enough to be causing the observed melting of this ice sheet?

SPENCER MICHELS: To find that out, Holland had to start pretty much from scratch.

DAVID HOLLAND: We really want to know about how the oceans and ice interact. For the fjord itself, the depth of the fjord is not known; the temperature of the water is not known. And you can go on from there, but not knowing those two things, nothing is known.

SPENCER MICHELS: They assembled a rugged weather station, which, they hope, will send back data, including video, every day for many years. Meanwhile, at the University of New Hampshire, glaciologist Mark Fahnestock has been compiling data he collected this spring on the speed of the glaciers and how icebergs sheer off them.

MARK FAHNESTOCK, University of New Hampshire: Our motivation for studying this system is understanding how you tie big glaciers that are draining a tremendous amount of ice to changing conditions, both in the atmosphere and in the ocean. And we`re trying to understand the rapid changes that the ice sheet has shown us so that we can have some idea what it will do in the future.

SPENCER MICHELS: He and his colleagues want to figure out what controls the speed of the glacier and the calving. Fahnestock set up time- lapse cameras to watch the changes in a compressed timeframe. This is a week`s worth of motion of the Jakobshavn. This is a day in the life of the Earth`s fastest glacier, continuous motion, more than 90 feet a day, fast for a glacier. But Fahnestock found the glacier actually moves in fits and starts.

MARK FAHNESTOCK: The scale here is that that`s probably 150 meters high as it rolls over.

SPENCER MICHELS: Sometimes there are sudden, violent calving events, an hour-long series of crashes sounding like a freight train. Scientists took a series of still photos of the event, shown in this black frame.

MARK FAHNESTOCK: The thing to take from that and from the rapid changes in the Jakobshavn area, I think, is that the ice sheet is much more sensitive to fairly subtle changes than we would have predicted having not seen it.

SPENCER MICHELS: To get even more information, two scientists on Holland`s team went out on Disko Bay, off Ilulissat, to observe where the icebergs ends up. Team member Ralf Bachmayer works with the National Research Council of Canada.

RALF BACHMAYER, National Research Council, Canada: Right now, we`re entering this magnificent scene here, and we have to see where we can actually go and launch the CTD. Before that, all bets are open.

SPENCER MICHELS: They were using an instrument called a CTD -- conductivity, temperature, depth -- to gather data about seawater, to see if its warmth could be what`s triggering the glacier`s melting and movement. Later that week, they were also able to deploy the glider, a kind of instrumented mini-submarine. They hope in future years to fly it underwater, taking measurements below the icebergs.

Flying over the glacier, they also managed to lower instruments from their helicopter. For the first time, they measured the fjord`s depth: almost 900 yards. A CTD found deeper water two degrees warmer than right at the surface. And even with fresh water pouring in from the melting ice cap, they found water way back in the fjord where icebergs break off was salty, confirming Holland`s suspicion that changes in the ocean may be what is causing the increased melting.

The research this year was just the beginning of what`s designed as a 10-year project.

DAVID HOLLAND: What`s really needed is a decade-long period of observation. We need to be able to correlate when the ocean is warm and cold in this fjord to when the ice is moving and not. So little snapshots are good, but the key observational thing is to get long term. We make the observations; we synthesize, understand the time series; and we will be able to make models that predict the future sea level, hopefully soon enough.

SPENCER MICHELS: Those models may have implications beyond Greenland.

MARK FAHNESTOCK: It may be that Greenland can teach us something that will allow us to better project forward what Antarctica may do in a warming climate, but we have to learn the story in Greenland first. We have a lot to learn.

SPENCER MICHELS: What they do learn over the next decade could help them predict how far sea levels could rise in the future and ultimately whether apocalyptic visions of massive coastal flooding are valid or not.

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GWEN IFILL: Well, if there is one thing that holds true around family dinner tables during the holidays, it`s that discussions of religion and politics should never mix.

But the intertwined topics have become a recurring staple this election year, from Mitt Romney`s Mormonism to Mike Huckabee`s Baptist roots. Just last week, no fewer than six candidates, Republican and Democrat, released campaign ads touching on the holiday season.

The topic, however, is not taboo at our table. Ray Suarez takes it on.

RAY SUAREZ: Throughout their months on the campaign trail, presidential candidates from both parties have spoken explicitly to voters about their religious faith and how it shapes them. Some of them, like Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, have spent more time talking about it than others, because they get asked.

