AFP - The powerful US gun lobby has painted the 2008 presidential race as a showdown over the right to bear arms, but the election could also prove to be a key test of its political firepower.

AP - Out of immediate danger, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy remained hospitalized as doctors worked to determine what caused one of the nation's best-known senators to suffer a seizure in his Cape Cod home.

AP - The political fortunes of Democrats down South once were so bad that people openly joked even Jesus Christ would lose by a double-digit margin if he ran for office on the party's ticket.

AP - Being dead since 1940 hasn't kept Idaho U.S. Sen. William Borah from being inserted squarely into 2008 presidential politics after Democratic candidate Barack Obama took issue with President Bush's borrowing of a quote from Borah.

AP - As head of the deep-pocketed Democratic Senatorial Campaign Commission, New York Sen. Charles Schumer hand-picked his party's nominee to take on Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, the last Republican standing on the West Coast. But apparently, Schumer forgot to inform the state's voters.

Reuters - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key Democrat critic of President George Bush's war policy in Iraq, landed in Baghdad on Saturday for talks with U.S. and Iraqi officials, the U.S. embassy said.

AFP - Defying a White House veto threat, the US House of Representatives Thursday took up a 163 billion dollar emergency budget for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which includes troop pullback timelines.

AFP - The US Senate on Thursday passed a mammoth 290 billion dollar farm bill with a veto-proof majority, which includes subsidies for farmers and help with food bills for the needy as prices rise.