Mudslinging picking up pace

Mudslinging - initiated over the weekend by Republican John McCain's campaign - gathered intensity in the presidential race yesterday as Democrat Barack Obama resurrected his opponent's links to a financial scandal that earned him a rebuke for poor judgment from Senate colleagues two decades ago.

Reacting to Republican allegations that he "palled around" with a 1960s radical, Obama fired back with a Web video about McCain's role in the Keating Five savings and loan debacle early in the Arizona senator's Senate career.

The Obama campaign was e-mailing a 13-minute Web "documentary" about McCain's involvement with convicted thrift owner Charles Keating, calling the episode "a window into McCain's economic past, present and future."