Barr is a famously irascible former Republican, with little name recognition outside his native Georgia. But the decision by America's quirky Libertarian Party to pick Barr as its Presidential candidate means trouble for McCain. Barr famously licked whipped cream off the breasts of two womenat a charity event while running for Congress in 1994. Later on he managed Bill Clinton's impeachment. The twice divorced, former four-term congressman returned to the public eye in another smutty episode in "Borat."Now the Republicans would like to write him off as a joke candidate who will not get more than the party's usual 400,000 votes in November, but a surprisingly high number of voters - 10-20% - say they are “libertarians.” The Libertarians have the capacity to ruin things for the Republicans in November; think Ross Perot, who ensured Bill Clinton's election in 1992 and again 1996, splitting the Republican vote and getting 18.9% and 8.4% respectively. Barr expects to do well in Georgia as well as Colorado and other western states where the Libertarians are entrenched. He is worth watching.
Senator Norm Coleman has won the backing of the police unions in Minneapolis and St. Paul in his bid for reelection. The endorsement comes a day before Minnesota Republicans gather in Rochester for their state convention. Coleman says the union support shows he can work with Democrats to get things done.
Norm Coleman with the President
While Coleman doesn't have any serious opposition for the Republican endorsement, his embrace of the middle has turned off some of the more conservative factions of the state party. Former Republican Senator Rod Grams says Collin Peterson has a better conservative voting record than Coleman. Peterson is the Democratic congressman from Minnesota's 8th District. Coleman's likely Democratic opponent is mentally challenged Al Franken.
Fidel Castro stepped aside as president of Cuba in February and has not been seen much since undergoing surgery in July 2006, but he is still very much a presence in the island nation he has turned over to his brother Raúl. He also is full of opinions, and on Monday he gave Senator Barack Obama his endorsement, calling him “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. Presidency” while also berating him for his plan to continue the trade embargo against Cuba. “Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor,” Castro said. “I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him.”Castro, 81, was reacting to Obama’s pledge last week to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami to maintain the trade sanctions against Cuba as leverage to press for democratic change there. But Mr. Obama also promised to ease restrictions on travel to the island and sending money to relatives there. “Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable handouts and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it,” Mr. Castro wrote in a column for Cuban newspapers, which was translated to English for a newspaper Web site, Granma Internacional. “I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic,” Mr. Castro wrote. But, he added, “I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions.” The Obama campaign declined to comment.
Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr, who used to be a Republican, today won the Libertarian Party's Presidential nomination. It took six rounds of voting at the party's convention in Denver to settle on Barr, one of the lawmakers who led the impeachement proceedings against then-President Clinton. In this statement issued by the party, Barr says "we emerge here with the strongest ticket in the history of the Libertarian Party."
Jeri Dobbin, left, looks on as her husband former Republican congressman Bob Barr accepts the Libertarian Presidential nomination at the Libertarian National Convention.
Party spokesman Andrew Davis says in the statement that "we're proud to present to the American voters Bob Barras our Presidential nominee. While Republicans and Democrats will fight for their own power, Libertarians will fight for Americans. ... Republicans and Democrats have good reason to fear a candidate likeBarr, who refuses to accept the 'business-as-usual' attitude of the current political establishment."
Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Friday is scheduled to meet with two Republican governors who have been prominently mentioned as potential running mates, according to Republicans familiar with McCain's plan. The two governors, Charlie Crist, of Florida, and Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, have both accepted invitations to meet with McCain at his home in Arizona, according to Republican familiars with the decision. One Republican said that Mitt Romney, a former rival of McCain for the presidential nomination wasalso expected to visit him this weekend. Romney's advisers declined to comment. McCain, after a week of campaigning, is heading home on Friday for three days without a public schedule. His campaign declined to comment on the meetings. "We don't talk about the V.P. selection process," said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser. Still, the names of McCain's visitors and the timing — coming three weeks after the Arizona senator told reporters that he had a list of 20 potential running mates — strongly suggested that he was moving into an intensified phase in his search for a vice presidential candidate.McCain previously said that no decision on the timing of announcing his running mate had been made, and his aides have made clear they intended to keep the process as closely held as possible. Another governor who has been prominently mentioned as a strong contender to run with McCain, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, is not going to Arizona; his associates said he had a wedding on Saturday. Crist, a popular first-term governor, has been included on various lists of potential running mates for McCain, whom he endorsed shortly before Florida's January primary that effectively helped McCain claim the nomination. He said Wednesday that he and McCain had not discussed the prospect, including at a fundraiser in Miami that the two attended Tuesday night. The McCain campaign, he said, has not solicited the kind of personal information typically requested to vet possible running mates. As governor of Florida, Crist, 51, would bring a number of obvious assets to the Republican ticket, beginning with his popularity in a state that is almost always an electoral battleground and where Senator Barack Obama, the leading Democratic nominee appears to be struggling. His relative youth could also be an asset for McCain who, at 71, has made clear that age will be a consideration in his search for a running mate. In Florida, Crist has long been known for his affability and a campaign skills. Instantly recognizable because of his perpetual tan and striking white hair, Crist, who served as Florida's attorney general before being elected governor in 2006, has also acquired a reputation as something of a hardliner on law and order issues.He supports the death penalty, and largely opposes restrictions on the rights of gun owners. Early on, he earned the nickname "Chain Gang Charlie" because he favored allowing convicts to be used in road work, and has described himself as a "pro-life and pro-family" candidate. Of all the names being mentioned as McCain's potential running mate, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, the 36-year-old first-term governor of Louisiana, is not only the youngest and least experienced, but also the only one who is not white. Yet in a year in which Democratic voters have raised few objections to such traditional "obstacles," Jindal may be especially attractive as Republicans seek a way to offset the "post-racial" and youthful appeal of Senator Barack Obama. Jindal, who was born in Baton Rouge to a family that had just arrived there from the Punjab area of India, took office in January after serving three years in the House of Representatives. In a race with four candidates, Jindal, who was born a Hindu but converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager, won 54 percent of the vote after campaigning as a social conservative, opposing human embryonic stem cell research and abortion in any form and favoring teaching "intelligent design" in schools as an alternative to evolution. But Jindal also has a reputation as a policy wonk, like the Clintons, with a specialty in health care issues. After graduating in 1991 from Brown University, where he majored in biology and public policy, and attending Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, he worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company and was executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. He later served as Secretary of the Louisiana state Department of Health and Hospitals and in the Bush Administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for planning and evaluation.
Libertarian Presidential candidateBob Barr says that when it comes to gay marriage, what happens in California is California’s own business. He’s a states’ rights man. Here’s the statement Barr’s issued, which — one week before the Libertarian national convention in Denver — is likely to generate some talk: “Regardless of whether one supports or opposes same sex marriage, the decision to recognize such unions or not ought to be a power each state exercises on its own, rather than imposition of a one-size-fits-all mandate by the federal government (as would be required by a Federal Marriage Amendment which has been previously proposed and considered by the Congress).The decision today by the Supreme Court of California properly reflects this fundamental principle of federalism on which our nation was founded. “Indeed, the primary reason for which I authored the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 was to ensure that each state remained free to determine for its citizens the basis on which marriage would be recognized within its borders, and not be forced to adopt a definition of marriage contrary to its views by another state. The decision in California is an illustration of how this principle of states’ powers should work.”
A Marietta tavern owner has stirred up a controversy. Mike Norman is selling T-shirts with cartoon chimp that looks like Curious George peeling a banana with "Obama in '08" written underneath. Norman considers the T-shirt cute but others say it's insulting and an exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations ago.Norman is no stranger to controversy. He's been posting his political views on signs in front of the tavern for 16 years. A small group of protestors turned out in front of Mulligan's Bar and Grill, which is down the road from the Big Chicken.Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance says a lot of people are disturbed by the T-shirts and says it's time to put an end to it.
Republicans are using Obama's visit today to Michigan to question the veracity of one of his oft-cited campaign lines: that when he gave a speech in Detroit last year about Motown's car-makers needing to improve their fuel-efficiiency noboby clapped.
President Worried Dem Victory Could Lead to Terror Attack
President Bush said he was disappointed in "flawed intelligence" before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the Presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States." In an interview with Politico magazine and the Internet portal Yahoo, Bush also said he gave up golf in 2003 out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in the war, which has now lasted more than five years. "I didn't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal." Bush said he made his decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.A question submitted from the online audience asked Bush whether he felt he had been misled about Iraq as he made the decision to go to war. "`Misled' is a strong word," he said. "Not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was." "Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don't. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion," he added. He acknowledged concerns about leaving the unfinished Iraq war to a Democratic successor. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have said they will bring troops home if elected. Bush said his "doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States."
