Obama pokes at McCain over tire-pressure issue

By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

ELKHART, Ind. - Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday taunted Republican presidential rival John McCain for first mocking the idea of keeping tires inflated for energy conservation and then agreeing the practice works.

"It will be interesting to watch this debate between John McCain and John McCain," Obama said as he campaigned in Indiana with Sen. Evan Bayh, widely considered a top-tier candidate for running mate.

When asked about the air-pressure issue during an appearance Tuesday night, McCain said: "I agree with the American Automobile Association. We should all inflate our tires." Obama had noted that keeping tires inflated and cars tuned was endorsed by both NASCAR and AAA and should be part of any comprehensive plan to reduce reliance on imported oil.

However, McCain had spent recent days ridiculing Obama's remarks about tire pressure, telling a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, S.D.: "My opponent doesn't want to drill, he doesn't want nuclear power, he wants you to inflate your tires." The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, poked fun at the idea, sending reporters tire gauges with "Obama Energy Plan" emblazoned on the side.

The two rivals have been sparring for several days over energy.

Assailing his rival's energy plans, Obama said, "that's a debate I'm happy to have. Because Senator McCain's energy plan reads like an early Christmas list for oil and gas lobbyists. And it's no wonder — because many of his top advisers are former oil and gas lobbyists."

Obama's joint appearance with Bayh led to considerable speculation that Obama might announce a decision about his choice for vice president. But it was not to be.

Bayh said Obama would bring "a breath of fresh air" to the nation's capital. He said McCain "is not a bad man," but that McCain had some bad policies.

Bayh opened his introduction of Obama by saying he had some "good news" to depart. "In five short months, the Bush administration will be done," Bayh said. A McCain victory, he said, would mean "four more years of what we've had."

Bayh, a former two-term governor and son of former Sen. Birch Bayh, is a former supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton, has executive experience and sits on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. Furthermore, Democrats view Indiana — which has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964 — as competitive this year.

Obama campaigned in Indiana as his campaign released a new television ad that seeks to link McCain to President Bush and questions whether McCain is the political maverick he claims to be. It shows McCain acknowledging that he agrees with Bush on most issues.

The ad also criticizes McCain on three economic issues of concern to middle-class voters: tax breaks for the wealthy, money for oil companies, and tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas. The ad ends with a smiling McCain and Bush side by side.

McCain's campaign turned out an ad Tuesday in the other direction, suggesting that McCain differs from Bush and the GOP on important issues — without mentioning Bush by name.

In his appearance here, Obama also questioned McCain's claim to being a maverick.

While the Arizona senator has broken with his party on many issues in the past, he "reversed himself on position after position" to secure his party's nomination, Obama asserted.

"That doesn't meet my definition of a maverick."

McCain's campaign "ran an ad saying Washington is broken. No kidding. It took him 26 years to figure it out," Obama said.

Bhutto was killed by sunroof, not bomb or bullets, Pakistan says

by Rana Jawad

Pakistan's interior ministry said Friday that Benazir Bhutto was killed after smashing her head on her car's sunroof while trying to duck, and that no bullet or shrapnel was found inside her.

The ministry also said it had intercepted a phone call from a top Al-Qaeda figure congratulating a militant for the attack on her Thursday, and said there was "irrefutable evidence" the group was trying to destabilise the country.

Bhutto's death after a suicide bomber blew himself up at her campaign rally has plunged this nuclear-armed Islamic nation into turmoil, but the ministry said she would have lived if only she had stayed inside her car.

"If she had not come out of the vehicle, she would have been unhurt, as all the other occupants of the vehicle did not receive any injuries," ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said.

He said the post-mortem on the populist opposition leader, whose funeral earlier Friday was attended by hundreds of thousands of mourners, found her mortal wound came when she tried to duck after the bomber attacked.

The bomber also apparently fired three times at her but missed, Cheema said.

When she ducked, she hit the lever of the sunroof of the car that was to speed her away from a campaign rally as she was gearing up to contest parliamentary elections set for January 8.

"The lever struck near her right ear and fractured her skull," Cheema said. "There was no bullet or metal shrapnel found in the injury."

Cheema showed a brief video of the moments before the attack and the blast itself but it was unclear.

He said intelligence services had intercepted a call Friday from the man considered to be a top Al-Qaeda figure for Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, congratulating a militant after Bhutto's death.

He said there was "irrefutable evidence that Al-Qaeda, its networks and cohorts are trying to destabilise Pakistan".

"We have recorded his conversation in which he is congratulating a militant for the attack," Cheema said, adding that Mehsud was also behind the suicide attack on Bhutto's homecoming rally in October that killed 139 people.

