OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — After an improbable Nebraska primary victory, state Sen. Deb Fischer has emerged from relative obscurity to take the mantle as one of the GOP’s best hopes for picking up a U.S. Senate seat – though she’ll have to beat a famous Democratic politician to do it – popular former Sen. Bob Kerrey.

On the presidential front, Republican Mitt Romney continued to pile up the delegates he will need to claim the GOP nomination, but he has already moved into general election mode against President Barack Obama. Romney inched closer to his all-but-certain nomination with wins in two more states.

Romney won at least 16 of the 25 delegates at stake in Oregon, with six delegates undecided as the vote count dragged into Wednesday morning. Romney has a total of 989 convention delegates. It takes 1,144 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Nebraska Republicans also picked Romney although no delegates would be allotted in a vote that amounts to a beauty contest. The state’s 32 delegates to the Republican National Convention later this year will be determined at the state convention on July 14.

Romney began the day 171 delegates short of the 1,144 needed for the nomination and was on pace to get them before the month ended.

In Nebraska, Republicans know they need to find someone to go toe-to-toe with Kerrey in the fall and could have opted for one of two statewide office holders – Attorney General Jon Bruning or Treasurer Don Stenberg, both of whom were better funded and better known than Fischer.

Instead, they chose Fischer, a ranch owner who was elected to the Legislature in 2004 and whose major push didn’t come until days before Tuesday’s primary. That’s when she landed the endorsement of 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and 2012 presidential candidate Herman Cain and received a $200,000 ad blitz from a super PAC bankrolled by TD Ameritrade founder and Chicago Cubs co-owner Joe Ricketts.

“As recently as a week ago, Deb Fischer was dismissed by the establishment. Why?” Palin wrote on her Facebook page Tuesday night. “Because she is not part of the good old boys’ permanent political class. The message from the people of Nebraska is simple and powerful: America is looking for real change in Washington, and commonsense conservatives like Deb Fischer represent that change.”

In Nebraska, the contrast couldn’t be more vivid in the November race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. It pits Kerrey, who is unabashedly comfortable moving in Washington circles, against Fischer, whose only experience in elected office prior to the Legislature was serving on her local school board in one of the most rural regions in the country.

“It’s a big race,” Fischer told The Associated Press Tuesday. “It’s the focus of the entire nation.”

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has won most of the delegates in the Oregon primary, leaving him 155 delegates shy of the number of delegates needed to win the Republican nomination for president.

He should get there by the end of the month.

Romney won at least 16 of the 25 delegates at stake in Oregon, with six delegates undecided as the vote count dragged into Wednesday morning. Romney has a total of 989 convention delegates. It takes 1,144 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

All of Romney’s challengers have stopped campaigning. However, Texas Rep. Ron Paul won at least two delegates and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum won at least one.

Romney also won the Nebraska presidential primary but no delegates were at stake.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

By DIDI TANG

BEIJING (AP) — A blind Chinese activist who sparked a diplomatic crisis by fleeing into the U.S. Embassy last month filled out a Chinese passport application and posed for a photo Wednesday, moving forward in his bid to study in the United States.

Paperwork for Chen Guangcheng, his wife, and two children was completed in the hospital where the family of four has stayed since he left the embassy in Beijing two weeks ago.

Chen said the officials who handled the paperwork were sent by the central government.

“I am sure they were sent by the central government, which appears to be fulfilling its responsibility,” he said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said Chen is free to study abroad like any other Chinese citizen, but security officials have kept him under virtual house arrest in his hospital room for two weeks. Until Wednesday, there was no clear sign that the government would let him apply for a passport.

Chen said he plans to attend New York University, probably as a visiting scholar, and has been given relevant paperwork for the posting from a U.S. official.

The U.S. has said visas for Chen and his family have been prepared and can be issued as soon as they obtain Chinese passports.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For more on Chen Guangcheng, read Blind justice, by WORLD’s Jamie Dean (May 03, 2012 Web Extra).

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — After months of silence, George W. Bush finally weighed on the presidential race – with four short words.

“I’m for Mitt Romney,” the former president said Tuesday in Washington as the doors of his elevator shut, perhaps his only public statement on the race before the Nov. 6 election.

Bush is said to be enjoying retirement at home in Dallas. He’s largely stayed out of sight and out of politics since leaving office and is likely to sit much of the campaign, too. He spends his time raising money for and promoting his presidential library at Southern Methodist University – the reason he was in Washington on Tuesday when ABC News caught him and elicited the unscripted endorsement. He also gives speeches for charitable causes.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Time

They have this all figured out in advance, you see: Time has rendered a public service in publishing an important feature about parenting, and you have taken it the wrong way because you have a dirty mind and are judgmental. No one at Time had a problem with the Madonna-and-child photo, but you, because of your backward Baptist background, saw it as creeping pornography.

