Chinese Spying on the U.S. on the Rise

Eventually we will figure out that Communist China is a greater threat to America than al Qaeda:

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.

Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.

[...]The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an "intellectual vacuum cleaner," has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said. Some are trained in modern electronic techniques for snooping on wireless computer transactions. Others, such as Mak, are technical experts who have been in place for years and have blended into their communities.

[...]Recent prosecutions indicate that Chinese agents have infiltrated sensitive military programs pertaining to nuclear missiles, submarine propulsion technology, night-vision capabilities and fighter pilot training -- all of which could help China modernize its programs while developing countermeasures against advanced weapons systems used by the United States and its allies.

"The intelligence services of the People's Republic of China pose a significant threat both to the national security and to the compromise of U.S. critical national assets," said William Carter, an FBI spokesman. "The PRC will remain a significant threat for a long time as they attempt to develop their military capabilities and to develop their economy in order to compete in today's world economy."

[...]While military technology appears to be the top prize, the Chinese effort is also aimed at commercial and industrial technologies, which often are poorly protected, several officials said. "Espionage used to be a problem for the FBI, CIA and military, but now it's a problem for corporations," Brenner said. "It's no longer a cloak-and-dagger thing. It's about computer architecture and the soundness of electronic systems."

[...]In another recent case, former Northrop Grumman scientist Noshir Gowadia, who helped build the B-2 bomber, was indicted last fall for allegedly sharing cruise missile data with the Chinese government during a half-dozen trips to China. He is scheduled to go on trial in October.

Hillary Clinton Plagiarizes Ronald Reagan

Hillary made a big deal about Barack Obama's plagiarizing a speech. Here she is doing the same. In this case it's a joke told by President Ronald Reagan.

Jesse Ventura on Larry King: We Must Overthrow the Two-Party System

This is the message that I've been arguing for decades. Jesse Ventura, who is a leader in the struggle against the corrupt two-party system, appeared on Larry King yesterday making his case. For those who don't remember, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, former wrestler became Governor of Minnesota by way of the Reform Party. He argues as I do that the time has come for our nation to throw off the chains of the tyranny of the duopoly. Read the entire transcript of the show. Here are some excerpts below:

VENTURA: I wrote the book because I was down there and I met the writer Dick Russell a few years ago. And he lives down there part- time, too. And we would get together every Wednesday. And we wrote the book together. And I wrote the book, hopefully, to awaken America, the United States, to what I believe we need a revolution here.

KING: What kind of revolution?

VENTURA: Well, when I say revolution, I don't say a violent one, because I'm not for violence. But we need a revolution to get rid of the Democratic and Republican two-party dictatorship that goes on in this country. Larry, they've got us $9 trillion in debt now, these two parties. Trillion.

I can't fathom what a trillion is. Can you?

[...]VENTURA: -- I believe there shouldn't be parties. I believe that --

KING: No parties?

VENTURA: No parties, that you should run on ideas and who you are and not be part of these two...

KING: But who does the backing? Who forms the groups? Who -- how do you get elected?

VENTURA: That's the problem.

KING: Yes.

VENTURA: That's the problem. The problem is these groups. You know, as I would get in trouble with before, I used to call them the Democrips and the Rebloodlicans. They're the same as the street gangs, only these guys wear Brooks Brothers suits.

KING: All right, what do you think of what we -- what do you think of Hillary Clinton? You met her.

VENTURA: I met her. She's a very intelligent woman. I don't take anything away from her. But, let's look at -- are we a dual monarchy now, Larry?

I mean we've had only Bushes and Clintons for the majority of my voting life have been running this country. So the two elitist parties -- that's all they give us are Bushes and Clintons, because you technically could go back to 1980, when Bush was with Ronald Reagan. So from 1980 to 2008, 28 years it's been Bushes and Clintons...

KING: We had --

VENTURA: ... and if Hillary wins, it will be another eight.

KING: All right.

So does Barack Obama bring you a degree of hope?

VENTURA: Barack Obama, to me, is the best of what they're offering us because he's new. He's got fresh ideas. But he's still going to get his strings pulled by the Democratic Party. He's talking about all this change. There won't be change happening.

Look it, OK, 2006 -- the voters clearly sent a mandate to the spineless Democrats. They sent a mandate to them saying get us out of Iraq.

Have they done it? No. Are they even close to doing it? No. All we're getting is cheap talk from them.

There is an alternative. The revolution that Mr.Ventura is talking about will come in the form of The People's Platform. Start today.

Hillary's Lies Guranteeing Her Defeat

The whole truth is finally coming out. And Hillary Clinton can't blame some vast right wing conspiracy. She and her famous lying husband, Bill Clinton, have a long history of telling fibs. Americans have been lied to for so long we are beginning to learn to spot a phony. It is that phoniness that is bringing down Hillary Clinton:

The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.

Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

Typical of her shameless pandering:

Clinton added, "When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit, I never give up and I know that were going to make it together, not just up those stairs, but were going to climb that mountain for a better day for America."

