Ted Stevens Found Guilty on Corruption Charges

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens vowed to fight his Monday conviction on federal corruption charges, a verdict he attributed to “repeated instances of prosecutorial misconduct.”

“I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have,” the 84-year-old Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, said in a written statement after the jury came back Monday afternoon. “I am innocent.” Read more

Cancelling the Election? Might be a possibility..

Thank heavens for the Internet; it’s put the surprise back in October Surprise.

Here is the latest big-picture conspiracy theory, which has been gathering strength on the blogosphere the way a hurricane feeds on Caribbean waters: It is widely believed, both online and, increasingly, offline, that the Bush administration intends to declare martial law and postpone next month’s elections. To prevent Barack Obama’s inevitable ascension to the Oval Office, obviously.

This theory/rumor/delusion dates back almost a year and a half, with the appearance on the White House website of National Security Presidential Directive 51, which outlined a policy for “continuity of government” in the event of a national emergency. Such emergency is defined as “any incident . . . that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel says the new directive supplants a Cold War-era emergency memorandum that is no longer valid in the post-9/11 world, with the country at risk of a “no-notice terrorist attack.” But on websites with names such as justanothercoverup.com and abovetopsecret.com, the public document - often described as “secret” - was read quite differently. “FEMA Official States Bush Is Planning to Implement Martial Law,” is a headline from justanothercoverup. “Pelosi Declared Martial Law Last Night,” was a September headline from abovetopsecret.

Like a much-awaited Messiah (I am channeling the famous sociological text “When Prophecy Fails”), the date of the martial law takeover keeps moving forward. This spring it was to coincide with the bombing of Iran, this summer with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ike. In the minds of conspiracy theorists, the current economic crisis seems like a propitious moment for the suspension of the November election.

The martial law paranoia has an engaging adjunct: the “FEMA coffins” story. If you Google those words, you will find pictures, videos, and reams of text explaining that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has stockpiled 30,000 - or is it 50,000? - coffins (or are they coffin liners? or . . . boxes?) in anticipation of a vast civil disturbance, presumably triggered by the imposition of martial law. “We do not have FEMA coffins,” says spokeswoman Debbie Wing.

On the one hand you say, OK, this is Internet madness. On the other hand, you note that Ireland’s largest bookmaker, Paddy Power, is laying 20-1 odds that the American election will be postponed. When I first checked that site on Tuesday, the odds were 40-1.

We’ve seen this movie before, right? Writer Ron Rosenbaum remembers a 1972 story averring that Richard Nixon asked the RAND Corporation to study whether he could postpone that election, which he won, handily. University of California historian Kathryn Olmsted, author of the forthcoming “Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11″ notes that Franklin Roosevelt’s many enemies were convinced that he would assume dictatorial powers and cancel the election of 1944, which he won handily.

United States Un-Blacklists North Korea

The Bush administration plans to remove North Korea from a terrorism blacklist on Saturday after getting assurances the Stalinist nation has agreed to a plan to inspect its nuclear facilities, the Associated Press has learned.

President Bush signed off on the move on Friday in a bid to salvage a faltering accord aimed at getting the North to abandon atomic weapons, according to diplomats briefed on the matter.

The removal is provisional and North Korea will be put back on the State Department’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list if it doesn’t comply with the inspections, they said. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because the administration has not yet announced the step.

The expected delisting comes as North Korea moves to restart a disabled nuclear reactor and takes other provocative actions, including expelling U.N. inspectors and test firing missiles, that have heightened tensions and threaten the shaky disarmament agreement.

It also follows days of intense internal debate in Washington and consultations with U.S. negotiating partners China, South Korea, Russia and Japan. Japan had balked at the move because the North has not yet resolved issues related to its abduction of Japanese citizens.

Neither the White House nor the State Department would comment on the decision, which has been in the works since chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill returned from a trip to North Korea late last week.

But earlier Friday, U.S. officials said they were trying to build consensus among negotiating partners on the step as well as the inspection regime that Washington insists must accompany the delisting.

“We’re continuing to work with our six-party partners,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said, referring to China, Japan, Russia and South Korea, which along with the United States and North Korea make up the group of countries working on the deal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke on Friday with the foreign ministers of China, South Korea and Japan and was trying to reach her Russian counterpart, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

“The point where we’re at now is making sure everybody agrees,” he said.

At issue was whether tentative arrangements worked out last week between Hill and the North Koreans were acceptable to the others. Under those terms, the U.S. would provisionally remove North Korea from the terror list once the North agrees to the inspections.

