In 1984, Jackson mounted a nationwide campaign for President. In the Democratic primaries, Jackson's "Rainbow Coalition" candidacy was written off by many as having little chance of winning the nomination. However, he garnered 18 percent of the total primary vote and took third place behind Sen. Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who eventually won the nomination. Jackson received 3.5 million votes and won five primaries.

Four years later, Jackson was back as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. This time he was better financed and more than doubled his previous results, capturing 6.9 million votes and winning 13 primaries. He took 29 percent of the total primary vote.

"Our banks were allowed to attack the most vulnerable citizens with the subprime product. Unprotected blacks and browns were targeted by the subprimes," he said, adding that in general minorities are exploited and wind up paying more for cars, insurance and housing. In our present culture, too few got too much at the expense of too many."

An Opinion Column by Ryan Greenfield addresses an interesting topic. He poses that asking people about their faith and how it will affect their decision making process should be fair game.

I would agree as long as the questions are posed in order to gain knowledge and understanding of that persons beliefs, and not to berate or disparage them. I would presume that people of any religion would love to have the opportunity to fully explain their belief system.

Side Note: We have to remember that Mitt Romney is running for President and therefore (as Ryan points out) is trying "to be all things to all people." Basically hide your faith and hope it doesn't cost you evangelical Christian votes, while at the same time showing your faith to not lose the respect of other Mormons.

One last thing that is brought up in Ryan's column is the idea that if your religion bans something (birth control is mentioned in the article) and you adhere to that religion will you impose your beliefs on others. This is a legitimate assumption that I would like to make two points on.

1. Anyone who is elected will have ideals and beliefs, will try to promote them, and therefore "force" others to value things in the same manner. Should more money go to elementary schools or Medicare? Different people rank the importance of these issues differently and would fund one over the other if forced to make a decision between the two. (Personally I would like to fund both with so much money they don't have places to spend it.)

2. One's adherence to a certain faith does not mean everyone in that faith shares the exact same interpretations. If you ask, "How can this be? The Bible is written out, the words are there, you either believe or you don't." Think about the 2nd amendment. That's written out too, but apparently open to interpretation.

It was a good article, and I hope it opens up conversations about the roles that race, religion, and gender will play in this election, and believe me they will.

The guns-plus-butter funding deal has collapsed, with House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., accusing "Republicans of bargaining in bad faith," Jonathan Weisman reports in The Washington Post.

"Instead, Obey said he will push a huge spending bill that would hew to the president's spending limit by stripping it of all lawmakers' pet projects, as well as most of the Bush administration's top priorities," Weisman writes.

Obey (remembering his old friend Dick Cheney): "I was willing to listen to the argument that we ought to at least add more for Afghanistan, but when the White House refuses to compromise, when the White House continues to stick it in our eye, I say to hell with it."

As you may remember, the standard talking point of administration apologists back in July, when President Bush chose to commute Libby's prison sentence, was that the commutation was necessary because Libby had been denied bail while his appeal was pending, an appeal which we were told would almost surely result in his conviction being overturned. We were also told that Bush's Solomonic decision--to commute Libby's sentence but not grant a full pardon--was ideal because it would allow the appeal to move forward so that Libby could be vindicated and clear his name.

In his speech, Mr. Gore invoked Winston Churchill, Robert Frost, Gandhi, the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, and the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, among others, to underline the urgency of his message. He wrote the speech himself, he said in the interview, “with the help of Mr. Google.”

Medvedev - who is 42 and a former lawyer from St Petersburg - is regarded as being more liberal and less hawkish towards the west than Sergei Ivanov, Russia's other first deputy prime minister who was also a frontrunner for the job...

Sergei Markov, a leading Kremlin analyst, said he expected three people to run the country after next year's election: Medvedev, the new president; Putin, who would control Russia's law enforcement agencies in a new role; and the prime minister...

"Medvedev's ideology is liberal patriotism," Markov told the Guardian. "He is more liberal than Sergei Ivanov. He has no experience of working with law enforcement agencies. They will tend to see Vladimir Putin as their main political chief."...

Under Medvedev's chairmanship Gazprom, Russia's state-run natural energy giant, has taken a tough line with neighbouring countries on gas price rises and has negotiated hard with multinational oil companies.

Although the Republican presidential contender plays down any personal involvement in that release, Huckabee granted 1,033 pardons and commutations in his 10 1/2 years as governor of Arkansas. The acts of clemency benefited the stepson of a staff member, murderers who worked at the governor's mansion, a rock star and inmates who received good words from their pastors.

...During his years as governor, Huckabee granted clemency an average of about once every four days. Huckabee's successor, Mike Beebe, has issued 40 so far this year, fewer than one a week. Bill Clinton, Frank White and Tucker granted 507 clemencies in the 17 1/2 years they served as governor.

_A pastor who promoted Huckabee among blacks urged the governor to grant clemency to John Henry Claiborne, who was sentenced to 100 years for a 1994 armed robbery, according to a 2004 report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Huckabee made Claiborne eligible for parole after receiving a letter from the Rev. Charles Williams, who told the newspaper he had helped win "many, many" clemencies from Huckabee.

As for DuMond, the convicted rapist initially was sentenced to life plus 20 years for his conviction in the 1984 rape of Stevens when she was a teenager, but Tucker reduced the sentence to 39 1/2 years, making DuMond eligible for parole.

While Huckabee told reporters last week that DuMond's file was waiting for him when he took office, his interest in the case started two years earlier after he met with DuMond's wife, Dusty. When he took office, she contacted Huckabee again. "He said if he was ever in a position to look into it he would try to remember it," said Dusty DuMond in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press.

Stevens met with Huckabee and his staff in 1996 to discuss his intent to grant clemency.

"I could tell he had already made up his mind," Stevens told the AP last week.

Huckabee argues that it was Tucker's decision to reduce DuMond's sentence that made him eligible for parole, and he maintains he had little — if any — role in his release. Still, Huckabee had publicly questioned DuMond's guilt and met privately with the state parole board.

What happened at that meeting has been the subject of debate. Two members of the board have said Huckabee pressured them for a vote. In a lengthy statement issued this week, Huckabee's campaign denied that he discussed DuMond's parole with the board but said he did talk with board members about the inmate's clemency request.