PUBLIC MARKS from jasontromm with tag 2008

At first, it sounds like a bad joke: What if a woman, a black, and a Mormon ran for president? Yet with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney running for the White House, this welcome burst of diversity in US presidential candidates is no joke. Each of these politicians comes with enough experience, patriotism, and popular support to be taken seriously for the 2008 contest. Yet polls show a number of Americans still hold some prejudice against them simply for their sex, race, or religion. Polls find that, while a strong minority of Americans say the US is "not ready" for a woman or black president, a vast majority of them say they could vote for one. A more worrisome poll finds 37 percent would not vote for a Mormon - a much higher negative response than for an evangelical Christian, a Catholic, or a Jew, although not as high as for a Muslim.

Right now John McCain is the front-runner for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But everyone expects that a single major competitor will emerge to challenge him from the right. The question hung in the air of this past weekend's Family Research Council summit in Washington: Who will that candidate be for the GOP's powerful social conservative base?

Is the national ID card the next step toward the imposition of the biblical "mark of the beast" Christians believe will be required to buy and sell during the Last Days? That's the contention of a growing group of believers who are working to turn back the approval of the Real ID Act by Congress last year. Public Law 109-13 requires the national ID portion of the plan go into effect by May 2008. ()() It's probably not "the mark," but it's a step toward it.