Nuestra Voice

Latino voters, who supported Sen Hillary Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin in the primary elections, could face a different choice in November if Clinton is out of the race. Latino media and blogs are speculating about where these voters would go in a face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain.

No one has bragging rights over the Latino vote, not yet. And after the massive immigrant rights marches of 2006, the old token “tamale politics” won’t work — if they ever did.

With Sen. Barack Obama emerging as the probable opponent to Republican Sen. John McCain, the Latino media and blogosphere have been abuzz with speculation on how the two might fare head-to-head.

Obama did poorly among Latinos against Sen. Hillary Clinton (On Super Tuesday, Latinos voted for Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin). The conventional wisdom has been that he is woefully vulnerable in this demographic. But McCain is not necessarily ideally positioned, according to Los Angeles political columnist Pilar Marrero.

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Perhaps no one took greater comfort in the Republican Party’s third straight loss of a long-held House seat this week than Barack Obama, who says the results point to clear limits in the effectiveness of attack ads he expects this fall.

The Democratic presidential candidate played a prominent role in all three special elections to fill vacant GOP seats, and he landed on the winning side each time.

In recent contests in Louisiana and Mississippi, Republicans or their allies ran TV ads linking the Democratic House nominees to Obama, warning that a vote for them was a tacit endorsement of Obama’s agenda, which the ads described as very liberal. In Mississippi, ads against Democrat Travis Childers also tied him to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

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Democrats on Thursday condemned President Bush’s insinuation that they would be appeasing terrorist states by holding talks, with one going so far as to call his remarks “bulls**t.”

Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that if the president disagrees so strongly with the idea of talking to Iran, then he needs to fire his secretaries of state and defense, both of whom Biden said have pushed to sit down with the Iranians.

“This is bulls**t. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement,” he said.

“He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has.”

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President Bush used a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Thursday to liken those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” to appeasers of the Nazis — a remark widely interpreted as a rebuke to Senator Barack Obama, who has advocated greater engagement with countries like Iran and Syria.

Mr. Bush did not mention Mr. Obama by name, and White House officials said he was not taking aim at the senator, though they were aware the speech might be interpreted that way.

The comments created an angry tussle back home, as Democrats accused Mr. Bush of breaching protocol by playing partisan politics overseas.

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John McCain’s campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley’s dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent “527″ group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates. The campaign also released a new conflict of interest policy barring such arrangements.

Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign’s payroll, but would also step down from his role on McCain’s Virginia Leadership Team, a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said.

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Barack Obama collected the support of seven of John Edwards’ Democratic convention delegates on Thursday, then gained the backing of four superdelegates and a large labor union as he marched steadily toward the party’s presidential nomination.

The fresh support brought Obama’s overall delegate total to 1,898, compared to 1,718 for his rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. It takes 2,026 to clinch the nomination at the party convention in Denver this summer.

Edwards, who bestowed his long-sought endorsement on Obama on Wednesday, won 19 delegates before departing the presidential race in January.

Within hours, Obama picked up the backing of five of them from South Carolina, one in New Hampshire and one in Iowa.

In addition, three superdelegates — Reps. James McDermott of Washington, and Henry Waxman and Howard Berman of California — endorsed Obama.

“I believe now is the time to unite behind Barack Obama so we can be in the strongest place possible to win in November,” McDermott said.

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It was the size of a dime and as thick as a nickel—a discolored blotch on John McCain’s left temple. He didn’t pay it much mind during the heat of the 2000 Republican primary campaign. But after losing the nomination to George W. Bush, the Arizona Senator found himself with time to spare. So as Bush celebrated victory, McCain headed to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to have the spot checked out.

Less than three weeks later, McCain endured 5½ hours of surgery to remove a patch of skin including the blemish, roughly 5 cm (2 in.) wide. The diagnosis: Stage 2A melanoma, an invasive form of skin cancer that claims the lives of up to 34% of those diagnosed within 10 years. Doctors also made an incision down his left cheek to remove lymph nodes in his neck in case the cancer had spread; they found it had not. The surgery left a large scar, and for weeks McCain retreated from public view to recover.

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The California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.

The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental “right to marry” that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June.

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It would have meant more in February or March, but John Edwards’ endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination was welcomed nonetheless by a politician eager to turn the page.

Edwards’ surprise appearance at a rally Wednesday steered some of the attention away from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s landslide win over Obama in Tuesday’s West Virginia primary. Despite the victory, the former first lady faces long odds in trying to deny Obama the presidential nomination.

Edwards had been their chief rival from 2007 through last January. But after finishing second to Obama in Iowa, the former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential nominee placed third in the next three contests, then left the race.

Obama and Clinton immediately sought his support, but Edwards stayed mum until Wednesday. The endorsement would have carried more clout had Edwards made it months ago, when the outcome of the Democratic contest was very much in doubt.

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The Republican defeat in a special Congressional contest in Mississippi sent waves of apprehension across an already troubled party Wednesday, with some senior Republicans urging Congressional candidates to distance themselves from President Bush to head off what could be heavy losses in the fall.

The victory by Travis Childers, a conservative Democrat elected in a once-steadfast Republican district on Tuesday, was the third defeat of a Republican in a special Congressional race this year. In addition to foreshadowing more losses for the party in November, the outcome appeared to call into question the belief that Senator Barack Obama of Illinois could be a heavy liability for his party’s down-ticket candidates in conservative regions.

