Politics

"A new dirty tricks campaign to embarrass the Democratic frontrunner, John Kerry, backfired ignominiously yesterday when it emerged that a widely circulated photograph of a protest against the Vietnam war was a crude forgery," reports Suzanne Goldenberg. "The photograph, falsely credited to Associated Press, combined two separate images to make it appear as if Mr Kerry shared a stage at an anti-war rally in the early 1970s with the actress, Jane Fonda." The fabricated photos are not the only recent attempt to smear Kerry.

A Republican effort to suppress the black vote may be linked to black preacher Al Sharpton's campaign in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Sharpton has postured as a radical firebrand, accusing other Democratic candidates such as Howard Dean of racial bias. According to reporter Wayne Barrett, "Roger Stone, the longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative who led the mob that shut down the Miami-Dade County recount and helped make George W. Bush president in 2000, is financing, staffing, and orchestrating the presidential campaign of Reverend Al Sharpton. ...

GOP pollster Frank Luntz warned in a memo to party leaders: "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable." The administration's recent funding boosts for its Healthy Forests Restoration Act, Pacific salmon recovery programs, the Klamath River Basin (previously targeted by the anti-environmental

Today's New York Times quotes an unnamed Republican "close to the Bush campaign" who says the timing of the State of the Union speech -- one day after the Iowa caucuses -- is no accident.