By MICHAEL COLLINS, Scripps Howard News Service

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- While most Americans will be paying attention to what happens on the stage, Mike Miller will be closely watching what happens behind the scenes at the Republican National Convention.

Miller is responsible for making sure everything runs smoothly at the four-day gathering in which Republicans will nominate John McCain as their candidate for president.

AURORA, Colo. -- Boyd Richie is one Texan who'll be delighted when a certain Texan from Crawford is no longer living in the White House.

He also wants to set the record straight about George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON -- As you zip down the highway at 70 mph, remember that your lead foot will cost you at the pump in these days of $4-a-gallon gas.

Some lawmakers in Congress have certainly considered the consequences of your driving habits. And they want you to slow down.

WASHINGTON -- Fish farms could be allowed to operate for the first time in federal ocean waters under a Bush administration proposal that critics say is a blatant attempt to bypass Congress and set up a marine program that lawmakers have been reluctant to approve.

WASHINGTON -- Patrick James was hours away from burying his 10-year-old daughter when he started to learn some disturbing things about her death.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. has heard cell phones go off at funerals, in movie theaters and in restaurants.

"There's a place for cell phones and there's a place not for cell phones," said Duncan, R-Tenn.

One place where cell phone use should not be allowed, he said, is on board airplanes that are in flight.

For all of the respect and adulation he commands, Pope Benedict XVI remains a mysterious figure to many Americans.

So when the pontiff sets foot on U.S. soil next week for the first time since he became leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he will be something of a papal paradox.

WASHINGTON -- Lois Armstrong and other hospice providers thought it was a positive move when the federal government decided a decade ago to make their services more readily available to patients dying of diseases other than cancer.

"A hurrah went up in the hospice community" at the time, Armstrong recalled.

Then something happened.

Some 400 hospices in 31 states are expected to receive letters from the federal government asking them to repay an estimated $300 million in Medicare funds they received for hospice services provided in 2006. The number indicates the percentage of hospices expected to receive the repayment demands in each state.

Alabama -- 52 percent

Arizona-- 33 percent

SURFSIDE BEACH, S.C. -- It was the morning after, but the sleeping bear was still on the attack.