She's lying about her opposition to NAFTA. And she is lying about paying her bills:

Gerry McEntee, Clinton's loyal surrogate and AFSCME president, defended Clinton's hesitency about NAFTA when she served as first Lady. McEntee said she called him when it was passed and she said, "We lost," while the candidate, in her speech, said she "raised a big yellow caution flag" about the trade bill.

On a separate subject, when asked in a press availability about the financial state of her campaign, Clinton replied, "We are raising the money we need and we are paying our bills."

That might explain why potential voters in Pennsylvania are turning for Obama. And if she loses that State it is definitely over:

Barack Obama has cut deeply into Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania, coming to within 5 percentage points in a new poll as the two rivals fought toe-to-toe over the same turf yesterday.

Sen. Clinton leads Sen. Obama by 47-42 percent in a new Rasmussen Reports survey. Just a week ago, Clinton was up 10 percentage points, and in early March she was ahead by 15.

"If Obama is able to pull off an upset in the Keystone State, it would effectively end the race for the Democratic nomination," wrote Scott Rasmussen in an analysis of the poll.

Clinton has been slipping over the past 10 days since her story that she came under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia in 1996 was debunked.

Even Clinton's supporters think she will lose:

A key Hillary Clinton supporter appeared to be a bit off message during a recent interview with a Canadian radio station.

"If I had to make a prediction right now, I'd say Barack Obama is going to be the next president," Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said in a Canadian public radio interview this weekend. "I will be stunned if he's not the next president of the United States."

Clinton Strategy: If I Can't Win Neither Will You, Barack

It's an obvious point the press keeps missing. Hillary wants to beat up Obama so that if she doesn't win Obama will be too weak to beat McCain in November. Then she'll be able to run in 4 years. Therefore, the arguments calling for Ms.Clinton to step down are missing the point. Hillary doesn't give a damn that her staying in the race is hurting the Democratic Party. Remember: the Clintons destroyed the Dems when Bill was President:

The analysis was conducted by Matt Seyfang, an attorney and a former delegate counter for past Democratic presidential candidates including Bill Clinton in 1992 to Bill Bradley in 2000. According to his projections and a calculation of the number of committee seats that each candidate is entitled to based on their proportion to the statewide vote or the relevant caucus rules, Obama holds roughly 65 seats and Clinton 56. There are slightly more than 23 seats still to be decided in the remaining contests.

Seyfang’s findings reveal that Clinton faces an uphill battle if, as she signaled on Saturday, her campaign decides to take her fight to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations to the Credentials Committee.

“I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan,” she told the Washington Post. “And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention — that's what credentials committees are for.”

She can't even pay her bills:

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose health-care plan would require every American to get insurance, owes health-insurance companies nearly $300,000 in payments to cover her own campaign staff, records reveal.

Clinton's campaign owes $229,000 to health-insurance giant Aetna and another $63,000 to CareFirst, which provides insurance coverage for her staff.

The debts, first reported by Politico.com, are part of a $9 million debt her campaign disclosed in documents filed with the feds.

[...] The potentially damaging revelation came as Barack Obama delivered yet another blow to her campaign - by scoring the endorsement of Minnesota's first-term senator, Amy Klobuchar.

Klobuchar, a superdelegate who gets to cast a vote at the party's national convention this summer, is the second female senator to endorse Obama.

She said the candidate speaks in a "different voice" and noted his impressive victory over Clinton in the Minnesota caucuses.

"Between Barack and a hard place, I chose Barack," she said, adding that she also likes Clinton.

"I believe that Sen. Clinton has every right to continue her campaign," she said, days after Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont urged Clinton to get out of the race.

Obama has now equaled Clinton in the number of endorsements received from fellow senators - 13 each.

And the arguments for her continued candidacy don't wash:

Myth: Very well, then, Mr. Smarty-Math. But if we counted Michigan and Florida, then Hillary would be winning!

Nooo, she wouldn't. The margin would depend on how you allocate the delegates, but Obama would still be ahead. And he'd still be about 100,000 ahead in the popular vote, too, despite not even being on the ballot in Michigan. However, it would enhance Hillary's chances of catching up in the remaining races.

Andrew Sullivan: Hillary C. Flings the Dirt but it’s Sticking to Her

This scorching critique comes from blogger Andrew Sullivan:

Hillary Clinton started throwing some stink bombs at Obama months ago; then, after New Hampshire, she threw the kitchen sink; and in the past week, as cable news threw the boiler, she gave it an extra push.

“I wouldn’t have Jeremiah Wright [Obama’s preacher friend who made embarrassing/incendiary comments] as a pastor,” she told Richard Scaife in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which just happens to be in Pennsylvania, which just happens to be the next primary state.

