With that shift Saturday, Obama dropped the careful condemnation, threats of consequences and the reminders to Gadhafi’s regime about its responsibility to avoid violence.

The president called on Gadhafi to step down for the first time, saying the Libyan government must be held accountable for its brutal crackdown on dissenters. The administration also announced new sanctions against Libya, but that was overshadowed by the sharp demand for Gadhafi’s immediate ouster.

“The president stated that when a leader’s only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,” the White House said.

The statement summarizing Obama’s telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel came as Libya’s embattled regime passed out guns to civilian supporters and sent armed patrols around its capital to quash dissent and stave off the rebellion that now controls large parts of the North African nation.

Until Saturday, U.S. officials held back from fully and openly throwing all their support behind the protest movement, insisting that it was for the Libyan people to determine how they want to be led. The refrain echoed the public position maintained by the administration during the Egypt crisis, when the U.S. gradually dropped its support for longtime ally Hosni Mubarak but never explicitly demanded his resignation after nearly three decades in power.

Explaining the change, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Libyans “have made themselves clear” that they want Gadhafi out.

The tougher tone set the stage for Clinton’s trip Sunday to Geneva, where she will confer with foreign policy chiefs from Russia, the European Union and other global powers on how to drive home the message to a Libyan government determined to cling to power and crush opposition to Gadhafi’s rule.

Obama and Merkel strategized on how the world should respond to the violence that, according to some officials, has killed thousands of people. Clinton spoke with the EU’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton to coordinate the international pressure.

Acting on its own, the administration announced a new measure Saturday when Clinton said the U.S. was revoking visas for senior Libyan officials and their immediate family members. New travel applications from these individuals will be rejected, she said.

The visa ban followed the administration’s moves Friday to freeze all Libyan assets in the U.S. that belong to Gadhafi, his government and four of his children. The U.S. also closed its embassy in Libya and suspended the limited defense trade between the countries.

It is unclear how far the U.S. — and its international allies — might have to go to convince Gadhafi that his four-decade reign in Libya must end. American military action is unlikely, although the administration hasn’t ruled out participation in an internationally administered protective no-fly zone.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was due in Washington on Monday for talks with Obama at the White House.

A nonviolent revolt against Gadhafi’s government began Feb. 15 amid a wave of uprisings in the Arab world. Most of Libya’s eastern half is under the control of rebels. Witnesses say Gadhafi’s government has responded by shooting at protesters in numerous cities.

The Fine Gael party was leading the pack as voters angry about Ireland’s battered economy ended the 80-year dominance of Fianna Fail.

“This was a democratic revolution at the ballot box,” Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny told supporters Saturday night.

By Sunday morning, 57 seats had been won by Fine Gael, 30 by Labour, 13 by Fianna Fail, 12 by Sinn Fein and 13 by smaller parties and independents. It takes 83 seats for a majority in the Dail, the lower house of the parliament.

Fine Gael was widely expected to form a coalition government with Labour. But with Fine Gael sensing that it might win nearly 80 seats, party leaders also talked about forming alliances with independent candidates. Kenny, destined to become prime minister, pledged to move quickly to form a government.

“We stand on the brink of fundamental change in how we regard ourselves, in how we regard our economy, and in how we regard our society,” Kenny said.

Fine Gael polled 36.1 percent support with the first round of counting completed in all 43 constituencies. Labour, Fine Gael’s possible coalition partner, was running second at 19 percent while Fianna Fail polled a historic low of 17 percent.

The Green Party, which had six seats in the Dail and was Fianna Fail’s junior partner in government, lost all its seats.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, who resigned his seat in the British parliament to run for the Dail, was among the winners.

Irish voters punished Fianna Fail for 13 percent unemployment, tax hikes, wage cuts and a humiliating bailout that Ireland had to accept from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. In elections going back to 1932, Fianna Fail had never won less than 39 percent of the vote and had always been the largest party in the Dail.

Fine Gael (“tribe of the Irish”) and Fianna Fail (“soldiers of destiny”) were born from opposing sides in Ireland’s civil war of the 1920s, and many see little difference between them on the issues. Fianna Fail, however, was leading the government when the property boom collapsed in 2007, and it put taxpayers on the hook to bail out Ireland’s failing banks.

