But according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the bigger problem appears to be John McCain's ties to President Bush.
In the survey, 43 percent of registered voters say they have major concerns that McCain is too closely aligned with the current administration.
Tony Zirkle, the Republican congressional candidate who didn't see anything wrong with speaking to a bunch of Nazis in Chicao on Hitler's birthday, is the gift that just keeps on giving for Hoosier Democrats:
Zirkle, who is seeking the GOP nomination for the state's 2nd Congressional District, believes — among other things — that whites are victims of a "genocide," that the races should be segregated into different states and that pornography is a Jewish plot against women.
Usually, when it is said of a woman that she really has a set, this isn't the mental picture we get:
She could hide, but she couldn't run:
SANTEE, Calif. - Marie Walsh kept a low profile for 32 years, trying to escape her past life as Susan LeFevre.
WINDSOR, N.J. (CBS) ? The sputtering economy has caused an increase in prices of many staples including gasoline, rice, ice cream, even beer. Now some lawmakers in New Jersey are considering taking food taxes a step further and install a proverbial "sin" tax on fast food.
Fuzzy Zeller Zoeller hits the ball, and it lands in the rough, and the commentators are bored . . . but, wait, the ball starts rolling again, and ... it's a hole in one! (It's the video; check it out if you've never actually seen one.) We go through life thinking all we have to do is master a certain set of skills to succeed and get ahead.
I've gotten a lot of feedback on our editorial "endorsing" Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary, including some from a good friend who has given up a large part of her personal life to volunteer for Obama. (I offered her a guest column spot if she wanted to write a rebuttal, so stay tuned for that possibility.)
I don't believe in miracles, but, damn::
SUFFOLK, Va. - It was a scene of haphazard destruction that stretched for 25 miles: Row upon row of homes reduced to sprays of splintered lumber, shopping centers stripped to bare metal, parking lots turned into junk yards.
And yet no one died.
"The only thing I can say is we were watched over and blessed," Fire Chief Mark Outlaw said.
Eventually, everything will be reduced to a number. Researchers have come up with something called the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which attempts to measure the nation's general welfare "much like the Dow Jones Industrial Average portrays the health of the stock market." The index classifies people as "thriving" (49 percent of Americans), "struggling" (47 percent) or "suffering" (4 percent). And get this:
Thank goodness Abraham Lincoln just grew up here, so Indiana can stay out of this little Kentucky-North Carolina tiff:
A group in Rutherford County, N.C., opened the Bostic (N.C.) Lincoln Center and is petitioning the federal government to run a DNA test of Lincoln's father, Thomas, to see if it matches some of the 16th president's saved genetic material.
The neighbors are complaining, which is why this is a story. But it seems sort of creative to me:
Jim Downs and Pat O'Brien said they did not want to cause a controversy when they covered their Merrillville front lawn with green indoor/outdoor carpeting.
[. . .]
After an alcohol-fueled "embarrassment" at least year's prom, Whiting High School students may face breath tests at prom Friday.
Whiting School Board members voted unanimously Monday night to authorize breath tests at school functions. The measure allows sobriety tests at a slate of school functions, but prom was clearly the board's concern.
There are two church-state issues that can be in conflict: 1. Freedom of religion requires government to keep its distance and let people worship the way their conscienses dictate. 2. But religion can't give cover to practices that are clearly against the law of the land. It can be tricky to determine when the behavior is so unacceptable that the state is justified in stepping in. Remember the Santeria members who got in trouble for killing chickens because it violated laws against "animal sacrifices"?
Omigod, what are we going to do?
If the USA seems too crowded and its roads too congested now, imagine future generations: The nation's population could more than triple to 1 billion as early as 2100.
That's the eye-popping projection that urban and rural planners, gathered today for their annual meeting in Las Vegas, are hearing from a land-use expert.
Justice Antonin Scalia was on "60 Minutes" trying to explain Originalist constitutional thinking to Leslie Stahl, and he might as well have been talking to the wall:
Scalia has no patience with so-called activist judges, who create rights not in the Constitution - like a right to abortion - by interpreting the Constitution as a "living document" that adapts to changing values.
"It is an enduring Constitution that I want to defend," he says.
OK, so what is Al Gore going to do about this?
Don't know about the trains, but the torch was sure on time:
PYONGYANG, North Korea - Assured of a trip free of anti-Chinese protests, the Olympic torch made its first-ever relay run Monday in authoritarian North Korea
It's nice to know Howard Dean still has left in him one of those primal-scream moments that sealed his doom as a presidential candidate:
Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama needed to quit the presidential race in June in order for Democrats to win the White House in November.
Aaaaarghh!!
