NEW YORK
Online presidential debates set for fall
The 2008 presidential contenders may soon be slugging it out in cyberspace, with pioneering online-only debates being planned for early next fall, a new media partnership says.
The Huffington Post political blog, online portal Yahoo and Slate Magazine will host the debates – one for Democratic candidates, one for Republicans – sometime after Labor Day, with PBS host Charlie Rose serving as moderator, the sponsors planned to announce today.
People will be invited to submit questions and can blog in real time to share their opinions on the candidates’ answers.
IOWA CITY, Iowa
Democratic hopefuls pitch eco-protection
Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards campaigned Sunday in Iowa, urging crowds to make environmental protection a top campaign issue.
“Today is Earth Day, and I personally believe every day should be Earth Day,” said Clinton, D-N.Y., in Decorah. “We have a duty to protect God’s creation, and we have a responsibility to repair the damage that we do as we go on in life.”
In Iowa City, Obama, D-Ill., told a noisy rally not to wait for political leaders to tackle giant issues like climate change.
“It’s not going to happen just because of some presidential candidate or because some bills are introduced in Congress,” he said. “It’s going to happen because the American people mobilize around the issue.”
In Waterloo, Edwards said he would cap carbon-dioxide emissions, lowering the cap each year, and put a “maximum investment” into sources of alternative energy.
WASHINGTON
McCain talks global warming, foreign oil
Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is calling the United States’ foreign-oil reliance and global warming twin threats that the country must aggressively confront.
“National security depends on energy security,” the Arizona senator says in a speech he is to give today in which he suggests the country can’t achieve either if it remains dependent on oil- rich Middle Eastern nations linked to terrorists.
“Al-Qaeda must revel in the irony that America is effectively helping to fund both sides of the war they caused,” McCain says. “The transfer of American wealth to the Middle East helps sustain the conditions on which terrorists prey.”
He also terms global warming “a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national-security challenge.”
McCain plans an official presidential announcement tour this week in early primary states even though he has been campaigning for months.
RENO, Nev.
Nevada GOP to caucus same day as Dems
Nevada Republicans agreed Saturday to hold their presidential caucus Jan. 19, the same day state Democrats vote for their candidates.
The GOP state central committee’s action follows the Democratic National Committee’s decision last summer to give Nevada the second 2008 presidential caucus in the nation.
