The AP has called the race in the Illinois 14th for Democrat Bill Foster.

With more than 96% of precincts reporting, Foster has a 52-48 lead over big-spending GOP candidate Jim Oberweis.

Think Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) is having fun yet as chairman of the NRCC?

Since taking over the NRCC after the 2006 midterms, he's struggled to compete with the DCCC financially, faced an ugly embezzlement scandal within the NRCC, and now lost the seat held by the last Republican Speaker of the House.

As I hinted at the other day, this race recalls Hastert's fall from power, the Mark Foley scandal and the general debacle of the last GOP Congress. In some ways it's the coda to the 2006 elections. But on the other hand, you've got a Democrat winning in a special election in a Republican district against a well-funded opponent untainted by scandal. So last hurrah of 2006 -- or prelude to 2008?

By the way, we'll do this all over again in November. Foster has won the right to fill the seat for the remainder of Hastert's term, when he'll face Oberweiss again. Both men have already won their parties' nominations for the general election.

Late Update: In a just released statement, the NRCC spins this one as sound and fury signifying nothing:

“The one thing 2008 has shown is that one election in one state does not prove a trend. In fact, there has been no national trend this entire election season. The presidential election is evidence of that. The Democratic candidates are trading election victories from week to week and the nomination could hinge on a few news cycles. The one message coming out of 2008 so far is that what happens today is not a bellwether of what happens this fall.”

For the hardcore junkie, we're tracking the race in the Illinois 14th congressional district tonight. Polls just closed there, and we'll be posting results in our Scoreboard there on the right.

This is Denny Hastert's vacant seat, and the Dems are making it remarkably competitive. For some background on the race, you can start here.

Late Update: AP calls it for Democrat Bill Foster over Republican Jim Oberweis.

The nets called it for Obama at the top of the hour.

That little girl "safe and asleep" in Hillary's 3 a.m. phone ringing ad turns 18 next month -- and is a big Obama supporter.

The election to fill former Speaker Denny Hastert's vacant seat is today.

As we reported this week, the race for what has been a normally safe Republican seat is going so badly for the GOP that the National Republican Congressional Committee -- which is already struggling to keep up financially with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- has been forced to spend more than $1 million to keep the seat in the R column.

The race is so tight that the NRCC yesterday emailed congressional staff on the Hill asking them to send any of their spare interns over to the RNC to do phone-banking for the GOP candidate, The Hill reports. Is that legal? Not clear, but what happened next is a no-no:

A staffer working for Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) apparently broke House rules Friday, forwarding a request that congressional staffers send interns to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to make campaign-related phone calls.

The episode started when an aide at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent an e-mail Friday to congressional staffers. The e-mail asked the GOP aides to send interns to the RNC to make phone calls for Jim Oberweis (R), who is running for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) vacated congressional seat in a special election Saturday.

“If you have interns sitting around today, please send them over to the RNC...to phone bank for Oberweis,” the e-mail states.

Matthew Lillibridge, a staff assistant in Chabot’s office, forwarded the e-mail to aides in other congressional offices, apparently violating House rules against using House resources for campaign purposes. Lillibridge used his House e-mail address, forwarding the e-mail to other addresses on the House e-mail server.

We'll be bringing you the results on the IL-14 race tonight as they come in.

CNN's politics page has a big feature story headlined "Fellow Legislator Saw Little 'Bold' About Obama" with a introspective, solemn pic of Obama. Then you read the story. And the colleague is a guy named Dan Cronin, a Republican.

Shouldn't they have spoken to one of the Republicans who now has positive things to say about Obama? Oh, wait ...

Late Update: Turns out Cronin is actually a member of McCain's Illinois leadership team. (Good catch by TPM Reader TK) At this point, this amounts to CNN being spoofed. Correction or some explanation is in order, guys.

President Bush vetoes anti-torture bill.

We'll be bringing you the latest on today's vote as it unfolds.

The caucus gets underway at 11 ET.

I guess these things run in cycles. But let's get real and admit that Hillary Clinton is getting the free ride of all free rides on her repeated invocations of foreign policy experience. As part of her foreign policy experience Clinton claims "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

The whole quote is as follows ...

You know, I was involved for 15 years in, you know, foreign policy and security policy. You know, I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland. I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo. I've been standing up against, you know, the Chinese government over women's rights and standing up for human rights in many different places. I've served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And I was the only senator of either party asked to be on an important task force put together by the Pentagon under this administration to figure out what to do with our military going forward.

Now, the Chicago Tribune reports that the borders in question were opened the day before Clinton arrived in the region. But the Northern Ireland claim is the kicker. George Mitchell, who's obviously a friend, has called Clinton's role 'helpful', according to CNN. But the UK papers today have David Trimble, a key unionist leader and former First Minister and Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan both pooh-poohing her claims. Coogan says her role was "part of the stage effects, the optics."

These are the sorts of puffed up claims that get other candidates held up to mockery and derision. But Clinton is using them as cudgels in her effort to portray Obama as a lightweight with no experience dealing with foreign policy crises. And basically she's getting a pass. I guess it speaks to the advantages of staying on offense, which can never be gainsaid. But she's still getting a big pass on this and a lot else.

Late Update: Here's the Clinton campaign's argument (with testimonials) about Hillary's role in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) pulls out all the stops, a trifecta of racist smears against Obama:

An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.

Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama's pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.

"The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida ... would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror," King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.

King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.

"His middle name does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that."

Late Update: That's the AP version above, but it's worth reprinting the relevant passage from the original report in the Spencer Daily Reporter:

King said he would support presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in part because of alternatives coming from the Democratic Party.

"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," he said. "I'll just say this: When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"

He continued: "I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."

King thinks radical Islamists will say the United States has capitulated because the Obama administration would be pulling troops out of any conflict associated with al-Qaida.

"Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."

He continued: "There are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he's taken. If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."

The ChiTrib looks at Clinton's claims of foreign policy experience. And the verdict is not a good one. I refer back to my point from yesterday -- she doesn't need to be a seasoned foreign policy hand. But she's setting herself up for a fall when she claims to be.

I'm starting to think that covering American politics is far easier than covering Canadian politics. But trying to cover the interplay between them both? A challenge of an entirely different magnitude.

This NAFTA story offers no easy answers, no obvious heroes, and a passel of possible villains pointing their fingers at each other.

Here's the latest from the Canadian Press:

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton never gave Canada any secret assurances about the future of NAFTA such as those allegedly offered by Barack Obama's campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said Friday.

With the NAFTA affair swirling over the U.S. election and Canadian officials skittish about saying anything else that might influence the race, it took the PMO two days to deliver the information.

After being asked whether Canadian officials asked for — or received — any briefings from a Clinton campaign representative outlining her plans on NAFTA, a spokeswoman for the prime minister offered a response Friday.

"The answer is no, they did not," said Harper spokeswoman Sandra Buckler.

That response will come as a relief to the Clinton campaign, which has angrily denied that it has engaged in the kind of double-talking hypocrisy of which it accuses Mr. Obama.

TPMmuckraker has learned the outlines of the compromise version of the surveillance bill worked out between House and Senate Dems.

Immunity out. Exclusivity in.

At least for now.

Late Update: So much for compromise. Sen. Jay Rockefeller's office is now saying he would not agree to the compromise outlined by a senior House aide.

Dems considering getting special interest groups to foot the bill for a mail-in, do-over special election primary in Florida.

Pocketing the Power firing and back on the offensive again: Hillary says voters should be suspicious that Obama tells Americans one thing while his advisors tell "foreign governments and foreign press" something else.

So John McCain has now done a limited, partial rejection of John Hagee's anti-Catholicism. "I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics." What about Hagee's statement that God is going to use Muslim terrorists to create "bloodbaths" in our streets to punish us for our sinful policies toward Israel? Can he repudiate that too?

At a Council on Foreign Relations event in D.C. today, as a Hillary adviser touted Clinton's foreign policy experience, McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann reportedly chimed in with: "Please keep running those 3:00 a.m. ads about who you want to answer the phone, because we like those."

McCain flips out on the Times Elisabeth Bumiller over whether he discussed the vice presidency with John Kerry in 2004.

Now maybe ask about those 2001 discussions about leaving the Republican party?

Jared Bernstein: The trouble has reached the job market.

TPM Reader IB responds ...

The bigger question is how did we get here? Obama rolled the dice, thinking he could win Texas and keep Ohio close. Had he done that, the kitchen sink strategy would have been seen as a failure. He chose wrong, and Clinton is making him pay for it. To dovetail on your boxing analogy, I don't think he gets out of the corner by punch back hard. I think he just needs to wait for her to punch herself out. In the past few days she's made some horrible statements (CIC Threshold), and the didn't come from staffers. they came out of her own mouth. She turned up the volume and won in OH and TX. There is nothing saying that strategy will work next Tuesday.

Could be. And there's always a danger of overplaying your hand. But firing Powers was an awfully big tell in my book. And as they say in a different context, hope is not a plan.

Obama-supporting TPM Reader PT is less sanguine ...

I agree with your long account of the Powers flap/Obama floundering.

And let me add a further observation: this is not a good way to raise money. First, lose your mo in a suite of big contests - what good did my last donation do, I ask myself? Then, tell the world that you raised $55 million last month - ok, so they have more than enough money now. Finally, let themselves get visibly kicked around in the press and by Clinton. Do they even intend to fight? Do they have any plan? Any determination? Any discipline? Is there anyone even responding to Clinton on this stuff? Does Obama think he can just go out there and answer another eight questions this afternoon? My wallet's closed shut, for now.

I do agree Hillary is a monster - in a cartoonish way, I think it's true. And Obama has turned into a wet noodle. Sad to have to say it about my guy.

But not TPM Reader BH ...

This is good strategy for Obama, not a sign of weakness. What he is setting up is one more in a long list of examples about the difference between the kind of leadership he offers, and that coming from the Clinton camp: Hillary plays dirty right out of Karl Rove's operating manual (see going after Obama on NAFTA-gate when it was her people that talked, thus her vulnerability), while he gets rid of people that stoop to her level. The contrast will be increasingly clear to voters.

Yet another take from TPM Reader TSJ ...

He had to fire powers. His campaign is based on not being the same old politics. Calling Clinton a "Monster" would qualify and they would have hammered him incessantly over it had she not resigned. My guess is The Scotsman screwed her but oh well. The other point is he can't fight back at Hillary in a similar way as she's attacking him. Even on non-slights (The Snub, the writing at the Texas debate) the pundits kept talking about how he was "disrespecting" her. He goes after her too hard he becomes the Angry Black Man beating up on the Poor White Lady. That's a no go. She wants him to get dirty (so she can say, "See he isn't special. He's just like me.) AND she wants to play the victim card (Oh he's beating up on me *tears*). He's responded well to her attacks but they don't get as much play in the media as his attacks on her gets. His campaigning in Mississippi has been brilliant and my guess effective but it hasn't garnered as much attention as Clinton's barrage 'cause it's not the story they want to tell.

I take the point about the standard Obama is trying to set. And in a vacuum, making an example of power might not be a mistake. But in the context of recent days it seems of a piece with the rest.

And now TPM Reader BOM gets in on the act ...

To project on what TB wrote you, Sen. Clinton apparently just made the following comment on the Power resignation “I think Senator Obama did the right thing but I think it is important to look at what she and his other advisers say behind closed doors…” Now, first of all that sounds very follow-me-Gary-Hart kind of comment as we all know her own campaign staffers probably say things that are just as bad behind closed doors.

But more importantly, isn't there a point at which the media realizes how conspicuously they took the bait when Clinton complained about media coverage and there is some kind of backlash ? I have been thinking it should come at some point because I don't think journalists like the widespread perception they were easily manipulated by a SNL sketch and this kind of comment makes me think she is on the verge of overplaying her hand by constantly attacking Obama for things that it is easy to prove she is doing herself (Rezko trial that are actual her donors, NAFTA-gate, the comment thing ... and so on).

Let me stipulate to one thing: if this were two Republicans squabbling, I'd be laughing my head off at the moment. And I can assure you a lot of them are.

The Clinton campaign has gotten so deep inside the Obama campaign's collective head it just ain't funny -- or, depending on your political persuasion, it's very funny.

Late Tuesday night I wrote that the upshot of the March 4th contests was that Clinton had beaten Obama up a bit and he hadn't responded. She'd not only bloodied up his poll numbers a bit by throwing all sorts of stuff at him. She also showed that it wasn't at all clear that Obama was enough of a fighter to stand up to this stuff or get back in her face. More than the delegate numbers, that was the challenge March 4th had left him with.

But since then she's just been slapping this guy around like crazy. She's on the offense every day, dictating the terms of the discussion and getting results.

This "monster" thing is a good case in point. That's a pretty over-the-top thing for a key campaign advisor to say. But what it tells me more than that is that the Clinton campaign has these guys rattled really bad. Some of this is no doubt due to the fact that Power is a bit out of her element. She's more from the academic/policy world than the political/policy world. But, again, rattled. The Clinton folks have been bashing Obama like crazy. Now they follow up by explicitly demanding that Obama fire one of his key foreign policy advisors and ... how, long did it take? An hour? And she's gone.

If boxing is our metaphor she's got him cornered on the ropes on one side of the ring and she's just landing punch after punch. And all he can manage are the defensive moves that her constant attacks dictate.

Just as I was writing, TPM Reader KM sent in this note ...

Can't believe that Samantha Power actually resigned. This is the type of phony "controversy" the GOP/Karl Rove uses to their advantage. Josh famously called it the "bitch slap" theory of politics, and Clinton is using the same playbook. Obama needed to send a signal that these types of fake outrages won't play, but by her quick resigntation, the bitch slap is alive and well.

Depressing.

So true, so true.

Now, one thing we get at TPM is a really front seat view of each side's immediate feelings and reactions to the campaign. The notes come in angry or plaintive or descriptive. And sometimes they're hard to read since we're on the receiving end of some of the emotional turmoil the intensity of the campaign churns up. So from that, I have a pretty good sense of where the Obama supporters are at at the moment. And a lot of the more intensely engaged of them are telling each other that what Power said is exactly right. And I can see why they're mad at Hillary after a lot of what's happened over the last couple weeks.

But you know what? Ice cream's fattening and we all die too. Get over it. This is about getting inside Obama's (the collective Obama, let's say) head, psyching him out, forcing mistakes and then going right back on the attack all over again. Getting the Obama folks pissed and gritting their teeth and off their game is precisely the point.

The Obama folks can either withdraw to a world where the 'new politics' reigns or focus on the fact that here in the real world there are two 'old politics' practitioners standing between him and the presidency and he needs to decide how he's going to deal with that fact.

As I've written before in different contexts, you can't get distracted by the literalism of the moment. To understand how politicking works you need to look not at the often terribly silly discussion points of the unfolding debates. You need to look at the larger picture the engagement is telling people. And right now this one's saying that Obama won't fight back, that he's easy to fluster, that he's weak. And that's precisely why Team Hillary is taking this tack.

Late Update: David Corn's got some more choice thoughts on this whole matter. One key issue, as David explains, is that campaign aides routinely talk about opposing candidates in this way when they think they're speaking off the record, which Power apparently did. It's not clear from the outside whether The Scotsman just flat out burned Power or whether she wasn't savvy enough in this world to understand the ground rules of the conversation.

Samantha Power resigns.

Late Update: The Power kerfuffle: media event or substantive damage to Obama? Discuss.

A new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq is scheduled to be completed next month. Will the Administration release a declassified version of the key findings or keep it under wraps?

In a conference call just now, the Clinton campaign called on Barack Obama to fire Samantha Power for calling Hillary a "monster."

There are advisers and then there are advisers. Power is Barack Obama's Condi Rice.

