Updated from the top. Please treat this as a blog-within-a-blog, come back often, and scroll down till you hit something you saw on your last visit.

• Virginia Tech Murders Gives GOP Candidates Chance to Prove Gun Rights Credentials
• Trivializing Virginia Tech
• Edwards Campaigns on Universal Hair Care
• Look who's propping up Al Sharpton
• Gallup: Hillary’s favorable rating craters
• House GOP Gush Over Actor Fred Thompson
• [Thompson] Meet And Greet Draws 53 Members

See my last previous roundup here. I skipped a day due to the Virginia Tech massacre.

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Virginia Tech Murders Gives GOP Candidates Chance to Prove Gun Rights Credentials 

WASHINGTON —  Forget sporting a hunting rifle and camouflage flak jacket -- Republican candidates wanting to prove their credibility with the gun rights lobby may have that opportunity as the Virginia Tech murders this week begin reviving a national debate over gun laws.

"(The Republican candidates) must appeal to folks like me to get my vote. I don't expect them to be calling for further gun control," said Jeff Soyer, who runs www.Alphecca.com, a Web log popular with supporters of the Second Amendment guarantee for individuals to bear arms.

"Simply put," Soyer said, "there is no law that could be enacted that would have prevented this tragedy. You can't legislate against insanity."

While leading Democratic candidates like Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did not raise the specter of gun control legislation in recent statements about the Virginia Tech tragedy, which ended in the deaths of 33 people on Monday, Republican sources, including the White House, have already waded into the thorny issue of gun rights.   ...

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who has enjoyed a mixed record with the gun advocates, was the first of any leading GOP hopeful to insist what happened this week would not shake his belief in the Second Amendment.

"I do believe in the constitutional right that everyone has — in the Second Amendment to the Constitution — to carry a weapon," he said in response to a reporter's question. "Obviously, we have to keep guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens." ...

While Democratic presidential candidates may be holding back, some Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates who have seen their cause languish on Capitol Hill during the Bush administration, have already expressed that it was time to turn that around.

"I believe this will reignite the dormant effort to pass common sense gun regulations in this nation," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who unsuccessfully sponsored renewal of the assault weapons ban after it expired in 2004.  ...

Some analysts suggest that Gore lost his 2000 bid by casting, as Senate president, the deciding vote in favor of closing the so-called gun show "loophole" — requiring background checks by private gun sellers at gun shows. That is debatable, but it's clear that since then, some presidential candidates have gone out of their way to prove their bona fides with the NRA crowd.

For example, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, was mocked in 2004 after a photo-op hunting pheasant in Iowa. Observers complained Kerry looked ill-suited to the role as hunter and the awkwardness had the opposite effect on gun enthusiasts, who were already behind Republican candidate Bush.

More recently, Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was chided for boasting about a lifetime passion for hunting. The former Massachusetts governor was later forced to explain why no hunting licenses could be found bearing his name. He pointed out that one doesn't need a license to hunt small animals like rabbits in his home state of Utah. ...

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Trivializing Virginia Tech
James Taranto

Ben Smith of the Politico reports on a Milwaukee speech by Sen. Barack Obama that, as Smith remarks, "captures what moves a lot of people about Obama, and bothers others." Count us among the bothered. You can listen to the speech in MP3 format, and blogger Jon Sanders excerpts the bothersome part. Obama urges his audience "to reflect a little bit more broadly on the degree to which we do accept violence in various forms all the time in our society." When he says "broadly," he isn't kidding:

It's not necessarily physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news obviously had to do with Imus, and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughters. . . .

There's the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has moved to another country, they've lost their job and they've lost their pension benefits and they've lost their healthcare, and they're having to compete against their teenage children for jobs at the local fast-food place paying $7 an hour.

There is the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored, who don't have access to a decent education, who are surrounded by drugs and crime, and a lack of hope.

So there's a lot of different forms of violence in our society.

Let's try putting this in a slightly different way. According to Obama, it is a form of violence when a racist radio host insults college basketball players. It is a form of violence when people lose their jobs. It is a form of violence when people seek jobs that pay $7 an hour. It is a form of violence when the voices of children in ignored communities go unheard.

And oh yeah, by the way, when a lunatic murders 32 people in cold blood, darned if that isn't a form of violence too!

Anyway, we thought the real problem wasn't violence but cynicism. Or maybe cynicism is just another form of violence.