McCormack dismissed suggestions the United States was trying to force an agreement on its partners and declined to say which, if any, countries were preventing a consensus.

However, Japan had been resistant, arguing that North Korea should not be taken off the list until the cases of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang in the 1970s and ’80s are resolved.

In Tokyo on Friday, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said his country could accept a U.S. move to remove North Korea from the list but only if it was reasonable.

“We still don’t know when and what kind of decision the United States makes, but I expect they will consult us before making a final decision,” he said. “If the decision is something that is also satisfactory to our country, that’s all we ask for.”

And in Washington, Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa used a meeting of the world’s top economies to urge the United States to keep in mind Japanese unease over the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles and about its past kidnapping of Japanese citizens.

It was not immediately clear how or if Japan was swayed, although a senior U.S. official said the administration was working urgently to meet Japanese concerns amid fears the entire denuclearization deal would collapse.

Under the 2007 disarmament deal, the North was to have disabled its main nuclear facility and the United States was to have removed it from the terrorism list. But after the Yongbyon reactor was disabled in June, the U.S. said it would not delist the country until it agreed to an intrusive verification regime.

But under a face-saving compromise proposed by Hill, the agreement could be deposited with the Chinese hosts of the six-nation talks and announced at the same time as the delisting.

When that point is reached, McCormack said North Korea would be required to halt and reverse its recent actions.

“We would hope and expect that if the process is going to move forward, that they take active steps to reverse what they have done over the past month,” he said.Source: USAToday.com

Secret United States Prisons in Poland?

Politicians of almost all parties in Poland have kept denying whether the CIA illegally held terrorists in secret prisons in Poland.

The first to report about secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in Europe where alleged Al Qaeda members were held was the Washington Post on 2 November 205. The story was based on anonymous sources within the CIA.

From Press Reports to Official Inquiries

The history of the article’s publication (Dana Priest won a Pulitzer for it) is dramatic. President George W. Bush intervened when the newspaper was to go to print, asking for certain details - the names of the countries where the detention centres were located, and the names of the prisoners - to be withheld.

On 7 November, Human Rights Watch, the human rights organisation, said the prisoners had been held in Poland and Romania, among other places. In December, ABC News reported the names of twelve terrorists who had supposedly been held in Poland, among them Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the World Trade Centre attack.

At the same time, European press reported on a whole ‘global network of secret CIA prisons’, mentioning countries not only in Europe, but also in Africa and the Middle East. Newspapers wrote about EU governments cooperating with the Americans and handing terrorist suspects over to them. The whole story was presented in Ewa Ewart’s BBC documentary about secret landings of CIA airplanes in Europe. EU institutions started investigating the matter. Three reports were drawn up confirming the prisons’ existence in Poland and Romania: the Council of Europe’s (June 2006), the European Parliament’s (November 2006), and the European Commission’s (November 2007). All three were based on circumstantial evidence and anonymous sources.

President Bush’s Admission

In September 2006, President George W. Bush admitted that the US had indeed used facilities in countries - members of the anti-terrorist alliance. He refused to name the countries. He denied whether the detainees had been tortured.

Poland was named most emphatically by the New York Times in a June 2008 report that described in detail the interrogations at the military intelligence training centre in Stare Kiejkuty in north-eastern Poland. It even stated the name of one of the interrogators - Deuce Martinez. The report’s author, Scott Shane, talked to a number of former CIA officers. According to them, the Polish prisons was ‘the most important one’ for the CIA. ‘Many’ Al Qaeda terrorists were held there for months.

According to the report’s author, Khalid Sheik Mohammad was tortured. Special interrogation tactics, such as sleep deprivation, frigid temperatures, fear, pain, simulated drowning - were used about one hundred times on Mr Muhammad over two weeks.

Europe Reprimands Poland

In Poland, politicians from all sides consistently denied the existence of alleged ‘CIA prisons’.

‘This is groundless slander’, then PM Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz (PiS) said in 2006.

‘No secret CIA prisons existed in Poland, whether during my term or before that’, President Lech Kaczyński stressed in June 2007.

‘Poland and the US have had long cooperated on intelligence matters. But the prisons never existed’, ex-president Aleksander Kwaśniewski reiterated last week.

Also Civic Platform deputies familiar with Polish-US intelligence cooperation joined in the denials. ‘This is an attempt to challenge the very basis of the fight against terrorism with lies’, deputy Paweł Graś said in 2006. PO-recommended MEP Barbara Kudrycka (presently the Minister of Science) successfully lobbied for the information about a ’secret detention centre’ in Stare Kiejkuty to be removed from the European Parliament’s report. Some Polish officials refused to testify before the Parliament’s committee of inquiry. The Polish government also refused to hand over a list of CIA-operated aircraft that landed in Szymany near Kiejkuty in 2002-2005.

