McCain, Obama court Hispanic voters

WASHINGTON—Presidential rivals John McCain and Barack Obama on Saturday vied for the support of Hispanics, beginning a four-month courtship of a pivotal voting constituency by vowing to revamp immigration policy.

“I come from a border state, my dear friends. I know these issues,” McCain told Hispanic elected officials. The Republican senator from Arizona said overhauling the country’s broken immigration system, not just securing its borders, “will be my top priority.”

Appearing later before the same audience, Obama accused McCain of walking away from comprehensive immigration reform. The Democratic senator from Illinois said: “We must assert our values and reconcile our principles as a nation of immigrants and a nation . . .

Brokaw needles Schwarzenegger on spending, economy

SACRAMENTO — — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, usually a darling of the national media, found himself being told by the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if he ran a private company the way he has run the state, he might have been fired by now.

Tom Brokaw, who will be moderating the program through the presidential election, put a series of confrontational questions to the governor in an interview taped in California and aired this morning.

“When you ran for governor in 2003, you ran as a fiscal conservative who would change the system, who would bring business-like techniques,” Brokaw said. “Now, you are facing a $15-billion deficit here in California. Unemployment is running at about 6.8%; you’ve got the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. If you were the CEO of a public company, the board would probably say, ‘It is time to go. . .

Judge orders Minutemen road sign to be reposted

A federal judge has ordered Caltrans to repost the San Diego Minutemen road sign on a two-mile stretch of Interstate 5, a victory for the anti-illegal immigration group.

The Minutemen were granted a northbound stretch of the highway near the Border Patrol’s checkpoint south of San Clemente in November as part of the Adopt-a-Highway litter cleanup program.

They were reassigned to state Route 52 near Santee in January after complaints to the agency about the group’s controversial nature and the location near the checkpoint. . .