Clinton wins even more chutzpah points when you recall who Scaife is. He is the far-right media magnate who made a fortune in the 1990s running the most irresponsible antiClinton stories in The American Spectator, who broke Troopergate, who promoted the notion that Clinton had her best friend Vince Foster murdered and fanned the idea that Bill Clinton was a drug dealer. Still, Clinton managed to sit down with him and discuss the real enemy: Obama. Machiavelli would understand, although one has to think he would be a teensy bit more subtle about it.

[...]This is now Clinton’s best hope of beating Obama. The woman who has a great and admirable record on racial issues, whose husband was described as the country’s “first black president”, the candidate with the strongest Hispanic support . . . now needs the votes of older conservative whites, who are uncomfortable with the idea of a black president and suspicious of Latino immigration.

This might explain why Obama's lead continues to grow:

Barack Obama now has a 10-percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton in a national tracking poll conducted by Gallup, the largest lead he has posted in the poll this year.

Gallup reported Obama now leads among Democrats 52 percent against 42 percent for Hillary Clinton, the third day in a row he has held a statistically significant lead against Clinton in the poll.

The movement in the national poll follows a week in which Clinton was widely lampooned for exaggerated accounts she gave of a visit to Bosnia in which she claimed she ran for cover under sniper fire. After the pilot of her plane and reporters who were on the trip with her disputed the account, she conceded she her account was a "mistake" and chalked the incident up to campaign-trail fatigure. But the exaggeration rapidly became fodder for late-night comics and video spoofs on the Internet.

Food Stamp Use Is at Record Pace

While the establishment quibble over whether we are in a recession, Main St. certainly feels like things are going badly. And it's only going to get worse:

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which led to a spike in the South.

But recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, officials and experts say, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched. Citing expected growth in unemployment, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected a continued increase in the monthly number of recipients in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1 — to 28 million, up from 27.8 million in 2008, and 26.5 million in 2007.

The percentage of Americans receiving food stamps was higher after a recession in the 1990s, but actual numbers are expected to be higher this year.

Federal benefit costs are projected to rise to $36 billion in the 2009 fiscal year from $34 billion this year.

“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.

One example is Michigan, where one in eight residents now receives food stamps. “Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we’re at an all-time record level,” said Maureen Sorbet, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.

The climb in food stamp recipients there has been relentless, through economic upturns and downturns, reflecting a steady loss of industrial jobs that has pushed recipient levels to new highs in Ohio and Illinois as well.

Victim of Horrific U.S. Government Torture on 60 Minutes

This story is the most shocking example of the American governments abuse of human rights I've ever heard. It is absolutely disgusting. All Americans should feel shame at what happened to this man. Do we really live in a free society? How could we allow this to go on? We must vow not to allow this to happen again:

The reason Kurnaz was singled out may always be a mystery. But at the time, the U.S. was paying bounties for suspicious foreigners. Kurnaz, who'd been rambling across Pakistan with Islamic pilgrims, seemed to fit the bill. Kurnaz says that he was told that U.S. intelligence paid $3,000 for him. He ended up bound and shackled on an American military plane.

"I was sure soon as they would find out I'm not a terrorist, they will apologize for it and let me go back home," he says.

But the plane flew him out of Pakistan and to a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was mixed with prisoners fresh off the battlefield. His new identity was "number 53." He was kept in an outdoor pen, in sub-freezing weather and interrogated daily.

[...]Docke says the police report was sent to the Americans. And Kurnaz claims his interrogations at Kandahar turned to torture. He told 60 Minutes that American troops held his head underwater.

"They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything," he says.

"They were hitting you in the stomach while you're head was underwater so that you'd have to take a breath?" Pelley asks,

"Right. I had to drink. I had to…how you say it?" Kurnaz replies.

"Inhale. Inhale the water," Pelley says.

"I had to inhale the water. Right," Kurnaz says.

Kurnaz says the Americans used a device to shock him with electricity that made his body go numb. And he says he was hoisted up on chains suspended by his arms from the ceiling of an aircraft hangar for five days.

"Every five or six hours they came and pulled me back down. And the doctor came to watch if I can still survive to not. He looked into my eyes. He checked my heart. And when he said okay, then they pulled me back up," Kurnaz says.

"The point of the doctor's visit was not to treat you. It was to see if you could take another six hours hanging from the ceiling?" Pelley asks.

"Right," Kurnaz says.

[...]He says it went on year after year, always the same questions about al Qaeda, and the endless effort to break his will. He heard nothing from the outside and wondered whether anyone knew that he was there.

Then, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners did have the right to lawyers. And to his complete surprise, one day Kurnaz was told he had a visitor. It was Baher Azmy, an American lawyer.

"He was chained to a bolt in the floor around his ankle," Azmy says, recalling his first meeting with Kurnaz. "And had an absolutely enormous beard that had marked the years that he was in detention. He looked like someone who had been shipwrecked, which, of course, in a sense, he really was."

Azmy is a professor at the Seton Hall Law School. He dug into the case and found that the military seemed to have invented some of the charges. Military prosecutors said one of Kurnaz’s friends was a suicide bomber, but the friend turned up alive and well in Germany.

