Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama hits the road on Monday for a Midwestern bus tour that he hopes will leave doubts over his leadership behind in Washington. But the three-day trip through Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois -- three states seen as vital to his 2012 re-election campaign -- could put him in front of voters who, polls show, are furious about political gridlock in the U.S. capital. Iowa, which launched Obama's historic journey to the White House in 2008, has recently been playing host to Republican presidential hopefuls who have aggressively slammed his record as they criss-cross the state....

A Norwegian team that includes the Thor Heyerdahl's grandson paddled Friday into the Pacific Ocean to repeat the famed adventurer's journey aboard the balsa raft Kon-Tiki. "My personal motivation is to have a great adventure," 28-year-old Olav Heyerdahl told The Associated Press before he and five shipmates embarked for the trip across the Pacific on the balsa raft Tangaroa _ named for the Polynesian god of the ocean. In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and his team sailed their primitive raft 5,000 miles from Peru to Polynesia in 101 days to support Heyerdahl's theory that the South Sea Islands were settled by...