Sen. Barack Obama is bracing for the general election fight, and conservatives are likely to throw some jabs at his wife Michelle Obama as well.

Conservatives view the presumptive Democratic nominee's wife as a target of opportunity.

But one Republican consultant said attacks on candidates' wives often backfire.

By MICHAEL GRUNWALD
There used to be an organization for people who believed in a truly limited government — limited taxes, limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs. That organization was known as the Republican Party. But the only one of those beliefs that still motivates the G.O.P. establishment is limited taxes. In 2008, people who still hold all of them joined the Ron Paul Revolution.

The South Carolina Republican Party will announce Thursday it is moving its primary to January 19, in an effort to preserve its status as the first southern state to vote in the 2008 GOP presidential nominating contest, party insiders told CNN.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel is looking into whether Rove -- President Bush's longtime trusted political strategist -- or other White House aides violated federal law by making political presentations to government employees in the run-up to last year's midterm elections.

Now, with fewer than two years left of his second term, the Bush administration is embroiled in multiple scandals and ethics investigations. The war in Iraq still rages. Bush's approval ratings are hovering in the mid-30s. And Democratic-Republican relations have seldom been more rancorous.

A rundown of Bush appointees who left under a cloud or face conflict-of-interest allegations

"People are a little more cautious if somebody might have a gun there," the GOP presidential candidate told Politico reporters Tuesday. "A concealed gun carried by a responsible person -- that might have ended the problem that they had at Virginia Tech with one person being killed or two people being killed."