Edwards can't get matching funds for $4.2 million ... Clinton rejects top adviser's comments on Obama and teenage drug use ... Thompson says he's not worried about predictions for Iowa ... Huckabee pushes national sales tax in New Hampshire ... Romney focuses on immigration in Iowa trip ... Obama offers bit of health care advice

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Edwards can't get some matching funds

WASHINGTON (AP) - John Edwards cannot get federal matching funds for some $4.2 million raised through a Democratic Web site.

The Federal Election Commission decided Friday on a 4-1 vote that the money was not matchable because federal rules do not include those contributions.

About 53,000 Edwards supporters donated through the ActBlue site. The Web site gets dollars designated to any Democratic federal candidate. It then passes the money to the authorized committees of the candidates.

The Edwards campaign has said it always knew there could be a legal problem with the ActBlue money, so it never counted the funds toward the match it expects to get.

"Although today's decision by the FEC is a setback to the progressive grass-roots movement, our campaign has all the resources it needs to aggressively make our case to voters," Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz said. "Even without the ActBlue contributions included, we will meet our projected $10 million in matching funds."

Edwards became eligible for matching funds on Nov. 1. The former North Carolina senator can supplement his fundraising with millions of dollars from the Presidential Public Funding Program, which is financed by taxpayers who set aside $3 for the fund in their tax returns.

FEC commissioners in the majority said that while they want more people to participate in the process, the regulations were clear. Commissioner Ellen Weintraub opposed the decision, saying the rules were outdated because they existed before the Internet.

"We need to take another look at this regulation and we need to revamp it for the future because it clearly was not intended to cover this situation," she said.

Commission regulations prevent matching contributions drawn from a committee's account even if individuals designated those dollars to go to a presidential candidate.

ActBlue is a registered political committee.

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Clinton rejects official's Obama comment

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday denounced the comments of an official in her campaign who resigned after raising questions about drug use by Barack Obama.

Clinton was asked about the official's comments about Obama as she campaigned in Iowa, where the controversy has become an issue less than three weeks before the state's leadoff caucuses.

"As soon as I found out that one of my supporters and co-chairs in New Hampshire made a statement, asked a series of questions, I made it clear it was not authorized, it was in no way condoned, I didn't know about it and he stepped down," Clinton said.

A day earlier, Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman for Clinton and a prominent New Hampshire political figure, had resigned. He and the Clinton campaign had been criticized after he suggested Obama's admitted use of drugs as a teenager could be used against the Illinois senator if he became the Democratic presidential nominee.

Clinton, speaking during a taping of Iowa Public Television's "Iowa Press" program and during a meeting with reporters afterward, sought distance from that comment.

"I made it very clear as soon as I heard about it that I not only disapproved, it did not reflect the campaign I am running," said Clinton. "I did personally apologize, the gentleman in question has stepped down from the leadership role in my campaign."

Asked if the issue of Obama's drug use should be an issue, Clinton said, "Not in my campaign."

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Thompson appears confident about Iowa

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - For someone who's trailing in the polls, Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson sounds confident heading into next month's Iowa caucus.

Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, stopped in Mississippi on Friday to attend a private fundraiser and pick up the endorsement of the Wesleyan Center for Strategic Studies, a Washington-based conservative Methodist group.

"I'm getting ready to focus on the state of Iowa, which I think is kind of tailor-made for the way I campaigned in Tennessee, where I went 20 points down to 20 points ahead and did it again two years later," Thompson said Friday.

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Huckabee pushes national sales tax in NH

BOSCAWEN, N.H. (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said eliminating federal income taxes in favor of a national sales tax would help save Social Security - an odd pitch in a state where residents pay no state income or sales taxes.

"Instead of basing our national budget off of payroll taxes for Social Security ... it means the base of funding is much broader," said Huckabee, whose shoestring campaign has surged nationally and in Iowa, which holds caucuses five days before New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary.

"That's important because we have a declining number of people who actually live by their wages," the former Arkansas governor told workers at the Elektrisola plant in Boscawen, where workers make wires for electric guitars like those Huckabee plays, among other things.

The tax plan Huckabee has proposed, called the "FAIR tax," would eliminate federal income and investment taxes and replace them with a 23 percent federal sales tax. The poor would pay no net sales tax up to the poverty level, and every household would receive a rebate equal to sales taxes paid on essential goods and services.

Huckabee also named Republican political strategist Ed Rollins as his national campaign chairman. Rollins was national campaign director for Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election in which Reagan won 49 states.

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Romney focuses on immigration

CARROLL, Iowa (AP) - Republican Mitt Romney chided two of his leading rivals on illegal immigration Friday in a region of Iowa where the issue is among the hottest topics in the race for the state's leadoff precinct caucuses.

"This is a pretty important topic and there are differences by the way," Romney told about 100 people at a country club in northwest Iowa.

He repeated his frequent claim that rival Rudy Giuliani "presided over a sanctuary city" when he was mayor of New York City, but Romney reserved his sharpest words for Mike Huckabee. As governor of Arkansas, Romney said, Huckabee not only pushed for higher taxes but used some of that money to offer government benefits to people in the country illegally.

Romney also used his immigration pitch to make the case that Washington has been unable to resolve the issue and voters should seek answers from an outsider.

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Obama offers his own bit of health care advice

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - At a session with five Iowans facing different economic and health care hardships in Cedar Rapids, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama offered his own bit of health care advice.

Katherine Marcano, a 22-year-old community college student who works a graveyard shift and is raising her 16-year-old sister and 14-year-old cousin, had just finished describing how her schedule allowed her a mere three hours of sleep. How do you stay awake? Obama wanted to know. Energy, drinks and coffee, Marcano replied.