Brian Cowen, the outgoing prime minister, had fallen to record low popularity and resigned as Fianna Fail party leader even before the campaign. He had wanted to hold the election in March, but agreed to hold it early in a deal to win confirmation of the hated EU-IMF bailout.

“Fianna Fail will come back,” said new party leader Micheal Martin, who bucked the tide to hold his seat.

The new government, like the last, will be constrained by the terms negotiated for the euro67.5 billion ($92 billion) credit line from the European Central Bank and the IMF. The loan is contingent on Ireland cutting euro15 billion ($20.6 billion) from its deficit spending over the coming four years and imposing the harshest cuts this year.

Kenny has pledged to try to negotiate easier terms for repaying the loan. He has also promised to create 100,000 new jobs in five years and to make holders of senior bonds in Ireland’s nationalized banks shoulder some of the losses.

Fine Gael said it would seek to balance public finances mainly through cuts, not tax hikes; it would also reform the health service and abolish 150 public bodies.

Adm. Habibollah Sayyari met with Syria’s defense minister and military chief Sunday, just days after Iran’s first show of naval power in the Mediterranean in decades. Two Iranian warships reached Syria last week after passing through the Suez Canal in the first such trip since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran’s military presence in the Mediterranean has raised alarm in Israel as political turmoil reshapes the region. Iran has close ties with Syria and the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group in Lebanon.

The official news agency IRNA say Sayyari and the Syrian military officials discussed the need for cooperation between the navies of the two countries, including training.

President Robert Mugabe told supporters at his birthday party that the government also would take control of companies owned by Western interests in retaliation for the economic sanctions that target him and his associates.

Mugabe turned 87 on Monday but traditionally marks his birthday later with a mass meeting of the youth movement he founded. He returned home Sunday from undergoing medical treatment in Singapore.

“87 is only 8 plus 7. I want to remain with you. My body may get spent but I wish my mind will always be with you,” he told more than 6,000 supporters in an animated 70-minute address.

Mugabe said his ideas were not those of an “aged person” but those of a young man that “will rejuvenate the country and impel us to be innovative and imaginative.”

Mugabe, wearing the red neck scarf of his youth movement, told the gathering of party leaders, youth groups and children that he never capitulated to pressures from Western leaders over their allegations of human rights abuses by him and his ZANU-PF party.

“No, that will never happen. That is where I derive strength,” he said. To him, he said, U.S. President Barack Obama “is just a nobody in America.”

Mugabe was garlanded with flowers, and he listened to two hours of praise singing by choirs and music groups. Other supporters chanted slogans recalling the guerrilla war that swept Mugabe to power in 1980, ending British colonial rule.

Tables in the convention hall were laden with giant cakes he cut during the ceremony, one resembling a giant Zimbabwean flag and another depicting the Great Zimbabwe ruins of a stone city built by a tribal dynasty in southern Zimbabwe in the 14th century from which Zimbabwe derives its name.

After disputed, violence-plagued elections in 2008, Mugabe was forced by regional leaders to join a shaky coalition with the longtime opposition leader, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who did not attend Saturday’s birthday bash.

Political violence and intimidation have surged since Mugabe called for elections later this year to bring the coalition to an end. Tsvangirai’s party has opposed early elections before constitutional reforms are complete.

Mugabe accused coalition partners of delaying progress toward elections.

“There has to be a good excuse not to have elections this year. We want to get to elections as soon as possible” with or without a new constitution, he said.

A popular uprising throughout the country has posed the biggest challenge Gadhafi has faced in his 42-year rule. He has maintained control in the capital by using violence on protesters, though rebels have seized control of about half of Libya’s coastline.

Pro-Gadhafi forces opened fire Friday on demonstrations after Muslims prayers, and Gadhafi told supporters he would “open the arms depot so all Libyans and tribes become armed.”

Residents contacted by phone from Cairo on Saturday reported trucks of pro-regime civilians patrolling the streets. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

___

Hubbard reported from Cairo.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Protesters demanding Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster came under a hail of bullets Friday when pro-regime militiamen opened fire to stop the first significant anti-government marches in days in the Libyan capital. The Libyan leader, speaking from the ramparts of a historic Tripoli fort, told supporters to prepare to defend the nation.

Witnesses reported multiple deaths from gunmen on rooftops and in the streets shooting at crowds with automatic weapons and even an anti-aircraft gun.

“It was really like we are dogs,” one man who was marching from Tripoli’s eastern Tajoura district told The Associated Press. He added that many people were shot in the head, with seven people within 10 yards (meters) of him cut down in the first wave.