Michelle comments here.

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Edwards Campaigns on Universal Hair Care
By Scott Ott

2007-04-18) — Democrat presidential hopeful John Edwards today unveiled the centerpiece of his 2008 White House bid, a budget-neutral proposal to provide universal hair care to every American.

The former North Carolina senator and 2004 vice presidential candidate is the acknowledged “hair policy wonk” among Democrat candidates.

Speaking to a convention of stylists and cosmetologists yesterday, Mr. Edwards described “the vast divide between the well-coiffed and the un-coiffed masses — a divide as sharp as the part in my own tawny locks.” ...

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Look who's propping up Al Sharpton
Michelle Malkin

Last week, I noted how willing media have propped up race hustler Al Sharpton. There's one other powerful institution that continues to serve as a Sharpton enabler: the Democrat Party.

Every major presidential candidate is scheduled to pay homage at Sharpton's annual National Action Network convention this week--beginning with John Edwards and climaxing with Barack Obama: ...

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Gallup: Hillary’s favorable rating craters
Allahpundit

I’m not complaining. But I honestly don’t get it.

Note that Obama’s own rating is actually a point lower than what it was in February so it’s not like his popularity is digging into hers. Follow the link and start scrolling and you’ll see that the decline cuts across every possible division: regional, political, income, gender, race, marital status, education, you name it. Minuses all the way down the line. The nutroots will try to coopt it as proof that her position on the war is alienating people, but I doubt most Americans know anything about that except (a) she voted for it and (b) she’s against it now. Both of which are also true of Edwards, of course. In fact, her biggest drop is among self-identified “moderates” compared to “liberals” and “conservatives”: -11 to -8 to -9, respectively.

The upshot is that her 38-19 lead over Obama two weeks ago has crumbled to 31-26. I can’t think of anything she’s done recently that would inspire a backlash like this, so I’m throwing it open with an earnest, non-rhetorical exit question: What gives? If it’s a sampling error, how did they bungle the sample so badly as to achieve negatives across the board demographically? Or is this simply a question of familiarity with the Glacier breeding contempt as the campaign wears on? ...

Kim Priestap has more here.

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House GOP Gush Over Actor Fred Thompson

WASHINGTON -- The welcome for Fred Thompson wasn't just warm, it was effusive. The former Tennessee senator and actor is still weighing whether to run for the GOP presidential nomination but House Republicans who met with him Wednesday gushed over the prospects of Thompson candidacy.

They called him presidential, a leader, a proven conservative, an exciting prospect and "a breath of fresh air."

"I wanted to come over and see some of my old friends and make some new friends and tell them what was on my mind and listen and to see what was on their minds," Thompson said in a brief statement to reporters camped outside the Capitol Hill Club.

"We had a good talk. I enjoyed it, and we'll be seeing some more of each other I'm sure," added Thompson, the actor who plays the gruff district attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's "Law & Order."

Before ducking into a waiting vehicle, he shook his head no when asked whether he had a timeline for deciding whether to run for president. ...

Some 50 House Republicans attended the private meeting arranged by Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, a Republican leading a draft-Thompson campaign.

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[Thompson] Meet And Greet Draws 53 Members

Hotliner Tim Sahd reports:

Said Ex-Sen. Fred Thompson, exiting a get-to-know-you session on Capitol Hill today: "I wanted to come over and see old friends, meet new ones and listen and see what was on their minds."

53 members came to see Mr. Thompson.

Rep. Zach Wamp spoke to reporters.

On fundraising issues: “He was not afraid, at all, of not having money, not in this climate in terms of his campaign. And he didn’t think it was too late. He knew there was a window, and he was not going to go outside of that window.

Wamp, on the timing of his announcement and the workings of his campaign: “He said ‘I have the ability right now to do certain things you can’t as a candidate.’ And that’s why it’s special he’s doing it his way. He said ‘I’m not going to follow the consultants’ path here because they’ve been wrong too many times. I’m going to follow my heart and this is going to be a different approach and I think people are ready for a different approach. And that’s why I’m not here because I want to be here, I’m here because there’s a need.’ I really believe he thinks the man and the times are lining up.” ...

On social issues: “The conservatives say he checks the boxes but he also transcends our party. He reaches out to the middle. He brings Reagan Democrats back to our party. He has appeal that other candidates simply don’t have.”

If he’s running: “The man that came to see us today, in my view, is preparing to run for president.”