Republicans had sought to link Mr. Childers to Mr. Obama in an advertising campaign there. Republican leaders said they were looking to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee, as a model whose independent reputation appears to allow him to rise above party in a year when the Republican label seems tarnished.

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Gore, 60, who won the Nobel Prize and built a constituency by championing the fight against climate change since losing the election to George W. Bush, has so far stayed out of the battle between Obama and Clinton.

“The Al Gore watch starts now,” said Ken Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Gore, who is one of the party’s superdelegates, has indicated he won’t give his endorsement until the primary contest is finished. His spokeswoman, Kalee Kreider, said yesterday that Gore had no further comment.

Obama and Gore

Obama said he has spoken to Gore “periodically” over the past several months about policies and ideas.

“I’m not really pushing for an endorsement,” Obama told reporters on his plane last night as he flew to Chicago. “I’d love to have it, but when you’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize, making an endorsement politically is maybe a step down.”

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For the past 18 months, ever since the 2006 elections, congressional Republicans have been like a hospital patient trying to convince visitors that he is not really all that sick: a bit under the weather; actually feel better than I sound; should be up and about any day; thanks for asking.

Suddenly — belatedly — all pretense is gone.

The Republican defeat in Tuesday’s special election in Mississippi, in a deeply conservative district where, in an average year, Democrats cannot even compete, was a clear sign that the GOP has the political equivalent of cancer that has spread throughout the body. Many House GOP operatives are privately predicting that the party could easily lose up to 20 seats this fall.

Combined with the 30 seats that the GOP lost in 2006, that would leave the party facing a 70-vote deficit against Democrats in the House — a state of powerlessness reminiscent of Republicans’ long wilderness years in the 1960s and ’70s.

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The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government’s forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the “pre-flight cocktail,” as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton romped to victory Tuesday in the West Virginia primary, burying Barack Obama in a landslide that seemed unlikely to stop his steady march to the Democratic nomination.

Running in a state tailored to her strengths — with a large turnout of white, rural and working-class voters — Clinton posted one of her biggest winning margins. With nearly all of the vote counted, she was leading Obama 67% to 26%.

Speaking to supporters at Charleston’s downtown convention center, Clinton made clear her intention to keep running, even as she praised Obama.

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Seeking to show he fears no Republican — even one with a deeply loyal national radio audience — Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday essentially started his general election campaign with a brief stop here.

By picking the boyhood home of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, his campaign pressed the idea that Obama would compete in places where Democrats have typically not fared well.

His appearance in the heavily Republican town ended just a few minutes before Sen. Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the West Virginia primary.

Looking past that loss, Obama pledged to repeatedly visit the bellwether battleground of Missouri, as he spoke in a town where visitors can purchase souvenirs honoring the man who ridicules “femi-Nazis” and “environmental wackos.”

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The Rev. John C. Hagee, whose anti-Catholic remarks created a controversy when Senator John McCain received his endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination with fanfare, has issued a letter expressing regret for “any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”

The letter was issued after weeks of conversations between Mr. Hagee and Roman Catholic Republicans about repairing the damage to Mr. McCain’s campaign and the alliance built over many years between conservative Catholics and evangelicals.

Mr. McCain said Tuesday that he had not been involved in brokering the apology letter from Mr. Hagee, a megachurch pastor in San Antonio who broadcasts to 200 countries, but that he found it “a laudable thing.”

Mr. McCain’s pursuit of Mr. Hagee’s endorsement came under renewed scrutiny recently as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, was embroiled in controversy over incendiary remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

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Americans are gloomier about the direction of the country than they have been at any point in 15 years, and Democrats hold their biggest advantage since early 1993 as the party better able to deal with the nation’s main problems, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Despite more than eight in 10 now saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, coupled with growing disaffection with the Republican Party, Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, remains competitive in a hypothetical general-election matchup with Sen. Barack Obama, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, and he runs almost even with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Those findings indicate that McCain continues to elude some of the anger aimed at his party and at President Bush, whose approval ratings dipped to an all-time low in Post-ABC polling. Maintaining a separate identity will be a key to McCain’s chances of winning the White House in November. Overall, Democrats hold a 21-percentage-point advantage over Republicans as the party better equipped to handle the nation’s problems.

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They can’t get over the irony that the first woman to be a viable candidate for president appears to have lost at the height of her game.

It seems like only a few days ago, right after Hillary Rodham Clinton’s big win in Pennsylvania, that Margaret Hamrick was on the phone with one of her bank customers, rejoicing at what appeared so possible — a woman, at last, in the White House. Hamrick wasn’t supposed to talk politics on work time, but the enthusiasm for Clinton was infectious.

So what has happened, exactly? she wonders now, in the sort of bewildered voice that sometimes takes over after a car accident.

“It looks pretty bleak,” Hamrick said at a crafts fair here. “It’s sad that it’s got to turn out that way. I wish it didn’t.”

Hamrick, 51, is part of a female army that is watching a dream fade with the Clinton campaign, a page of history that might not get written now after all.

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Before Cindy McCain equals the stature of Michelle Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, she will have to top Marge Simpson.

The latest Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll asked Americans which mother has “had the most positive influence on America,” and Mrs. McCain trailed the pack, with just 4 percent — well below Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and top-choice first lady Laura Bush. She even trailed the fictional matriarch from “The Simpsons,” who garnered 9 percent.

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