Tonight, we get four views on where faith fits in with politics. Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., is a leader of the Value Voters Summit and founder and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition.

Martin Marty is a historian of modern Christianity and a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he helped create an institute for the study of religion.

Edwin Kagin is an atheist and the national legal director for the educational group American Atheists.

And Richard Cizik is the vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, which represents millions of evangelicals in the United States.

And, Richard Cizik, is there a definable, proper role for religion in a political campaign?

RICHARD CIZIK, National Association of Evangelicals: Well, the candidates often define what those parameters are and shouldn`t be, so it`s hard to say there is any one definition of what should occur in the debates. Obviously, some candidates will answer questions; others won`t.

I think that it`s an important time, though, to discuss questions about religious liberty, and what we stand for as a nation, and why we`re different from other countries in the world. And so I think a lot is fair game.

RAY SUAREZ: Edwin Kagin, what`s the proper place for religion in elections, in political persuasion?

EDWIN KAGIN, American Atheists: They have absolutely nothing to do with one another, exactly as the founders set forth in the Constitution.

Jefferson and Madison were very clear on this. Article VI of the Constitution says in black letter law there shall never be any religious test for any office under this Constitution. And one really wonders just what part of "no" they don`t understand.

To ask someone what sin he committed is a religious test. We are, after all, a nation of laws and not a nation of sins. The concept of sin is a religious test; it`s a religious concept that our founders wanted no part of. That`s why God is not mentioned in the Constitution of the United States.

RAY SUAREZ: Bishop Jackson, is there a proper role for religion in political campaigns?

BISHOP HARRY JACKSON, JR., High Impact Leadership Coalition: I think so. Everyone`s values are shaped by some school of thought. And your morals and your religious convictions will found the platform, if you will, for your decisions.

So if I`m going to get to know how someone is going to act in the future, I need to know their framework, their worldview, their concepts.

And so what the people are trying to do is find out whether they can trust the kinds of decisions that this person will make, based on the kind of person that he is today. And I think that`s fair territory.

And think about it this way. All of our laws, all of our civil laws are based on some set of morality. We are saying x and y is wrong, as a culture, based on somebody`s set of truth. And the great thing about democracy is that the Christians get a chance to talk about it, the atheists get a chance to talk about it, and we decide collectively what the true laws should be, but they`re based on somebody`s morality.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Marty, where do you come down on that question?

MARTIN MARTY, University of Chicago Divinity School: Well, I should like to think that these people running for the presidency of all the people, and therefore, when they deal with religion, the two great dangers are, one, to flaunt it and, two, to exploit it.

Flaunting it really runs against most of the religions they profess. Most of them are somehow Christian.

The sermon on the mount, Jesus says, "Don`t flaunt it. When you pray, pray alone. Don`t make a public scene of it. You`ll have your reward, and it won`t be the reward you`re looking for." That`s flaunting it.

And exploiting it is whenever you`re taking one segment of the population and saying, "The others aren`t right. They can`t be moral. They can`t be ethical. They can`t be good citizens."

So those are the boundaries that I try to watch all the time. Or, to put it another way, I think we should look for more winsome, positive, glowing vision of religion.

Almost all the religion we get on the campaign is prideful, arrogant, exclusive, et cetera. And I don`t know how anybody would be drawn to any of the faiths being described. You`re being rallied around a faith, but you`re not being drawn to the virtues of any of them.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, you just heard Bishop Jackson say that people want to know. And certainly there is a lot of curiosity among voters. Bishop Jackson mentioned we want to know what your compass is, what your worldview is. Is that legitimate?

MARTIN MARTY: I certainly think it`s legitimate, yes. It`s all part of it. If they ask me, I can describe how this is going to bear on all kinds of issues.

He has a perfect right to use his faith to say, "Because of my faith, this is the view I`m going to have of abortion or opposite of it." That`s perfectly legitimate. It becomes a public policy.

All the way back to President Carter, who said, "I`m a Baptist. We believe in a certain kind of liberty. I`ll advocate it." That might even create some problems in foreign policy. When you do that, you know whether to vote it up or down or not.

But when they`re really saying, "I`m more pious than you are, I`m more shaped by values than you are, the people I hang out with are the ones that are the real Americans and you`re not," I think that`s what I`m saying is not a winsome presentation of the faith and it means that any president elected on those terms is going to be president of some of the people, but not of the whole republic.