Time knows very well the first-second impact of the photo. There are refined 10-second thoughts, perhaps. But the in-your-face broadside is spelled S-E-X, not M-O-T-H-E-R-H-O-O-D. The photo (we offer a slightly modified version above) is of a beautiful woman with her breast hanging out—but it’s attached to the mouth of her son. As you can see, he is no infant; the child is a fully sentient dead ringer for Beaver Cleaver’s friend Larry Mondello, and he is looking straight at us, standing on a chair, his mouth serving the function of a pastie to cover the verboten areolae.

I don’t know if any of you remember what it was like to be a little boy. I commend the tree-house discussion of Mouseketeer Annette Funicello in Stand By Me as a refresher course. Follow it up with the final interview serial rapist Ted Bundy gave to James Dobson before his execution in 1989, giving special attention to his recounting of a childhood incident in which he dipped into an alley with his friends, innocently came across a discarded girlie magazine, and stepped back out of the alley a different child forever.

At my mom’s request, I recently went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel with her. People later asked me what the movie was about and I didn’t know what to tell them: It is a comedy about elderly Brits deciding to pass their retirement in India, I could say. Or I could point out that the most sympathetic, mature, avuncular, and decent character in the film is the gay guy. This not by design, ladies and gentlemen. This is a Trojan horse. If even the floral print on the Dalit extra’s dress is thoroughly vetted by the wardrobe designer, you can be sure that the noble homosexual is cold calculation.

Time to apply the book of Revelation: What Satan cannot accomplish with the sledgehammer of the law courts (the Beast) he will do with the soft sell of debauchery in the theaters (the Harlot), while you were passing the popcorn.

But wait, is not the pose of a fair-haired mother giving suck to her son beautiful? What Christian would say it is not? This, after all, is what we are all about—pro-life, pro-nurturing, pro-motherhood. Let us not make the judgment on the basis of personal opinion, which, as evidence by our president’s own “evolving” morality, is as notoriously morphable as mush. Sensibilities are good in spiritual people as First Alarmers warning of a fire, but there is a more certain way: To the Word and the testimonies! These are immovable plumb lines.

Peter commends “respectful and pure conduct” (1 Peter 3:2). Timothy urges “respectable apparel, with modesty” (1 Timothy 2:9-10). “But what is pure,” Time will doubtless argue. “What is modesty? Are these not subjective? Are these not ambiguous?” If one is inclined to be obtuse, enamored of arguing, or seared of conscience, there will never be agreement. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was an intelligent man and the best he could do with porn is: “I know it when I see it.”

If you don’t like Peter or Timothy, other Scripture abounds about knowing one’s times and acting accordingly. Time’s editors knew exactly what time it was when they hauled off with their cover and upped the ante. And they knew you knew, too. But they were just playing a little game on you, to see what you would do. And I’ll bet you didn’t fall for it.

This is our daily open thread, where you, the commenters, get to choose the topics of conversation and politely interact with one another.

QOD: If you could only take two items with you to a deserted island, what would you take?

Chen complained Tuesday that his elder brother and nephew had both been beaten by Chinese authorities since Chen fled house arrest in late April.

Chen said a charge of homicide brought against his nephew was “trumped up.”

Rights activist Bob Fu, who translated Chen’s comments, earlier testified that Chen’s nephew had injured several people who had burst into his home without warrants.

Chen is awaiting Chinese permission to travel to study in the U.S.

He has been at a Beijing hospital after his flight from house arrest to the U.S. Embassy triggered intense U.S.-China negotiations on his fate.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

—

For more on Chen Guangcheng, read Blind justice, by WORLD’s Jamie Dean (May 03 Web Extra).

By THOMAS BEAUMONT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican Mitt Romney said Tuesday President Barack Obama’s support for increased federal debt has put the economy on a disastrous course, portraying himself in a speech in battleground Iowa as the defender of fiscal responsibility and his opponent as reckless.

Calling for sharp spending cuts and a long-term budget discipline, Romney is trying to frame the campaign against the Democrat as a contest of fairness versus irresponsibility.

“A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation and every day we fail to act we feed that fire with our own lack of resolve,” Romney said, according to excerpts of a speech he’s scheduled to deliver on his first trip to Iowa since January.

The White House promptly dismissed Romney’s critique. Press secretary Jay Carney blamed federal overspending primarily on Romney-backed tax cuts for the wealthy that were enacted during President George W. Bush’s administration and on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Romney’s debt-and-spending argument is also the counter-argument to Obama’s emphasis on fairness, in which the president is asking more of wealthier Americans by eliminating tax breaks and loopholes.

