McCain Regrets Use of Term 'Tar Baby'

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is seen during a campaign stop in Concord, N.H., Wednesday, March 14, 2007.(AP Photo/Jim Cole) (Jim Cole - AP)

Lenders specializing in high-interest mortgages to people with bad credit have tightened their policies as their own financing has dried up and defaults have increased.

New Century Financial Corp. is facing possible bankruptcy, and Fannie Mae, one of the nation's largest providers of home mortgages, has said it no longer will buy subprime mortgages that may be highly vulnerable to foreclosure.

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PEORIA, Ill. (AP) _ Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback said Friday that Iraq should be divided into three sectarian-based states to halt the war and mounting death toll of American soldiers.

The Kansas senator said Iraq would remain one country, with a weak central government in Baghdad, but Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites would have their own states and equally share the nation's oil revenues.

"I believe this is ultimately the shape the place will take," Brownback told reporters before speaking at the annual Peoria GOP Lincoln Dinner. "We are not going to, over a long period of time, impose a military solution. It needs a political solution."

Brownback, a favorite of the religious right who billed himself a "bleeding-heart conservative," also promoted family values, health care and alternative energy sources such as ethanol and biodiesel during his stop in central Illinois.

He said he still is working to build name recognition in his long-shot bid for the 2008 Republican nomination. But he noted that other little-known candidates have risen out of the pack in past elections, including former Presidents Clinton and Carter.

"I'm the tortoise in the race and I don't like how that race starts but I like how it finishes," Brownback said.

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Associated Press writers Kathy Barks Hoffman in Sterling Heights, Mich., Jon Gambrell in Little Rock, Ark., Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles, Nathaniel Hernandez in Chicago and Jan Dennis in Peoria, Ill., contributed to this report.