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Arnold's suggestion

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested in a German newspaper interview published Saturday that the Republican Party should move "a little to the left," a shift that he said would allow it to pick up new voters.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has taken an unorthodox approach since winning office last year -- standing by a promise to toe a conservative line on fiscal matters, while veering left on social issues, such as homosexual rights and the environment.

In an interview with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, Mr. Schwarzenegger said that "the Republican Party currently covers only the spectrum from the right wing to the middle, and the Democratic Party covers the spectrum from the left to the middle."

"I would like the Republican Party to cross this line, move a little further left and place more weight on the center," he was quoted as saying. "This would immediately give the party 5 percent more votes without it losing anything elsewhere."

Mr. Schwarzenegger was guarded on suggestions that he harbors presidential ambitions, saying only that a debate on whether the Constitution should be amended to allow foreign-born citizens to run was "overdue," the Associated Press reports.

ABC's slant

"In a Sunday night ABC story, the brother and mother of soldiers killed in Iraq denounced Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for having an auto-pen machine sign his letters of condolence," the Media Research Center's Brent Baker notes at www.mediaresearch.org.

"But while 'World News Tonight/Sunday' anchor Terry Moran portrayed the two as representative of how 'some military families' are 'upset' with Rumsfeld, the two are dedicated Bush and Rumsfeld haters with a political axe to grind," Mr. Baker said.