Nation in brief

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. (MCT) – Hillary Clinton tore into Barack Obama in a spirited debate Saturday… GOFFSTOWN, N.H. (MCT) – Hillary Clinton tore into Barack Obama in a spirited debate Saturday night, accusing her rival of changing positions often, notably on health care.

“As the AP described it, he could have a pretty good debate with himself,” Clinton said.

Illinois Sen. Obama hit right back, suggesting that the AP had been “quoting some of your folks, Hillary,” and chiding everyone not to “distort each other’s records as Election Day approaches here in New Hampshire.”

John Edwards jumped in too: “I didn’t hear these kinds of attacks from Senator Clinton when she was ahead,” the former North Carolina senator said.

“I’ve been in hostage negotiations that were a lot more civil than this,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson quipped.

The clash between the four Democrats was their first since Obama trounced Clinton in Thursday’s Iowa caucuses, and the last before New Hampshire voters cast the nation’s first secret ballots for presidential nominees on Tuesday.

Obama is leading narrowly in many New Hampshire polls; Clinton had counted on winning the two early states to create an aura of inevitability.

While the Democrats sparred over domestic issues, most of their differences were more of tone, nuance and resumes. They all want to end the war in Iraq. They all want aggressive programs to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. They all want to extend health insurance to everyone. They disagreed mainly on who would best be able to do it.

– David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers

GOFFSTOWN, N.H. (MCT) – Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona engaged in a bitter fight to win Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican primary. The two lashed out at each other in unusually personal terms Saturday over immigration, with McCain essentially calling Romney a liar for suggesting McCain supports amnesty.

In the same testy debate, the Republican presidential candidates outlined how they would battle Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois should he become the Democratic nominee, a change from previous GOP debates in which New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was the main target.

On the immigration issue, the debate virtually exploded when Romney accused McCain of promoting a form of amnesty for illegal aliens, saying McCain would allow them to permanently stay in the United States.

The debate, held three days before the New Hampshire primary, was crucial to the fate of Romney’s campaign, as well as the five other candidates on stage. It came as a new poll showed that McCain had pulled ahead of Romney after trailing him for months, although nearly 60 percent of Republican voters said they had not definitely decided who they would support Tuesday.

Romney, who finished second to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa, used the debate to promote himself as an agent of change. But McCain used that against him in questioning the former Massachusetts governor’s consistency.

“I just wanted to say to Governor Romney, we disagree on a lot of issues, but I agree you are the candidate of change,” a smiling McCain told Romney.

– Jill Zuckman and Rick Pearson, Chicago Tribune

SAN JOSE, Calif. (MCT) – With execution chambers from California to Florida idled, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday will offer an unprecedented glimpse into how the justices assess the swirling legal conflict over the grim business of administering a fatal dose of drugs to death row inmates.

The Supreme Court, faced with mounting legal chaos across the country over lethal injection, will hear arguments in a challenge to Kentucky’s execution method – the same procedure favored in virtually every state that has a death penalty. The justices will directly confront the constitutionality of an execution method for the first time since the 1870s, when they upheld Utah’s firing squads.

The high court is expected to rule by the end of its term in June, at the very least devising a road map for what states must do to ensure the executions they carry out are as humane as possible.

On one side, lawyers for death row inmates argue that states have grown so sloppy in executions that they should not resume unless the Supreme Court establishes strict standards. On the other side, dozens of states, the Bush administration and victims’ rights groups insist that Kentucky and other states already do it right.

For legal experts, the tea leaves have never been harder to read. There is only one consensus: The conservative Supreme Court will not abolish the death penalty or outlaw lethal injection.

The Supreme Court stepped into the issue last fall after several years of proliferating legal challenges to lethal injection, all centered on whether the three-drug combination used in most executions exposes inmates to the risk of cruel and unusual punishment. Critics argue that the combination of drugs can mask an inmate’s suffering.

Courts throughout the country have issued conflicting rulings, with some states putting executions on hold.

– Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News

BAGHDAD (MCT) – Nearly five years into the war in Iraq, the top U.S. commanding general said Saturday that security gains and a gradual hand-off to Iraqis will allow a drawdown of U.S. forces in 2008.

But the security improvements that brought violence down to 2005 levels are fragile and reversible, Gen. David Petraeus said during a press briefing. They depend on a complicated equation of troop concentrations, citizen security forces, cooperation from Iraq’s neighboring countries and relative quiet from militias such as the Shiite Mahdi Army.

U.S. forces will thin out through the year, rather than abruptly handing control to Iraqis. First Iraqi politicians must work out “fundamental” governance issues, Petraeus said, and continue expanding the Iraqi security forces. The country’s police and army added about 100,000 members this year and benefited from a 70,000-member, Sunni-majority, U.S.-funded Concerned Local Citizens group (also known as Awakening Councils). Before the movement spread nationally, it helped to stabilize Anbar province, known as an al-Qaeda hotbed until recently.

It’s unrealistic for U.S. forces to wait for car bombs and suicide vests to disappear before beginning to wind down, he said.

“The question is `Are they reducing in number and effectiveness over time?'” he said. “I think the answer to that has been yes.”

Extremist militias could pose a long-term threat to the country, Petraeus said, but the most significant enemy for now is al-Qaeda.

“It is the enemy that carries out the most horrific attacks, that causes the greatest damage to infrastructure and that seems most intent on reigniting ethno-sectarian violence,” Petraeus said.

– Jamie Gumbrecht, McClatchy Newspapers