We have our model in Abraham Lincoln. He said, "Don`t claim that you have the almighty behind you. Don`t claim that the almighty is on your side. You should seek to discern the mysterious will of God and try to follow it." And that`s what we don`t hear enough of.

EDWIN KAGIN: Yes, we certainly don`t hear much of the incredible landmark statement of President John Kennedy when he was asked about this. He was the first Roman Catholic successfully elected to the presidency. And he made it very clear that there should be no connection whatsoever.

And the people who seem to think there should be some connection seem unfamiliar with the writings of the founding fathers, as well as with the teachings of the sermon on the mount, as has been stated earlier.

The Bible says rather clearly that you cannot serve both God and mammon. And Jesus said that his kingdom is not of this world.

The idea that our laws are based on somebody else`s moral code is, I think, fallacious. The government of the United States is in no way based on the Bible. Democracy is not mentioned in the Bible. It`s simply not there.

The Bible has a system based on judges and kings, on codes, on commandments, on rules, no give-and-take, no due process of law, no juries, no fairness, strictly the leaders tell you who -- that meaning the priesthood -- and then you do as you`re told by the religion.

That`s the danger, and that`s what our founders wanted to avoid. But we`re a nation of laws.

RICHARD CIZIK: Well, we obviously -- we are a nation of laws obviously. And we live under the rule of law. But that doesn`t prohibit, for example, the values and the religious beliefs of millions upon millions of people being used to evaluate candidates.

This goes all the way back to the founding. In 1800, for example, posters read, "Adams and God, Jefferson and no god." A hundred years ago, in the William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan campaign, the same issues came up.

And it always will, because we are, as one person described -- I think it was de Tocqueville -- he said, "We are a nation with the soul of a church." So given this fact -- and it`s not going to go away -- let`s learn to navigate the terrain.

And these questions are helpful. For example, what Mr. Romney said was that freedom requires religion and religion requires freedom. Well, the second is an adage of theological truth that everyone would agree, because religion without freedom is, indeed, coercion.

But I wouldn`t agree with Mr. Romney, for example, that freedom requires religion, because there are, in fact, countries and societies that are free and are secular. The fact that he said this I find interesting.

And this is what we want to know in a campaign. How does a presidential candidate think about these issues of faith and politics? And we found something out, didn`t we?

EDWIN KAGIN: We certainly did.

RICHARD CIZIK: In fact, he didn`t begin to even address the issue of secularists. And so his ploy -- in this case to Evangelicals, Mr. Romney`s ploy -- his appeal to evangelicals left out secularists entirely.

So it may have been tactically good for Mr. Romney to make that appeal, but it was intellectually insufficient.

RAY SUAREZ: Bishop Jackson, did you find that the Romney speech left out people of other faiths, non-Christian faiths, and no faith at all?

BISHOP HARRY JACKSON, JR.: Well, I don`t think he left anyone out. I think he was attempting to deal with the fact that he is seen as being an elite person. He`s got this "questionable," quote, unquote, faith. There is a certain amount, in my view, of prejudice against Mormons, because we don`t know whether they are -- do they have three wives, or whatever?

And so I think he was attempting to say, "Take a look at me. Here`s who I am. Here`s what I really believe." And I think you`ve got to evaluate that on a different kind of set of rules than if he was saying, "Every American should be this, that and the other."

He simply said, "I believe we should have freedom of whatever religion you are, to operate in it. I believe faith is a wonderful thing." He didn`t really define what faith. And I believe that he wanted to let people know that "I am proud of my personal heritage."

And so, again, his value system was exposed by discussing religion. And then you can say, "Do I want someone who stands with his family and tradition? Do I want someone of deep conviction?"

He was seen as being a waffler or a flip-flopper by some. And I think he addressed those kinds of questions.

So the problem is you can`t say religion doesn`t count and then talk about your religion at the same time. You can`t have it both ways. And that`s the only thing I see that was a little bit challenging in his speech, is almost he`s saying, "It doesn`t count, but let me tell you about it anyway." That was the only tension I found.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Marty, you heard Richard Cizik mention William Howard Taft, who was a Unitarian, William Jennings Bryan, an Evangelical Democrat who made a very strong religious pitch to the country. But is this an argument, in effect, that we`ve been having for 218 years since the drafting of the Constitution?

MARTIN MARTY: Yes, I think Richard Cizik is exactly right. Religion did play a big part in slavery and anti-slavery, in prohibition and anti- prohibition, in women`s rights and anti-women`s rights. The civil rights movement is that.