Also Friday evening, troops loyal to Gadhafi attacked a major air base east of Tripoli that had fallen into rebel hands.

A force of tanks attacked the Misrata Air Base, succeeding in retaking part of it in battles with residents and army units who had joined the anti-Gadhafi uprising, said a doctor and one resident wounded in the battle on the edge of opposition-held Misrata, Libya’s third-largest city, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) from the capital.

The opposition captured two fighters, including a senior officer, and still held part of the large base, they said. Shooting could still be heard from the area after midnight. The doctor said 22 people were killed in two days of fighting at the air base and an adjacent civilian airport.

In Washington, President Barack Obama signed an executive order Friday freezing assets held by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and four of his children in the United States. The Treasury Department said the sanctions against Gadhafi, three of his sons and a daughter also apply to the Libyan government.

Obama said the U.S. is imposing unilateral sanctions on Libya because continued violence there poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to America’s national security and foreign policy.

A White House spokesman said it is clear that Gadhafi’s legitimacy has been “reduced to zero” — the Obama administration’s sharpest words yet. The U.S. also temporarily abandoned its embassy in Tripoli as a final flight carrying American citizens departed from the capital.

The U.N. Security Council met to consider possible sanctions against Gadhafi’s regime, including trade sanctions and an arms embargo. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged it take “concrete action” to protect civilians in Libya, saying “the violence must stop” and those responsible for “so brutally shedding blood” must be punished.

But Gadhafi vowed to fight on. In the evening, he appeared before a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters in Green Square and called on them to fight back and “defend the nation.”

“Retaliate against them, retaliate against them,” Gadhafi said, speaking by microphone from the ramparts of the Red Castle, a Crusader fort overlooking the square. Wearing a fur cap, he shook his fist, telling the crowd: “Dance, sing and prepare. Prepare to defend Libya, to defend the oil, dignity and independence.”

He warned, “At the suitable time, we will open the arms depot so all Libyans and tribes become armed, so that Libya becomes red with fire.”

The crowd waved pictures of the leader and green flags as he said, “I am in the middle of the people in the Green Square. … This is the people that loves Moammar Gadhafi. If the people of Libya and the Arabs and Africans don’t love Moammar Gadhafi then Moammar Gadhafi does not deserve to live.”

Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, told foreign journalists invited by the government to Tripoli that there were no casualties in Tripoli and that the capital was “calm … Everything is peaceful. Peace is coming back to our country.”

He said the regime wants negotiations with the opposition and said there were “two minor problems” in Misrata and Zawiya, another city near the capital held by the opposition.

There, he said, “we are dealing with terrorist people.” But he said he hoped to reach a peaceful settlement with them “and I think by tomorrow we will solve it.”

Earlier Seif was asked in an interview with CNN-Turk about the options in the face of the unrest. “Plan A is to live and die in Libya, Plan B is to live and die in Libya, Plan C is to live and die in Libya,” he replied.

The marches in the capital were the first major attempt by protesters to break a clampdown that pro-Gadhafi militiamen have imposed on Tripoli since the beginning of the week, when dozens were killed by gunmen roaming the street, shooting people on sight.

In the morning and night before, text messages were sent around urging protesters to stream out of mosques after noon prayers, saying, “Let us make this Friday the Friday of liberation,” residents said. The residents and witnesses all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

In response, militiamen set up heavy security around many mosques in the city, trying to prevent any opposition gatherings. Armed young men with green armbands to show their support for Gadhafi set up checkpoints on many streets, stopping cars and searching them. Tanks and checkpoints lined the road to Tripoli’s airport, witnesses said.

After prayers, protesters flowed out of mosques, converging into marches from several neighborhoods, heading toward Green Square. But they were hit almost immediately by militiamen, a mix of Libyans and foreign mercenaries.

“We can’t see where it is coming from,” another protester from Tajoura district — several miles (kilometers) from Green Square — said of the gunfire. “They don’t want to stop.” He said a man next to him was shot in the neck.

In the nearby Souq al-Jomaa district, witnesses reported four killed as gunmen fired from rooftops. “There are all kind of bullets,” said one man in the crowd, screaming in a telephone call to the AP, with the rattle of gunfire audible in the background. Another protester was reported killed in the Fashloum district. The reports could not be independently confirmed.

