Researchers reached that conclusion after comparing DNA from both fossil remains found on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, and from living people who belong to several First Nations tribes in the area.

The new results, published today (July 3) in the journal PLOS ONE, are consistent with nearby archaeological evidence suggesting a fairly continuous occupation of the region for the last 5,000 years. []

"We're finding links that tie maternal lineages from as far back as the mid- 5,000 years ago to living descendants living today in Native American communities," said study co-author Ripan Malhi, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ancient genomes

Past research showed that almost all of today'swho crossed the Bering Strait around 20,000 years ago. But getting a more detailed picture of history prior to colonization has proven difficult.

That's partly because after colonization, European men often mixed with Native American women, meaning DNA from the genome as a whole, and from the Y chromosome (the male sex chromosome), contained a significant fraction of European markers.

To get around this problem, Malhi and his colleagues chose to analyze mitochondrial DNA, which is carried within the egg and is passed on only through the maternal line. The team collected DNA from 60 currently living people from the Tsimshian, Haida and Nisga'a tribes on the northern coast of British Columbia.

They then compared those samples with mitochondrial DNA extracted from the teeth of four ancient individuals: a 6,000-year old and 5,500-year-old skeleton unearthed in a heap of shells (called a midden) near an ancient house from the Lucy Islands in British Columbia, and twounearthed on Dodge Island, British Columbia that were 5,000 and 2,500-years-old, respectively. []

The researchers found that three living individuals from the Tsimshian and Nisga'a tribes contained DNA that matched that from the older skeleton found in Dodge Island and that three of the skeletons matched to DNA from at least one living person. The oldest Lucy Island skeleton had DNA that didn't match living relatives, but did match a 10,300-year-old skeleton unearthed in On Your Knees Cave on Prince Wales Island, Alaska.

"What's particularly interesting about this paper is that the authors found two mitochondrial lineages in the Northwest Coast region in both the ancient individuals and modern people living in the area. This suggests that there's a long continuity of occupation of this region," Jennifer Raff, an anthropological genetcist at the Northwestern University in Illinois, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email.

In addition, the fact that the people were found in a shell midden suggests the culture has been relatively continuous for the last 5,000 years. Up until the 1800s, Northwest coast tribes would build rectangular houses and throw their food waste mostly seafood shells in a shell midden next to the house, Malhi told LiveScience.

"The information is new and exciting, and it fits with everything that somebody who knows about Northwest coast history and culture knows," said Susan Marsden, a historian who works with First Nations groups and the curator of the Museum of Northern British Columbia.

Still, the genetic data could create a potentially misleading picture of a completely stable culture, Marsden, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience.

In fact, these communities keep meticulously handed-down oral histories that serve in part to track matrilineal heritage, and those oral histories suggest furtherinto the region in the last 5,000 years, Marsden said.

For their part, Malhi and his colleagues, at the request of the tribes themselves, are doing further research to see how the genetic history of the region lines up with their oral histories.

Follow Tia Ghose onand .FollowLiveScience , & . Original article on.

Wainwright (12-5) struck out nine over seven strong innings, allowing just one run, to join Washington's Jordan Zimmermann at the top of the NL wins category.

Matt Carpenter had three early RBIs to spark St. Louis to a 7-0 lead then they held on for a fourth straight victory, while NL Central rivals Pittsburgh fell 1 1/2 games behind after a 2-1 loss to Oakland took their losing streak to four straight.

Brandon Moss hit a two-run home run in the fourth inning and the Athletics leaned on pitcher Dan Straily, who allowed just one run in 6 1/3 innings to beat a quality start from Pirates pitcher Gerrit Cole.

It was a third straight win for American League West leaders Oakland, who remain a half-game in front of Texas.

In Detroit, Alex Rios tied an AL record with six hits during a nine-inning game to vault the Chicago White Sox past the Tigers 11-4.

The White Sox pounded out 23 hits in total and exploded late with 10 runs in the final two innings.

In addition to Rios's huge night, Dayan Viciedo hit two home runs while Detroit's Miguel Cabrera added his 29th homer of the season in the defeat.

