Hogan Leads Stanford Past UCLA 27-24 to Win Pac-12

Kevin Hogan has taken Stanford to a place Andrew Luck never could.

With the NFL's No. 1 overall draft pick and an elite class of seniors gone, a program that weathered the loss of coach Jim Harbaugh once again faced questions. Stanford coach David Shaw answered every one of them, finding a new clutch quarterback along the way.

Hogan threw for 155 yards and a touchdown and ran for 47 yards and another score, helping eighth-ranked Stanford beat No. 17 UCLA 27-24 in the Pac-12 championship game Friday night. The redshirt freshman won game MVP honors while leading the Cardinal to the Rose Bowl for the first time in more than a decade.

"Character," said Shaw, the Pac-12 coach of the year in his first two seasons. "Even when we don't play well, we still play hard. Our guys played with such heart. We made plays when we needed to make plays."

Hogan's biggest highlight came in the biggest moment of the game.

As a defender barreled into him, Hogan hurled a 26-yard tying touchdown pass to Drew Terrell on third-and-15 early in the fourth quarter. Jordan Williamson kicked his second field goal from 36 yards with 6:49 remaining for the go-ahead score, lifting Stanford to its first conference title since the 1999 season.

Many of the sparse crowd announced at 31,622 rushed the field. Players, wearing their all-black uniforms, danced on the sideline and later carried roses — or stuck them in their mouths — while parading around as confetti flew from a stage erected on the field.

What a way to ring in the post-Luck Era: The Cardinal (11-2) will play the winner of the Big Ten title game between Nebraska and Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1.

UCLA's Brent Hundley threw for 177 yards and a costly interception that set up a Stanford touchdown. He still almost brought the Bruins (9-4) back, but Ka'imi Fairbairn missed a 52-yard field goal wide left in the closing moments of the disappointing loss.

Hogan completed 16 of 22 passes for a fourth win over a ranked opponent in his fourth straight start since unseating Josh Nunes at quarterback. After the Cardinal rolled past UCLA 35-17 last Saturday at the Rose Bowl, it took all 60 minutes to secure another victory in a rare rematch.

Scattered showers made the grass a bit slick, though the surface never seemed to slow down the Bruins, who ran for 284 yards with Johnathan Franklin (194 yards) leading the way. It was the most yards rushing allowed this season by Stanford, which yielded 198 in an overtime victory at Oregon two weeks earlier.

No matter.

The Cardinal did just enough to win their seventh straight game and advance to their third different BCS bowl in as many seasons. They have won at least 11 games each year, part of a run that began behind Harbaugh and Luck, and now has carried on with Shaw and Hogan.

Stanford had won 10 games only three times before in program history (1992, 1940 and 1926).

"It's been fun," Hogan said.

The Bruins made the final road block more difficult than expected.

UCLA converted a pair of third downs before Franklin burst through the middle for a 51-yard touchdown on the game's opening drive. He carried safety Jordan Richards the final 5 yards into the end zone.

Stanford answered quickly. Hogan ran 14 yards on a read-option keeper to convert a long third down, fullback Ryan Hewitt bulldozed through the line on a fourth-and-1 and Stepfan Taylor took a short pass 33 yards, to inches shy of the goal line. On the next play, Hogan faked a handoff and rolled untouched for the tying touchdown.

Taylor finished with 78 yards rushing to eclipse Darrin Nelson's school record of 4,169. Taylor, an outgoing senior, has 4,212 for his career.

Before the Cardinal offense even found their seats on the sideline, Hundley ran 48 yards and scrambled for a 5-yard TD to put UCLA back in front, 14-7.

With the Bruins about to go ahead two scores, Ed Reynolds intercepted Hundley's pass and returned it 80 yards to set up Taylor's short TD run.

Officials ruled that Reynolds, who has returned three interceptions for touchdowns this season, was tackled by Hundley short of the goal line and a replay challenge by Shaw was inconclusive. Reynolds moved into a tie with Oregon State's Jordan Poyer for the Pac-12 lead with six interceptions.

Williamson kicked a 37-yard field goal as the first half expired to give Stanford a 17-14 lead. Fairbairn answered with a field goal from 31 yards on UCLA's opening drive of the second half.

