Al Gore is endorsing Barack Obama and promising to help the Democrat achieve what eluded him - the presidency.

In a letter to be e-mailed to Obama supporters, the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner wrote, "From now through Election Day, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure he is elected president of the United States."

McCain-Obama camps clash over when to meet for debates

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain sought to claim the high ground Friday by accusing each other of stamping out debates in the run-up to the US presidential elections in November. Both campaigns issued statements complaining that the other side had rejected offers for an unprecedented series of joint townhall meetings and traditional debates between the two candidates...

Age becomes the new race and gender

Age will figure in this election — not only because of the gulf in years separating the two candidates, but also because of fault lines of age within the electorate. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama will have to reckon with the great mass of baby boomers, the post-World War II generation who make up a major part of the voting demographic and are themselves experiencing for themselves just what it means to get older...

Gingrich: Jindal best check for GOP veep

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said Sunday that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “would be far and away the best candidate” to appear on the Republican presidential ticket with Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

Gingrich, who appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” heaped praise upon the former congressman, saying that he is a “spectacular” governor and predicted that Jindal would be a presidential candidate in the future...

Lieberman irks Democrats by criticizing Obama

Joe Lieberman is fast becoming the Democrats' public enemy No. 1.

The four-term Connecticut senator, who came tantalizingly close to being Al Gore's vice president in 2000, not only has been campaigning for his pal, presumed Republican nominee John McCain, now he's publicly criticizing the Democrats' standard-bearer, Barack Obama...

THE CANDIDATES:

John McCain... today's headlines with excerpts

McCain blasts corn subsidies, backs larger Security Council

U.S. presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain supports ending subsidies for U.S. ethanol production and would back Brazil's inclusion on an expanded United Nations Security Council, a Brazilian newspaper reported Sunday.

In comments published by the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, McCain also said he would support Brazil's addition to the Group of Eight industrialized nations and lauded the nation's drive to find clean energy sources...

Prominent Democrats back McCain

Sen. John McCain's campaign has announced a group of prominent Democratic and unaffiliated leaders and activists who have joined Citizens for McCain, a new grassroots effort headed by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to rally Americans of all political parties to support McCain's candidacy.

"Citizens for McCain is an organization within the McCain campaign for people who put country before political party and support the presidential candidate who has a proven record of bipartisanship," said Lieberman.

McCain meets with Iraqi foreign minister

John McCain (R-Ariz.) met privately with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari this morning at his campaign headquarters, before emerging to praise the minister and take a handful of questions from a pool of reporters.

... After talking behind closed doors for a half hour, McCain and Zebari invited reporters into the meeting. Both men complimented each other on their work, and expressed their faith that the war in Iraq was succeeding.

In  '74 thesis, seeds of McCain's war views

“The biggest factor in a man’s ability to perform credibly as a prisoner of war is a strong belief in the correctness of his nation’s foreign policy,” Mr. McCain wrote in a 1974 essay submitted to the National War College and never released to the public. Prisoners who questioned “the legality of the war” were “extremely easy marks for Communist propaganda,” he wrote.

Americans captured after 1968 had proven to be more susceptible to North Vietnamese pressure, he argued, because they “had been exposed to the divisive forces which had come into focus as a result of the antiwar movement in the United States.”    read McCain thesis

McCain cuts fundraiser

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign canceled a fund-raiser at the home of an 86-year-old oilman, Clayton Williams, after the campaign faced questions about comments Mr. Williams made in the 1990 race for Texas governor.

... The campaign canceled the fund-raiser on Friday after it faced questions from ABC News and The Washington Post.

“These were obviously incredibly offensive remarks that the campaign was unaware of at the time it was scheduled,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. “It’s positive that he did apologize at the time, but the comments are nonetheless offensive.”

Many historians see little chance for McCain

Historians belonging to both parties offered a litany of historical comparisons that give little hope to the Republican. Several saw Barack Obama’s prospects as the most promising for a Democrat since Roosevelt trounced Hoover in 1932.

... the biggest obstacle in McCain’s path may be running in the same party as the most unpopular president America has had since at least the advent of modern polling. Only Harry Truman and Nixon — both of whom were dogged by unpopular wars abroad and political scandals at home — have been nearly as unpopular in their last year in office, and both men’s parties lost the presidency in the following election....

Barack Obama celebrated Father's Day by calling on black fathers, who he said are "missing from too many lives and too many homes," to become active in raising their children.

"They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it," the Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his hometown.

Reminding the congregation of his firsthand experience growing up without a father, Obama said he was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his mother. He got support, second chances and scholarships that helped him get an education. Obama's father left when he was 2.

"I resolved many years ago that it was my obligation to break the cycle - that if I could be anything in life, I would be a good father to my girls," added Obama.

see also: Obama's Father's Day speech

Obama promises hoops court in White House

"I hear there's a bowling alley and obviously that hasn't gone too well," Obama told comic Jimmy Kimmel in a satellite interview from Philadelphia on Sunday. "So we're getting rid of the bowling alley and replacing it with a basketball court in the White House."

Obama was referring to his disastrous attempt at bowling a few weeks before Pennsylvania's Democratic primary in April. The party's presumptive nominee for president is much more at ease on the basketball court.

Obama goes one on one, battling 'just a speechmaker' label

Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has spent the first week of the general election campaign getting up close and personal. Fighting the perception that he is only a razzle-dazzle speechmaker who is aloof in small settings, Mr. Obama devoted most of his time on the campaign trail in the past week to intimate appearances, hosting round-table discussions with the public and touring a hospital in St. Louis, a retirement facility in Columbus, Ohio, and an all-girls charter school in Chicago.

He has also been showing a more pugnacious side, commenting at a Philadelphia fund-raiser Friday that he was prepared for a fight with Republicans, saying, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” That line, from “The Untouchables,” led the campaign of his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, to cry foul and to suggest that hopes for an elevated dialogue were in danger...

Ex-TV journalist is new face of Obama campaign

After three decades as a television correspondent, Linda Douglass is now on the inside...

Obama identifies with Hillary

At a Philadelphia fundraiser last night, Obama repeated something he'd told Clinton at their meeting:

"You're the only one who knows what I've gone through and I'm the only one who knows what you've gone through."