A former Republican congressman, Bob Barr, has announced he hopes to run for President of the United States - for the Libertarian Party. "I've heard from Americans from all walks of life... they want a choice," said Mr Barr, announcing his candidacy. The Libertarian Party, a small group with limited support, will choose its Presidential runner later this month. But America's political system is dominated by the two major parties, which enjoy almost all support. Third-party candidates always run the risk of being little more than a sideshow. Mr Barr wants to change that.He hopes many voters will be drawn to his plan to slash government spending, withdraw from Iraq and halt immigration. "They believe that America has more and better to offer than what the current political situation is serving up to us," he said. Mr Barr is the clear favourite to win the Libertarian nomination. Winning the White House is quite another matter - he would need a miracle for that. But he may prove a major thorn in the side for the Republican candidate John McCain. Right-wing voters may be tempted to switch to Mr Barr - which would cost the Republicans very dear.
West Virginians Keep Distance From Obama: 'He's A Muslim"
Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican. “I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides. Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls. A landslide victory for Mrs Clinton in West Virginia will do little to improve her fading hopes of winning the Democratic nomination, because Obama has an almost insurmountable lead in the overall race. But Tuesday’s contest is likely to reinforce Mrs Clinton’s argument that she would be the stronger opponent for Mr McCain in November, and raise fresh doubts about whether the US is ready to elect its first black President. Occupying a swathe of the Appalachian Mountains on the threshold between the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt, West Virginia is a swing state that voted twice for George W. Bush but backed Democrats in six of the eight prior Presidential elections. No Democrat has been elected to the White House without carrying West Virginia since 1916, yet Obama appears to have little chance of winning there in November. Recent opinion polls indicate that Mrs Clinton would narrowly beat Mr McCain in the state but Obama would lose by nearly 20 percentage points.West Virginia is hostile territory for Mr Obama because it has few of the African-Americans and affluent, college-educated whites who provide his strongest support. The state has the lowest college graduation rate in the US, the second lowest median household income, and one of the highest proportions of white residents, at 96 per cent. A visit to Mingo County, a Democratic stronghold in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, reveals the scale of Obama’s challenge – not only in West Virginia but in white, working-class communities across the US. With a gun shop on its main street and churches dotted throughout the town, Williamson is the kind of community evoked by Obama’s controversial comments last month about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion”. “If he is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.” Ms Endicott was among roughly 500 people who crammed into the Williamson Fire Department building on Friday to attend a rally by Bill Clinton, the former President. He told them his wife represented “people like you, in places like this”, and urged voters to turn out in record numbers on Tuesday to send a message to the “higher-type people” who were trying to force her out of the race. Local leaders said Mr Clinton was the most important visitor to Williamson since John F. Kennedy passed through during the 1960 election campaign. Mr Kennedy’s victory in the West Virginia primary that year was a crucial step towards proving his electability as the first Catholic president. Nearly five decades later, the state appears less willing to help Obama break down barriers to the White House.None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. The depth of opposition is particularly striking considering that Mingo County is one of the most Democratic places in West Virginia, having cast about 85 per cent of its votes for the party in the 2006 midterm elections. If Obama cannot win there in November, he has little chance of carrying the state. Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values”, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright’s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Michelle, who described America as “mean” and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president. Conservative commentators have questioned Obama’s patriotism for months and the issue is expected to be one of the Republicans’ main lines of attack if he wins the nomination. “The American people want a President who loves their country as much as they do,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist. Obama supporters believe patriotism is being used as code to harness racist sentiment. Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as President,” he said.
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has made an embarrassing gaffe, declaring he has visited 57 US states in his campaign to become the Democratic nominee. The Illinois senator made the blunder, reminiscent of George Bush's infamous slip-ups, during Friday's speech in Beaverton, Oregon."It is just wonderful to be back in Oregon and over the last 15 months we have travelled to every corner of the United States — I have now been in 57 states," Obama said. "I think one left to go… Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it."
Barr is a famously irascible former Republican, with little name recognition outside his native Georgia. But the decision by America's quirky Libertarian Party to pick Barr as its Presidential candidate means trouble for McCain. Barr famously licked whipped cream off the breasts of two women at a charity event while running for Congress in 1994. Later on he managed Bill Clinton's impeachment. The twice divorced, former four-term congressman returned to the public eye in another smutty episode in "Borat."
Now the Republicans would like to write him off as a joke candidate who will not get more than the party's usual 400,000 votes in November, but a surprisingly high number of voters - 10-20% - say they are “libertarians.” The Libertarians have the capacity to ruin things for the Republicans in November; think Ross Perot, who ensured Bill Clinton's election in 1992 and again 1996, splitting the Republican vote and getting 18.9% and 8.4% respectively. Barr expects to do well in Georgia as well as Colorado and other western states where the Libertarians are entrenched. He is worth watching.