A Harvard Law grad, former foreign correspondent, and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Power left her Harvard faculty gig to go work on Obama's Senate staff for a year. It might be a little condescending to say she schooled him on foreign policy, but that's close to accurate. In the constellation of Obama advisers, the 37-year-old Irish-born Power has as high a profile and as close a relationship to the candidate as anyone.

All of which is to say that her intemperate comments have put her and Obama in a bind -- and the Clinton campaign knows it.

It seemed as if it took the networks about half a day yesterday to realize that the most newsworthy thing to come out of Hillary's Washington press conference was, you know, the commander-in-chief threshold comment.

So, belatedly, here it is:

Samantha Power apologizes for calling Hillary Clinton a "monster."

A DNC source tells TPM Election Central that Howard Dean has put the kibosh on the DNC paying for a do-over election in Florida.

I think Hillary Clinton is definitely qualified to be commander-in-chief of the US military. In fact, I think she'd make a strong one. She had a successful legal career. She participated in key decisions during the Clinton administration. And she's beginning her second term in the US senate. Her husband was qualified to be commander-in-chief too -- at 46 and having spent his whole political career in Little Rock.

But just what on earth is Hillary Clinton talking about when she says she's crossed the "commander in chief threshold" which John McCain has also crossed but Barack Obama hasn't?

There are two ways of looking at what's required for this aspect of the president's job. One school of thought has it that a potential president needn't be an expert on military affairs or foreign relations any more than he or she needs to be an experts in economics. They need to be informed and knowledgeable. But what's most needed is temperament, maturity and judgment. Detailed expertise can come from advisors.

Others think it's precisely the expertise that's needed. So someone like a Joe Biden is the kind of person you want -- someone who's deeply schooled in every aspect of foreign relations and has been at it for literally decades. John McCain has some of that and he was also career military which gives him, at least arguably, some special grasp of the military components of the job. Bill Richardson had at least some cred on that scale based on his time in the Congress, UN Ambassador and general ad hoc rogue regime diplomacy.

Hillary Clinton seems to think she's a strong contender in this latter category. But that's a joke. She's starting her second term in the US senate, where, yes, she serves on the Armed Services committee. Beside that she's never held elective office and she has little executive experience. I think she can argue that she'd make and would make a strong commander-in-chief. But she's pushing a metric by which she's little distinguishable from Barack Obama. I'm honestly surprised she's not drawing chuckles on this one.

A lot of people are seeing red that Hillary's so aggressively pushing the Republican nominee's credentials to be president. And I can see their point. But I'm more surprised that she's pushing an argument she doesn't need to make and frankly can't make credibly.

Obama adviser Samantha Power: Hillary is a "monster."

Atrios makes a good point. It's not just the media's slavering adulation of John McCain. Things like the Hagee story also fail to pick up momentum because name leaders don't chime in on them. In some abstract sense it shouldn't make Hagee a bigger deal simply because Nancy Pelosi says what a lot of other people are already saying. But in the way news pegs operate, it makes all the difference in the world.

In any case, the anti-Catholicism issue is now rising above the radar. But let me draw people's attention back to another Hagee claim -- that it's not just the terrorists we have to worry about mounting catastrophic terrorist attacks on American soil. God is helping them. According to Hagee God is going to let the terrorists create "bloodbaths" in American streets because we're trying to find a peace settlement for the occupied territories which would have Israel alongside a Palestinian state.

So it's not just better intelligence and border security we need to worry about. God is actually helping the jihadists to come kill us because of our sinful foreign policies. At least according to Hagee, who McCain continues to embrace.

You can find it at the 2:19 mark in our compilation of great Hagee moments.

The GOP is struggling to hold onto Denny Hastert's old seat. The election is this Saturday, and the cash-strapped NRCC has been forced to put more than $1 million into the race.

Via Nico Pitney at Huffington Post:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most prominent Catholic serving in the U.S. government, called on Sen. John McCain to reject the endorsement of Texas televangelist John Hagee, who has labeled the Catholic church "the great whore," a "false cult system," and linked it to Hitler's Nazi movement.

"That behavior is outside the circle of civilized debate in our democracy," Pelosi said during a Thursday conference call. "I certainly think John McCain should reject his endorsement and I'm sure it won't be long before he does."

Hillary Clinton, speaking today:

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

It's early; it's just a snapshot; some of the numbers are within the margin of error and all that. But these 50 state polls put out by SurveyUSA are fascinating. The topline is that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton beat John McCain by the slimmest of margins (you can see Eric Kleefeld's write up here). But they do it in starkly different ways. Barack Obama manages to beat John McCain while losing Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida -- which I would scarcely have thought possibly (i.e., that a Dem could win while losing those states). Meanwhile Hillary wins in a more conventional way -- judged by the standards of the last twenty years. Most of the blue states are blue and red states red. But where she loses the Pacific Northwest she takes Florida.

Supporters of Clinton and Obama can both take from this that they're backing solid general election candidates but it does show they're very different -- at least at this moment -- in terms of the package of states they'd put together. The maps here are well worth taking a look at.

She may have netted only a handful of delegates, but Tuesday's primary wins by Hillary Clinton had a huge psychological impact on the race. And on the Republican side, what is President Bush doing to help out the Dems' chances in 2008? All that and more in today's '08 Roundup episode of TPMtv ...

Watch this episode on YouTube.

The political geek in me loves this kind of stuff.

SurveyUSA has just come out with its 50 state polls comparing the head-to-head match-ups between Hillary and McCain and Obama and McCain.

Hillary v. McCain:

Obama v. McCain:

As it stands now, either Dem wins against McCain. Keep in mind this is different than a single national opinion poll, some of which show McCain ahead. SurveyUSA's exercise here is to allocate electoral votes based on its state-by-state polls.

The interesting thing though is how close Obama and Hillary are to each other in electoral vote count. It's only a 4 vote difference, even though Obama carries far more states. The key difference? She takes Pennsylvania and Florida.

Late Update: Before the arrival of emails from supporters of each candidate, let me acknowledge that there is limited utility in this sort of exercise. Some state polls, for example, are within the margin of error, etc. But this is catnip for junkies.

Later Update: We've got a discussion going on the maps at TPMCafe.

Obama's February haul: $55 million.

Michael Connery, on youth organizing beyond 2008.

In a MSNBC appearance today, Hillary supporter Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) revealed that he was pressing DNC chair Howard Dean for a re-vote in his state.

Late Update: TNR is citing an anonymous DNC Rules Committee member as saying that Michigan is likely to hold a caucus sometime before the Democratic Convention, to allocate the delegates that the DNC stripped when Michigan held its primary.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a conference call with bloggers today about the FISA bill and stressed that for her: "Exclusivity is the issue."

Not immunity.

She says she's "absolutely opposed" to immunity for telecoms, but that she "didn't want the fight to be so focused there that we neglect exclusivity." An exclusivity provision would make FISA the exclusive mechanism for conducting government surveillance.

Not clear whether Pelosi would be willing to throw immunity under the bus for exclusivity, but it has that smell about it.

Chief Hillary flack Howard Wolfson says Obama is "imitating Ken Starr."

The GOP does financial oversight just about as well internally as it does for the federal government.

Obama camp denies that its holds a secret bloc of 50 superdelegates.

It seems that even in victory folks in the Clinton campaign are letting everyone know that Mark Penn sucks.

Seems the NAFTAgate leak started with -- surprise, surprise -- the Chief of Staff to Canada's conservative PM Stephen Harper. Only the first hint wasn't about stuff the Canadians had heard from the Obama camp. It was about reassurances the Canadians got from the Clinton campaign. According to a reporter who heard the original conversation, Brodie said "someone from (Hillary) Clinton's campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry."

Only somehow this evolved into a story about the Obama campaign giving such reassurances.

The Globe and Mail has the latest details.

So was Hillary bashing Obama for what her own campaign had done? Did they both do it? Was it all a set up? I think the overarching story here is that friendly governments should not interfere in our elections.