The European Parliament committee said the Polish government had been ‘grossly’ uncooperative, and the delegation of the committee members had been ignored by both cabinet and parliament. The Polish press joined in the politicians’ denials, not doing much to find out whether the allegations were true, and in some cases actually defending the government’s position.

Siemiątkowski’s Secret

Both the politicians and the press were acting under the pressure of the argument that investigating the matter more closely could expose Poland to a terrorist attack.

Today, they repeat the argument in unofficial conversations, but they admit that, following the Europarl and global media reports, continuing to hide the truth makes no sense.

Zbigniew Siemiątkowski, head of the Intelligence Agency in the SLD administration in 2002-2004, as one of few Polish politicians, has inside knowledge about what went on in Kiejkuty. He appeared before the Europarl committee, but testified that the agency he headed has done nothing illegal.

Today he also says he is sworn to secrecy. ‘And that’s what I’ll tell the prosecutors too’, he tells Gazeta.Source: wyborcza.pl

Taliban Now Split with Al Queda

Taliban leaders are holding Saudi-brokered talks with the Afghan government to end the country’s bloody conflict — and are severing their ties with al Qaeda, sources close to the historic discussions have told CNN.

The militia, which has been intensifying its attacks on the U.S.-led coalition that toppled it from power in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, has been involved in four days of talks hosted by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, says the source.

The talks — the first of their kind aimed at resolving the lengthy conflict in Afghanistan — mark a significant move by the Saudi leadership to take a direct role in Afghanistan, hosting delegates who have until recently been their enemies.

They also mark a sidestepping of key “war on terror” ally Pakistan, frequently accused of not doing enough to tackle militants sheltering on its territory, which has previously been a conduit for talks between the Saudis and Afghanistan.

According to the source, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar — high on the U.S. military’s most-wanted list — was not present, but his representatives were keen to stress the reclusive cleric is no longer allied to al Qaeda.

Details of the Taliban leader’s split with al Qaeda have never been made public before, but the new claims confirm what another source with an intimate knowledge of the militia and Mullah Omar has told CNN in the past.

The current round of talks, said to have been taken two years of intense behind-the-scenes negotiations to come to fruition, is anticipated to be the first step in a long process to secure a negotiated end to the conflict.

But U.S.- and Europe-friendly Saudi Arabia’s involvement has been propelled by a mounting death toll among coalition troops amid a worsening violence that has also claimed many civilian casualties.

A Saudi source familiar with the talks confirmed that they happened and said the Saudis take seriously their role in facilitating discussions between parties to the conflict.

A second round of talks is scheduled to take place in two months, the Saudi source said.

The Afghan government believes the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily, and the Taliban believe that they can’t win a war against the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, the Saudi source said.

The involvement of the Saudis is also seen as an expression of fear that Iran could take advantage of U.S. failings in Afghanistan, as it is seen to be doing in Iraq.

Several Afghan sources familiar with Iranian activities in Afghanistan have said Iranian officials and diplomats who are investing in business and building education facilities are lobbying politicians in Kabul. Learn more about King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia »

The Afghan sources wish to remain anonymous due to their political roles.

Coalition commanders regularly accuse Iran of arming the Taliban, and Western diplomats privately suggest that Iran is working against U.S. interests in Afghanistan, making it harder to bring peace.Source:CNN.com

Troops Needed in Afghanistan!

The U.S. and its allies should rush more troops “as quickly as possible” to Afghanistan, the top American commander in that country said Wednesday, warning that the fighting could worsen before it get better.

Trying to meet Gen. David McKiernan’s urgent need for weapons and equipment, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked the military for additional surveillance drones and armored vehicles right now for Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned. It is a short-term solution to a persistent shortfall of military assets in a seven-year war often overshadowed by the larger U.S.-led conflict in Iraq.

After an Oval Office briefing from McKiernan, President Bush said Afghanistan is “a situation where there’s been progress and there are difficulties.”

The U.S. is in a tough fight against determined killers, Bush said. He cited progress in health care, education and transportation, and said McKiernan relayed “what he’s going to need to make sure that we continue helping this young democracy succeed.”

McKiernan is in Washington this week meeting with top leaders and laying out his military requirements for a war that is just beginning to take on new prominence in the waning months of the Bush administration. U.S. troops are being killed there in increasing numbers.