Franklin capped a 12-play, 80-yard drive with a 20-yard TD run late in the third quarter. That gave the Bruins a 24-17 advantage and put Stanford on the brink of its first home loss this season.

Instead, the Cardinal came back in impressive fashion.

After shaking off the safety, Hogan heaved the long touchdown to Terrell just over the cornerback's head. Terrell caught the pass in the short corner and pointed to the poncho-wearing crowd.

"We knew we had to remain calm and play our style," Hogan said. "We kept to it. We pounded the ball, got field position, got the TD to tie it."

Stanford stuffed UCLA three-and-out and Terrell returned the punt 18 yards to the Bruins 43. That set up Williamson's tiebreaking field goal.

One last UCLA drive nearly sent the game to overtime.

Tight end Joseph Fauria caught a pass over the middle on fourth-and-7 and lateraled the ball to Jordon James to finish a 17-yard completion. That helped set up Fairbairn's field goal with 34 seconds left, and the kick never looked on target.

"There's a lot of tears and a lot of disappointment but I think they should be proud of what we accomplished," first-year UCLA coach Jim Mora said.

Stanford has beaten the Bruins five straight games. UCLA was going for its first conference championship since 1998.

The crowd was the smallest at 50,000-seat Stanford Stadium since the Cardinal drew 30,626 against Sacramento State on Sept. 4, 2010.

"It felt like the whole entire game we controlled our own destiny, controlled this ballgame," Bruins defensive lineman Datone Jones said. "We dominated the line of scrimmage and stopped big runs."

Egypt Constitution Sparks Outrage

Critics of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi slammed the country's draft constitution after it emerged from a hasty all-night session, with opponents charging the document was a jumbled attempt to impose Islamic law produced by what they called an unrepresentative body dominated by Islamists.

The draft charter, which the president has vowed to put to a national vote soon, emerged a week after Mr. Morsi issued a decree broadly expanding his powers, spurring violent rallies against the president in the worst crisis of his five-month term. The battle is expected to play out in coming days both in Egypt's courts, where judges will hear challenges to Mr. Morsi's decree, and in the streets, where supporters and opponents have been laying plans for large rallies.

The draft constitution was finished early Friday by Egypt's 100-member Constituent Assembly, a body that had been conceived as representing Egyptians broadly. The group became dominated by Islamist politicians, however, after it was boycotted by Christian and secular members who had made up more than one-quarter of it. The assembly, bolstered with replacement members, sprinted to complete the draft ahead of a scheduled hearing Sunday in the country's top court, where the assembly itself faces a challenge as unrepresentative and unconstitutional.

Assembly chairman Hossam El Gheriany said early Friday that he and 85 members would hand-deliver the document on Saturday to President Morsi, who would then announce the date for a national referendum. The vote would be held by mid-December, several government officials and members of the panel said. '

"Completing this historic step represents important progress for Egypt and its people," said the Muslim Brotherhood, the main party in Mr. Morsi's Islamist coalition.

The question for Mr. Morsi and his allies is whether they can overcome a barrage of opposition that has grown in the past week and now includes representatives of the judiciary, youth and liberal and secular forces, and also many Christians, moderate Islamists and a large cross-section of the population that considers itself independent.

"We are watching, we are sitting in and we are rejecting a shameful constitution," read a large banner in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, where tens of thousands of people flocked Friday to demand an end to the document, the panel that drafted it and the extraordinary powers Mr. Morsi gave himself.

"We consider the current project for a constitution illegitimate from the standpoint of form and content," the National Salvation Front of opposition political parties, which was formed to confront Mr. Morsi's decree, said in a statement read Friday on Tahrir Square by politician Mohammed ElBaradei. The square has been filled, for eight days, by thousands of Mr. Morsi's opponents.

The president's Islamist supporters, who had largely stayed off the streets in the past week, came out in processions around the country Friday. They are planning a massive gathering Saturday outside the main campus of Cairo University to rally around "Shariah [Islamic law] and legitimacy," as described by parties in the governing Islamist coalition.

Many legal experts said they saw major ambiguities and contradictions in several articles dealing with the role of Shariah, or Islamic law; the powers of the president and the legislature; the nature of the judicial and electoral systems; and the establishment of regulatory and oversight bodies and agencies.