I usually just post our TPMtv episodes once a day. But there was a lot of news today. And this one I'd like people to get a special look at because it shows what an elaborately choreographed joke the coverage of John McCain is likely to be. Barack Obama got seriously tripped up for apparently not sufficiently denouncing an 'endorsement' he didn't solicit from someone he has no connection with. John McCain solicited the endorsement of a complete nut who's got this long history of slurs against the Catholic Church and a lot else. McCain's sticking with Hagee and he's getting a complete pass.

We put together a little compilation of some of Hagee and McCain's best moments. But look at the second one in the list. US policy explicitly supports a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. Hagee says that because the US is supporting that policy God is going to punish America by sending Muslim terrorists to America to create a bloodbath in our streets.

God's going to send jihadists to mount catastrophic terrorist attacks to punish us for supporting the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. It's certainly a new twist on the war on terror.

It's pretty amazing what it takes to create a problem for John McCain ... Take a look.

Watch this episode on YouTube.

President Bush's endorsement of and joint appearance with John McCain today at the White House:

TPM Reader JG takes a contrary view ...

I think the post is only half right. When Obama got called on the NAFTA/Canadian contact and when the Rezko issue arose, Obama's weak and confused response did tremendous damage to white middle-aged, working class voters. I think they are ready to support a black candidate, but they are going to hold him to a higher standard (at least until they establish a familiarity and a confidence in the candidate). Among these voters, they are going to be wary of a slick, young, black candidate.

Obama and Axelrod's responses were inept, and they both had a deer in the headlights look about them in
responding. (I think I saw them both on Good Morning America) seemed defensive and incomplete. When the ABC reporter asked Obama about the Rezko loan -- instead of taking charge of the question and putting the issue in context (I was buying a house and I didn't want or need the extra lot and Rezko was a well known investor in that neighborhood and the transaction was fully disclosed and it was an arm's length transaction from which I received no improper benefit from Rezko), Obama let the reporter control the discussion. Axelrod was equally inept at responding to the experience issue.

You take a white, middle class, middle aged or older, blue collar worker in Ohio getting that kind of clue,
and they are not going to give the black candidate the benefit of the doubt.To put it another way, Obama is
the new guy, and he needs to define himself. It is incumbent on Obama to make clear that his skirts are
clean and that he is acting above board to keep this kind of voter. If Obama allows Hillary to rough him
up, it's his fault for not responding more effectively.

I'm a big Obama fan, but his campaign the last week or so has not been aggressive enough for my taste. I
thought his response to the 3 am thing was weak. He should have gone on the attack against Hillary and
strongly questioned her judgment. The Iraq vote is only one part of the equation, and he needs to
supplement his attack on her with additional examples of her poor judgment.

Readers have been asking about why the Texas caucus results from last night have been so slow coming in. As of this moment, only 39 percent of the caucus precincts are reporting.

Eric Kleefeld called down to Texas, and the Democratic Party tells him, in so many words, that the caucus reporting was voluntary.

Precincts were not required to report results to the state party, but they set up a voluntary reporting system so that the media would have results to report. Nice of them, no?

In their defense, Texas Dems didn't go the route of the Washington State GOP and make a wild-assed election night pronouncement of a winner based on incomplete returns. But at least in Washington State, they promised a final count, and as far as we know, they got one, eventually, one way or another.

But in Texas?

We're told not to expect too much more in the way of caucus returns. Sort of makes sense. If you were going to comply with the "voluntary program," you probably would have done so by now.

One might use different words to describe what BC's talking about, hit the point harder or softer. But I think the essential observation is an acute one. Let's be honest. If you live in the South, and you've got issues with black people, you're already voting Republican. In states of the old industrial heartland, where racial tension crosscuts ties of unionism and economic populism, that's much less clear.

I was canvassing for Obama in OH from Saturday through Election Day, but I still expected Clinton to win. My reasons were in part anecdotal: Despite working with a solid Obama ground organization, I encountered much starker resistance from older, middle- and working class whites than I had in other places I'd canvassed, namely Maryland and Iowa. But this anecdotal evidence only added to the much more extensive sense of the Ohio electorate I got as the field director on a House race there in 2006.

The impression I came away with then, and had reinforced last week, was that in today's America race is actually more of a factor in the Democratic politics of "border states" like Ohio, Tennessee and Indiana than it is in the "Deep South." In the latter region, racism has been thoroughly integrated into Republican politics while the kind of counter-forces that would keep racially conservative whites aligned with Democrats -- primarily unions and economic populism -- are virtually nonexistent.

In the "border states," though, you have a collision between old patterns of racist sentiments bleeding up from the South and traditions of populism and white working class unionism bleeding down from the Rustbelt North. Ultimately, I think this means that while you may find more out-and-out racists in Alabama or Texas, you're more likely to encounter latent racist sentiment among a broad segment of Democrats somewhere like Ohio or Tennessee.

If I'm right, this could be at least a partial explanation for why Obama performed better in southern, red Texas than in midwestern, purple Ohio. It could also explain the odd pattern we've repeatedly seen of Obama performing very well in both the states with the highest African American populations and the lowest, but not as well in those in the middle where ethnicities are more mixed.

I think this is one facet of the race/gender issues in this campaign that the media actually hasn't beaten to death -- in fact, they've barely addressed it. We've heard a lot about Hillary's appeal to women giving her an advantage with them, a lot about how well Obama does among blacks, and even some mutterings about whether Obama's youthful and yuppie white support has to do with those groups wanting a "token black friend"; but almost no one has stopped to ask whether Clinton's consistent lead amongst white working class Democrats might have something to do with race. I'm almost certain it played a role in her margins of victory in states like Ohio, Tennessee, and Oklahoma.

I'm also not sure what this means if true, either for the rest of the primary or the general. I guess the question for the primary is whether latent racism exists amongst Pennsylvania's white Democrats to the same degree that it does in Ohio. And for the general, if Obama wins, I'd say the question is whether racial suspicions in swing states like Ohio are so strong that a significant portion of white working class Democrat-leaners would ignore their economic concerns to vote against him, or whether it's a more subtle thing that just nudged them into a preference for Clinton in the primary, but will be trounced by devotion to economic progress in November.

Swiss bank drops suit against Wikileaks.

There's been a lot of chatter over the last few days about John McCain's embrace of Pastor John Hagee, who's well-known for a history of anti-Catholicism and claims that God will send terrorists to create a "bloodbath" in America for its support of a two state solution in Israel/Palestine. So what is it exactly that Hagee's said and just how much has McCain cozied up to him? We thought we'd put all the choicest moments into one quick video so you could take a look and make up your own mind ...

Watch this episode on YouTube.

Looking ahead, Mark Penn says to expect lots more negative campaigning from Hillary -- although he calls it "vetting" and "contrast."

Quick question: Is Penn taking credit for last night's landmark Clinton wins? Or is he still just a lowly "outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me."

Mike Connery: Before there was the Obama Youth Movement there was The [dot] Org Boom.

The latest delegate counts we've compiled show Hillary with a net gain of 15 delegates last night -- not counting the Texas caucus, which remains outstanding.

Current estimates suggest the Texas caucus results will trim her net gain to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 delegates.

What's Bush up to while the country is distracted by the election?

How about bypassing Congress in cementing our long-term presence in Iraq.

Everyone is still sorting through last night's numbers to determine who won how many delegates. That process is complicated by the allocation system for the Texas primary and the fact that the Texas caucus results are only partly in, even now.

But it would appear at this point that Hillary will net only a few delegates, putting a small dent in Obama's overall delegate lead. Again, that's the most likely scenario as things stand now. We'll be updating that information through the day.

We've obtained the new ad being run against John McCain in Ohio by that independent Democratic group that we first reported about yesterday. Take a look.

What happened last night?

I have a built-in bias against the usual explanations. Getting a grasp on the dynamics of a sprawling presidential campaign is like trying to predict the weather, before the advent of satellites and computer modeling.

