John Edwards: squeezed out?A USA Today article analyzing the electability of presidential candidates running in Iowa barely mentioned John Edwards, even though Edwards is the only Democrat besides Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who consistently polls in the double digits in Iowa, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group that analyzes the accuracy of corporate media from a left-leaning perspective. The December 18 USA Today article titled Poll: Electability becoming more important to Dems, proposed hypothetical match-ups of Clinton and Obama against Republicans Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee, and discussed how each Democratic candidate might fare against the Republicans without mentioning Edwards, even though a CNN survey done December 6-9 showed Edwards polling consistently better against Republicans than either Clinton or Obama. FAIR cites Edwards' campaign focus on corporate influence over government as a possible reason for the squeeze, and says the USA Today article is "a good example of corporate media striving to narrow down the Democratic primary field."

Smoking in Colorado's casinos due to end Jan. 1As Colorado prepares to extend its state law eliminating secondhand smoke in workplaces to include casinos as of January 1, 2008, the state's mountain gambling towns have been hard at work getting ready for the change. Casinos have been installing outdoor heaters and putting up windscreens, while some city councils have been finding ways to loosen the law. The Central City town council officially defined an "outdoor area" as any place at least 40 percent exposed to the outdoors, allowing for construction of partly-enclosed smoking areas. The state provision requires that smoking stay at least 15 feet away from building entrances to prevent smoke from getting inside buildings, but since it also allows home-rule cities to change that distance, Central City and Black Hawk both reduced their official smoking distance to all of one inch. Central City's Mayor, Buddy Schmalz, says his town has "no intention of getting around any kind of laws on the smoking ban," saying his town is just preparing for the future, but Smoke-free Gaming of Colorado, the coalition of casino employees and patrons who worked to close the loophole that allowed continued smoking in casinos, expressed disappointment that the towns are working to circumvent the state law.