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Saying that "it's offensive to me as a woman and as a minority" that Democrats portray the GOP as "the party that hates you" when they reach out to non-whites, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made the case this morning that it's the Republican Party that minorities should be looking to join.

There are lots of ways to get to 270 and they don't all involve Florida's 29 electoral votes, according to Rich Beeson, the national political director for the Mitt Romney Campaign.

Beeson, speaking with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep on Tuesday, says the Sunshine State would be nice to have in the red column, but it's not a sine qua non for clinching victory in November.

Good morning from Tampa where the Isaac-delayed Republican National Convention is set to get going for real this afternoon.

It's going to be a busy day for the GOP once the delegates are called to order at 2 p.m. ET. Here are some highlights from the schedule:

When the Republican National Convention finally gets underway today here in Tampa, it will renew a civil war that's been raging — off and on — for more than a century.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene.

Residents of New Orleans and other cities are performing the balancing act that is an essential part of life along the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes are such a regular feature that you can't let them disrupt your life too much.

As extremely hot temperatures continue to hit much of the country, high school football teams are busy getting ready for the fall season.

Last year, five high school football players died of heat stroke. Across the country, experts are trying to prevent those kinds of tragedies.

At the University of Connecticut's Korey Stringer Institute, researchers study the effects of extreme heat on athletes.

Say "adoption" and many Americans think "babies." The U.S. system was largely organized around placing infants, both from this country and abroad. It turns out that, by far, the largest number of adoptions in the U.S. is through the foster care system. That means toddlers, young children, even teens.

Yet many in the field say the system does little to help families cope with the special issues a number of these children will face, even years after adoption.

One day Theresa Hamilton, a mother of 12, was struck by how hard it is to come by human dignity when you are down on your luck. For instance, you can't use Food Stamps to buy toilet paper or laundry soap.

So Theresa founded Giving The Basics — an organization that provides people with toothbrushes, feminine hygiene products and other human-dignity necessities.