Read the entire article/transcript

CIA Director Hayden on Meet The Press: Transcript

Read the entire transcript of CIA Director, Gen.Michael Hayden, appearance this week on Meet The Press. Here are some excerpts:

MR. RUSSERT: I want to go back to '07 when Bob Woodward wrote a piece in The Washington Post about comments you made to the Iraqi Study Group, and have a chance to talk about that regarding Iraq.

"On the morning of November 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered ... in the ... Roosevelt Room of the White House. CIA Director Michael Hayden ... said, `the inability of the [Iraqi] government to govern seems irreversible,' adding that he could not `point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,' according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"`The government is unable to govern,' Hayden concluded. `We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balance, and it cannot function.'"

Is that an accurate assessment of what you said?

GEN. HAYDEN: It's an incomplete assessment of, of what I said. What, what I said was inability to govern or turn this around in the short term is, is what I precisely said. And then I, I tried to use a sports metaphor. I talked about running a marathon, and what I, what I said to the, to the group there is I'd run a marathon in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh's pretty hilly, as you know, and at about mile 21 there's a two-mile downhill stretch. And as you get down to the bottom of that hill, it's only three miles to the finish and you run three miles before church on Sunday. So I knew if I got to mile 22, there was a natural break that would begin to turn things into my favor. What I was saying to the commission was, there were no longer any natural breaks lying ahead of us that would turn things in our favor. It had to be done with just slogging through hard work. There were no upcoming elections, for example, no upcoming changes in the political structure that would be natural breaks. That's what I was trying to say to the committee.

Doublespeak on waterboarding:

[Russert]Do you believe that waterboarding's torture?

GEN. HAYDEN: What's more important is what the Department of Justice believes, and, frankly, the question of waterboarding, I've, I tried to point this out in as many ways as I can publicly, is an uninteresting question for the Central Intelligence Agency. We have not--and I, I made this public last month--we have not waterboarded anyone in now over five years, and only three people have been waterboarded in in the life of the CIA's interrogation program.

The issue with the Army Field Manual is not the false dichotomy that, that some people want to create, that on the one hand you've got the Army field manual and on the other hand you've got the licensing of torture. That, that's not the choice at all. The Army has listed--and by the way, the real debate, the real impact for us isn't on the list of things you've forbidden. That's fairly uninteresting to us. What's critical for the Army Field Manual, were it to be applied to CIA, is what's authorized and limiting the CIA only to what's authorized. No one claims that that list of authorized techniques in the Army Field Manual exhausts the universe of lawful interrogation techniques that the republic can draw on to defend itself. And so the issue for us is, is, is not torture or licensing torture or licensing waterboarding. And to the best of my ability I've made it very clear that we don't do that. But to limit us to what America's Army thinks they can train young soldiers to do under minimal supervision against lawful combatants in a transient battlefield situation, when our circumstances are completely different, means we're undercutting our ability to defend the nation.

Tibetan Protestors Attack Chinese Embassy

Alive and kicking:

A group of 200 Tibetan exiles and Buddhist monks tried to storm the Chinese Embassy visa office in Nepal's capital on Sunday but police beat them back with bamboo batons.

At least 130 protesters were arrested and some of the demonstrators and policemen were injured in the scuffle.

The protesters reached the metal gate of the fortified compound and were kicking and trying to push it open when police armed with bamboo batons rushed to the scene and began beating them.

"Stop the killing, stop the killing," the protesters chanted as they charged toward the office gate.

Tibetans have protested in front of the Chinese Embassy visa office in the heart of Katmandu in the past, but it was the first time they had reached the gate and tried to push through.

Sunday's protest was the latest by Tibetan monks and refugees in Katmandu against Chinese authorities' crackdown on recent demonstrations in Tibet.

Police officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing policy, said those arrested were being held in several detention centers and would likely be freed later within hours without facing any charges.

Nepal has said it would not allow protests against any "friendly nation," including China.

International rights groups, like New York-based Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations have repeatedly criticized Nepal's handling of the Tibetan protests and beating of the protesters.

Nepal has not issued any statement on China's crackdown in Tibet.

Chinese state media accused the Dalai Lama on Sunday of closing the door to talks over Tibet's future, an apparent response to rising international calls for Beijing to negotiate with Tibet's exiled Buddhist leader.

In a lengthy article, Xinhua News Agency cited past actions and statements attributed to the 72-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner that it said contradicted or undermined his calls for negotiations.

"It was the Dalai Lama clique that closed the door of dialogue," Xinhua said, using China's standard term for the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The statement came a day before the arrival in Beijing of the Olympic torch, which has become a magnet for Tibetan activists and other groups seeking to use the August Games to draw attention to their cause.

China has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating protests in Tibet's regional capital Lhasa and other heavily Tibetan areas that started peacefully among Buddhist monks, but turned deadly on March 14. Beijing says 22 people were killed in Lhasa, while Tibetan exiles put the overall death toll at 140.

