As they traveled across Indiana and North Carolina over the last few days, trading charges and countercharges about the wisdom of suspending the federal gas tax for the summer, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were really having a larger fight.

A "futures market" reading from Rasmussen Reports projects presidential election winners based on "trades" made by the site's users.

Intrade has done an excellent job of predicting election results over the last few years.  But now a little backlash has begun.

The turmoil in the mortgage markets has incited a wave of legal tangles, as homeowners are suing lenders, lenders are suing banks, banks are suing loan specialists. And investors are suing everyone.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won the vote in the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday, giving her a second consecutive victory in what is shaping up as a protracted battle with Senator Barack Obama.

With his victory in South Carolina on Saturday, Senator John McCain of Arizona has accomplished what no other Republican presidential candidate has been able to do this year: he has captured two competitive contests. Not incidentally, this one was in the state that effectively sank his campaign in 2000.

The convincing victory by Mitt Romney in the Michigan primary on Tuesday means three very different states — with dissimilar electorates driven by distinctive sets of priorities — have embraced three separate candidates in search of someone who can lead the party into a tough election and beyond President Bush.

STANDISH, Mich. — This quiet town, tucked between the thumb and the rest of the fingers in Michigan’s mitten, feels worlds away from the struggling automobile factories of Flint and Detroit. But economic gloom has made its way here just as it has seeped through so much of this state.