"He is responsible for most of the attacks that have taken place in the country," the spokesman said, calling for national unity "to eliminate the proponents of death and destruction who are trying to destabilise Pakistan."

Pakistani authorities say Mehsud is based in the troubled tribal region of South Waziristan, where troops have been battling Islamist rebels since the fall of the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001.

Mehsud had until recently been described by officials as the top pro-Taliban militant commander in the region but is increasingly said to have links to bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group.

Gun control returns as issue for 2008 candidates

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

Gun control has been treated with a mix of silence and discomfort in the presidential campaign, a stance that may become insupportable once the nation finds its voice in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech mass murder.

Democrats have been deliberately muted for months on an issue that, by their own reckoning, contributed to and perhaps sealed their defeat in the 2000 presidential election. That's when Al Gore's call for gun registration cost him votes in rural America and dulled the party's appetite for taking on the gun lobby.

Top Republicans in the race are trying to close ranks with their party's conservative base on a variety of issues, making gun control an unusually sensitive one for them, too, thanks to their liberal views in the past.

Enter the massacre at Blacksburg, Va., an attack so horrific it froze the presidential campaign in place. Candidates called off events and expressed only sorrow, not opinion, in the first hours.

Advocates of any stripe raised their gun agenda at their peril.

"I think that people who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride ... I've got nothing but loathing for them," Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said. "To those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say take that elsewhere."

But the bloodiest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, with 33 dead, is certain to set off a debate that those who would be president can hardly sit out in the days and weeks ahead.

Rudy Giuliani waded gently into it Wednesday, a day after GOP rival John McCain said that the attack did not throw him off his support for constitutional gun rights.

"Obviously, this tragedy does not alter the Second Amendment," Giuliani said in a statement. "People have the right to keep and bear arms and the Constitution says this right will not be infringed."

His emphasis on state-by-state solutions to gun control in the GOP primaries contrasts with his past enthusiasm for a federal mandate to register handgun owners — an even stiffer requirement than registering guns.

Giuliani, as New York mayor and former Senate candidate, and Mitt Romney, as Massachusetts governor, supported the federal ban on assault-type weapons, background checks on gun purchases and other restrictions reviled by many gun-rights advocates.

The other New Yorker in this race, Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, also supported proposals for state-issued photo gun licenses, as well as a national registry for handgun sales, in positions laid out for crime-weary New Yorkers in 2000.

In this campaign, candidates in both parties who've ever taken a shot at a prey are playing up their hunting credentials. Others are highlighting their allegiance to the constitutional right to bear arms or avoiding the question altogether.

Now such questions are unavoidably in their face.

"Not talking about an issue may be successful in the short term but it's never a successful long-term strategy," said James Kessler, policy and gun-control specialist at Third Way, a Democratic centrist group. "I don't think that a candidate will be punished for supporting gun safety measures this time around."

But, he said he thought that after Columbine, lawmakers could pass legislation requiring background checks on weapons bought at gun shows "and we didn't."

Mass shootings have often been the catalyst for legislative action on gun control, with mixed results.

And with Democrats controlling Congress partly on the strength of new members from rural parts of the country, few lawmakers were expecting the Virginia Tech assault to revive the most far-reaching gun-control proposals of the past, such as national licensing or registration.

In 1999, after the Columbine High School killings in Colorado left 15 dead,lawmakers unsuccessfully introduced dozens of bills to require mandatory child safety locks on new handguns, ban "Saturday night specials," increase the minimum age for gun purchases and require background checks on weapons bought at gun shows.

A month after the Columbine shootings, then-Vice President Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to advance a juvenile crime bill that included gun show restrictions. But the bill died in negotiations with the House.

McCain has a long record of voting for gun rights in the Senate but changed some of his views, sponsoring legislation to support the gun show restrictions he once opposed.

And Democratic candidate John Edwards, despite recently highlighting his boyhood outings hunting birds, rabbits and deer as well as his respect for gun ownership rights, backed his party's main gun control measures when he was in the Senate.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as a state lawmaker in the 1990s, supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tougher state restrictions on firearms.

Gun control seemed far from the minds of voters before the murders Monday. In an AP-Ipsos poll taken last week in which respondents were asked to name the most important problem facing the country, few if any spontaneously mentioned guns or gun control. That's likely to change in response to the Blacksburg rampage.

The Virginia Tech senior and Korean native identified as the gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, was a legal permanent resident of the U.S., meaning he could legally buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony. The campus killings were carried out with 9 mm and .22-caliber handguns.

"I think when a guy walks in and shoots 32 people it's going to cause there to be a lot of policy debate," President Bush said. "Now is not the time to do the debate until we're actually certain about what happened and after we help people get over their grieving."