South Dakota

John McCain's recent appearance in South Dakota at the Sturgis Rally, America's largest motorcycle convention, was by most accounts a roaring success. But Barack Obama's campaign isn't going to give up the biker vote without a fight. At Sturgis, McCain ridiculed Obama for drawing "hundreds of thousands" of people to an outdoor speech in Berlin. "I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day," he boasted, as dozens of cyclists revved their engines.

Two years ago, South Dakota voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed ban on abortions that proponents had hoped would set up a Supreme Court showdown over Roe vs. Wade. Next month, the state ballot will include another abortion ban with similar goals -- but observers say this one is far more likely to pass. The new ballot measure would allow for abortions in the case of rape and incest, exceptions that were not in the 2006 version.

A man charged with fatally stabbing his wife in a frenzy last February testified in Pierre that his daughter Haylee did it and does not remember the murder. "If she remembered what I saw, she'd kill herself," Brad Reay, 47, told jurors after taking the stand in his own defense. Haylee, 13, testified last week that she never would have hurt her mother. The girl said she was afraid of her father and had never been very close to him.

A man who blamed his 12-year-old daughter for his wife's stabbing death was convicted in Pierre of first-degree murder. Prosecutors said Brad Reay, 47, stabbed his wife to death last winter just days after she asked for a divorce. He killed her in revenge for an affair with a co-worker and then tried without luck to frame her lover and then his daughter, the jury was told.

The South Dakota Senate refused to expel a lawmaker accused of fondling an 18-year-old legislative page in a motel bed, but voted to censure him instead. Democratic Sen. Dan Sutton had admitted sharing a bed with the page last winter but denied groping him. The page is a family friend, Sutton said. The censure amounts to a public reprimand that has no effect on Sutton's legislative powers. Sutton, 36, said afterward that he believes the censure vote will end the matter.

Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) is reading news clippings and starting to do some office work from the hospital, almost two months after suffering a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. "He has requested more contact with office and is looking for updates from staff," his office said in a statement. Spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said he was starting slowly. "We do not anticipate him back [in the Senate] for several weeks," Fisher said. "We are bringing work to him rather than him coming to us.

Two months after his brain hemorrhage, South Dakota Sen. Tim Johnson has left a Washington hospital and entered a private rehabilitation facility, spokeswoman Julianne Fisher said. She would not say whether the Democratic senator remained in Washington or was moved to a facility in South Dakota, citing family concerns about media scrutiny. "They just want him to focus on getting better and not [worry] about outside cameras snapping away," Fisher said.

A jury in Sioux Falls sentenced a woman to life in prison without parole for killing an acquaintance and hacking up her body with a chain saw. Daphne Wright, 43, was convicted last week of kidnapping and murdering Darlene VanderGiesen, 42, in February 2006. Prosecutors said Wright was jealous of the friendship VanderGiesen had with Wright's former lover and it turned to rage.

Sen. Tim Johnson has returned to his residence outside Washington, more than four months after he suffered a brain hemorrhage. "It is wonderful to take this next step with family and friends," Johnson's office quoted the South Dakota Democrat as saying. "As I continue with my therapy, I also get more and more work from the office."