After nightfall, protesters dispersed, and regime supporters prowled the streets, a resident said. As they have on past nights this week, many blockaded streets into their neighborhoods to prevent militiamen and strangers from entering.

Tripoli, home to about a third of Libya’s population of 6 million, is the center of the eroding territory that Gadhafi still controls. The opposition holds a long sweep of about half of Libya’s 1,000-mile (1,600- kilometer) Mediterranean coastline where most of the population lives.

Even in the Gadhafi-held pocket of northwestern Libya around Tripoli, several cities have also fallen to the rebellion. Militiamen and pro-Gadhafi troops were repelled Thursday when they launched attacks trying to take back opposition-held territory in Zawiya and Misrata in fighting that killed at least 30 people.

In an apparent bid to win public favor, parliament speaker Mohammed Abul-Qassim al-Zwai announced that the government would increase salaries and offer the unemployed a monthly salary. State TV reported the unemployed would get the equivalent of $117 a month and salaries would be raised 50 to 150 percent.

Support for Gadhafi continued to fray within a regime where he long commanded unquestioned loyalty.

Libya’s delegation to the United Nations in Geneva announced Friday it was defecting to the opposition — and it was given a standing ovation at a gathering of the U.N. Human Rights Council. They join a string of Libyan ambassadors and diplomats around the world who abandoned the regime, as have the justice and interior ministers at home, and one of Gadhafi’s cousins and closest aides, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, who sought refuge in Egypt.

Libya’s 11-member Arab League mission also announced its resignation in protest at the crackdown

On a visit to Turkey, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the violence by pro-Gadhafi forces is unacceptable and should not go unpunished.

“Mr. Gadhafi must go,” he said.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll in Libya at nearly 300, according to a partial count from several days ago. Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed were “credible.”

The upheaval in the OPEC nation has taken most of Libya’s oil production of 1.6 million barrels a day off the market. Oil prices hovered above $98 a barrel Friday in Asia, backing away from a spike to $103 the day before amid signs the crisis in Libya may have cut crude supplies less than previously estimated.

The opposition camp says it is in control of two of Libya’s major oil ports — Breqa and Ras Lanouf — on the Gulf of Sidra. A resident of Ras Lanouf said Friday that the security force guarding that port had joined the rebellion and were helping guard it, along with residents of the area.

Several tens of thousands held a rally in support of the Tripoli protesters in the main square of Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi, where the revolt began, about 580 miles (940 kilometers) east of the capital along the Mediterranean coast.

Tents were set up and residents served breakfast to people, many carrying signs in Arabic and Italian. Others climbed on a few tanks parked nearby, belonging to army units in the city that allied with the rebellion.

“We will not stop this rally until Tripoli is the capital again,” said Omar Moussa, a demonstrator. “Libyans are all united. … Tripoli is our capital. Tripoli is in our hearts.”

Muslim cleric Sameh Jaber led prayers in the square, telling worshippers that Libyans “have revolted against injustice.”

“God take revenge from Moammar Gadhafi because of what he did to the Libyan people,” the cleric, wearing traditional Libyan white uniform and a red cap, said in remarks carried by Al-Jazeera TV. “God accept our martyrs and make their mothers, fathers and families patient.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said the bloc needs to consider sanctions such as travel restrictions and an asset freeze against Libya to halt to the violence and move toward democracy.

NATO’s main decision-making body met in emergency session to consider the deteriorating situation. It said it would continue to monitor the crisis, but that it will not intervene. Participants at the NATO meeting decided it would be premature to discuss deployments or a no-fly zone over Libya, said a diplomat familiar with the discussions.

The U.N.’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay said reports of mass killings in Libya should spur the international community to “step in vigorously” to end the crackdown against anti-government protesters.

___

I suppose we’ll have to wait for polling to find out why, but I’ll hazard a guess. As the old divisions have faded, new divisions are being created along lines of substantive issues. As the Harold Washington racially based foolishness has abated, Chicagoans are more interested in fixing things–not in the old sense (as in the “fix is in’) but in the sense of finally digging into the massive problems bedeviling the city.

So, if the old-style parochial blinders have been set aside, what explains Emanuel’s victory? Some guesses:

His style. Some credit Emanuel’s display of control and calmness during his grueling questioning at an elections board hearing as the turning point in his campaign. All doubts raised about his legendary temper were cast aside; Emanuel demonstrated that he can govern. But I demure. From the beginning, the people who wanted to change how the city does business understood that they needed someone tough enough to stand up to the usual interests. They weren’t fooled by Emanuel’s display of equanimity. Under it, they knew boiled the blood of a determined–dare I say? –reformer.

