Hillary Clinton: Where's the Rodham?

While she is known to millions simply as "Hillary," New York's junior senator is having something of an identity crisis in her official life.

When it comes to running for president, she is "Hillary Clinton," according to her campaign Web site. But when it comes to her official Senate releases, she is still "Hillary Rodham Clinton."

The Clinton camp appeared to be at a loss to come up with an explanation when the Albany Times Union newspaper asked about it.

"I haven't, I haven't," Clinton said with laugh when asked about her apparent name change.

A strategic decision? Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson told The Associated Press on Monday: "The campaign hasn't given any thought to this issue."

"When we started writing press releases on the presidential campaign, we started using Hillary Clinton," Wolfson said.

Why? "Why not," he said.

The Clinton aide said there had been "zero" discussion about the matter and that given her celebrity, "I don't think anybody's going to be confused."

The name game has been going on for some time in Clinton's world.

When Hillary Rodham married Bill Clinton in 1975, she kept using her maiden name as he pursued his political career in Arkansas and she built her reputation as a lawyer in Little Rock. But, in the wake of his loss in a re-election race for governor, she began using "Hillary Clinton." He won back the governorship.

"Hillary Rodham Clinton" became the standard in 1993 as the Clintons moved into the White House. She continued to use that when she ran for Senate from New York in 2000.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) _ Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said former CIA Director George Tenet's points on the buildup to the Iraq war in his memoir show that Congress must press its demand for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

"It's just further evidence of how strong the Congress needs to be in standing up to President Bush," Edwards told The Associated Press in a brief telephone interview Monday.

Tenet writes in his new book, "At the Center of the Storm," that Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials pushed for the U.S. to invade Iraq without a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. The book was officially released Monday.

President Bush said Monday that he wants to work with Democrats on compromise legislation to fund the Iraq war even though he promised to veto a funding bill that sets an October timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces.

Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, voted to authorize the invasion in 2002, but has since called his vote a mistake.

Tenet isn't the only one with a new book.

John Edwards co-edited a book released Monday that details a variety of possible solutions to poverty in the United States. The book is titled, "Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream," and contributors include former Republican presidential candidate Jack Kemp.

Edwards helped coordinate the collection of essays while serving as director of The Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) _ Democratic presidential contender Bill Richardson, in a campaign stop in Nevada, said Monday he favors overturning last year's congressional ban on Internet gambling.

"I'm against shutting it down," Richardson said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is important to the economy of the state, as long as it's properly regulated and it is."

While in this wide-open gambling state, the New Mexico governor said he might occasionally play slot machines but otherwise doesn't gamble.

The Internet gambling ban prohibits banks from processing fund transfers from players to settle their online wagers. The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators were tasked with coming up with practical measures to enforce the law by July 2007.

Americans bet an estimated $6 billion per year online, according to industry figures, most of it through sites run by companies outside the U.S.

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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Has U2's Bono finally found what he's looking for?

The rocker and global do-gooder will pair up Tuesday with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to back legislation to expand education efforts in impoverished countries.

When Bono's Irish supergroup performed in the nation's capital in 2005, Clinton seized it as a fundraising opportunity, charging $2,500 a seat to rock out with the New York senator in a luxury box.

Then as now, Bono is not endorsing her politically, just her policy stance on the issue of global education.

The two will participate in a conference call with reporters Tuesday to tout the legislation that would add billions in U.S. aid to overseas education programs. The bill would expand education for the estimated 77 million children worldwide who are not enrolled in primary school. The legislation, which has been offered in past years, would spend $10 billion over 5 years.

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WASHINGTON (AP) _ Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman said Monday a third-party candidate could emerge to shake things up in the 2008 presidential race unless the two major parties tackle the growing problem of partisan polarization that alienates many voters.

"I think the public is fed up," he said. "If the two major parties don't hear this going into '08, there is a real chance of an independent third-party candidacy _ and watch out if that happens," he said at a forum on civility and politics on Capitol Hill.

Extremists in both parties are driving the debate in the 2008 primary, said Lieberman, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 and who ran unsuccessfully for the party's 2004 presidential nomination.

The fastest growing political party in America, he said, is "no party."

Lieberman, I-Conn., has cast himself as an independent voice in the closely divided Senate. His Iraq war support angered many Democrats and led to his primary loss last summer to challenger Ned Lamont. But Lieberman bounced back and won re-election as an independent, stressing his desire to work across party lines to get things done.

Citing the harsh, divisive tone of attack ads, bloggers, talk radio and cable TV news, Lieberman said most voters across the country are turned off by the partisan bombast and registering to vote as independents in greater numbers.

"The disease is partisanship," he said. "The lack of civility is one of the symptoms of that disease."

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Associated Press Writers Devlin Barrett and Andrew Miga in Washington, Ryan Nakashima in Las Vegas, Brendan Riley in Carson City, Nev., and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.