There are in fact few visible manifestations of a presidential campaign: TV ads, stump speeches, dueling consultants. Most of the social, cultural and economic engines that drive voting decisions bubble beneath the surface.

Like tribal explanations for weather phenomenon, there is a tendency to ascribe cause and effect based on proximity of events. This is especially true among political reporters and TV people. The ads they run, the events they report, the insiders they talk to must be what propels voters: Muskie was sunk by his tears. Dukakis by Willie Horton. Kerry by Swift Boaters. Vast sociological storm systems reduced to a sound bite or a highlight reel.

That's not to say that NAFTA or red phones or Farrakhan play no role, or that the rhetoric of the campaigns is just white noise. But it's almost always far more complicated than what we see on our TVs.

Which is a long way of saying, I don't know with any precision what happened last night.

What do you think?

We have an open thread set up at TPMCafe. Have at it.

Donna Brazile says Howard Dean and other party leaders should be prepared to step in.

TPMCafe reader post: "I think one thing is clear this far into the Democratic primary race: Both Obama's and Clinton's supporters must now drop out of the race."

Two days before the Ohio election, Zogby had Obama ahead. The day before the election, he had it as a dead heat.

SurveyUSA's final poll, released Monday: Hillary ahead by 10 points, 54-44.

Hillary won Ohio 54-44.

It's almost an exact replay of the California primary, where Zogby and SurveyUSA were at opposite ends of the spectrum and SurveyUSA nailed the exact final vote.

The big headlines tonight are now in focus. Hillary takes three of four primaries, and the two big states. Yet the delegate spread didn't budge. The possibilities seem to range from a high-single digit pick up for Hillary to the possibility of a net pick up for Obama. So, big headlines and buzz for Hillary, but the same stubborn picture on the pledged delegate front.

Both sides are spinning like wild about what the different numbers mean. And a lot gets said about how each side might be 'willing' to win. But it's not going to be up to them. The super delegates are going to break for the winner of the primary/caucus process, as long as it's relatively clear. Who the 'winner' (in the perception of the supers and Democrats around the country) is will also be heavily informed by what the available evidence suggests about who's going to be the stronger candidate in the general. I don't pretend that makes the whole thing simple or the outcome obvious. I just mean to stress that the spin from each side isn't going to be as big a factor as you might think. It's not up to them as much as they want to convince everyone that it is.

A lot's getting said tonight. And a lot of it is baseless speculation. But the one thing that rings true to me is this: The Clinton campaign got rough and nasty over the last week-plus. And they got results. That may disgust you or it may inspire you with confidence in Hillary's abilities as a fighter. But wherever you come down on that question is secondary to the fact that that's how campaign's work. Opponents get nasty. And what we've seen over the last week is nothing compared to what Barack Obama would face this fall if he hangs on and wins the nomination.

So I think the big question is, can he fight back? Can he take this back to Hillary Clinton, demonstrate his ability to take punches and punch back? By this I don't mean that he's got to go ballistic on her or go after Bill's business deals or whatever else her vulnerabilities might be. Candidates fight in different ways and if they're good candidates in ways that play to their strengths and cohere with their broader message. But he's got to show he can take this back to Hillary and not get bloodied and battered when an opponent decides to lower the boom. That will obviously determine in a direct sense how he fares in the coming primaries and caucuses. And Obama's people are dead right when they say, he doesn't even have to do that well from here on out to end this with a substantial pledged delegate margin.

At the end of the day, the winner of the pledged delegate race has the strongest claim to the nomination. Everything else is spin. But it's a strong claim, not incontestable.

Let's hypothesize for a moment a scenario in which March 4th broke the back of Obama's campaign. He emerges bloodied and doesn't seem to be able to stand up to Hillary's assault. His delegate margin is big enough that she can't catch up. But she runs through the next dozen or however many remaining contests there are making up steady ground on the pledged delegate front. I don't think a small margin of pledged delegates will be enough if Obama looks like a damaged candidate who seems unable to fight off a determined and ruthless opponent. Just hanging on to the margin he banked in February won't be enough because fundamentally, if neither candidate has it locked by the convention, the super delegates will want to pick the candidate who looks like the general election winner and is the favorite of Democrats at the time of the convention, two qualifiers which are in practice two sides of the same coin.

I don't think the above is a likely scenario. In fact, I think it's quite unlikely. Almost everything remains stacked against Hillary. There's no denying that. But I think this does point to what this debate -- literal and meta -- will turn on over the next couple weeks.

Chuck Todd's a really good guide to the nitty-gritty of vote totals and delegate distributions. Just a few minutes ago he was giving his latest read on how this all nets out in terms of delegates.

Now, remember one key thing. When people are ballparking delegate distributions they generally take the vote total percentages and assume, for the sake of a rough estimate, that the delegates are distributed roughly in proportion to the popular vote, perhaps with the bonus a given state will use for winning over all. But it doesn't actually work that way. There are all sort of little details about winning particular congressional districts, or sometimes local legislative districts. And on top of that the delegates often take into account how those jurisdictions voted in previous elections. So the devil's really in the details.

Todd was just on and said, not surprisingly, that Rhode Island and Vermont (the battle of the New England micro-states) basically cancel each other out. What he seemed quite confident of is even with Clinton's currently very solid spread in Ohio, she nets only 7 delegates. He seemed pretty solid on that number. So I assume he and his crew had run the numbers on that.

The Texas numbers are still up in the air. But he seemed to be suggesting a possible range from a 4 to a 9 delegate pick-up there.

Put that all together and it seems likely that we're close to no movement at all on the pledged delegate front, conceivably even Obama picking up delegates, not withstanding losing the popular vote in three of the four states.

MSNBC and Fox call Texas for Clinton.

Remember, that's the popular vote in the primary. That accounts for 126 of the Texas delegates; 67 more are up for grabs in the caucus. The Texas primary has no bonus for getting an overall win. So with the margin this close, that's probably a tie in delegates -- even conceivable that Obama picks up more because of the way the apportionment works. But assume that's basically a wash. Then there's the caucus. People assume, though that's only based on earlier caucuses, that Obama will win there. So keep in mind the very distinct possibility, even a probability, that Obama will take more delegates out of Texas than Clinton, even assuming he narrowly loses the primary part of the contest.

It's hard to say whether this has any necessary connection to the NAFTA stuff. But a lot of the suspicion in liberal policy circles toward Obama centered on Goolsbee and his positions on Social Security and social insurance generally. What's ironic about the NAFTA/Goolsbee thing is Clinton's actually the candidate who's always been basically pro-NAFTA whereas Obama's the reverse. So I wonder if having Goolsbee around (who I suspect, based on other policy positions but don't specifically, is pro-NAFTA) came back to bite Obama.

Late Update: TPM Reader NBL chimes in ...

I'm an Ohio native and can tell you that many people I talked to referenced Obama's 'double talk' (their words, not mine) on NAFTA as their reason for switching to Clinton. They said they don't trust Clinton, but now they don't trust Obama either. I've always wondered what would happen if someone punctured Obama's aura of integrity and trustworthiness. I guess Ohio gave us the answer. I just never thought it would be someone on his own team that did the puncturing.

My biggest fear now is that the turf wars within the Clinton camp will lead Penn to aggressively push the idea (wrongly) that the '3AM' ad was what put them over the top. If Penn wins the battle of egos, the Clinton campaign could go hardcore negative and end up handing the presidency to McCain. I guess I should expect as much from a campaign built by people (not Clinton, her advisers) who care more about the credit and blame than on what actually works.

p.s: I was raised and went to college in Ohio. For much of that time I worked on local and statewide Democratic campaigns. Trust me when I say NAFTA is a BIG issue among Democrats there.

Clinton speaking in Ohio. Ohio, Ohio, Ohio.

You have to give Clinton credit. She's gone a month of crushing defeats. She's been outspent. The narrative has all been against her. (Not because, like a lot of people think because the press is biased, but because losing breeds negativity.) And Obama charged hard against her in Ohio and Texas, probably coming close to even in Ohio, at some point last week. But she hung in there, threw everything they had at Obama, and she's pulled this off. She doesn't give up; she doesn't quit.

