President George W. Bush's paranoid megalomania is so rampant that close friends and supporters worry about the man's sanity and fear he has lost his tenuous grip on reality.
Bush, whose arrogant stubbornness knows no bounds, is so wrapped up in his obsession with being President and "commander-in-chief" that his behavior shocks his most ardent supporters.
In Nevada, a state of mostly desert, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is quickly nurturing a grass-roots campaign, with a rally on Thursday showing such efforts are generating enthusiasm.
More than 3,500 people filled a Reno park to hear the 45-year-old senator from Illinois. At a press conference after the rally, he talked about the importance of attracting ordinary voters back into the political process.
"My campaign is bringing in new people. It is galvanizing people," Obama said.
A former US intelligence agent who was outed in 2003 in an Iraq war scandal that rocked the White House filed suit against the CIA Thursday over an order preventing her from publishing her memoirs.
The case centers on whether Valerie Plame can publish her dates of service. While the CIA says the information is classified, Plame and her publisher Simon Schuster say the details were released unclassified in 2006.
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards on Thursday called for a federal investigation into possible antitrust violations by the oil industry and criticized oil companies for raising gas prices.
"There's absolutely no justification for the gas companies to be as profitable as they are and have the taxpayers subsidizing the industry," Edwards said.
Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are abandoning the middle ground for positions on Iraq and immigration that cater to their parties' fringes — the latest example of polarization trumping moderation in Washington.
Democrats are lurching to the left on Iraq. Republicans are moving right on immigration. Neither shift is a surprise; the two-party system encourages presidential candidates to appeal to each side's most fervent voters during the nomination fights.
Lately it seems all the leading presidential candidates are discussing their religious and moral beliefs — even when they'd rather not. Indeed, seven years after George W. Bush won the presidency in part with a direct appeal to conservative religious voters — even saying during a debate that Jesus Christ was his favorite philosopher — the personal faith of candidates has become a very public part of the presidential campaign.