A senior defense official said Gates asked aides to find both unmanned surveillance drones and mine-resistent vehicles to divert to Afghanistan in the coming months until a more coordinated effort early next year. One focus is protecting the strategic main highway.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the effort has not yet been made public, said the military is looking to nearly double the 24-hour aerial surveillance patrols, from 27 now to about 55.

A new Pentagon task force is supposed to speed weapons and equipment to Afghanistan beginning early next year.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon announced orders to deploy about 26,000 troops to Iraq beginning next summer, evidence of the struggle to shift troops and weapons. The deployments would allow the U.S. to keep troop levels largely steady in Iraq through much of next year. Military leaders have made it clear they cannot shift more troops to Afghanistan until they can further cut force levels in Iraq.

Bush announced this month that the U.S. will pull about 8,000 U.S. troops from Iraq by February, with about half leaving before the end of 2008. Pentagon officials say more reductions could be made by summer, possibly freeing up units to go to Afghanistan.

“The additional military capabilities that have been asked for are needed as quickly as possible,” McKiernan said. He said he is hoping to get units that will be able to both fight the insurgents and serve as trainers for the Afghan Army and police.

About 33,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan — 20,000 fighting insurgents and training the Afghan security forces, and 13,000 with the NATO-led coalition.

McKiernan’s immediate challenge is to coordinate a winter offensive by coalition forces. Commanders do not want to sit idle and give Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents that time to rebuild their forces.

Military leaders insist the retooled strategy is critical because they made the mistake of giving the enemy that break last winter and do not want to repeat it.

At the same time, defense officials are reviewing the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, working to draw a clearer picture for the next commander in chief of what needs to be done to stabilize the country, bolster international support and make the most of U.S. and allied military forces.

Violence in Afghanistan is up about 30 percent this year compared with 2007. The Taliban and associated militant groups such as al-Qaida have stepped up attacks. More U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year than in any year since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

“We’re in a very tough fight,” McKiernan said. “The idea that it might get worse before it gets better is certainly a possibility.”

Gates said last week he may be able to send thousands more combat troops to Afghanistan starting next spring. McKiernan said he expects some of his more urgent needs for additional helicopters and surveillance capabilities will be met in the next few months.

The general pointed to a significant increase in foreign fighters coming from neighboring Pakistan this year — Chechens, Uzbeks, Saudis and Europeans. He said he needs the 10,000-plus additional forces he has requested to help increase campaigns in the south and east where violence has escalated.

McKiernan told reporters he is encouraged by recent Pakistani military operations against insurgents waging cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, but said it is too soon to tell how effective they have been.

He also endorsed the recent suggestion by Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak to try to create a joint force of Afghan, Pakistani and U.S. forces to secure what is a porous, mountainous, ungoverned border region.

“I think in the future I would certainly support the idea of combined patrolling along that border,” said McKiernan. If it’s handled the right way, he said he believes the Pakistanis would go along with the plan.

“There are mutual border security concerns that both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have,” he said. “So the more we can work together to approach those concerns, the better off we all are.”Source: Yahoo.com

Appeals Court Punishes Judge for Relying on Wikipedia

References to information at Wikipedia have shown up in various inappropriate places, from homework assignments to college term papers. But there’s one place that it seems everyone can agree that it doesn’t belong: the US court system. The US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, ruling in an immigration case, has agreed with the Board of Immigration Appeals in finding that a reliance on information in Wikipedia is insufficient grounds for a ruling. Nevertheless, it sent the case back to the Board, requesting that it clarify its decision.

The decision, filed late last week, stems from a case where an individual entered the country using a forged passport, and then applied for asylum based on the threat of torture if she were returned to her place of origin. Her application for asylum, and the processing of her case by the immigration courts, hinge on a personal identification document called a laissez-passer issued by the Ethiopian government.

The Department of Homeland Security, wishing to deny the asylum claim, argued that the laissez-passer was insufficient as a form of identification. Excerpts from Wikipedia apparently provided at least some of the information used by the DHS position to support its position. An immigration judge ruled in favor of the DHS, finding that the individual, Lamilem Badasa, had not established her identity, and could not be granted asylum.

Sarah Palin’s daughter is PREGNANT!

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.
“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” the Palins’ statement said.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,” the Palins said.

The Palins asked the news media to respect the young couple’s privacy.
“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” the statement concluded.