In San Diego, Eric Stults pitched a complete game to snap the Padres' 10-game losing streak with a 2-1 win over Colorado.

Stults threw eight shutout innings but surrendered an RBI single to Nolan Arenado in the ninth before getting the final out.

(Writing by Jahmal Corner in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

As unseasonably warm temperatures continue to stall in the triple digits in large parts of the western United States, Yahoo asked residents to share their heat wave experiences. Here's one.

FIRST PERSON | RENO, Nev. -- The heat is doing more than making Reno-area residents sweat. As temperatures soar in northern Nevada, so does the chance of wildfires and heat-related injuries.

With record-high temperatures reaching 105 earlier this week, the National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory until at least 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Many residents are staying inside or taking to the water to cool down.

"I get up and water my yard at 8 a.m. and then stay inside with the air conditioning going all day," said Sparks resident Glenna Gish. "It is too hot to go anywhere or do anything."

Gish, who has lived in Sparks since 1977, said this heat wave is the worst she has ever experienced. "I can't remember it ever being this hot here," she said.

Desiree McErquiaga Gray of Reno agreed. She said that she stays inside and has a Lifetime-Channel-a-Thon, watching sappy movies for hours on end.

If she has to go out she takes her kids to the Bowers Mansion Pool in New Washoe City or hits Yogurt Beach for a cool treat.

"I go kayaking or paddle boarding at Lake Tahoe," said Reno resident Christopher Foreman.

The Truckee River is also a hot spot for young and old alike. However, two people have already drowned after entering its cool but unpredictable waters on Tuesday.

Along with northern Nevada's sweltering heat comes the afternoon wind, thunderstorms, and possible brush fires and flash flooding.

Since Sunday, a fire has burned 96 acres near Silver City (the Pedlar Fire) and 5,400 acres have been consumed in the Red Rock Fire north of Reno.

For those avoiding the smoky skies and afternoon storms, their homes provide a safe haven from the heat.

"As long as the air conditioner keeps on cooling, I'll be fine, " said Gish's husband, Don.

And so far that has not been an issue yet.

"Fortunately, the heat has not caused any service issues. NV Energy has adequate resources to serve the company's 324,000 electric customers in northern Nevada," NV Energy spokesman Karl Walquist said.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Programs designed to prevent childhood obesity in the home don't affect kids' weight a year or more down the line, according to a review of the evidence.

But that conclusion comes from only a small number of available studies on the programs, and doesn't prove that such studies can't work, according to lead author Dr. Nakiya Showell.

"We need additional studies to answer this question, especially studies with greater number of participants, greater program exposure among participants and longer participant followup," said Showell, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Other studies have shown that family influence and home environment play an important role in preventing childhood obesity, which affects about 17 percent of American children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the review, the researchers analyzed the results of the six best studies on home based programs for kids. Three included diet and exercise, one was on diet alone and two also included primary care or school programs. The kids ranged from two to 18 years old.

"Most programs involved educating children and their parents or family about healthy diet and physical activity choices (i.e. increasing fruit and vegetable intake, increasing daily physical activity, decreasing TV/computer screen time, etc.)," Showell told Reuters Health by email.

Some, but not all, included actual exercise sessions, she said.

The studies either compared the home-based program to another program or to a comparison group of kids not enrolled in any program. All measured the kids' weight or body mass index (BMI), an indication of body fat percentage, at least one year after the program had ended, to see if it had any effect.

Some of the programs did result in kids eating more fruits and veggies or getting up and moving around more than the comparison groups, but none affected kids' weight or BMI, according to results published in the journal Pediatrics.

In each study, the percentage of kids qualifying as overweight or obese was the same in the program group and the comparison group.

Among the three studies that showed the programs worked, although not for weight, the findings may have been because those programs had components in schools or primary care.

There isn't enough evidence out there to draw real conclusions about these programs, according to Helen Skouteris, who was not involved in the study.

And the few that were available for study included children in a wide range of ages, in fact too wide a range to synthesize the results, Skouteris, of Deakin University in Burwood Victoria, Australia, told Reuters Health.

It is also troubling that the study did not include details about parental influences like role modeling, encouragement and feeding behaviors, which should not be ignored, she said.

It's unclear how best to improve these programs, but "In my opinion as a pediatrician and pediatric obesity researcher, home-based obesity prevention programs should include additional components beyond what is described in this particular review," Showell said.

The programs should stress family and parental involvement and also address access to healthy food and space for play in the community, she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/13yAfIs Pediatrics, online June 10, 2013.

Zanotti, three times a runner-up on tour, the last time at the 2012 Irish Open, shot his second 68 to finish six-under-par and ahead of a group that included 42-year-old Dane Thomas Bjorn.

Overnight leader Hansen, another 42-year-old Dane, dropped four shots in his first 11 holes, following up his 66 with a 78 and was two over along with former world number one Martin Kaymer of Germany, who carded a 76.

Zanotti, 30, ranked 391st in the world, had four birdies and a single bogey in his round at the testing Le Golf National course, venue for the 2018 Ryder Cup.

Defending champion Marcel Siem of Germany missed the cut and others who struggled were Luke Donald and Ian Poulter, the Britons both on two over. American Matt Kuchar was three over after a 75.

After fog delayed the start for an hour, one man in early contention was Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell. The former U.S. Open champion fired a second 69 to be four under.

McDowell, like many of the leading contenders warming up for the British Open at Muirfield this month, had missed the cut in five of his last six strokeplay events before this week.

"I'm playing this golf course the way it's supposed to be played - fairways and greens. Once you start hitting it off line it will punish you. I just have not got the putter revved up but I am well in touch and right where I need to be," McDowell said.

"It's been a rough couple of months for me. I've not been playing the kind of golf I'd like to and the key to this week was to come and get myself in the mix for the weekend and get some of the juices flowing again."

(Writing by Tony Goodson in London; Editing by John Mehaffey)

Sarah Guyard-Guillot was pronounced dead late Saturday night at a hospital after falling about 50 feet from the show's stage.

Witnesses told the Las Vegas Sun (http://bit.ly/14H3Te0 ) that the accident occurred near the end of the production Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

Visitor Dan Mosqueda of Colorado Springs, Colo., said the 31-year-old acrobatic performer was being hoisted up the side of the stage when it appeared that she slipped free of her safety wire and plummeted to an open pit below the stage.

"Initially, a lot of people in the audience thought it was part of the (show)," he told the Sun. "But you could hear screaming, then groaning, and we could hear a female artist crying from the stage."

The show momentarily continued, then stopped. Minutes after the accident, a recorded announcement informed audience members that refunds or vouchers to future shows would be offered, and the crowd was dismissed.

Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte issued a statement Sunday praising Guyard-Guillot and saying performances of "Ka" have been canceled until further notice.

Guyard-Guillot, a mother of two children, had been with the original cast of "Ka" since 2006, and had been an acrobatic performer for over 20 years.

"I am heartbroken. I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to the family. We are all completely devastated," Laliberte said. "We are reminded with great humility and respect how extraordinary our artists are each and every night. Our focus now is to support each other as a family."

Cirque officials are working with authorities investigating the accident and have offered their full cooperation, he added.

The Clark County Coroner's Office will rule on the cause of death.

The MGM Grand also issued a statement concerning the accident.

"Our company is deeply saddened by the loss of one of the talented KA artists Saturday night," it reads. "The thoughts and prayers of our employees are with the performer's family, the cast of KA, and the entire Cirque family during this difficult time."

The accident occurred while Cirque's top executives, including president Daniel Lamarre, were in Las Vegas to celebrate the premiere of "Michael Jackson One" at Mandalay Bay.

On Wednesday night, a performer in a preview performance of that show suffered a mild concussion after missing the protective pad below an act and landing on the stage. That artist is expected to return to the show.

___

Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a man with a mission: to erase the bitter stain of defeat and attain personal political redemption with a victory in a national election this month.

With his Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition (LDP) back in power since December and all but assured of a handsome win in a July 21 poll for parliament's upper house, Abe might forgiven for slowing his pace a bit.

But allies and critics agree the 58-year-old heir to an elite political family will not rest until the votes are counted and his ruling bloc is in control of the chamber, reversing a humiliating defeat that led to his resignation six years ago.

"I guess history is a turn of Fortune's wheel. The LDP led by Prime Minister Abe suffered a crushing defeat in the last (2007) upper house election, which led us to lose power," Abe's close ally Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference last week as the official campaign commenced.

"We must resolve the split in parliament through this upper house election. By doing so, Prime Minister Abe can finally get his revenge from the defeat of six years ago."

Upper house lawmakers serve six-year terms and half the seats are contested every three years, so the seats to be filled in the coming election are those that were at stake in 2007.

When he succeeded popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September 2006, Abe - then aged 52 - had high support ratings. Ten troubled months later, his popularity eroded by scandals in his cabinet and public outrage over lost pension records, Abe led the LDP to its worst election defeat since it was founded in 1955.

He clung to power for another two months before suddenly quitting in the face of a deadlock in parliament, where the opposition-controlled upper house was blocking a key bill, and ill health due to a flare up of his chronic ulcerative colitis.

Two years and two more LDP prime ministers later, the LDP lost power to the novice Democratic Party of Japan in an historic 2009 lower house poll.

"The setback then has been deeply embedded in my heart," Abe told a news conference after parliament ended its session late last month. "I cannot lose the upper house election."

Abe spent much of the next five years regaining his health and repairing his reputation with the support of equally conservative lawmakers and business executives. By 2012, he was ready for another run at the premiership. He secured a rare second chance as prime minister after the LDP and its junior partner swept aside the Democrats in a December lower house election.

TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

Abe has been in campaign mode ever since.

A string of overseas visits, frequent interviews, domestic photo op events and use of social media including Facebook have kept him constantly in the public eye.

The non-stop schedule prompted some close aides to urge Abe to take a break and even caused some concern that exhaustion might lead to a gaffe just when everything looks rosy.

"The prime minister feels that he was responsible in the past for losing the upper house election and for the ensuing situation. He has tasked himself with not resting until the upper house election is won," Economics Minister Akira Amari told a news conference last month.

Abe is showing no signs of taking victory for granted. Recalling how media had forecast an LDP win in a 1998 upper house poll, only to see the party lose after then-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto flip-flopped over income tax cuts in the final days, Abe on the weekend warned against complacency.

"If we are not on our guard until the end, we will lose," he said on a Sunday TV talk show with other party leaders.

Abe insists that once the election is won, he will not be distracted from his drive to revive the economy with a mix of hyper-easy monetary policy, fiscal spending and structural reforms, including deregulation.

But some fear that with the stronger position, he will shift gears to focus on a conservative agenda, including revising the post-war pacifist constitution to legitimize the military and bolstering pride in Japanese traditions rather than dwelling on Japan's wartime past.

"Every country has pride in its history so what is important is to have mutual respect," he said on the Sunday TV show.

The conservative, hawkish Abe imbibed many of his political ideals at the knee of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, a wartime cabinet minister who served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

Kishi was forced to resign without achieving his goal of revising the U.S.-drafted constitution due to a furor over a U.S.-Japan Security Treaty that he rammed through parliament.

Abe will face one test on August 15, when many of his rightwing backers would like him to pay his respect at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied Tribunal are honored with war dead.

"Mr. Abe has an internal struggle between his head - the pragmatic realist - and his heart," said Columbia University political science professor Gerry Curtis, adding that Abe's emotions incline him to explain away Japan's wartime actions.

"As long as his head is in control, he's OK. But if he says what he really thinks, then he gets in real trouble."

(Editing by Neil Fullick)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for telling Congress earlier this year that the National Security Agency does not collect data on millions of Americans, a response he now says was "clearly erroneous."

Clapper apologized in a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. His agency posted the letter Tuesday on its website.

Leaks by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden have revealed the NSA's sweeping data collection of U.S. phone records and some Internet traffic every day, though U.S. intelligence officials have said the programs are aimed at targeting foreigners and terrorist suspects mostly overseas.

Clapper was asked during a hearing in March by Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, if the NSA gathered "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans."

At first, Clapper answered definitively: "No."

Pressed by Wyden, Clapper changed his answer. "Not wittingly," he said. "There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."

Last month, in an interview with NBC News after revelations about the program, Clapper said: "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner" because the program was classified.

In his letter to Feinstein, Clapper wrote that he was thinking about whether the NSA gathered the content of emails, rather than the metadata of the phone records the record of calls to and from U.S. citizens and the length of those phone calls.

"I realized later Sen. Wyden was asking about ... metadata collection, rather than content collection," Clapper wrote. "Thus, my response was clearly erroneous, for which I apologize."

Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday: "I have received Director Clapper's letter and believe it speaks for itself. I have no further comment at this time."

Wyden spokesman Tom Caiazza said Tuesday that when Wyden staffers contacted Clapper's office shortly after the hearing, his staffers "acknowledged that the statement was inaccurate but refused to correct the public record when given the opportunity."

"Sen. Wyden is deeply troubled by a number of misleading statements senior officials have made about domestic surveillance in the past several years. He will continue pushing for an open and honest debate," Caiazza said.

In the letter, Clapper said he could now publicly correct the record, because the existence of the metadata collection program has been declassified since the deluge of leaks from Snowden. A copy of the letter posted on the DNI website was stamped June 21 but made public on Tuesday.

Snowden is believed to be in a Moscow airport transit area, seeking asylum from one of more than a dozen countries.

Since the revelations, the Obama administration has said the leaks have caused damage to national security, including tipping off al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to specific types of U.S. electronic surveillance.

But under pressure from lawmakers and privacy activists, the administration took the extraordinary step of declassifying many of the details surrounding the surveillance programs and how they work, to explain to Americans that NSA is not spying directly on them, which would violate its charter.

The Senate has passed legislation that combines the promise of citizenship for those living in the United States unlawfully with increased border security. But that approach seems to be a nonstarter in the GOP-led House.

Still, Bush tells ABC's "This Week" that it looks like lawmakers are making "some progress."

Bush was unable to get an overhaul passed when he was president.

Asked whether the GOP would suffer if immigration legislation died, Bush said the reason to pass it isn't to bolster the Republican Party but to fix the system.

He said, "Good policy yields good politics as far as I'm concerned."

The decision caught Republicans between newfound state autonomy that conservatives covet and the law's popularity among minority, young and poor voters who tend to align with Democrats. It's those voters that Republicans are eyeing to expand and invigorate the GOP's core of older, white Americans.

National GOP Chairman Reince Priebus began that effort well before the court's decision by promising, among other initiatives, to hire non-white party activists to engage directly with black and Latino voters. Yet state and national Republicans reacted to the Voting Rights Act decision with a flurry of activity and comments that may not fit neatly into the national party's vision.

Congressional leaders must decide whether to try to rewrite the provision the court struck, but it's not clear how such an effort would fare in the Democratic-led Senate and the GOP-controlled House. And at the state level, elected Republicans are enacting tighter voting restrictions that Democrats blast as harmful to their traditional base of supporters and groups the Republicans say they want to attract.

States like North Carolina and Virginia provide apt examples of the potential fallout. An influx of non-whites have turned those Republican strongholds into battlegrounds in the last two presidential elections, and minority voters helped President Barack Obama win both states in 2008 and Virginia again in 2012. Nationally, Republican Mitt Romney lost among African-Americans by about 85 percentage points and Latinos by about 44 percentage points, margins that virtually ensure a Democratic victory.

Yet presidential math doesn't necessarily motivate Republicans who control statehouses and congressional districts in states most affected by the Voting Rights Act. Core GOP supporters in the region react favorably to voter identification laws and broad-based critiques of federal authority.

Against that backdrop, Southern Republicans celebrated Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion that effectively frees all or parts of 15 states with a history of racial discrimination from having to get advanced federal approval for any election procedure.

