The Swamp

Latest from the Tribune's D.C. blog feed.

'Gender-gap' favoring Obama: Experts

by Mark Silva The "gender gap'' in support for Barack Obama and John McCain is particularly pronounced in some of the "battleground'' states where the Democrat and Republican are vying for the presidency. And the apparent initial impact that Sarah Palin -- the first female Republican nominee for vice president - had on support for McCain among women is "settling out'' now, according to a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "It seems the effect of...

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Obama missed White Sox defeat: Aide

by John McCormick NASHVILLE - Running for president is a tough business. Sometimes you don't even get to watch your favorite team lose in the playoffs. The nation's highest-profile Chicago White Sox fan -- Sen. Barack Obama -- was apparently too busy to watch his team get knocked out last night. "The senator was actually working during the game, but was dismayed to hear the news," David Axelrod, Obama's top adviser, said on a flight here from Asheville, N.C., where Obama has been in...

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William Ayers' past was unknown: Obama

by John McCormick, updated NASHVILLE -- Barack Obama has since condemned the Vietnam war-protest tactics of William Ayers, though a top adviser said today Obama didn't know of his past when Ayers hosted a campaign reception for Obama in 1995. So when did Obama learn that Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground in the 1960s? "It was sometime after their first meetings, you know, he...

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Judge: Release some Gitmo detainees

by James Oliphant In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration, a federal judge Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to immediately release a small group of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States. U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said in a landmark ruling that it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the 17 detainees, known as Uighurs, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants. The Uighurs have been in custody for almost seven...

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Obama vs McCain -- debate 2 preview

by Frank James The second presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain comes at a time in the race when the Democratic presidential nominee has taken a significant lead in national polls though it's still in the single digits. As the two men meet in Nashville at Belmont University tonight, their backdrop is a nation of rising economic worries, with companies shedding jobs, rising housing foreclosures, tight credit markets and declining values on Wall Street . Thus,...

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McCain dumps racial-joking campaigner

by Mark Silva The McCain campaign has denounced a racially charged, anti-Barack Obama newspaper column written by one of the Republican campaign's organizers in Virginia, and has removed the author-activist from his post as a member of the candidate's statewide leadership team, our colleague at the Top of the Ticket reports. "The column by Bobby May appeared in a southwestern Virginia newspaper, The Voice, and drew attention after it was cited in a Sunday Los Angeles Times report about how...

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Palin spoofed by pornmeister Flynt

By Andrew Zajac Is there any doubt that Sarah Palin is the transcendent pop cultural figure of the moment? Think about her portfolio: Alaska governor, Republican vice-presidential candidate, homemaker, hockey mom, moose butcher, and muse to Tina Fey AND Larry Flynt. Yes, him. Flynt, the bottomfeeding pornographer and self-styled crusader against government hypocrisy, was last scene in political precincts in 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal offerng $1 million for the goods on...

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Sarah Palin: Obama's 'left-wing agenda'

by Mark Silva Sarah Palin, waging the Republican Party's presidential campaign in a state that she and John McCain count on for victory, kept up an assault today on Democratic rival Barack Obama's association with William Ayers, a Chicago education professor and onetime radical war protester in the Sixties. Palin also accused Obama of campaigning with "a left-wing agenda packaged to look mainstream.'' And, Palin accused Obama of lying - or, as she put it today, a lack of...

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Obama-Ayers ties Q&A

by Mark Jacob Q. Why did Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin accuse Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists"? A. She was referring to Obama's association with 1960s radical Bill Ayers, now an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Q. How are Ayers and Obama associated? A. They both live in the Hyde Park area on the South Side, and Obama visited Ayers' home for a meeting at the start of his first state Senate bid in 1995. They were active in...

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Fed adds lube to financial gears

by Frank James Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, one of the world's foremost experts on the Great Depression, has obviously learned much from history and is determined not to repeat it. One reason the Great Depression became so durable according to experts was that central bankers at the time responded by doing exactly the wrong thing, they tightened access to money. So Bernanke's Fed has repeatedly pumped vast sums of money into the financial markets in order to lubricate the gears...

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McCain 'struggles:' Bush-states polled

by Mark Silva Polls conducted in several states that President Bush carried in 2004 show Republican presidential nominee John McCain "struggling'' with his Democratic rival, according to a report this morning from Time magazine, CNN and Opinion Research Corp, which conducted the surveys. McCain holds a five-point advantage over Democrat Barack Obama in Indiana among likely voters, 51-46 percent, but is tied 48-48 among registered voters., in a two-way matchup. Add Libertartian Bob Barr to...

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Bush approval-rating: All-time low

by Mark Silva President Bush will step out today for a pep-talk about the economy, a badly stumbling economy that he had called fundamentally "sound'' not many months ago. He will be talking at an office products company in suburban Chantilly, Va., about the economic stabilization act which Congress has passed at his insistence, a $700-billion bailout of the nation's bankers that may take some time to show political profit. Bush's own bottom-line has reached a new low at the same time,...

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'Obama Nation's' Corsi held in Kenya

Jerome Corsi being escorted for deportation from Kenya. (AP Photo) by Frank James updated at 8:38 am UPDATE: The Associated Press is reporting the following -- NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) _ Kenyan airport official says American author of book slamming Barack Obama is being deported. Original posting below ------------------------------------------------------- It's being reported that Jerome Corsi, author of "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," has been detained...

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Bush's judicial nominations, McCain's?

by James Gerstenzang Mentioning neither William Ayres and the Weather Underground nor the Keating Five, the two hot topics du jour of the presidential campaign, President Bush managed nevertheless to quietly slip himself into the campaign on Monday by delving into a secondary issue: What standards a president should apply when picking judges. Bush did not have to say about whom he was speaking. He never said "Obama" or "McCain," "Democrat" or "Republican." But speaking to a conservative...

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McCain, Obama debate: Pass the pork

by Bob Secter Imagine for a moment if John McCain were running against John McCain. The first John McCain might be having a field day right now attacking the second John McCain for voting in the U.S. Senate last week to approve tens of billions of dollars in earmarks. McCain has been especially vocal during his Republican presidential campaign about the entrenched practice of congressional earmarks, billions of dollars in targeted spending or tax breaks for narrow interests often larded...

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