Week In The News: Campaign Heats Up, Bibi's Red Line, NFL Refs

Obama, Romney slug it out.  Free speech and faith at the U.N.  NFL refs go back to work. Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Slugfest in the swing states now.  Polls show Obama besting Romney this week in Ohio, beyond.  But Romney’s got questions.  About even worse –than-thought economic growth.  About White House backpedalling on what happened in Benghazi.  About how a second Obama term would be different.

At the U.N. this week, talk of free speech and red lines on Iran.  In China, riot where iPhones are made.  In Europe, mayhem in the streets over austerity.  We’ve got refapalooza in the NFL – uproar and the pros are back.

This hour, On Point:  our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.
-Tom Ashbrook

Laura Meckler, White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst.

New York Times "It began with a series of polls from The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University, released early Wednesday morning, which gave President Obama leads of between 9 and 11 points in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Later in the day, Mr. Romney got polls showing unfavorable numbers for him in Colorado and Iowa."

The Weekly Standard "Several other data points, however, help us resolve this question.  There is considerable contemporaneous reporting that demonstrates the Obama administration knew long before it said so publicly that the attacks were planned and likely the work of al Qaeda-related terrorists."

Project Syndicate "The anti-Japan protests that continue to roil China are just another indication of the rise of a potent Chinese nationalism. After a century slowly fomenting among Chinese intellectuals, national sentiment has captured and redefined the consciousness of the Chinese people during the last two decades of China’s economic boom. This mass national consciousness launched the Chinese colossus into global competition to achieve an international status commensurate with the country’s vast capacities and the Chinese people’s conception of their country’s rightful place in the world."