Why Is One Student Group Offering a Caucasian-American Scholarship?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Caucasian Scholarship

The College Republicans group at Boston University is offering what it calls a "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship" that requires applicants to be at least 25 percent Caucasian. B.U.'s "Daily Free Press" newspaper says students who want the $250 award must submit two essays — one on their ancestry and the other on what being a Caucasian-American means to them.

Schools, government and private organizations offer hundreds of scholarships targeted at various minority groups. The president of the College Republicans says his group is trying to make a point about the bigotry of racial preferences and affirmative action — not advocate white supremacy. He says a lot of people have been "agitated or upset" at the Caucasian scholarship idea initially — but understand the point when it's explained to them.

Money Trail

The record-setting campaign spending for the midterm elections has been a windfall for the obvious folks — such as ad agencies and pollsters — but it also meant big money to flower shops, limo companies and photographers.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton spent around $36 million and won by about 30 points. A look at some of her spending by The New York Times finds $13,000 for flowers – $27,000 for valet parking — $51,000 for professional photographers — $160,000 on private jet travel and $746,000 for catering and entertaining.

Not everyone is happy about it. The liberal Web site "The Democratic Daily" has accused the senator of "blowing a shameful 36 million on her shoo-in reelection campaign."

Shall We Pray?

The city council in Aurora, Colorado is having trouble getting someone to say the opening prayer at its meetings — after passing new rules that ban references to specific religious figures. The guidelines allow a mention of God — but Jesus, Mohammed and everyone else are out.

For the past few meetings the mayor has given what the Denver Post describes as an "ecumenically ambiguous" invocation. Monday he just asked for a moment of silence. One minister who has been doing invocations at the meetings for years says he has issues with the government telling him how to pray. And the president of one conservative legal group says the rules violate the First Amendment's separation of church and state clause.

Shopping Guide

One of the nation's largest homosexual advocacy groups wants you to do your holiday shopping at companies that it approves of — so it's issued a consumer buying guide. The Workplace Project of the Human Rights Campaign grades organizations on things such as domestic partner benefits, non-discrimination policies involving sexual orientation and gender equity, and transgender wellness benefits.

The ratings cover everything from electronics stores to pizzas and gasoline. The group says last year's guide was downloaded from its Web site more than 250,000 times and 50,000 printed copies were distributed.

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.