The National Right to Life Committee: Visit the NRLC's site to keep up with the pro-life movement.

National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League: NARAL's pro-choice site is full of news and information.

Planned Parenthood: The web home of the world's oldest and largest voluntary family planning organization.

Community Transportation Association of America: The CTAA is a nonprofit membership association whose members are dedicated to mobility for all people, regardless of wealth, disability, age or accessibility.

The International Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Exploration and Production Industry: This group provides some facts about the offshore oil and natural gas industry.

The International Association for Energy Economics: Want to the know the oil and natural gas reserve values in the U.S.? You can find the results of an IAEE study here.

When Senator Bob Dole returned to his duties as Senate Majority Leader after nailing down the Republican Presidential nomination this spring, a dramatic showdown was underway. At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue sits Bill Clinton, a Democratic President seeking re-election. At the other is Dole, the man who more than anyone else controls the laws produced by Congress. The question was, how would Dole use his Congressional clout to gain leverage over Clinton in their race toward the 1996 election?

The two remain at an impasse over the single biggest issue, a plan to balance the federal budget. Republicans have submitted major budget plans to Clinton that include big changes in Medicaid, Medicare and welfare as well as billions of dollars in tax cuts. For months, Congressional Republicans and the White House have balked at one another's proposed compromises. Some think the outcome will now be left for the voters to decide in November, when a Dole victory would allow him to sign the Republican budget and a Clinton re-election would all but kill it off. Recently, Clinton has been meeting with a bipartisan group of moderate Senators, led by Sen. John Breaux, R-LA and John Chafee, D-RI, who have crafted a budget plan that would basically split the difference between the stalemated White House and Congressional budgets by trimming the tax cut and taking a smaller bite out of Medicare.

But recently a handful of issues, while not as sweeping in scope, have taken on important symbolic meaning for the developing campaign between Dole and Clinton. Dole in particular has high stakes in what bills he shepherds through Congress, and Clinton has been forced into difficult choices about the vetoes he will have to explain in the coming months. Here's a look at some of the issues that have topped the Congressional agenda with implications for the 1996 election, and how the two candidates have handled them:

"PARTIAL-BIRTH" ABORTION
While the Republican Congress has largely steered clear of the abortion issue (there was no mention of it in the Contract With America), conservative members, led by Sen. Bob Smith, R-NH and Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-PA, did manage to pass a bill that would ban a rare late-term abortion procedure dubbed the "partial birth" abortion. That the practice -- which involves siphoning out a developed fetus' brain fluid -- is awful is not disputed. The question is whether the circumstances of the procedure -- almost always a last resort to protect the health of the mother -- justify its gruesome results.

Dole: Supported the bill. Dole charged with slipperiness on the abortion issue, and understandably so. He needs to appeal to core conservative voters who are generally pro-life, but also to crucial moderates who may be turned off by the hard-right position. In classic form, Dole supported the bill but avoided being too visibly linked to it.

Clinton: Solidly pro-choice, vetoed the bill.

Scorecard: Abortion is turning into a thorny issue for the Republican party. The GOP's conservative wing sees opposition to abortion as a central, defining element of their platform. The presidential campaigns of Patrick Buchanan and Alan Keyes pounded away on the pro-life theme, while leading party moderates like California Governor Pete Wilson and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman have suggested recently that the party should end its official position calling for a constitutional ban on the practice. Clinton was chastised for his veto by the Vatican itself, while Dole probably shored up pro-life support. But because it covers only a few thousand abortions a year, the "partial-birth" abortion issue is probably too specialized to have much of an impact on voters in 1996.

Advantage: TIE

MINIMUM WAGE
After Pat Buchanan's worker-oriented presidential campaign and the continued toll of corporate downsizing, the plight of the middle-class worker has returned to center stage with a new urgency. Among the biggest problems for American workers has been the inability of wages to keep pace with inflation. In the past several weeks, Democrats have sought to capitalize on this issue with a new drive to raise the $4.25 per hour minimum wage, which is at a 40-year low in buying power. Most Republicans argue that by eliminating jobs a minimum wage boost would hurt the people it was meant to help, and have blocked Democratic attempts to force a vote on a bill raising the wage to $5.15 per hour.

Dole: Has opposed even a vote on the minimum wage, but popular opinion and pressure from both parties have caused him to back away and concede the possibility of a vote.

Clinton: Enthusiastically supports a raise, although he chose not to emphasize it when Democrats controlled Congress (Democrats answer that they preferred to focus on an Earned Income Tax for low-income workers).

Scorecard: Republicans are scrambling. While Democrats have been gaining ground on their GOP foes over issues like the budget and environment, the minimum wage fight touched off an unprecedented disarray among Republicans. GOP leaders knew they were in trouble late last month when a group of House Republicans, sensing they were on the losing side, suggested an even higher raise, to $5.25 per hour. While a minimum wage boost would likely have little effect on either incomes or jobs, this issue is as symbolic as it is popular among working-class voter, and could be a big boon for Clinton (as well as Congressional Democrats, who have led the fight) in November.

Advantage: CLINTON

GAS TAX REPEAL Thanks to the convergence of a few arcane economic forces, mainly the wrong expectation that the U.N. would let Iraq begin selling oil again, gas prices in the U.S. have risen by about 20% in early 1996. While they remain historically low, the higher prices at the pumps have got the politicians scrambling. Congressional Republicans, led by Dole, have seized on the issue, in part to soften the damage incurred by the Democratic minimum wage assault. The Senate Finance Committee is holding hearings on a repeal of the 4.3 cents per gallon gasoline tax passed by the Democratic Congress as part of Clinton's budget in 1993.

Dole: Milking the issue for all it's worth. Dole enjoyed a photo op at a Washington-area gas station last weekend, and made a rare appearance as a witness before the Senate Finance Committee. But as the White House is all too eager to point out, Dole is vulnerable on this issue because he has voted for previous gas taxes.

Clinton: In a bind. Understandably reluctant to concede the repeal of a tax he proposed, Clinton also wants to appear reactive to higher prices. His ploy was to sell off 12 million barrels of oil from the nation's reserve supply.

Scorecard: Politics at its worst. Gas prices make for a nice way to pander to the middle class, but the gas tax only amounts to a couple of bucks a month for most people. And there are some real drawbacks to the politicking: lost revenue from a repeal will boost the deficit; the oil reserves were sold at a much lower price than they were bought, costing millions; and the pampering of the politicians does nothing to remind Americans how dangerously dependent we are on oil.

Advantage: Mainly DOLE, but also opportunistic campaign advisors everywhere.