Edwards to air rebuttal to Bush speech

WASHINGTON - In the clamor of Democrats assailing President Bush on Iraq, presidential candidate John Edwards has found a way to be heard after Bush addresses the nation tonight: He's buying time for a rebuttal.

Edwards has bought two minutes of air time on MSNBC, scheduled after Bush's 15-minute televised speech from the White House at 9 p.m. EDT.

Bush is expected to announce plans to reduce the US troop presence in Iraq by up to 30,000 by next summer, but to say that he will condition those and further cuts on continued progress.

"Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he's ever had - more time, more troops, and more war," Edwards says in the ad, according to excerpts provided by his campaign.

Edwards has been pushing Congress - including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, his top rivals - to block any war funding that does not include a withdrawal date from Iraq. That challenge was part of his ad.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Readers grill candidates

WASHINGTON - Today, Yahoo!, the HuffingtonPost.com blog, and the Web magazine Slate.com will let online readers assemble their own Democratic presidential debate.

The eight Democratic candidates took questions from moderator Charlie Rose of PBS on education, healthcare, and the Iraq war, many of which were submitted from readers online.

Comedian Bill Maher also made a surprise appearance, offering "wild card" questions on issues such as whether marijuana should be legalized.

Once the candidate answers are posted on the three websites today, viewers will be able to edit to taste. Organizers call it a "mashup," the latest offspring of the marriage of politics and the Internet.

"The point is putting power in the hands of the audience and letting them navigate it," said Scott Moore, Yahoo's senior vice president of news and information.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Networking for votes

MySpace and Facebook are so last month. While nearly all the presidential candidates have pages on those social networking websites popular with the younger set, Barack Obama is the first to venture in LinkedIn, a networking site for older professionals.

"How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?" the Illinois Democrat asked yesterday on LinkedIn's homepage.

Obama and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, are currently the only candidates who are LinkedIn members, said spokeswoman Kay Luo.

If MySpace and Facebook are like a rowdy party or singles bar with members posting provocative snapshots or trashing Britney, LinkedIn is like a huge reception with everyone exchanging business cards to try to make professional connections. Launched in 2003, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based site claims more than 14 million members worldwide, about half of them in the United States.

FOON RHEE

Romney blasts 'hijinks'

WASHINGTON - Republican Mitt Romney denounced a website that was bitingly critical of GOP rival Fred Thompson's personal life and political career, calling it "juvenile and offensive."

"There's no place in politics for those kind of hijinks," Romney said in his first public comments on the controversy.

Now off-line, PhoneyFred.org was the creation of Wesley Donehue, a business associate of Romney's top political operative in South Carolina, Warren Tompkins. Romney's campaign insists that neither Romney nor Tompkins knew about the site or approved of its creation.

Said Romney: "I've said I do not want to have that person in any way associated with my campaign."

Tompkins, who has been paid $12,000 a month to guide Romney's South Carolina effort, said yesterday that Donehue has been "severely admonished, but not fired. He's on a very short leash."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clinton targets funds flap

WASHINGTON - Senator Hillary Clinton, whose campaign is returning $850,000 in contributions linked to disgraced fund-raiser Norman Hsu, indicated yesterday that donors who contributed that money could donate to her presidential campaign once again.

"We're not asking that that be done," she said in a teleconference with reporters. "But I believe that the vast majority of those 200-plus donors are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about what they will or won't do going forward."

Clinton's remarks were her first on the effect that Hsu's unraveling fortunes have had on her campaign. Hsu was a leading money "bundler" for Clinton, earning the title of HillRaiser for his fund-raising activities.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Romney ads hit Florida

Mitt Romney extended his TV ads yesterday to Florida, the fourth state where viewers will see him jogging near the family's summer home in New Hampshire and hear a narrator extol his political and business resume.

The 30-second spot began airing last week in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Romney has spent heavily and is leading in the polls among the Republican presidential hopefuls. It was also his first ad in South Carolina, where he is trailing in the polls.

Romney's campaign said the ad began airing yesterday in selected markets in Florida, where Republicans moved up their primary to Jan. 29. A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday showed Romney running in third place among Florida Republicans with 11 percent support, behind Rudy Giuliani with 28 percent and Fred Thompson with 17 percent, and just ahead of John McCain with 10 percent.

FOON RHEE

Group wants Gore to run

Al Gore isn't volunteering to jump into the presidential race, so some Massachusetts Democrats want to draft him. A new statewide group announced yesterday that it will launch a petition drive Tuesday to try to get the former vice president on the March 4 primary ballot. It needs to collect at least 2,500 verified signatures of registered voters by Dec. 21, but the group's leaders said they want to collect many more.

FOON RHEE