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ON THE VERGE!!! We are on the verge of pulling off a miracle comeback today for John McCain. We can win this thing in Pennsylvania. We need your help! If you haven’t voted, please vote ASAP! You still have time, polls close at 8:00pm ET, and your vote will make the difference. If you don’t know where to vote, please click here to find your polling location. If you have already voted, please help us remind your fellow Pennsylvanians to get out and vote for John McCain. We need to do everything we can to make sure Pennsylvanians supporting John...

The Drudge effect on the campaign Pittsburgh Tribune Review By Salena Zito Barack Obama's first mistake on Memorial Day was giving a speech that said his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz concentration camp. Since his mother, Stanley, was an only child that story was not going to hold water with reporters for long. Obama's campaign said Tuesday the candidate meant to say that his great-Uncle, Charlie Payne, was the liberator. And unless great-Uncle Charlie was a Russian that wasn’t true either. The Red Army liberated Auschwitz in 1945, not American forces. Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton stepped in to fix that...

Rev. Jeremiah Wright criticizes media at Eugene Pincham funeral OBAMA'S FORMER PASTOR | Fires back at Fox News during sermon at Pincham funeral April 13, BY ART GOLAB Staff Reporter agolab@suntimes.com The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., former pastor of Barack Obama’s Trinity United Church of Christ, has kept a low profile since some of his sermons landed him in the middle of a political firestorm. But on Saturday Wright made his first extensive public remarks since the controversy began

Obama advance: 'Get me more white people' POLITICO Ben Smith From the account in Carnegie Mellon's paper, the Tartan, of a Michelle Obama event in Pittsburgh: While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.” “I didn’t know they...

Obama is the odds-on betting favorite TRIBUNE-REVIEW BY Salena Zito According to sports gambling and handicapping expert Steve Budin of Sportsinfo.com, Barack Obama has surpassed Hillary Clinton to become the odds-on betting favorite -- at 4-5 -- to win the presidential election. Sportsinfo.com is the world’s largest online sports pay-per-view analysis conglomerate.

John McCain For President: A Hero Leader Editorial Pittsburgh Tribune-Review February 10, 2008 You have to hand it to John McCain. He has an impeccable sense of timing. At the very moment that a dangerously fractured Republican Party could have disintegrated -- Thursday, when Mitt Romney, the darling of the anti-McCain crowd exited the race -- Sen. McCain delivered a stunning speech to the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. Certainly, there was a measured sense of rebuke in the words of the Arizona senator who now has a virtual lock on the GOP presidential...

Goodbye Fred By Salena Zito MANCHESTER (NH) -- Fred Thompson spent most of caucus night in Iowa hovering between third and fourth place -- a far cry from the lofty first-place position he held in Rasmussen's poll of likely Republican caucus-goers last June. It has been a long time since Thompson has made a compelling reason to be in this race. And it should be a very short time before he confesses a compelling reason to exit stage right. A bystander in his own race, Thompson's political what-could-have-been slipped through his fingers long before he announced his candidacy. "The process...

John McCain Busts a Move By Salena Zito Hands down, John McCain is the buzz in New Hampshire. After a political freefall in the summer, the man who swept Granite State Republicans and independents in 2000 has gone and done a Lazarus, resurrecting his presidential candidacy.

The GOP Race is Still Up for Grabs RealClearPolitics By Salena Zito The most intriguing aspect of the Republicans' road to the nomination for president is its unpredictability. It's a buckle-up race that won't be decided early or easy. About the only thing for certain is that anything can happen and anyone can win. Campaign strategists for four candidates -- Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and John McCain -- can sit down straight-faced, without spin, and outline a plausible scenario for how their guy can win the nomination. And for each legitimate win-scenario is an equally legitimate reason they...

Obama, Huckabee make their case in Iowa By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, November 25, 2007 Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama stand on political precipices in Iowa. With the wind of surging campaigns at their backs and New Hampshire on the other side of their current Iowa momentums, they have nowhere to go but forward, to see where potential Iowa caucus wins might take them. Both are men in forward motion in their respective parties. With 40-odd days left until the first precinct count in Iowa, they are beating expectations and inevitability by pulling ahead in polls. But what does it...

The Economics Equation By Salena Zito It's the economy, stupid -- again. Americans are more worried about their pocketbooks than the war in Iraq or Iran's nuclear program, suggests a recent poll by the New Democratic Network. "The economy is the sleeper issue in the American electorate," says network head Simon Rosenberg. William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, agrees: "If there is enough evidence of weakening, then economic questions will be more prominent than they would otherwise have been."

Triangulation returns By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, November 11, 2007 Clintonese, Clintonspeak and Clintonesque. Three words that describe the art of political triangulation are back in the American lexicon, thanks to Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy. "Triangulation," the brainchild of former Clinton strategist Dick Morris for Clinton-Gore '96, is a pejorative to some; it's double-talk, parsing and waffling at its worst. But for others, such as Democrat strategist Steve McMahon, that reputation is undeserved. "What it really does is recognize that, in order to get things done, you have to sometimes satisfy competing factions," he says.

RealClearPolitics November 04, 2007 Wooing the 'Indies' By Salena Zito Welcome to New Hampshire: home of granite, the first presidential primary in the nation (mandated by state law) -- and mysterious independent voters. While granite makes a great countertop, and being the first primary state gets you lots of national attention, it is those independent voters who are the most valuable asset of this tiny state. New Hampshire has a lot of indies -- 44 percent of the electorate, compared with 30 percent who are registered Republicans and 26 percent who are registered Democrats. Their numbers have increased by 11...

That 'Huckappeal' By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 28, 2007 Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee may have elevated his candidacy to his party's upper tier but his choice of campaign accommodations and travel haven't improved much.

DeLay energizes GOP faithful By Justin Vellucci TRIBUNE-REVIEW Friday, October 26, 2007 Former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay stood in front of some of Allegheny County's top GOP donors Thursday night and delivered a blunt message appropriate for a man dubbed "The Hammer." "There still is a Republican Party in this country," DeLay said. "And we've got to get our act together and move forward."

Rudy steps right By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 21, 2007 (WASHINGTON DC) Rudy Giuliani took a step last week to convince some of the more sensible folks who hold rock-ribbed conservative values to re-examine his candidacy:

Horowitz plans week-long war against rise of radical Islam By David M. Brown TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 21, 2007 David Horowitz minces no words to evoke a stark image. Asked what threat radical Islamic terrorism poses to the United States, the conservative writer and activist sums up his view: "One dirty nuclear bomb can ruin your day."

Killing 'inevitability' in Iowa By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 14, 2007 How do you stop the Bush-Clinton, Bush-Clinton inevitability? Well, if you're Barack Obama, you continue to begin each speech in Iowa with the phrase, "If you haven't signed up for our campaign, please do so now."

Kurds don't fear Turks By Betsy Hiel TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 14, 2007 QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq Turkey's threat to invade northern Iraq and attack PKK guerrillas comes when U.S.-Turkish relations are at an all-time low. It further complicates already-strained U.S. plans in the region, including efforts to end sectarian violence across Iraq and to isolate Washington's regional arch-nemesis, Iran. A recent Pew opinion poll showed only 9 percent of Turks hold a positive view of the United States while 28 percent look favorably on Iran.

Richardson runs left By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, October 7, 2007 At a recent combined fundraising-campaign stop in Pittsburgh, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said he believed his debate performance in New Hampshire the night before had been the "breakthrough that he needed to move up into the first tier" of candidates. Referring to his break on Iraq war policy from Democrat front-runners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- they all had refused to pledge that U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of their first or second term as the next president -- Richardson...