Deputy FEMA Administrator Harvey E. Johnson Jr. said he intends to improve the help that the agency provides to Texans whose home were damaged or destroyed by the September hurricane. He said FEMA will deploy mobile homes to the hardest-hit areas more rapidly, review rules that might be causing premature denials of assistance and provide more resources to Texas.

He said Friday he has put more personnel into Texas housing assistance programs. He invited energy company officials into FEMA's Texas field offices to help provide electric power to mobile homes housing storm victims, and he has started a review of procedures that result in relatively few families being approved for assistance when they first apply.

Ike came ashore near Galveston on Sept. 13, causing at least $11 billion in damage to Texas.

Johnson met this past week with local officials in Galveston, the Beaumont-Port Arthur area and Houston.

"I've never had any intentions of trying to change anybody's mind," says Falco, a Barack Obama supporter. "I've heard a lot of celebrities talking about politics who, in my estimation, are not qualified to do so."

She adds, "Frankly, I'm embarrassed sometimes that they are representing my ilk, if you will."

For the seemingly endless number of celebrities who back Obama, trying to persuade people who already support the Illinois senator to volunteer for his campaign is as important as swaying undecided voters.

Four years ago, rocker Bruce Springsteen was the face of celebrity politics, making his first public endorsement of a candidate with a column in The New York Times before leading a series of swing-state concerts to urge a vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Five people were waiting at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections when doors opened at 8:30 a.m. Two in line said they were voting for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, including John Fuller, 73, a retired hospital orderly from Cleveland.

Fuller said voting early would allow him to work on Election Day helping others get out and vote. Fuller and others in line Tuesday morning were previously registered.

Election officials around Ohio prepared for a rush of early voting Tuesday, the first day absentee ballots are accepted in advance of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Backed by the state Supreme Court and two federal judges, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, is allowing new voters to register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day from Tuesday through Oct. 6.

For weeks, the Ohio Republican Party accused Brunner of interpreting the early voting law to benefit her own party by allowing same-day registering and voting. Republicans argued that Ohio law requires voters to be registered for 30 days before they cast an absentee ballot.

But the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court decided Monday that Brunner was following the law. The decision was backed by a federal judge in Cleveland. Another federal judge in Columbus declined to rule, deferring to the state Supreme Court's decision.

On Tuesday, the Ohio Republican Party asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati should either stop same-day voting or at least require the state's top elections official to separate those ballots so they can be verified. Brunner, however, has already instructed election officials to segregate the ballots cast by those who register on the same day and verify the registration information before those ballots are counted.

The second voter in line at the Board of Elections here was Julia Kramer, 19, a Case Western Reserve University freshman from New York City and an Obama volunteer. She said she's been working on campus to register out-of-state students to change their registrations to Ohio because of its critical role in the election.

Nevertheless, "A lot of people are really attached to their hometowns," Kramer said. "It's hard to explain to people that your vote (in New York) won't count as much."

In Columbus, voters wanting to cast ballots as soon as possible on Tuesday morning had set up tents Monday night to wait in line outside the Franklin County Board of Elections.

Obama's campaign organized car pools from college campuses to early voting sites. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is ferrying voters from homeless shelters to polling sites in the Cleveland area. Other organizations that seek to increase poor and minority participation in elections are transporting voters from low-income neighborhoods.

The targeted voters have all traditionally had a harder time getting registered, and then getting to polling places on Election Day.

Republicans weren't ceding the early voting crowd just because they were engaged in a court challenge.

"You have a special opportunity to help elect John McCain, Sarah Palin and Republicans across the ballot," a page on the Republican National Committee's Web site said.

The window occurs because state law requires absentee voting to begin 35 days before Election Day, on Sept. 30, while the end of registration for this election is Oct. 6. The window was used by voters sparingly in previous elections, but never got any attention until the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law in 2005 that enabled all Ohio voters to vote absentee.

"Every member of Congress and every American should keep in mind that a vote for this bill is a vote to prevent economic damage to you and your community," said Bush, fully aware that congressional passage of the $700 billion compromise legislation is far from assured.

"With this strong and decisive legislation," he said, "we will help restart the flow of credit so American families can meet their daily needs and American businesses can make purchases, ship goods and meet their payrolls."

Two leading players in the negotiations also spoke early Monday, taking to television news shows to lobby for approval of a package deeply unpopular with a public angry that taxpayer money will save Wall Street firms from heavy risk-taking. Thousands of angry phone calls, e-mails and letters have poured into Capitol Hill from constituents.

But Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said that failure to act would spread the contagion of frozen credit markets even further. "This is not just about Wall Street," said the Banking Committee chairman.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who represented fellow Republicans in the hard-fought 10 days of talks that culminated in a deal early Sunday morning, called it a "tourniquet" for the ailing financial industry and slow-moving economy.

Still, both men said the necessity of such massive government action is a sad day for the nation. Asked if the legislation, slated for a vote in the House later Monday and a Senate vote as early as Wednesday, would pass, Dodd said only: "We hope so."

These players were speaking not just to rank-and-file lawmakers to whom the spotlight now turns in this contentious, dramatic debate, but to U.S. and global markets which have displayed nervousness about Washington's determination to act.

Democrat Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, is only too happy to remind voters where McCain stands, but he tries to make his case without attracting too much attention.

Both presidential candidates are gingerly trying to strike the right chord on abortion as they reach out to a critical voting group — independents and moderates, primarily women in swing-voting suburban regions of crucial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio.

The candidates' carefully targeted ads on abortion and stem-cell research, topics that enflame passions among both abortion-rights proponents and opponents, illustrate how Republicans and Democrats alike are tailoring their messages to specific groups of voters.

Obama criticizes McCain in ads that say the GOP nominee takes an "extreme position on choice" and "will make abortion illegal." That misrepresents McCain's position. The Arizona senator favors overturning the Supreme Court's guarantee of abortion rights but would let states decide their own abortion laws, and he is not seeking a constitutional ban.

Obama is using low-profile radio ads and campaign mailings to make his point about McCain. He hopes to avoid being tagged as too liberal on abortion.

McCain, for his part, is responding with radio commercials promising to support stem cell research to "unlock the mystery of cancer, diabetes, heart disease." He doesn't mention that he supports embryonic stem cell research, which many anti-abortion Republicans oppose.

A lawsuit filed by his parents has been dragging through the courts for eight years as attorneys argue the central issue: who must pay damages.

A federal appeals court is still trying to come up with the answer.

Last December, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a lower court's order requiring several U.S.-based Islamic groups to pay $156 million to Boim's family — who claim money the groups gave to Palestinian charities ultimately helped fund terrorism.

But now the appeals court is second-guessing itself and revisiting the emotionally charged case, the first filed under a 1991 law allowing American victims of international terrorism to recover triple damages.

During an extraordinary "en banc" hearing before all 10 sitting judges last week, the case came in for a fresh airing. How much longer the case will go on is anyone's guess.