Political Parties

A hilariously sad e-mail is circulating nowadays proposing that members of Congress be required to wear colorful, logo-splattered uniforms like NASCAR drivers so that voters can know their corporate sponsors. So no surprise that the Republicans went out of town to find their official responder to President Obama's Feb. 24 address to a joint session of Congress: Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal.

With the party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto pushing for elections to be held on schedule next week, President Pervez Musharraf's government appeared poised Monday to postpone the vote well into February. Pakistan's Election Commission, which is made up of Musharraf supporters, was to have announced today that the vote would be delayed. But the decision was so contentious that the announcement was put off until Wednesday.

During the stormy years Benazir Bhutto ruled Pakistan, her husband was a top power broker and a prime target of corruption allegations that toppled her. The assassination of the former prime minister has pushed her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, back into the heart of the storm. Their political party this week named Zardari to run its day-to-day affairs while appointing the couple's 19-year-old son to the ceremonial role of chairman.

As presidential candidates battle in New Hampshire and beyond, an older generation of prominent politicians is bemoaning the whole polarized scene -- grousing that could encourage New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to jump into the race and transform the political landscape. On Monday, a bipartisan group of these elders is meeting at the University of Oklahoma to urge candidates to set a less divisive tone and stop catering to their narrow political bases.

The opposition Nationalist Party won an overwhelming victory Saturday in closely watched Taiwanese legislative elections widely seen as a preview of March's presidential contest. The results were viewed as a vote of no confidence in the administration of President Chen Shui-bian, who has alienated many voters with his contentious style and policy reversals during a period of disappointing economic growth and increased tensions with Beijing.

Medea Bern, once a registered Republican, is one of a growing number of California voters who shun party membership and declare themselves independent. In the upcoming presidential election, that makes her the kind of voter all the candidates would like to reach. But when it comes to California's Feb. 5 primary, there is only one major party where she's welcome: the Democratic Party. She isn't allowed to cast her ballot in the Republican primary, and that upsets her.

To a crescendo of clicking cameras, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped before a row of shimmering U.S. flags last March to make an announcement Americans had been waiting four months to hear. November's elections had swept Democrats into power on a wave of frustration with the Iraq war. Now, flanked by three committee chairmen in her ceremonial Capitol office, the San Francisco congresswoman prepared to unveil the party's plan to bring the troops home.

Usually in this country, baseball partisans are paying customers who shell out for peanuts and hot dogs, move the turnstile, crack open the Cracker Jack and root, root, root for the home team. They are not, traditionally speaking, members of Congress batting around the issue of Roger Clemens and steroids as if their party affiliation was a logo emblazoned across a cap and jersey.

When they voted in national elections four years ago, Spaniards were both traumatized and energized. Their country had just suffered continental Europe's deadliest terrorist attack, and millions of voters were angry. A very different and bitterly divided Spain returns to the polls Sunday. Many Spaniards are weary of the endless fighting that has consumed politicians pushing diametrically opposed agendas, and frightened by a once-robust economy's signs of stumbling.

The partisan drama surrounding Roger Clemens erupted again Tuesday, when the Republican representative that signed the letter referring the baseball pitcher for a perjury investigation condemned Democrats for an accompanying summary that "reads like an advocate's brief or prosecutorial indictment of Roger Clemens." Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.