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Commentator Elissa Ely goes with her little girl to buy underpants. The three-year-old knows exactly what she wants. Dwarf underpants. Grumpy specifically. She has made her choice, and there is no changing her mind.

Mark Moran of member station KJZZ reports on efforts by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to crackdown on illegal immigrants in the southwestern United States. The smuggling of undocumented immigrants has become a multi-billion industry in the US and the INS hopes to curb the practice through a new initiative called operation denial.

From Maine Public Radio Charlotte Renner reports on recent changes to Maine's campaign finance legislation.

NPR's Anthony Brooks reports on the campaign trail of Vice President Al Gore and his running mate Senator Joseph Lieberman. Yesterday for the first time both candidates campaigned together and made stops in their home-towns. Today, Gore and Lieberman along with several Governors from southern states are campaigning in Atlanta.

Host Howard Berkes talks to Robert Blendon of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the accuracy and meaning of polls. Blendon says the farther away from an election, the less accurate the poll. He also says that respondents are reluctant to admit they won't vote for candidates from minority groups.

Janet Heimlich reports form Brownsville, Texas, where a jury decided not to award punitive damages to a Tejano family who sued to regain lost profits from mineral rights discovered on their former land. Last week, the same jury gave the Balli family 1.1 million dollars in compensatory damages; the case is potentially groundbreaking since it could open the door to similar claims by Mexican American families.

Howard Berkes talks with naturalist Craig Childs, author of The Secret Knowledge of Water: The Essence of the American Desert. Childs documented his cross-country trek through the deserts of North America as he searched for water holes, small springs, and other signs of water. His quest took him to a place most experienced desert hikers avoid: directly in the path of a flash flood. (8:20) The Secret Knowledge of Water : Discovering the Essence of the American Desert by Craig Leland Childs is published by Sasquatch Books; ISBN: 15706

NPR's Eric Weiner reports that Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid handed over the daily running of the government to his deputy Megawati Sukarnoputri. Wahid made the change in an effort to appease top legislature who accuses him of failure to lead the country out of years of economic and social crisis.

Host Howard Berkes talks to Historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, about her research into the countries of origin of African-Americans. While preparing her 1992 book, Africans in Colonial America, Hall discovered court documents that indicated where enslaved Africans said they came from. The information was overlooked for more than 200 years, largely because the documents were in French or Spanish. Hall's findings are of particular interest to African Americans who want to trace their ancestry.

From his childhood in Carthage, Tennessee and Washington D.C., Al Gore was raised not just to be a politician but to be a Democratic presidential candidate. Next week in Los Angeles, Al Gore will take the penultimate step toward fulfilling his lifelong goal when he becomes the Democratic Party's nominee for the White House. NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.