NATIONAL POLITICS
Moving from celebrity to senator isn't exactly an untraveled path. But that doesn't mean comedian Al Franken, who is vying for a Senate seat in Minnesota, will coast to Capitol Hill on a wide, smooth road.
Former Sen. Jesse Helms, an unyielding champion of the conservative movement who spent three combative and sometimes caustic decades in Congress, where he relished his battles against liberals, Communists and occasionally a fellow Republican, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

