THE CANDIDATES:

John McCain... today's headlines with excerpts

McCain backs off his no-new-tax pledge

John McCain's signal that he may be open to a higher payroll tax for Social Security, despite previous vows not to raise taxes of any kind, is drawing sharp rebukes from conservatives.

McCain's shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table," he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC's "This Week," in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

"There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions, and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table," McCain said. "I don't want tax increases. But that doesn't mean that anything is off the table."

That comment drew a strong response this week from the Club for Growth, a Washington anti-tax group. McCain's comments, the group said in a letter to the Arizona senator, are "shocking because you have been adamant in your opposition to raising taxes under any circumstances."

Evangelicals warn against Romney veep choice

The Washington Times reports that prominent evangelicals don't trust Romney on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, given the former Massachusetts governor's track record. "McCain and Romney would be like oil and water," novelist Tim LaHaye, who supported Mike Huckabee during the GOP primaries, told the newspaper. "We aren't against Mormonism, but Romney is not a thoroughgoing evangelical and his flip-flopping on issues is understandable in a liberal state like Massachusetts, but our people won't understand that."

McCain hit by civil rights groups

John McCain's decision to support a proposed ballot initiative in Arizona that would ban affirmative action in local and state governments might prove his conservative bona fides in some quarters. But it is not winning him any friends in the civil rights community, which notes that he opposed a similar resolution in 1998 as "divisive."

"His reversal must surely be seen as pandering 'flip-flop' to the extreme right wing of his base," Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said in a statement issued today. "Quotas are already illegal under federal law, and the initiative that Senator McCain now supports is far more destructive than his false assertion implies."

McCain has spot removed from face

Senator John McCain said on Monday that his dermatologist had removed a spot from his right cheek, and that while it did not appear to be serious, she would perform a biopsy “just to make sure everything is fine.”

... In the morning, Mr. McCain had a small bandage on his upper right cheek, near his temple, but he had removed it by the afternoon, revealing a dark area about the size of a bug bite.