In a day or two, I think those delegate numbers are going to sink in. And her path to the nomination still looks incredibly difficult. But give her her due.

NBC calls Ohio for Clinton. CNN too.

So here's a question. Almost 40% of the votes are in in Ohio. And Hillary Clinton has a big 16 point margin which really hasn't budged much all evening. So why haven't they called this thing yet? According to Chuck Todd on MSNBC a number of big cities, which are supposed to be Obama strongholds, still haven't reported yet. Still, he'd have to manage something pretty extraordinary in those jurisdictions to even get this one close.

Late Update: Readers have rightly pointed out that it is, or was, 40% of the precincts, not votes.

Brian Williams is on a serious John McCain flufftacular, circa 10:30 PM.

Don't have a clear sense of where the remaining votes are from, and the percentage of precincts reporting are deceptive because of this, but Hillary Clinton is making steady progress against Barack Obama. It's down to a two point margin.

Late Update: Now down to 19,000 votes votes, with 15% reporting. But again, remember, that's 15% of precincts. So it's a misleading number.

Later Update: Now down to 1% -- 15,000 votes.

Yep, Even Later Update: Down to a mere 8,000 votes.

There's too much confusion and disinformation in the air to know what to believe and which side's doing what, but the reports we're getting from on the ground in Texas sound pretty wild: doors getting shut early with various folks locked out, various kinds of gaming of the process.

If earlier caucuses in this cycle are any guide, a lot of this is the product of so many new caucusers who aren't familiar with the rules, haven't been through earlier cycles. But it looks like a contact sport on the ground tonight.

Can someone get Huckabee off the stage and end the most painfully embarrassing concession I think I've ever heard? I mean, put him out of my misery. Huckabee seems to have forgotten that this isn't the end of a grand, hard-fought race. It was a farce that everyone indulged because Huckabee's sort of a feel-good wingnut and had a good sense of humor. When he started on to 'Victory or Death' riff at the end I thought he might be about to end with a stunning crescendo of a ritual suicide. But apparently it was Victory or Death (or windy concession speech), the lesser known original version of the line.

Hillary campaign holds "emergency" conference call with reporters, asserting that Obama backers are "locking out" Hillary supporters in the Texas caucus.

Fox and MSNBC call Rhode Island for Clinton.

Huckabee just strode to the podium, and contrary to earlier reports he is dropping out tonight.

These details are sketchy. But a local station in Ohio is reporting that in addition to the Secretary of State's decision to keep open the precincts in Sandusky county until 9:00 PM, the Obama campaign has reportedly filed a suit to keep them open in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties. According to this local NBC affiliate the judge acceded to his request for Cuyahoga but declined to do so in Franklin county saying that it was out of his jurisdiction.

CNN projecting that John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination with today's results.

Late Update: TPM Reader KB ponders the impact of McCain's win on Dems:

Does John McCain clinching of nomination tonight have an impact on the psychology of the Dem supers? Do they see him cross that threshold and begin to feel that they need to step in now to close down their contest too? Does it make the coalescing around a winner more urgent in their minds after they see this?

Undoubtedly true to an extent. But tonight's results will have a big impact on whether that coalescing begins now or later. The Clinton camp is pleading for those undecided supers to hold off for now.

A number of readers have asked about something seemingly screwy about the Texas numbers. There are roughly 1% of precincts reporting. And yet there are about 800,000 votes cast. Now, we know Texas is an awfully big state. But did 80 million Texans really show up today? Well, no. Here's the answer. These are the early votes, the ones that weren't cast today. And the percentage of returns are precincts reporting, not votes. And my understanding is that in each county all the early votes count as one precinct. I'm not 100% sure I've got the precise details right here. But I'm pretty sure the issue here is early votes.

CNN reporting that Bush will endorse McCain as early as tomorrow if he secures enough delegates for the nomination tonight.

Late Update: Huckabee may bow out after tonight.

Late-deciding voters in Ohio break to Hillary by 11 points.

Voters pick "change" over "experience" by big margins in Ohio and Texas, according to exit polls.

John McCain.

Ohio is too close to call on the Democratic side.

As expected, Vermont goes to Obama, according to network projections.

There had not been much polling in Vermont, but as you can see here, it wasn't expected to be close.

Late Update: I hasten to add that John McCain also is projected to win Vermont. There is still technically a GOP nomination race.

Later Update: Speaking of the forgotten, TPM Reader PP suggests: "If either Obama or Clinton do well in tonight's elections, maybe it's time we ask Mike Gravel to leave the race."

I'm looking at the second wave of exit polls. They show an Obama blowout in Vermont, which was entirely expected and basically dead even in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, the latter two of which would be pretty substantial surprises. At this point in the cycle, though, I think we should remember that the early exit numbers have been significantly off the mark from the final results in a number of cases. So not just one grain of salt but several.

Regulars probably know to expect it by now. But we'll be bringing you live election results right here at TPM starting at 7 PM (when Vermont closes). And we'll stay with it until all the results are settled. Could be a long night. Join us.

Jon Alter runs the math for what Hillary has to do to get back take the lead among pledged delegates.

Late Update: A surprising large number of readers have written in to note that Hillary Clinton cannot "get back the lead" among pledged delegates because she has never been in the lead. To the best of my knowledge this is true. Obama has been in and maintained his lead throughout. I'm not sure this makes a great deal of difference to the larger story. But accuracy counts. So I stand corrected.

TPM Reader JW laments the McCain, media bigs love affair.

Ya, the lobbyist story was pretty much the ballgame. Bumiller's NYT piece yesterday was buried in the avalanche of Democratic primary coverage. If the lobbyist story, and McCain's reaction, didn't tarnish St. McCain then I can't imagine a little pandering to crazy right wing religious fanatics will do the trick. The Lobbyist story undercut everything about McCain. It's like if the press found out Obama didn't really believe in Hope or Hillary really wasn't a Senator from NY. It went to McCain's fundamental argument -- I'm not one of Them, not a Politician, can't be bought by Lobbyists. In fact, he IS ALL OF THOSE THINGS. But he got away with it.

And the reason the press isn't all over the Hagee thing (besides the normal, its okay if you are a Republican) is that they think McCain really doesn't like Hagee, but is gritting his teeth and engaging in
smart politics by getting the religious right's vote. Whereas, they think Obama is trying to have it both ways: get the benefits of a Farakhan endorsement (what are those?) while avoiding the bad of being
associated with him.

Oh well. We've gone through 8 years of this, what's 4 more?

I'm not quite so despairing.

Progressives are finally developing an infrastructure for young activists to rival the conservative youth colossus, Michael Connery writes at TPMCafe's Table for One.

The Horse's Mouth counts up the pundits on either side of the debate. In sheer numbers, the press-has-been-unfair-to-Hillary camp wins.

Let's note that Sen. McCain has decided to hang tough with his embrace of anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic Pastor John Hagee. And the major papers and cable news outlets have decided to give him a pass.

Just to remind everyone, we're hiring a new reporter-blogger at TPMMuckraker. We're looking for just the right person. So if it's you, please let us know. The details are here.

It's all over but the voting (and caucusing). So in today's episode of TPMtv, we go over which states are voting, how many delegates each has, what to expect, and just how that weird Texas Caucus/Primary works ...

Watch this episode on YouTube.

The Clinton campaign is currently holding a Rezko conference call. We'll let you know what gets said.

In other news, Todd Gitlin is not happy about the Clinton-McCain tag team or the McCain camp's conniving with the Canadian PM to damage Obama.

In his ever simplistic way, the President says telecom immunity is just a way for him and Congress to say "thank you for doing your patriotic duty."

While we're on the topic, if John McCain would be the big winner of a result tonight that would insure a continued and hard fought Democratic primary race, you have to figure that a big loser would be the National Journal who would be faced with the possible need to re-re-jigger their congressional voting rankings to make Clinton the most liberal member of the United States Senate.

