In campaign news, Democratic presidential rivals Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton both spoke in Selma, Alabama, on Sunday to mark the 42nd anniversary of Bloody Sunday. On March 7, 1965, police violently attacked hundreds of peaceful civil rights protesters as they tried to march from Selma to Montgomery to secure their voting rights. Senator Obama said he was able to run for president because of the sacrifices made by those in Selma. He described himself as an offspring of the movement.

Sen. Obama: “Government alone can’t solve all those problems, but government can help. And it’s a responsibility of the Joshua Generation to make sure we have a government that’s responsive as the need that exists all across America. But that brings me to one other point though, Joshua Generation. That is this. It’s not enough just to ask what the government can do for us. It’s important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves.”

Senator Clinton appeared in Selma along with former President Bill Clinton.

Sen. Clinton: “How do we say everything is fine, Bloody Sunday is for the history books, when over 96,000 of our citizens, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are still living in trailers and mobile homes, which is a national disgrace to everything we stand for in America?”

After speaking at separate rallies, both Obama and Clinton joined in a march across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge.