(ABC News) Sens. Obama, Brownback to Get HIV Tests: Another sign of the new Washington: bipartisan HIV testing. At a World AIDS Day conference in California next month, two potential 2008 presidential rivals Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan. will each take an HIV test and encourage others to do the same. To reduce stigma around the test and publicize its value, “I’m happy to offer my body for science,” Brownback said in a telephone interview Friday. “People need to get the test,” he added. Obama press secretary Tommy Vietor said, “If two United States senators can do it, then everyone else can too.”

(McClatchy) New faces, same debate on `amnesty’: Still, when Gallup last month asked U.S. adults about “top priorities for the president and Congress to deal with,” they ranked immigration third, behind Iraq and the economy. “I don’t think we did ourselves any favors when we engaged the public in a major topic and didn’t pass the legislation to deal with it,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who backed the Kennedy-McCain plan.

Rep.-elect Nancy Boyda/U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun (D)

(Topeka Capital-Journal) Ryun dissects election defeat: Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., blamed his re-election defeat Thursday on a range of influences, including overconfident campaign volunteers, news reports that questioned his honesty and distortion of his voting record by Democrat Nancy Boyda. Ryun, a five-term Republican incumbent beaten by Boyda on Nov. 7, said in his first detailed explanation of the loss that another important factor was voter disappointment with the Iraq war. Ryun is closely aligned with President Bush’s policy on the conflict. There was a convergence of forces the day of the election, Ryun said, that overshadowed a decade of work on behalf of residents of the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Topeka and runs from the Nebraska to Oklahoma borders.