Politics is a rough biz.

If the polls bear out, we seem set for a result that will lead to minor or major crowing from the Clinton camp, with a victory in Ohio seeming very likely and at least a primary popular vote victory in Texas looking like a distinct possibility. The Obama camp will counter, and they'll be right, that judged by the standards of a few weeks ago, these results only amount to Clinton holding on by the skin of her teeth. But the expectations game isn't 'fair'. It's what it is, they're expectations. And there's simply no denying that such an aura of victory has grown up around Obama that losing one or both of these big states (at least the popular vote in Texas, which, remember, also has a caucus that seems likely to bag a lot of delegates for Obama) will be perceived as a very real turnaround.

And yet, look at the delegate counts, or what they seem likely to be. We've run the numbers, and even assuming a very big night for Clinton, she seems unlikely to make more than a small dent in Obama's lead of roughly 150 pledged delegates. Indeed, she could actually do quite well on the popular vote side and end up falling behind a bit further on pledged delegates.

The upshot is that the Clinton campaign may come out of tonight with a major shot in the arm and a round of good press and yet still be in no more realistic a position to win the nomination based on the stubborn tally of delegates.

Zogby has Clinton moving back ahead of Obama in Texas (47%-44%), a six point net move from the day before, and tied in Ohio (44%-44%), a two point move. Bear in mind that Zogby is actually an outlier in having it even close in Ohio and there now seems little doubt that, if the polls are to be credited, the late movement is all in Clinton's direction.

It's hard to say just what issues are responsible for the shift in momentum. It's hard to believe the NAFTA stuff hasn't played a role. The Farrakhan/Muslim/anti-Semitism stuff, which Clinton has pushed in concert with key press outlets, also probably plays a big role.

But I think the real story is a very effective working of the refs on the part of the Clinton campaign. Going back more than a week the Clinton campaign has made a concerted and aggressive push arguing that they've been the victim of systematically negative press coverage while Obama has gotten a free ride. Whether or not you agree with that claim there's little doubt that the effort has paid off big dividends. The last week's press coverage has featured a mix of stories on the question of relative scrutiny/fairness itself as well as more probing looks into Obama himself.

Yesterday Zogby's daily tracking poll gave Obama his first lead in Ohio in any poll we've seen.

Today Zogby brings him back down to earth, showing a dead heat in Ohio.

Still just charges and denials, but I suspect we'll be hearing more of this. It's now being reported in the Canadian press that Ian Brodie, the Tory Prime Minister's Chief of Staff was responsible for leaking the memo describing the Obama staffer's meeting with the Canadian consular officials.

As I mentioned, another Alaskan mucky muck has gone down for public corruption. Jim Clark -- lawyer, lobbyist, and former chief of staff to Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski (father of current U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski) -- pleaded guilty today to a single conspiracy count.

Typically the way these plea deals work is for the cooperating defendant to plead guilty to some concise and discreet set of facts that doesn't tip off other targets of the investigation as to prosecutors' intentions. So you can bet, and the plea documents here suggest, that Clark was guilty of a lot more than that single conspiracy count.

But even that one count contains some tantalizing information. Clark admits to conspiring to have Veco, the Alaska oilfield contractor that is at the center of the federal investigation, make payments totaling more than $68,000 to two pollsters and a political consultant for services provided to then-Gov. Murkowski's 2006 re-election campaign.

Who are they?

Here's an excerpt from the Information filed in court today (emphasis mine):

5. Polling Company A was a business that provides polling services for political campaigns. Polling Company A was located in the State of Alaska.

6. Polling Company B was a business that provides polling services for political campaigns. Polling Company B was located in a jurisdiction other than the State of Alaska.

7. CONSULTANT A was a consultant who provided strategic analysis and other services to the campaign of the Governor of the State of Alaska. CONSULTANT A’s business and residence were located in a jurisdiction other than the State of Alaska.

Polling Company A is not identified by name in the court filings today, but Anchorage pollster David Dittman told the Anchorage Daily News last fall that Veco had paid him $20,000 for a poll for Murkowski in April 2006. The court filings today allege that Polling Company A was paid $20,000 for an April 2006 poll. Just a coincidence?

(Dittman later became a strategist on the campaign, although ironically he quit because, he said, Murkowski just wasn't spending enough money. "I thought the governor was being too frugal with his own funds, in my opinion, and I just didn't want to work so hard on a campaign that was underfunded when it didn't need to be," Dittman said at the time.)

After Dittman's allegations appeared in the paper in September, Clark issued a statement denying the charge. Well, I guess things change.

Now, apparently, it wasn't unusual for Veco to pay for polls for friendly Alaska pols. A Veco executive testified during one of the Alaska corruption trials that Veco had paid for "upwards of 100 polls." Two pollsters, one of them Dittman, told the Anchorage Daily News that Veco had paid them for two different polls in 2006 for then-state Sen. Ben Stevens, son of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. The Stevens have been caught up in the Veco investigation but not charged with any crimes.

But that still leaves the two out-of-state outfits: "Polling Company B" and "Consultant A." Who are they? When do we get to find out?

The sweeping federal corruption investigation in Alaska snagged another guilty plea today.

Jim Clark, one-time chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski (R), pleaded guilty to conspiring to arrange for corrupt oilfield contractor Veco to pay $68,000 for consultants and polls on Murkowski's 2006 re-election campaign, none of which was ever disclosed as contributions to Murkowski's campaign.

Murkowski ultimately lost in the GOP primary in 2006.

We'll have more on this tomorrow at TPMmuckraker, but to put this in some perspective, the Anchorage newspaper once called Clark Alaska's most powerful (unelected) official, and he is cooperating with the government. This should only get more interesting.

Last week I posted snapshots of the Democratic races in Ohio and Texas, using Pollster.com's poll of polls.

At that time, Obama had passed Hillary for the first time in the Texas race and was trending upward. But look what's happened since:

Obama is now ahead by a mere .2 percentage points in Texas, and it seems clear that the race there has been scrambled in the last few days.

In Ohio, the graph of Obama's steep climb suggests more movement perhaps than there has actually been in the most recent polls (with the exception of Zogby):

Overall, Clinton holds a 6-point lead in Ohio going into tomorrow's election.

Clinton supporters rally around memories of her miracle comeback in New Hampshire. Obama supporters cherish the memory of his breaking wide open what appeared to be a close race in Wisconsin. Which will it be? A comeback or a runaway? Or neither?

I think it's clear that NAFTA/Goolsbee flap has blunted some of Obama's momentum, especially in Ohio. The volume of press releases out of the campaign certainly suggests that.

The Obama campaign just sent out a Youtube clip from a little more than an hour ago on MSNBC that shows video from the Canadian parliament in which a member of the opposition (I'm not sure who, if anyone can tell me, I'd appreciate it) attacks the government for meddling in the Democratic primaries; and then Prime Minister Harper responds.

Now, the headline of the Obama camp's email reads "Canadian Prime Minister Addresses Issue." But what's interesting is that Harper, who's close to DC Republicans, actually doesn't address it in a way that's helpful to the Obama campaign. Indeed, notwithstanding a statement of regret and other flowery language, he seems to go out of his way to confirm the essential charge against the Obama campaign.

Remember, both things can be true -- Goolsbee may have said these things (he's already eyed with suspicion by many Democratic policy types) and the Tory government in Canada used this to damage Obama. One doesn't negate the other.

Late Update: Readers confirm the questioner is Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party which, if I'm not mistaken (and this isn't my subject) is the smaller and more social democratic of the two opposition parties.

Blogging about his new book -- Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority -- Michael Connery previews his week at TPMCafe's Table for One:

Over the next five days, I’d like to talk about the history of the youth vote, why Barack Obama is just the very visible tip of the iceberg that is today’s rising youth participation, what it all means for the Democrats, and how the broader progressives movement can capitalize on this youth wave to secure a progressive future majority far into the 21st Century.

Check it out.