But these are voluntary expressions of citizen groups. They all have a right to organize and try to win. I`m saying it`s very destructive of human relations when you rule out those who don`t agree with your politics and you claim God on your side.

But Richard Cizik is right. And I happen to admire some of the ways he`s been putting religion to work in his life. He doesn`t rule you out if you`re not an Evangelical. He doesn`t say, "You`re going to Hell if you`re not an environmentalist."

But he is saying that, "I`m shaped by these things." That`s exactly what several of these people tonight are saying.

It`s strictly though when you are pridefully flaunting what you are, and I must say that, while Mitt Romney said many things that were useful -- I thought he handled the Mormon thing very well. He said, "Take it off the table."

Where he overstepped, though, is where he really did -- I have to disagree with the bishop here -- he really did rule you out. If you don`t have religion, you can`t have freedom. And that`s manifestly untrue in American past. And (inaudible) coming down the block and in every precinct, it`s still untrue.

RAY SUAREZ: Edwin Kagin...

EDWIN KAGIN: And what about the atheist, shall we say?

RAY SUAREZ: Well, I was just about to say, what about the atheists?

EDWIN KAGIN: What about the atheists? Sadly, there is a commonality running through all of these political statements that you must have some kind of religion to be a good person. This is a major philosophic flaw that strikes at the heart of our democracy.

Now, if someone truly believes that they must believe in God to keep from robbing, raping, murdering, stealing, then I think they should go right on believing in God.

But to imply that if someone does not they are somehow a bad person, this is destructive of the intent of our founders.

As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put it, he said the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Now, there has been a great deal of dispute in recent years, sadly, about whether or not freedom of religion means freedom from religion, with many people asserting quite sternly and dogmatically and tyrannically, I might add, that you cannot have freedom from religion.

Of course you can have freedom from religion. You cannot possibly have freedom of religion if you do not have the freedom not to believe. And anyone who doesn`t understand that has no business running for president of the United States.

RAY SUAREZ: The 2000 elections were said to be marked heavily by this kind of overt appeal to religious voters and religious themes. Are we on the verge of another election where that trend will continue, or are there other issues that are making that tendency in American politics subside?

Let me get you first.

RICHARD CIZIK: Well, I happen to think that faith will yield certain kinds of public policies. Mr. Huckabee, for example, has said that it`s because he believes in God that he believes this Earth, for example, isn`t his or ours. It`s belonged by God, and we ought to care for it. It`s called creation care.

And so in that sense to the extent that faith or its consequences do lead to certain public policy conclusions, in this case Mr. Huckabee saying he would support what is going on in Congress today, a bill for cap-and- trade of greenhouse gas emissions, then I think that`s important to know.

And if, for example, you happen to disagree and do so on a faith basis or otherwise, say so. So I would hope that we get away from some of the personality elements the bishop has suggested, you know, the elements of Mormonism. We shouldn`t be trying to dissect what the faith is.

Even Mr. Huckabee has said he doesn`t want to do that. Well, he then went ahead and did it anyway.

But let`s get away from that and look at, what are the consequences that we logically will come to if we do accept certain premises? That, to me, is a more fruitful conversation.

RAY SUAREZ: Anybody?

BISHOP HARRY JACKSON, JR.: Well, no, I believe that this election is going to be determined by the people of faith yea or nay. Despite my atheist friend`s comments, people have certain value systems. They`re looking for people that agree with them.

In 2000 and 2004, it was the fear of same-sex marriage and fear of certain other things that led Evangelicals to come out by the millions.

At this particular point, the fear that the concerns about life and family and other issues are going to be left off the table I believe is one of the central issues that has rallied people around Huckabee.

And I think you`re going to find that many, many people are going to feel compelled to talk about their faith and, therefore, we are going to have, I believe, a spoiler effect in that whoever is most antagonistic to faith will suffer some kind of penalty in this election season.

RAY SUAREZ: Gentlemen, thank you all very much, Bishop Jackson, Richard Cizik, Professor Marty, and Mr. Edwin Kagin. Gentlemen, thank you.

(BREAK)

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major developments of the day.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims took advantage of a lull in the violence to flock to Bethlehem on this Christmas Eve for the first time in years.

And a winter storm in the upper Midwest disrupted some holiday travel and killed at least 19 people.

We`ll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I`m Gwen Ifill. Thank you, and good night.