It comes as Wall Street deals with the fallout of revelations that one of the nation’s most trusted banks made bad bets and lost billions of dollars, and in the wake of disappointing job growth for the month of April.

The speech also shows Romney’s effort to focus on the economy, voters’ No. 1 concern, after several days in which gay marriage dominated the campaign debate. Obama announced last Wednesday that he supports gay marriage, after publicly opposing it but saying his position was “evolving.”

Romney opposes gay marriage and reaffirmed his position while delivering a weekend graduation speech at a conservative Christian university in Virginia.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nebraska Republicans on Tuesday were choosing a candidate to square off against Democrat Bob Kerrey, a former senator seeking another turn on Capitol Hill in one of the year’s most hotly contested Senate races.

The GOP primary fight illustrates a years-old split between the two wings of the GOP. State Attorney General Jon Bruning, backed by establishment Republicans, is trying to overcome a spirited challenge from state Sen. Deb Fischer, who has tea party support. State Treasurer Don Stenberg also was on the ballot.

Elsewhere, Oregon was deciding whether to give its 25 presidential delegates to Mitt Romney, the all-but-certain GOP nominee. Nebraska Republicans also were weighing in on the GOP race though no delegates would be allotted in a vote that amounts to a beauty contest. The state’s 32 delegates to the Republican National Convention later this year will be determined at the state convention on July 14.

Romney was 171 delegates short of the 1,144 needed for the nomination and is on pace to get them before the month ends. He was spending the day in Iowa, a competitive general election battleground, delivering a speech on the economy as he looks to counter President Barack Obama on voters’ top concern.

Idaho voters also were picking nominees for state and congressional offices.

But the biggest race Tuesday was Nebraska’s GOP Senate primary.

Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, a two-term moderate, is retiring and both parties are eyeing his seat. Democrats want to keep it to maintain their Senate majority, while Republicans see an opportunity in their drive to win back control of the Senate.

Democrats control the Senate 51-47, plus two independents who caucus the majority. But the outcome in November of several competitive Senate races could result in a power shift.

Kerrey, who served Nebraska as governor and as a U.S. senator before leaving Congress in 2001 to become a university president in New York, reluctantly agreed to run again to help give Democrats a shot at holding a seat they’ve long controlled.

Republicans in Washington turned to Bruning, who has been successful in statewide races. But in the final stretch of the Senate campaign, he has found that his nomination is hardly assured.

Fischer, a rancher in rural Nebraska, has mounted a feisty campaign that in the past few weeks has attracted attention and endorsements from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and other tea party darlings. She’s also backed by an outside group, created by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, that’s running TV ads on her behalf.

Stenberg, for his part, has argued that he is the only “genuine, life-long conservative” in the race.

—

Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington and Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Neb., contributed to this report.

© 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The New York Times this morning has an article about coyotes in the parks and expensive backyards of San Francisco. The Times noted that dogs outnumber children in that remarkable city, and pondered this question: “Will the two animal worlds—the domesticated and the wild—be able to coexist?”

In 2007 authorities shot two coyotes that attacked dogs in Golden Gate Park: “Since then, the city has emphasized coexistence.” The Times quoted Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote: “Usually, the knee-jerk response is, ‘Problem: wildlife. Let’s trap and kill.’”

That’s one knee-jerk response. The other goes something like, “Ooh, cute.” The Times ended its story by quoting one bemused resident’s view of coyotes: “They’re doing their own thing. It’s pretty cool. This is a big city, and there are wild animals.”

Hmm. A quick Google search of “coyotes, children” shows some press leads of recent years. Here’s one: “The wary but tolerant relationship between humans and coyotes is changing in a New York City suburb, where two attacks on little girls have police officers shooting at the animals and parents keeping their kids inside on summer evenings at the urging of authorities.”

And another, from a Los Angeles suburb: “The coyote … snapped its jaws on the girl’s buttocks and her nanny had to pry the toddler from the wild animal. Less than a week later, a coyote in a mountain resort town some 35 miles away grabbed a girl by the head and tried to drag her from a front yard. …”

I read about coyote attacks in Indiana, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Colorado (see the photo above of a couple of coyotes outside a church in a Denver suburb in 2008). In 2009 coyotes in a Canadian national park killed 19-year-old singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell. That was terrible, but wilderness is where the wild things live—do they belong in cities, though?

I happily saw no stories of coyotes killing children in backyards—just dogs, so far. Happily also, God has put in wild animals some fear of man, so coyote attacks on humans are still rare. But, with animal rights advocates on the march, this is an issue we will have to face. Are we bigoted and intolerant practitioners of “species-ism” if we respect wildlife but put first the safety of children?