I'm not sure who this favors. But the weather tomorrow in Ohio is supposed to be simply terrible.

From the AP ...

The National Weather Service is looking for freezing rain to cover most of the northern half of the state, which will be under a winter storm through Wednesday morning. The weather service says if temperatures fail to crack the freezing mark on Tuesday, a "significant" coating of ice is possible.

Across most of southern Ohio, there's a threat of heavy rain and flooding. The forecasters expect 1 to 2 inches of rainfall in the region on primary day, with even higher amounts possible in some areas.

According to the Obama's official schedule, he has no events in Ohio either today or tomorrow. He's in Texas the whole time.

For tomorrow's TPMtv episode we're doing a final March 4th primaries round up, looking at what the states are, how many delegates they have, who looks set to do well where, and so forth. So I had a member of the staff write up a memo for me. And looking at the polls a bit more closely, it looks like the polls in both Ohio and Texas are trending in Hillary's direction, though she still appears to be behind in Texas.

The polls aren't unanimous of course. There are significant exceptions. Like Zogby, for instance, has Obama for the first time in the lead in Ohio. But he's clearly an outlier on this.

A big complicating factor in Texas is the caucus, where people assume based on past caucuses, that Obama will significantly outperform his poll numbers.

As I said earlier, everybody who's watching the numbers closely can see this as well as we can. And compared to two weeks ago, the probable outcome for Obama in both races looks good. But a Hillary win in one or especially two races would be a jolt to the atmosphere we're in at the moment where Obama is seen as an all but unstoppable force.

From the beginning of the primaries, there's been a pattern I've seen from a lot of Hillary supporters which of late has basically had it that despite Obama's wins in February, a couple solid wins on March 4th means he has to get out. I'm not kidding. I hear this a lot. It's a weird mindset. There was a lot of it after Super Tuesday. I cannot tell you how many emails we got here at TPM on February 6th arguing that it was over and obvious that Obama had to bow out after Super Tuesday. And I've started seeing a series of similar emails this morning: if Hillary wins Ohio and Texas, she's got the nomination. (I just noticed an example here in our reader blogs section.)

That seems ridiculous to me. But I'll admit I'm less sure than I was even a couple days where we're going to be on March 5th. Under most probable scenarios the overall delegate math doesn't change a lot tomorrow. And I still don't see the superdelegates going for the candidate who has a clear deficit among pledged delegates. But politics is unpredictable.

SurveyUSA has their final Ohio number out: Clinton 54%, Obama 44%.

With Zogby saying Obama has openned a narrow lead, this is looking like another one of those someone's going to look pretty stupid moments, just as we had between these two pollsters going into California.

And remember, that one didn't work out well for Zogby, though admittedly he got Missouri right where SUSA did not.

Note too that this is I think the third poll out today (Rasmussen, PPP and SUSA) that shows Clinton increasing her margin over Obama in Ohio, not just maintaining a diminishing lead.

We're on the eve of what could be the end of the Democratic nominating contest. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that if Barack Obama wins Texas and Ohio, it's over. The official recognition may be days or weeks in coming. But that will be it.

But you can see a bit of a pattern shaping up. Compared to where things were after the Potomac primary, things look bleak for Hillary. A loss in Texas seems likely and one in Ohio is at least possible. But the hype and expectations for Obama are so high that I think people expect him to take everything.

There's some factual basis for that. In the Virginia and Maryland and later in Wisconsin he seriously outperformed the polls. But Hillary's lead in Ohio, though greatly diminished, seems pretty resilient.

In the final analysis, as we keep coming back to, this whole thing comes down to delegates. So I don't think a narrow victory in Ohio alone keeps Hillary's hopes for victory realistic. But Ohio isn't just a big state. Like Missouri it's a quintessential swing state. It has all sorts of karma and political mojo surrounding it. And Obama's thrown tons of resources into it.

If she comes out the winner there, which is the probable outcome if you take most of the polls at face value, I can't see where she's getting out of the race any time soon.

The Obama campaign has released the two-minute TV ad that it will be running tonight in Texas.

Hillary has new TV spots up in Ohio and Texas.

Telecom immunity isn't about protecting the telecoms from ravenous trial lawyers; it's about protecting the Administration from further revelations about warrantless wiretapping and the legal consequences thereof.

Use Barack Obama's middle name at a rally and John McCain wants no part of you. But call the Catholic Church the "great whore" and the presumptive Republican nominee will gladly take your endorsement. We try to parse the double standard with some help from the talking heads in today's Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv ...

Watch this episode on YouTube.

It's within the margin of error, to be sure, but Zogby's daily tracking poll is out this morning, and it gives Obama his first lead in Ohio in any poll, 47-45.

Meanwhile, Quinnipiac has Hillary up four points, 49-45, although that's down from her 11 point lead of a week ago.

Late Update: This throws a monkey wrench in the "Obama zeroing in on Hillary in Ohio" narrative. Rasmussen shows Hillary widening her lead by four points since their last poll, on Friday. She now leads 50-44.

Later Update: Ditto with the new poll from Public Policy Polling. It shows Hillary widening her Ohio lead from 4 points to 9 points.

Soon after tonight's 60 Minutes ran we started to get emails from readers flagging Hillary Clinton's response to Steve Kroft's question about whether she believed Obama was a Muslim. From several emailers her comment was characterized simply as her saying she "took Obama at his word" that he wasn't a Muslim. As you can see from the transcript below, what she said isn't quite that simple. In fact, at least from the transcript she doesn't seem to have used those words at all.

Yet there is some iffy hedging.

I've read and now watched a few times. And I suspect this is a case where different people will come away from seeing the exchange with very different senses whether she was hedging or whether people are pulling more equivocation out of her words because of the intensity and combustibility of the moment.

So here's the quote and the video.

“You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?” Kroft asked Sen. Clinton.

“Of course not. I mean, that, you know, there is no basis for that. I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that,” she replied.

“You said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not…a Muslim. You don't believe that he's…,” Kroft said.

“No. No, there is nothing to base that on. As far as I know,” she said.

“It's just scurrilous…?” Kroft inquired.

“Look, I have been the target of so many ridiculous rumors, that I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time,” Clinton said.

Here's the video ...

For me it's on the edge. And I find it surprising she would leave it on the edge. Why the 'as far as I know' line? On the other hand, at other points, she seems pretty unequivocal. But mainly I'm curious to hear what you think.

This morning on CNN's Late Edition, Wolf Blitzer asked McCain supporter Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) about McCain's embrace of anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic Pastor John Hagee.

There's a couple things to watch in this passage, first is how Blitzer completely misstates what actually happened. "Should John McCain repudiate and reject the comments, the support from John Hagee just as Barack Obama has done that with the Rev. Louis Farrakhan (sic)?"

Let's be clear what happened here. John McCain solicited the support and endorsement of Hagee and then he held a joint appearance with Hagee in which he formally endorsed him. In these terms, Obama has no connection whatsoever to Farrakhan. He's just someone who said positive things about Obama. So the premise for even asking Obama is dubious in itself, whereas McCain has openly embraced Hagee.

As you can see Hutchison steadfastly refuses to reject or denounce or even say what she or McCain disagrees with Hagee about. Her big point seems to be that even if Hagee calls the Catholic Church the "great whore" and "anti-Christ" that he still supports Israel and has a big congregation whose support McCain needs. Let's go to the tape ...

Ignatius to Obama: You're no Joe Lieberman!

Just not for us.

From Reuters (courtesy of TPM Reader BKS) ...

Pomp and ceremony greeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his arrival in Iraq on Sunday, the fanfare a stark contrast to the rushed and secretive visits of his bitter rival U.S. President George W. Bush.

Ahmadinejad held hands with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as they walked down a red carpet to the tune of their countries' national anthems, his visit the first by an Iranian president since the two neighbours fought a ruinous war in the 1980s.

His warm reception, in which he was hugged and kissed by Iraqi officials and presented with flowers by children, was Iraq's first full state welcome for any leader since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.