By BETH FOUHY
The Associated Press
Friday, December 15, 2006; 11:44 PM
NEW YORK -- It will be a daytime gabfest with Barbara, Rosie _ and Hillary.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be making the rounds of the morning shows next week, promoting the rerelease of her book, "It Takes a Village," while getting some major television exposure as she weighs a likely 2008 presidential bid.
The Democrat will be interviewed Monday on NBC's "The Today Show," and will join Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters on ABC's "The View" on Wednesday. She'll also do several book signings around New York.
Clinton, who tops every national poll of potential Democratic contenders, has been reaching out to friends and activists in states with early nominating contests such as Iowa and New Hampshire. Next week's nationally televised interviews will be Clinton's first since she began actively exploring a presidential bid.
Speaking to reporters in New York Friday, Clinton said she does not expect to make a decision on entering the presidential contest until after the first of the year.
"I'm very gratified at all of the outpouring of interest and support I've been trying to field the past couple of weeks," she said.
In the last month, Clinton has largely ceded the limelight to Sen. Barack Obama, the charismatic Illinois Democrat also weighing a presidential bid. Obama made a high-profile visit to New Hampshire last weekend, speaking at a state Democratic Party fundraiser that drew 1,700 activists and some 150 reporters.
During her first Senate campaign in 2000, Clinton was a frequent guest on network morning shows and other programs with largely female audiences. She promoted "Living History," her best-selling memoir, on the "Today Show" and "The View" in 2003.
The "Today Show" has 5.8 million average daily viewers and "The View" has 3.1 million average daily viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
"It Takes a Village," Clinton's book on child rearing, is being rereleased 10 years after it was first published in 1996. In a new introduction to the book, Clinton argues that technology, especially the Internet, has made the lessons of her book even more relevant.
"Today's electronic village has certainly complicated the always difficult challenge of parenting and raising the next generation," Clinton wrote.
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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating is mulling a possible bid for the presidency, voicing concern that the 2008 Republican lineup lacks a Ronald Reagan conservative.
"He's kicked the idea around in his head," Dan Mahoney, an aide to Keating, said Friday. "He's just sort of thinking about it."
Keating, 62, a former FBI agent and prosecutor, served as Oklahoma governor from 1994-2002 and was in charge of the state during the deadly Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He was a high-ranking official in the Justice and Treasury departments during the Reagan administration and considered a possible vice presidential choice by George W. Bush in 2000.
In June 2003, Keating resigned as head of a panel examining the U.S. Roman Catholic hierarchy's efforts to rid the priesthood of sexual molesters. Keating was highly critical of the bishops' cooperation and compared the secretive church hierarchy to the Mafia.
Mahoney said that after the defeat of Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia last month, Keating was concerned about the absence of a "Reagan-like conservative in the mix" of presidential candidates. Several of the White House GOP hopefuls _ Sens. John McCain and Sam Brownback, and Gov. Mitt Romney _ have either compared themselves to Reagan or highlighted his record.
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BOSTON (AP) _ Gov. Mitt Romney, responding to a newspaper report that illegal immigrants worked on a landscaping crew that regularly groomed his lawn, says that employers need a better way to verify the status of workers.
"If you have, let's say, a construction crew come in and add an addition to your home, you don't go around to the workers and say, 'Let me see your papers.' I don't know that that's even legal," Romney said Friday in an interview with Fox News.
"It's certainly not what America expects of our citizens," he said. "What they do expect is that the companies we hire have some way of determining whether their employees are legal."
The Boston Globe reported two weeks ago that a lawn service used for several years by Romney had employed illegal immigrants to work on the grounds of his two-acre suburban home. Romney declined to comment at the time and then left on an extended trip abroad. A spokesman later said the governor knew nothing about the workers' immigration status.
Romney has emphasized his opposition to illegal immigration as he has courted conservatives and tested the waters for a presidential run. On Wednesday he signed an agreement that allows Massachusetts State Police troopers to arrest suspected illegal immigrants.
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MILWAUKEE (AP) _ Former Gov. Tommy Thompson has formed an exploratory committee looking ahead to a possible campaign for the White House.
The committee delivered paperwork Wednesday to the Federal Election Commission as part of the process, Thompson spokesman Tony Jewell said Friday.
Thompson won't make a decision about running for president until some time next year, Jewell said.
The former governor and Bush Cabinet secretary was talking politics on Friday with people in Iowa, where precinct caucuses traditionally launch the nominating season.