Obama Wants to Return to Foreign Policy of the Past

I'm not sure that's such a great idea. JFK has his Bay of Pigs. Reagan sold weapons to Iran, broke the law in fighting the Sandanistas, and allowed Jihadists to murder Americans in the Middle East. Bush Sr. invaded Panama to overthrow a thug who had been the CIA payroll. Obama has craft a new foreign policy that would make America strong not compromise us morally:

Sen. Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more "traditional" foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush - father of the president - for the way he handled the Persian Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives.

Obama began a six-day bus tour through Pennsylvania, the largest remaining primary prize in the contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Sen. John McCain is the Republican nominee-in-waiting.

"The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan, and it is George Bush that's been naive and it's people like John McCain and, unfortunately, some Democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation around the world," he said.

Obama faced criticism in January from Clinton and then-challenger John Edwards for saying Reagan had changed the trajectory of American politics - and that Republicans had been the party of ideas for the last decade or more.

In one of the more heated moments of the Democratic debates, Clinton challenged him directly on the topic, saying those GOP ideas were "bad for America, and I was fighting against those ideas."

In his speech Friday night, the Illinois senator charged that Clinton, for all her criticism of the current President Bush, has too often gone along with his decisions.

"I do think that Sen. Clinton would understand that George Bush's policies have failed, but in many ways she has been captive to the same politics that led her to vote for authorizing the war in Iraq," he said. "Since 9/11 the conventional wisdom has been that you've got to look tough on foreign policy by voting and acting like the Republicans, and I disagree with that."

His views on other issues can also be considered typical politician-speak. Obama is an honorable man but being part of a corrupt two-party system forces even the best of the best to compromise their principles:

No sooner had we issued Elizabeth Green's dispatch under the headline "Obama Open to Private School Vouchers" than his campaign was scrambling to undo the potential damage with the Democratic primary electorate. On February 20, his campaign issued a statement headlined, "Response to Misleading Reports Concerning Senator Obama's Position on Vouchers" that said, "Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers." The statement went on, "Throughout his career, he has voted against voucher proposals and voiced concern for siphoning off resources from our public schools." It noted that Mr. Obama's education agenda "does not include vouchers, in any shape or form."

Clarifying statement aside, there is no taking away what Mr. Obama actually said in the interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentininal that was the subject of Ms. Green's dispatch. "If there was any argument for vouchers, it was 'Alright, let's see if this experiment works,' and if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids," the senator said. "I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn. We're losing several generations of kids and something has to be done."

Parents of schoolchildren, in sharp contradistinction to teachers' unions, will prefer Senator Obama's initial statement to the clarification issued by his campaign. The initial statement was change you can believe in. The follow-up message was the same old interest-group Democratic Party politics as usual. It was plainly designed to assuage the teachers' unions, who are the enemies of change. If Mr. Obama really gets into the education issue, he is going to realize that no position that includes accountability for schools or teachers is going to satisfy that interest group.

British Filmmakers Expose Terrible Oppression in Tibet

The truth is coming out. Will the world listen:

British filmmakers have emerged from three months undercover in Tibet to release a terrifying portrayal of Chinese repression, including shootings, torture and the brutal sterilisation of women left maimed by crude operations.

Their film, to be shown tomorrow night as part of Channel 4's Dispatches series, was made before the recent outbreak of anti-Chinese rioting in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

But with hundreds of jailed Tibetan protesters now in fear for their lives, the harrowing footage will add to the storm of condemnation gathering ahead of the Beijing Olympics this year.

The documentary's investigation began with the notorious 2006 shootings on the Nangpa La pass, when unarmed Tibetans trying to leave the country were gunned down by Chinese border guards.

Two Tibetans were killed and 32 detained, interrogated and then sent to a labour camp 150 miles from Lhasa.

The experiences of one of those held, Jamyang Samten, now 16, gives a clue to the fate of Tibetan protesters now in the hands of the Chinese police.

He told the programme makers he was given electric shocks with a cattle prod, chained to a wall and hit in the stomach by a guard wearing a metal glove.

If he made a minor mistake in his interrogation, he would be beaten with a chain.

"The way the Chinese tortured was terrifying," he said.

"They beat us using their full strength. Sometimes they forced us to take off our clothes. We were locked up in a room with our arms and legs handcuffed and they beat us. The chain injured the surface but not the inside of the body.

"If they hit us with the electric baton, our entire body trembled and gradually we were unable to speak."

At least one major Western politician has shown the decency and courage to take a stand against the brutal oppression of the Tibetans by China:

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games' opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown's determination to attend the Olympics.

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.

"The presence of politicians at the inauguration of the Olympics seems inappropriate," Tusk said. "I do not intend to take part."

