Politico.com notes that Democrats have gained "control of secretary of state offices in five key states -- Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio -- where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes. ...

NPR reports, "In a presidential race that seems to include every possible political strategy ... [t]here have been no high-impact independent groups along the lines of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that played a prominent role in attacking John Kerry four years ago. ... After the Dow Jones industrial average's record 777-point plunge last month, wealthy donors didn't have so much wealth.

A full-page ad in the New York Times "accuses ACORN of a list of abuses that suggest hypocrisy on some of the group's signature issues: intimidating and firing its own employees if they try to unionize, misappropriating millions of dollars from taxpayer-funded government grants and advocating minimum wage hides while paying its own employees less than minimum wage." While the ad "does not indicate who or what organization paid for it," it comes from one of lobbyist