Steve Forbes

Silvan Johnson adores Sarah Palin, belongs to a conservative discussion group and fumes at President Obama's spending policies. But when it comes to picking a new congressional representative for her upstate New York district, she is in no mood to help the Republican Party. In fact, Johnson and many other conservatives want to use a Nov. 3 special election to teach the GOP a lesson about sticking to conservative values -- even though that lesson could mean the party loses a House seat it has held for decades.

Oscar De La Hoya feels like a contender, which is only right because he's fighting a guy from "The Contender." Never mind that Steve Forbes couldn't even win the now-defunct reality television show. He's a big winner now that De La Hoya hand-picked him to be his latest comeback opponent next week in Los Angeles. Forbes is used to following scripts, so this one should be simple enough. His job is to make De La Hoya feel like a champion again, just in time for his September rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr. There's really no other purpose for the May 3 fight, other than to draw a big crowd to the Home Depot Center for something other than watching David Beckham sit on the bench.

Pay no mind to the sports book, Steve Forbes insists. Certainly, he didn't look at the odds himself as he was leaving training camp in Las Vegas en route to L.A. for Saturday night's fight against Oscar De La Hoya. The 35-year-old De La Hoya is a staggering 18-to-1 favorite, according to the MGM/Mirage sports book. "Somebody forgot to tell me that," Forbes (33-5, nine knockouts) said this week as he concluded preparations for the bout at the Home Depot Center's soccer stadium in Carson.

Tonight, in a soccer stadium at the Home Depot Center in Carson, a boxing promotion will be interrupted by an actual boxing match. For an hour or so, the selling will rest while the product performs. But soon, presuming Oscar De La Hoya doesn't wander into one of Steve Forbes' fists and remain on the mat for 10 seconds or more, the promotion machine will crank up again. Don't mistake this for smug sarcasm. (Heaven forbid.

It was a typical oddball Milken conference matchup: longtime Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens sparring with magazine editor and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes in a lively debate on oil prices and energy policy. The result in the packed Beverly Hills ballroom Tuesday? Horror -- and amusement. Pickens drew a mix of groans and quiet gasps with his prediction that U.S. oil prices would top last year's record high of $78.

James W. Michaels, the former editor of Forbes magazine whose cantankerous manner and contrarian take on American business flavored the publication and fueled its growth during a career spanning four decades, has died. He was 86. He died of pneumonia Tuesday in New York City, the magazine announced. Michaels was both a relentless advocate of free markets and a dogged critic of financial scoundrels and politicians given to meddling in the markets and promoting regulatory excess.

Pundits are dismissive, polls are unimpressive, but Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes is undeterred as he treks tirelessly through the snowy drifts of small-town Iowa, appealing to voters as the most electable enemy of abortion and the Internal Revenue Service. Passing out T-shirts, copies of his book and steaming bowls of chili, Forbes is calling on leaders of conservative grass-roots groups to get voters to next week's caucuses, where polls show him running second to Texas Gov.

Republican front-runner George W. Bush fended off attacks on two fronts Friday: John McCain accused him of negative campaigning and Steve Forbes lashed out at his abortion record. McCain, in South Carolina, criticized a Bush television ad that accuses the Arizona senator of promoting a $40-billion tax hike. McCain released his own 30-second spot that accuses Bush of "political attacks" and counters that he actually would cut taxes. Campaigning in Iowa, Texas Gov.

Steve Forbes had a simple message to workers for a major defense contractor: Your jobs are safe with me. After stiffly but patiently viewing models of heat-seeking missiles, Forbes declared that as president he would invest "several tens of billions in extra spending" to upgrade the military. "Defense cannot be done on the cheap. The only cheap hawk is a dead hawk," he told an appreciative audience at a Lockheed Martin company with 4,000 employees in New Hampshire.