The issues. While all the candidates discussed issues, Emanuel went in the direction that his constituency may have wanted. Challenge the public employee unions, most of all. But, quite frankly, clean up the mess that departing Mayor Richard M. Daley and his rubber stamp City Council have created. The reality of Emanuel’s direction was confirmed for those who weren’t convinced when some of the toughest public employee unions started saying nasty stuff against the him.

Those unions knew what they were facing. If Emanuel’s promises of reform are to be taken seriously and not as empty clichés, everyone in city government will indeed “share” in the pain necessary to right city government.

Particularly encouraging is his promise to conduct a forensic audit of all city departments. By definition, it’s an investigation into corruption and criminality–something that shouldn’t be so hard to discover. I’d be more impressed with a functional audit that goes beyond corruption and into why we even have this or that department. What are its goals? How effective is it? Are the resources sufficient or is the department bloated with retainers and political appointees?

Viewed nationally, Emanuel’s victory may represent, as Carmeron Joseph said in the National Journal, “…underscores the changing politics and demographics of a city famous for its racial and ethnic divisions.” As the New York Times called it, “Chicago, City in Transition, Picks a Big Personality.”

Chicago abandoning racial politics? Perhaps, and, if true, that change was coming for a long time. More earth shattering though, is the possibility that Chicagoans themselves yearn for a real change, not just in politics, but also in government. Though politics and government are linked, they are really two different things, you know. 

Democratic U.S. Rep. David Wu said Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the photos were taken while he was “joshing around” with his children in October just before Halloween.

One photo shows Wu wearing an orange and black striped tiger outfit with pointy ears and striped mittens. Portland newspapers reported that campaign staffers pleaded with Wu to seek psychiatric help in the final week before the November election, but he refused.

The newspapers reported that campaign staffers were appalled by a series of e-mails sent from Wu’s federally issued BlackBerry that included the photo of him in the tiger costume. But more disturbing, staffers said, were e-mails written in the voice of his adolescent children.

Wu acknowledged sending the photos and said he sought mental health treatment, including counseling and medication. He said Tuesday he’s “in a good place now,” but he said he ruled out inpatient treatment because he couldn’t spend time away from his family.

“Last October was not a good month. It was very stressful. I did some things, I said some things, which I sincerely regret now,” Wu said in the ABC interview.

But the seven-term congressman assured voters he is fit to remain in office.

“I emphatically can do the job,” Wu said, adding that “only time will demonstrate that to my constituents.”

Wu said he was stressed from running for office while taking care of his two children as a single father and caring for his 88-year-old mother. He is separated from his wife, Michelle Wu.

“I think that mental health is a very, very important issue and people ought to feel ready, willing and able to seek it when they need it and perhaps doing this interview with you, George, will help other people feel more comfortable about addressing those issues,” Wu told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

Wu has overcome previous revelations of unusual behavior to survive seven elections. Republicans have long eyed Wu’s 1st Congressional District despite a large registration advantage for Democrats, in part because of Wu’s propensity to invite embarrassing news.

The latest reports were published Friday in The Oregonian and Willamette Week. Citing interviews with a number of anonymous staff members, the newspapers reported that Wu was increasingly unpredictable on the campaign trial and in private last fall, and had several angry and loud outbursts.

Wu, a Yale Law School graduate born in Taiwan, was first elected to the U.S. House in 1998. He’s maintained a low profile in Congress, except for his occasional appearances in unflattering news stories.

Just weeks before the 2004 election, Wu apologized for “inexcusable behavior” after reports surfaced that a former girlfriend once claimed that he tried to sexually assault her while both were students at Stanford University in the 1970s. No charges were filed in the case, but Wu’s opponent seized on the allegation to argue he was unfit for office.

Three years later, Wu’s remarks on the House floor that “there are Klingons in the White House” were roundly mocked.

Seven of his staff members have left since he won re-election in November: his chief of staff, spokeswoman, three field representatives in Oregon, and two others in Washington, D.C. In addition, he lost his campaign pollster and campaign fundraiser. His campaign treasurer resigned last week, and Wu named himself treasurer.