Gov. Rendell Remarks: More Clinton Surrogate Race-Baiting

Once again a Clinton supporter and surrogate makes a racially insensitive remark. This has become standard operating procedure for the Clinton mafia. This is a CNN 360 show transcript:

BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ED RENDELL, (D) PA: It wasn't intended to be racial. Anybody who knows my record as governor knows I've been probably the most inclusive governor we've ever had.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell explaining some of the controversial remarks he made about Barack Obama. Critics have since been calling his words everything from politically motivated to racist, some people have said. The governor isn't quite backing down.

360's Randi Kaye met with him in Philadelphia.

Tonight she's up close with Governor Ed Rendell.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's blunt, brutally honest.

RENDELL: People know I don't B.S. them.

KAYE: And hardly bashful regarding his recent comments about Barack Obama.

RENDELL: The next president of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

KAYE: In a meeting with the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's" editorial board last month, Pennsylvania's Governor Ed Rendell, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton said, "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate." Yes, he went there.

RENDELL: I wasn't trying to influence the campaign, I was in a room with six guys -- I don't think it even had any windows and they asked me to handicap the race.

KAYE (on camera): The governor's remarks sent a chill through Pennsylvania's African-American community. Here in Philadelphia, the head of the NAACP called it callous and insensitive. Others have suggested it was politically motivated, even racist.

RENDELL: It wasn't intended to be racial.

KAYE: You don't regret your comments at all about Barack Obama and white voters.

RENDELL: Do I think there was anything wrong with it? Absolutely not. I told the truth, and we've got to be able to speak the truth about race without someone pointing their finger and saying, you're racist.

KAYE: Rendell calls Obama a formidable candidate who has done a great job of putting the race issue behind him. He blames the media for, his words here, "obsessing about this stuff."

Just five days after the "Post Gazette" published Rendell's comments, it printed a follow up article that seems to defend Rendell.

"Mr. Rendell didn't dump or strategically plant his opinion about race in our paper on behalf of the Clinton campaign. He appeared passive but not indifferent to or malicious about our state's backwardness."

Barack Obama agreed with the governor saying, "I think there will be people who don't vote for me because of race. There will be people who don't vote for me because I got big ears." But Obama didn't let Rendell off the hook. He also said, "Governor Rendell is a savvy politician, and I think he wants to project strength for Senator Clinton."

This is not the first time Governor Rendell injected race into a race. When he ran for governor in 2006, his opponent was former TV host Lynn Swann, an African-American. After his victory, Rendell said he believed the margin would have been closer, had Swann been white. Swann told us he thought Rendell's most recent comments about Obama were a subtle form of racism. If Clinton doesn't win the nomination, Rendell says he will support Obama. He's given him his word.

Iraqi Shiite Militias Kill off The "Surge"

The surge was always dependent upon the self-imposed ceasefire by the Shiite militias. Now they are fighting again and U.S. forces won't be able to stop it. Not only that but the so-called safe haven, Green Zone, is under repeated fire. It is reminiscent of Saigon before the fall to the Communists:

The death toll rose above 130 after days of fighting in Baghdad where U.S. forces have been drawn deeper into an Iraqi government crackdown on militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

U.S. forces said they had killed 48 militants in air strikes and gun battles across the capital on Friday.

A top Sadr aide said Sadr's representatives had met Iraq's highest Shi'ite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in an effort to end the violence. The Sadr aide, Salah al-Ubaidi, said Sistani called for a peaceful solution.

At least 133 bodies and 647 wounded have been brought to five hospitals in the eastern half of Baghdad over the past five days of clashes, the head of the health directorate for eastern Baghdad, Ali Bustan, said on Saturday.

Health workers say hospitals are overflowing and understaffed in the Sadr City slum, a vast stronghold of Sadr's followers, and a ring of Iraqi and U.S. forces around the area makes it impossible to evacuate the wounded.

More than 300 people have been reported killed and many hundreds wounded in the five days of fighting across southern Iraq and Baghdad since Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a crackdown on Sadr's followers in the southern city of Basra.

In Basra, Mehdi Army fighters controlled the streets, manning checkpoints and openly brandishing rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers.

Of course Bush views the dramatic increase in violence as a good thing. Up is down, in is out. Could he possibly be that deluded:

Washington says the crackdown is a sign the Iraqi government is serious about imposing its will and capable of acting on its own. But government forces have failed to drive Sadr's fighters from the streets.

U.S. forces described a number of gun battles in Baghdad including one in which they said they killed 10 gunmen who attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi security station. The Americans have used helicopter gunships and artillery.

Mortar bombs and rockets have caused havoc in the capital all week. Strikes on the fortified Green Zone government and diplomatic compound forced the U.S. embassy to order staff to wear helmets and body armor.

A curfew is in place in Baghdad, closing shops, businesses and schools. Residents are confined to their homes in areas where there has been fighting.

Alleged Saddam Spy Says He Met With First Lady Clinton

This story if true could finish off Hillary:

A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996.

In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State Department" about the need to implement the oil-for-food deal, which was intended to allow Saddam to sell billions of dollars' worth of oil to pay for food for Iraqi citizens.