The Supreme Constitutional Court is expected to convene Sunday to take up a case asking to disband the Constituent Assembly, which was formed by the Islamist-dominated lower chamber of Parliament. It was later dissolved by the same court when Egypt was ruled by the interim military that preceded Mr. Morsi's rule.

Many Egyptian legal experts now expect the constitutional court to postpone its case on the body itself, while the administrative branch of the judiciary hears more than a dozen separate lawsuits filed against the decree Mr. Morsi issued last week shielding his own decisions and those of the Constituent Assembly from the judiciary.

If the court finds the Morsi decree is unconstitutional, it could then consider the status of the assembly.

On Friday, a group of judges with the State Council, the body overseeing the administrative judiciary, issued a statement lambasting Mr. Morsi's decree as "worthless" and "null and void."

Several articles introduced to the constitution this week are already provoking a backlash among many Egyptians.

"Every section tacitly bolsters Islamic rule in Egypt, whether politically or socially," says George Messiha, a member of the dissolved parliament and Coptic Christian, who was among the 26 who boycotted or resigned from the Constituent Assembly before the vote on the constitution Friday.

Also under scrutiny is an article banishing members of the former ruling party of ousted president Hosni Mubarak from political life for 10 years.

Many Morsi opponents who flocked to Tahrir Square on Friday said the president is forcing Egyptians to choose between living with his decrees or accepting a constitution drafted mainly by Islamists.

"He gave us a choice between something that smells bad and something that smells very bad," said Hani Sabet, a retired music producer who came to the square with his wife, Rosemary, a dramatist and novelist.

Obama Duels With Boehner Over Need to Compromise in Cliff Talks

President Barack Obama and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner each demanded the other compromise as they ended a week of public jockeying for advantage in fiscal cliff negotiations with a standoff over taxes.

Obama, warning of “prolonged negotiations,” used a campaign-style appearance yesterday in Pennsylvania to appeal for help from voters to put pressure on Republicans in Congress to pass an extension of tax cuts for middle-income Americans as a first step toward resolving the impasse. That would leave decisions on reworking the tax code and cutting spending until next year.

“It’s not going to be enough for me to just do this on my own,” Obama said on the floor of a toy factory in Hatfield.

Boehner, speaking less than a half-hour later in Washington, said the administration plan presented to congressional leaders by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner would risk growth by raising taxes on small businesses. He said it left talks no further along than they were before the election.

“There’s a stalemate, let’s not kid ourselves,” he said.

The deadlock over whether to continue Bush-era tax rates for the top 2 percent of wage earners extends a battle that has been waged for more than a year between Obama and Republicans in Congress. The issue has gained more urgency as the clock ticks down on more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to start taking effect in January.

Top Earners

Obama has proposed a framework that would raise taxes immediately on top earners and set an Aug. 1 deadline for rewriting the tax code and deciding on spending cuts, according to administration officials.

It calls for $1.6 trillion in tax increases, $350 billion in cuts in health programs, $250 billion in cuts in other programs and $800 billion in assumed savings from the wind-down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the officials, who asked for anonymity.

Obama, speaking at a facility of the Rodon Group that makes Tinkertoys and K’NEX building sets, said quick action by lawmakers to extend tax cuts for middle-income Americans -- while letting top rates rise -- would allow time for tougher negotiations on spending cuts to lower a budget deficit that has exceeded $1 trillion for each of the four years he has been in office.

Retail Sales

With the approach of Christmas, and the retail sales the season sparks, Obama said acting onrates would give consumers certainty even if the debate on spending and the tax code isn’t settled. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

“Where the clock is really ticking, right now, is on middle-class taxes,” he said. Settling that issue “would then give us in Washington more time to work together on that long- range plan to bring down deficits in a balanced way.”

Boehner refused to give in on raising tax rates on high earners, saying it would deal a “crippling blow” to small business and hurt economic growth.

“We’re willing to put revenues on the table, but revenues that come from closing loopholes, getting rid of special interest deductions and not raising rates,” Boehner said. “We think it is better for the economy clear and simple.”

Weekly Gain

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose less than 0.1 percent to 1,416.18 at 4 p.m. in New York yesterday, erasing an earlier 0.3 percent drop and capping a second straight weekly gain. Yields on 10-year U.S. notes were little changed at 1.62 percent after losing seven basis points during the week amid concern about the budget standoff.

