Jim Rutenberg

Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met for a secret tête-à-tête. What both men took to be the start of a frank but productive dialogue proved, in retrospect, more akin to the round of pre-Pearl Harbor peace talks between the United States and Japan.

The White House on Monday started a new Web site to fight questionable but potentially damaging charges that President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health care system would inevitably lead to "socialized medicine," "rationed care" and even forced euthanasia for the elderly.

A group of online journalists say they are teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn.org to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party further to the left.

Republicans have long accused mainstream journalists of being on the payroll of President Obama and the Democratic Party, a common refrain of favoritism especially from those on the losing end of an election (see Bush vs.

The White House faces many obstacles as it tries to accomplish what aides say is one of their most important goals: transforming the YouTubing-Facebooking-texting-Twittering grass-roots organization that put President Obama in the White House into an instrument of government.

The campaigns of Sens Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) are making their last-ditch advertising pitches in a loud, televised shouting match over health care and taxes, terrorism and presidential readiness, trying to sway the few remaining undecided voters or to push wavering supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

Democrats who monitor advertising spending now put at five the number of states where Sen John McCain (R-AZ) is reducing his advertising - New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Colorado, Maine and Minnesota.

Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) is running advertisements on radio and television that have matched the dubious nature of Sen John McCain's more questionable spots. In all, Sen Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Sen McCain's positions in the past two weeks.

Is Sen John McCain (R-AZ) really dissing his base to appease his party's base?

Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) has started a sustained and hard-hitting advertising campaign against Sen John McCain (R-AZ) in states that will be vital this fall, painting Sen McCain in a series of commercials as disconnected from the economic struggles of the middle class.