foreign policy

Republican Mitt Romney sought Sunday to deflect charges that he is a flip-flopper, insisting he had learned from experience and could be counted on to keep his campaign promises if elected president. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, also called on top rival Mike Huckabee to apologize to President Bush. In an article in the journal Foreign Affairs, Huckabee criticized Bush's foreign policy as an ''arrogant bunker mentality.'' Huckabee said no apology is necessary and that Romney should read the article.

With no foreign policy credentials, next to no national profile, and having served in the statehouse for less than two years, Palin has such a thin record -- both legislatively and in terms of public statements -- that it's difficult to predict just what sort of vice president she might soon become. As for issues affecting gay Americans, there's only a handful of legal decisions -- made early in her tenure as governor -- that can help us divine where she stands.

Socialist prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero won reelection Sunday in a clear endorsement of a record of social change including the legalization of gay marriage and on-demand divorce, reforms once unthinkable in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Spain. Zapatero also shifted Spanish foreign policy by pulling troops from Iraq in his first term, which he won three days after Islamic militants killed 191 people in a string of bombings against commuter trains. Voters handed Zapatero his second term despite worries about a slumping economy, immigration, and resurgent Basque separatists, blamed for gunning down a member of the prime minister's party on Friday -- timing that recalled the March 11, 2004, Madrid attacks.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey wants the U.S. to lead in the global struggle for LGBT rights.