Back in 1997, a spokesman for the first lady referred inquiries about the meeting to the National Security Council. At the time, a spokesman for the National Security Council, Eric Rubin, responded by saying that President Clinton, not the first lady, sets foreign policy.

Asked whether Senator Clinton recalls the meeting or whether the presidential campaign had any further comment on the meeting in light of Mr. Hanooti's indictment, the Clinton presidential campaign yesterday offered no formal response.

[...]But to reporters on the foreign policy beat in Washington at the time and to those active in the Iraqi opposition to Saddam, it was clear whose agenda was being advanced. The news article in 1997, published in the Forward, that described Mrs. Clinton's involvement with Mr. Hanooti began: "The American-led blockade of Iraq is crumbling, following an intensive, domestic lobbying effort that has involved Rep. David Bonior and Senator Abraham — and, according to some sources, Hillary Rodham Clinton."

More on Hillary's so-called experience:

Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland as one of the top foreign policy credentials of her presidential bid.

Her critics point to an empty, wind-swept Belfast park - which Clinton a decade ago proclaimed would become Northern Ireland's first Catholic-Protestant playground - as evidence that her contribution as peacemaker was more symbolic than substantive.

"She was in charge of christening this wee corner (of the park) as some kind of peace playground. It never made any sense then, and there's nothing there today," said Brian Feeney, a Belfast political analyst, author and teacher. "Everything she did was for the optics."

Critics say the playground-that-never-was illustrates the wider lack of accomplishment from Clinton's half-dozen visits to Northern Ireland - that they emphasized speechmaking, chiefly to women's groups, leaving no lasting mark.

Obama NY Speech on the Economy Transcript 3-27-08

Read the entire transcript of Barack Obama's New York speech on the economy given today. Below is an excerpt of that speech:

But the American experiment has worked in large part because we guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That's why we've put in place rules of the road: to make competition fair and open, and honest. We've done this not to stifle but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at Nasdaq last September, the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well-being of American business (OOTC:ARBU) , its capital markets and its American people are aligned. I think that all of us here today would acknowledge that we've lost some of that sense of shared prosperity. Now, this loss has not happened by accident. It's because of decisions made in board rooms, on trading floors and in Washington. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we've failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practice. We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both. Nor is this trend new. The concentrations of economic power and the failures of our political system to protect the American economy and American consumers from its worst excesses have been a staple of our past: most famously in the 1920s, when such excesses ultimately plunged the country into the Great Depression. That is when government stepped in to create a series of regulatory structures, from FDIC to the Glass-Steagall Act, to serve as a corrective, to protect the American people and American business.

John McCain Speech Transcript on Foreign Policy 3-26-08

Read the entire transcript of McCain's speech on foreign policy given yesterday. Here are some excerpts below:

• I am an idealist, and I believe it is possible in our time to make the world we live in another, better, more peaceful place, where our interests and those of our allies are more secure, and American ideals that are transforming the world, the principles of free people and free markets, advance even farther than they have. But I am, from hard experience and the judgment it informs, a realistic idealist. I know we must work very hard and very creatively to build new foundations for a stable and enduring peace.
• The developments of science and technology have brought us untold prosperity, eradicated disease, and reduced the suffering of millions. We have a chance in our lifetime to raise the world to a new standard of human existence. Yet these same technologies have produced grave new risks, arming a few zealots with the ability to murder millions of innocents, and producing a global industrialization that can in time threaten our planet.
• To meet this challenge requires understanding the world we live in, and the central role the United States must play in shaping it for the future. The United States must lead in the 21st century, just as in Truman's day. But leadership today means something different than it did in the years after World War II, when Europe and the other democracies were still recovering from the devastation of war and the United States was the only democratic superpower. Today we are not alone. There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia that wield great influence in the international system.
• America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model. How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured. I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control.
• Relations with our southern neighbors must be governed by mutual respect, not by an imperial impulse or by anti-American demagoguery. The promise of North, Central, and South American life is too great for that. I believe the Americas can and must be the model for a new 21st century relationship between North and South. Ours can be the first completely democratic hemisphere, where trade is free across all borders, where the rule of law and the power of free markets advance the security and prosperity of all.
• China and the United States are not destined to be adversaries. We have numerous overlapping interests and hope to see our relationship evolve in a manner that benefits both countries and, in turn, the Asia-Pacific region and the world. But until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.
• We learned through the tragic experience of September 11 that passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must protect our borders. But we must also have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. Today al Qaeda and other terrorist networks operate across the globe, seeking out opportunities in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and in the Middle East.

Hillary Clinton's Positive Ratings Hit New Low

How can you argue that you will win in the Fall if your positive ratings keep dropping? That is the case with Hillary Clinton. All her lies and attacks on Obama are guaranteeing she will not win against John McCain in a general election:

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's positive rating has dropped to a new low of 37 percent in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.

