They're both Catholic, middle-aged, Harvard-educated white men - but the similarities end there between the two candidates running for Arlen Specter's U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
This year's debate over extending President George W. Bush's tax cuts has turned into a brawl over which party is doing more for small businesses, with assertions that the health of the economy and thousands of future jobs are at stake.
John Carney of Delaware is a rarity in a campaign season of foreboding for Democrats, a practicing politician with a strong chance of winning a Republican-held seat in Congress.
Pressure is growing on the White House to fire one of President Obama's co-chairmen of his deficit commission after he sent a verbally abusive e-mail to a seniors advocate last week - and opponents warn he had discredited the entire commission's work.
Former Sen. Ted Stevens will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony with relatives and friends.
If Democrats had doubts about the voter unrest that threatens to rob them of their majority in Congress, they needed only look from the Capitol this weekend to the opposite end of the National Mall.
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck and tea party champion Sarah Palin appealed Saturday to a vast, predominantly white crowd on the National Mall to help restore traditional American values and honor Martin Luther King's message. Civil rights leaders who accused the group of hijacking King's legacy held their own rally and march.
If Democrats had doubts about the voter unrest that threatens to rob them of their majority in Congress, they needed only look from the Capitol this weekend to the opposite end of the National Mall.
In the supposed year of the outsider, Missouri didn't get the memo.