MCCAIN KNEW
Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

In the short period since she was announced last Friday, Palin has helped to energize the Republican Party’s conservative base, giving the McCain camp fresh energy going into the campaign for the November 4 election against Democrat Barack Obama.
McCain officials said the news of the daughter’s pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called “mud-slinging and lies” circulating on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in May to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin’s child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.
A senior McCain campaign official said the McCain camp was appalled that these rumors had not only been spread around liberal blog sites and partisan Democrats, but also were the subject of heightened interest from mainstream news media.

“The despicable rumors that have been spread by liberal blogs, some even with Barack Obama’s name in them, is a real anchor around the Democratic ticket, pulling them down in the mud in a way that certainly juxtaposes themselves against their ‘campaign of change,’” a senior aide said.

Abortion Legalised in Mexico City

Mexico City’s legislative assembly has voted to legalise abortion in the city, the capital of the world’s second-largest Roman Catholic country.
Lawmakers voted 46 to 19 in favour of the bill that will permit abortions of pregnancies in the first 12 weeks.

Mexico City previously allowed abortion only in cases of rape, if the woman’s life was at risk or if there were signs of severe defects in the foetus.

Opponents of the abortion law have said they will challenge it in the courts.
Church concerns

The BBC’s Duncan Kennedy, in Mexico City, says that for years groups wanting to increase the rights of women have campaigned for change while conservative forces in the Catholic Church and elsewhere have fought to keep the practice outlawed.

Mexico City is one of the most populous cities in the world, with 8.7 million of Mexico’s population of 106 million people living there, according to UN figures from 2005.

The abortion vote split Mexico’s population, which is 90% Catholic, and prompted a letter last week from Pope Benedict XVI urging Mexican bishops to oppose it.

Prior to the vote, riot police kept rival demonstrators apart as they hurled insults at each other outside the assembly building.

There are an estimated 200,000 illegal abortions in Mexico each year.

Of women who opt for illegal procedures, at least 1,500 women die during botched operations performed in unhygienic backstreet clinics.

Many victims of rape are denied access to legal abortion, a Human Rights Watch report said last year.

The Mexico City assembly has courted controversy in Mexico before: it recently voted to allow same-sex civil unions and is currently considering legalising euthanasia.Source: BBCNews

McCain settled on VP pick - Announcement Tonight

Sen. John McCain has decided on his running mate and will inform the person Thursday night, sources close to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said.

A Republican source said the matter was settled at a meeting of McCain’s advisers Wednesday.

Plans are in place for the senator from Arizona to reveal his pick for the GOP vice presidential nominee at an Ohio rally Friday, the day after Sen. Barack Obama formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination.

The McCain campaign is hoping to have 15,000 people at the Ohio event, roughly five times the size of his largest crowd to date.

In an interview with a Pennsylvania radio station that was taped Wednesday and aired Thursday, McCain said he had not settled on a nominee. The Associated Press reported that the interview with KDKA radio had occurred Thursday, which created confusion as to whether McCain had finalized his choice for vice president.

Asked whether either former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was his VP pick, McCain replied to KDKA, “I haven’t decided yet, so I can’t tell you.”

Both men are expected to join McCain at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania.

Ridge, who is also the former secretary of homeland security, is reportedly on McCain’s short list of possible running mates.

A Republican insider said this month that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has called several state party chairmen and indicated that Ridge will be the Republican vice presidential pick this cycle.

During his interview with KDKA, McCain praised Ridge, saying, “he’s a great American and a great and dear friend, and I rely on him, and I have for many years.”

But the possibility that Ridge could be McCain’s running mate sparked a backlash among conservatives because he supports abortion rights.

Another potential VP pick, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, also raised concerns among conservatives. Lieberman, an independent senator who was the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has been a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, but he, too, backs abortion rights.

If McCain picks either man, it could drive away social conservatives who are already uneasy about his nomination, conservative activists warned.

In an open letter to McCain, conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie wrote, “Your indication that you’re willing to put a person who has a clear, unequivocal pro-abortion record within a heartbeat of the presidency is alarming.”

“Sen. McCain, you are exceedingly proud of being a political maverick — you wear it as a badge of honor. Well, poke the base of the Republican Party — the conservatives — in the eye one more time by choosing a pro-abortion vice presidential candidate, and conservatives will show you that two can play the maverick game,” Viguerie said

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is also believed to be on McCain’s short list, as is Romney, who ran against McCain this year for the GOP presidential nomination and was a frequent critic of the senator on the campaign trail.

But Romney endorsed McCain after he captured the Republican nomination and has campaigned for him. He also opposes abortion rights, a position he said he came to in 2004 after studying the stem cell-issue as Massachusetts governor. Before then, Romney was in favor of abortion rights.Source: CNN.COM

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