John McCain is set to speak at the NRA annual meeting with Ted Nugent four days before the Kentucky primary on May 16th, 2008. McCain's campaign has kept this appearance low-key so far. Maybe we can put down our primary swords and join together to get this into the open!

Why would we want to do this? Well because Ted Nugent is a nut-job!

Why might McCain be reluctant to have himself officially listed on the NRA's event? The answer may well be his concern about being associated with Nugent who, less than one year ago, held up two machine guns at a concert and--in one of the most brazen displays of violent rhetoric by a well-known pundit ever caught on video--threatened the lives of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Sen. Barack Obama.

On BBC News,

The US government has agreed to pay $300,000 (£172,000) to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian arrested after the 11 September attacks, reports say.

Lynn Swann is running as a Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania. As John Hull noted in Breaking Blue, it is a close race between Swann and Rendell. I was curious to see this football player-turned-announcer's political stance, so I went to his website to learn about his position on the issues.

Swann is recycling George Bush's rhetoric from his 2000 run for president! He has three issues listed for his vision, but basically they all ring hollow and echo the 'compassionate conservatism' pitch of Bush in 2000.