The so-called "preclearance" provision anchored the law that Congress renewed four times since its 1965 passage as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement for black Americans. The law contains an "opt-out" provision that allowed a jurisdiction to ask a federal court for release from preclearance if it has established a record of non-discrimination. Roberts said that process never used successfully by an entire state wasn't enough.

"The court recognized that states can fairly design our own (district) maps and run our own elections without the federal government," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement.

Citizens can still sue to overturn state laws, but they'll likely have to prove discrimination after the fact, rather than local authorities having to convince federal officials in advance that a law wouldn't discriminate.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican running for governor, said: "I do not believe we have the institutional bigotry like we had before."

GOP officials in Texas and Mississippi promised within hours of the decision to enforce new laws requiring voters to show identification at polls. The U.S. Justice Department's civil rights lawyers had frozen the Mississippi law while they considered effects on minority voters, while a panel of federal judges in Washington blocked the Texas law because of its potential to harm low-income and minority voters. North Carolina Republicans said they'd enact their own voter identification law. Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed new congressional district maps tilted to Republican advantage that federal authorities would have had to review.

But in Washington, Republicans like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia embraced the nuances of Roberts' ruling. The court didn't actually strike down preclearance, instead tossing rules that determined which jurisdictions got oversight. Congress is free to rewrite those parameters and revive advance review, Roberts wrote.

"I'm hopeful Congress will put politics aside," Cantor said, "and find a responsible path forward that ensures that the sacred obligation of voting in this country remains protected."

The white Republican recalled his recent trip to Alabama with black Democratic Rep. John Lewis on the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, was beaten repeatedly as a young civil rights advocate during the 1960s. The commemoration, Cantor said, was "a profound experience."

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who helped lead the law's latest reauthorization when the GOP ran Congress in 2006, said the court "disappointed" him. Lingering discrimination, he said, compels Congress to update the act, "especially for minorities."

"There's no easy answer" for the GOP, said Henry Barbour, a high-profile member of the Republican National Committee. The Mississippi native conceded his personal views demonstrate the complications.

Barbour helped write the national party's post-election analysis calling for better outreach to minorities and urged fellow Republicans that "our tone is important, on this and any other issue." But he's clear in his support for the decision and what it means in Mississippi.

Blatantly racist laws like poll taxes and literacy tests once made preclearance necessary, Barbour said. "But when you have to go hat-in-hand to Washington every time you want to move a polling place," then it's evolved into "federal harassment that's gone on way too long," he added.

Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said Congress is capable of writing a new national formula based on the latest voter registration and turnout data "if everyone will sit back and take a deep breath."

Barbour disputed that forecast, but not because of opposition from Southerners. Rather, he said, "People in these other states don't want this scrutiny coming to them."

That frustration reflects part of the 2006 renewal debate in Congress. Despite fewer than three dozen dissenting votes, some Southern members said the extra scrutiny should apply nationwide or not at all.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who supported ending preclearance, said Republicans should emphasize parts of the act still in use. Besides a general discrimination ban, the feds can invoke preclearance for jurisdictions with new patterns of mistreating minorities. That "opt-in" rule has affected Arkansas, New Mexico and some cities and counties.

Others in the GOP say election results form a defense. Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina party chairman, noted that Gov. Nikki Haley, of Indian descent, appointed then-Rep. Tim Scott as the modern South's first black U.S. senator. He'll seek a full term next year.

"We're walking the walk," Dawson said.

Of course, Southern states also produced the widest margins among white voters in favor of Mitt Romney and John McCain in their losses to Obama.

Chris LaCivita, a Republican consultant in Virginia, offered one more potential comfort for Republicans: The relationship between Democrats and whites. Republicans need more minority votes in presidential years, but Democrats need more white Southerners if they want to regain control of Congress or many statehouses.

"Democrats might want to think long and hard about making a racially based argument," LaCivita said, "considering voters they need don't like having to pay for the sins of their fathers."

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Follow Barrow on Twitter @BillBarrowAP.