Day: January 28, 2007

By MIKE GLOVER

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton blamed President Bush on Saturday for misusing authority given him by Congress to act in Iraq, but conceded “I take responsibility” for her role in allowing that to happen.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton also said she would not cede black votes to Barack Obama and that she had proven as a U.S. senator that gender is irrelevant.

Of her husband, the former president, she said he would have a role in the campaign but “I’m the one running for president.”

Conservative Republican Mike Huckabee, seeking to repeat the success of another former governor from Hope, Ark., said Sunday he is taking the first step in what he acknowledged is an underdog bid for the White House in 2008.

Huckabee, who left office Jan. 9 after serving 10 1/2 years as governor of a Democratic-leaning state, faces steep odds in a crowded GOP field that includes well-known and well-funded hopefuls such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

By CALVIN WOODWARD and LARRY MARGASAK

Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said on Saturday he was preparing a resolution setting a series of targets for the Iraqi government as a “last chance” effort to reverse U.S. failure.

The Senate resolution would set benchmarks for the Iraqi government to defuse the escalating conflict and create the conditions for a U.S. withdrawal, McCain said at a briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

UPDATE (Sunday: 9:23 a.m. EST) After working through most of the night, we were able to significantly improve server performance so we are going to stick with the new design and CMS to see if we can get it working.

Our design and look was popular with most readers and with that kind of positive feedback we’d prefer to stick with something that most readers appear to like..

Thanks for all the comments and we will be trying this again.

–Doug Thompson