Embassies can't go out of their way for politics

WASHINGTON — As Democrat Barack Obama began an overseas tour, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told employees at U.S. embassies to provide only minimal help to visiting presidential candidates.

The orders went to all overseas posts and told government employees not to do anything that might show favoritism or amount to improper campaign activity.

The department said the State Department issued similar orders ahead of presumed Republican nominee John McCain's overseas tours to Iraq, Mexico and elsewhere this year, but limited the communication to embassies in countries the Republican planned to visit.

Government employees are prohibited from certain political activity on the job and cannot perform campaign work on the public payroll.

Rice's orders give examples of things embassy employees should not do, such as arrange high-level meetings for visiting candidates or get involved in nitty-gritty logistical details.

As an example of appropriate logistical help, Rice's memo, sent late Thursday, said, "If the campaign staff wants to rent a bus for press, tell them where they can rent a bus."

Joint appearance

at Calif. church set

WASHINGTON — In their most direct effort yet to court people of faith, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain will make their first joint appearance of the campaign next month at the Rev. Rick Warren's California megachurch.

Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion, co-sponsored by the nonpartisan group Faith in Public Life, will focus on wider moral issues rather than policy, and let both candidates make their pitches to religious voters.

Warren's "Purpose-Driven Life" books have sold more than 25 million copies.

Who donated

money to McCain

Wall Street, gambling and energy interests have contributed generously to presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain and the GOP as they amass money for the fall campaign, according to newly filed campaign-finance reports.

McCain trails his rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the total amount each has raised, $339 million to $144 million.

Nine donors gave $100,000 or more in May and June. Geoffrey T. Boisi, a director of troubled home lender Freddie Mac, for one, gave $100,000.

Donors identifying themselves as investors or working for investment firms, including partners in the investment firm Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts and the New York hedge fund managed by Paul E. Singer, accounted for $9 million to the joint committees, a preliminary review by the Los Angeles Times shows.

The reports were submitted to the Federal Election Commission last week and provided by Congressional Quarterly's MoneyLine, a service to which the Times subscribes.

An initial review shows McCain and the GOP committees raised at least $890,000 from oil and other energy producers. Gambling sources, including Steve Wynn and others in his Wynn Resorts and MGM-Mirage, accounted for at least $458,000.

N.Y. Times refused

article by McCain

The Op-Ed page of The New York Times decided not to publish an article submitted by Sen. John McCain, asking instead for revisions before the newspaper would reconsider it. The campaign declined to do so.

McCain's article, written in response to an Op-Ed article by Sen. Barack Obama that was published in The Times last week, criticized Obama for his plan for Iraq. "I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it," McCain wrote, according to a version of the article that appeared on the Drudge Report. "A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president."

The Times' rejection — which was first reported Monday on the Drudge Web site — set off a torrent of commentary, some of it critical.

David Shipley, editor of the Op-Ed page, requested that McCain revise the article if he wanted it published, advising in an e-mail message that the campaign "articulate, in concrete terms, how McCain defines victory in Iraq."

Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, was critical of the request. "John McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables," he said in a statement.

Editorial-page editor Andrew Rosenthal said, "It is standard procedure on our Op-Ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and forth with an author on his or her submission. We look forward to publishing Sen. McCain's views in our paper just as we have in the past."

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