The dueling appearances by Obama and Boehner followed Geithner’s shuttling between congressional leaders on Nov. 29 with a plan to trade $1.6 trillion in tax increases on top earners for about $350 billion in unspecified entitlement- program cuts. It also seeks about $50 billion in stimulus spending in this fiscal year.

Republicans complained that the offer was little more than a rehash of old budget proposals, setting the stage for more contentious negotiations over the next several weeks.

It “was not a serious proposal,” Boehner said. “And so right now we’re almost nowhere.”

Entitlement Programs

Republicans also are seeking an overhaul of entitlement programs in exchange for raising tax revenue through other methods, such as limiting deductions. They want a higher Medicare eligibility age and an alternative yardstick for calculating inflation that would reduce Social Security cost-of- living adjustments, according to a Republican aide who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly

Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council and one of the administration’s principal negotiators, said the ball was now in the Republicans’ court.

“It’s for them now to come forward with their plan, with their details, so that we can start working quickly to getting an agreement,” Sperling said on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” which airs this weekend.

That stance was echoed by Democrats in Congress, including Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat.

“I don’t think it’s a take it or leave it offer,” he told reporters. If Republicans “don’t like it, which apparently they do not, they need to counteroffer.”

Tax-Rate Increases

Sperling, while saying Obama insists on tax-rate increases for the wealthy, signaled flexibility on how much they might be raised and on the composition of the stimulus.

He said Obama has offered “very specific savings that have been detailed in our budget.” That proposal includes “$600 billion in entitlement savings, about $350 billion in health entitlement savings, such as in Medicare,” he said.

As part of the administration’s campaign for public support, Geithner also will appear tomorrow on the five main Sunday news interview shows, on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN. Next week, Obama will meet with a group of governors on the fiscal cliff and address the Business Roundtable.

Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, said the public posturing eventually will give way to serious negotiations.

“When it’s serious is when there will be negotiations that aren’t being leaked out for public consumption,” Corker said. “This is all theater that I don’t think anybody ought to pay any attention to.”

Clinton calls on Israel to embrace moderate Palestinians, negotiations

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned on Friday that without progress toward peace, Israel will be forced to choose between "preserving democracy and the Jewish identity of the state." ‫

Speaking at the Saban Forum 2012 at the Willard InterContinental in Washington D.C., Clinton rejected Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's pessimism concerning the Palestinian Authority's capability of governing its territory and bring about a lasting peace.

"With very little money, and no natural resources, they have accomplished quite a bit, building a security force that works every single day with the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). They have entrepreneurial successes. They are nationalistic - but largely secular. Israel should support them."

"Some Israelis claim [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas is not a partner for peace," Clinton continued, "Well, I think that should be tested."

Turning to the situation in the Gaza Strip, the secretary of state said, "That fragile cease-fire is holding, the skies above Israel are clear... but the world knows - and always will know - that whenever Israel is threatened, the U.S. will be there. What threatens Israel threatens America, what strengthens Israel, strengthens America."

Clinton warned the Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, that "If more rockets are smuggled into Gaza, it will lead to more violence. We will never work with terrorists. Hamas knows what it needs to reunite Palestinians and rejoin the international community."

Clinton said she wasn't naïve about the prospects for achieving a lasting peace. She explained that she thought "that even if you cannot reach complete agreement, it's in Israel's interest to try. It gives Israel a moral high ground that I want Israel to occupy. That's what I want Israel to occupy."

"Rockets launched from Gaza at Tel Aviv only stress what we already know - the international community must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," Clinton segued. "The Iranian regime already exports terrorism around the world. Nuclear Iran is a threat not only to Israel; it's a threat to all nations. The U.S. will not have a policy of containment, but prevention, built on a dual track of sanctions and dialogue."

Clinton said the United States tried to engage the Iranians in bilateral negotiations but that they refused.

"Protecting Israel's future is not simply a matter of policy for me, it's personal," Clinton said, turning to a more personal tone as she recalled her visit to Israel shortly after her daughter Chelsea was born. The secretary of state, who will soon be ending her service, added, "I know with all my heart how important it is that our relation goes from strength to strength. I am looking forward to returning to Israel as a private citizen on a commercial plane. It's not a great secret I hope to become a grandmother one day - and I hope one day to take my grandchildren to… Israel."