According to the poll, the New York senator's positive rating slid 8 percentage points in two weeks and she had a negative rating of 48 percent in a week where she admitted making a mistake in claiming she had come under sniper fire during a 1996 trip to Bosnia.

Clinton's Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, also saw a slight dip in his positive rating, to 49 percent from 51 percent, the poll found.

[...]The survey was taken after Obama gave a speech last week on race in America and rejected racially charged remarks by his pastor in Chicago of two decades, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

NBC said 32 percent of respondents said Obama "sufficiently addressed the issue" and 26 percent said he needed to say more about the Wright controversy.

More than half of those surveyed -- 55 percent -- said they were "disturbed" by the videos of Wright that were widely circulated on television and the Internet, the poll found.

In head-to-head matchups, Obama and Clinton were even at 45 percent. In general election matchups, Obama led McCain by 44 percent to 42 percent and McCain led Clinton by 46 percent to 44 percent.

When asked which candidate could unite the country if elected, 60 percent said Obama, 58 percent said McCain and 46 percent said Clinton.

I wonder if those numbers have anything to do with her habit of lying, like her husband:

This is the woman who insisted for more than a decade that she was named after the late, great mountain-climber Sir Edmund Hillary — never mind that she was born six years before he scaled Mt.
Everest in 1953.

This is the woman who told "Dateline NBC" that daughter Chelsea was on a jog in New York City when the jihadists struck on 9/11 — never mind that Chelsea later wrote a magazine essay revealing that she watched the attacks on television from a friend's apartment.

This is the woman who claimed to have "helped start" the federal Children's Health Insurance Program — never mind that the program's original sponsors noted that Sen. Clinton fought the initial bill and had no role in writing the legislation.

This is the woman (echoed by her husband and daughter) who bragged that she was the "first" to call the disaster in Darfur "genocide" — never mind that several other senators had done so in 2004, while her first press statement referring to Darfur as "genocide" wasn't until March 2006.

This is the woman who claimed to have organized "instrumental" meetings in Belfast and baldly asserted that she "helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland" — never mind that key negotiators dismissed her as "totally invisible," "cheerleading" and "a wee bit silly."

So Hillary and her supporters have now taken to lashing out against the Speaker of the House for looking out for the Democratic Party--unlike Ms.Clinton:

Top fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign upbraided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday for suggesting that Democratic superdelegates should back the candidate with the most pledged delegates and urged her to respect the right of those delegates to back whomever they choose at the end of the primary season.

The criticism represented the latest effort by Clinton's campaign and its allies to beat back talk that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has amassed enough of a lead in pledged delegates that she will not be able to overtake him, and arguments that a continuation of the conflict between the two candidates will hurt the party in November.

Selling out of America: U.S. Passports Outsourced

Here is the transcript of a CNN Situation Room's report on the outsourcing of U.S. passports. This the latest outrage by a government that is participating in the selling out of our country:

They're designed to deter terrorists and keep America's borders secure -- U.S. passports embedded with brand new high tech computer chips. But several foreign companies have a -- now have a hand in making them and this outsourcing, meant to actually save money, is raising new concerns about your security.

Let's go to CNN's our State Department correspondent, Zain Verjee. She's been looking into this story.

It's raising a lot of eyebrows, a lot of concerns -- Zain, what are you learning?

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there are fears that the high tech push on passports could mean lower security standards.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VERJEE (voice-over): Your passport used to be made in America, but because of 9/11, all passports now must be fitted with electronic chips -- harder for terrorists to fake. Turns out, though, that in trying to make passports more secure, the U.S. is outsourcing the job to foreign companies.

MICHAEL CUTLER, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: It's another reason not to sleep tonight. VERJEE: Security experts fear blank chips could be stolen or tampered with.

CUTLER: If bad guys got a hold of those blanks and then properly filled them out and processed them and you had corruption involved, then what you really have are the keys to the kingdom sitting in a foreign country.

VERJEE: The Government Printing Office says U.S. companies don't have the state-of-the-art technology, so it gets European companies to make computer chips, in Singapore and Taipei, that are then sent to Thailand and inserted into passport covers, along with a wireless antenna. Those blank covers and blank chips go back to the U.S., where your data and photo are added.

Congress is sounding alarm bells. In a letter to the GPO inspector general, Congressman John Dingell is demanding to know whether that poses "... a significant national security threat and raises questions about the integrity of the entire e-passport program." SmartTrac, the Dutch-based company producing U.S. passports in Thailand says its facility is secure and built according to U.S. standards and each passport chip is tracked.

In a statement, the GPO says, "The materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles."

The State Department says there's no reason to be concerned.

PATRICK KENNEDY, UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE: When they arrive in the United States, all you have in front of you is a blue piece of plastic that is the standard size of anyone's passport in the entire world and a chip that has nothing on it and it could be the same equivalent as a CD-ROM that you could buy, as I said, anywhere.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VERJEE: Just a short while ago, CNN obtained a statement from Benny Thompson, the Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, who calls outsourcing passports just plain irresponsible, saying that his committee is going to look into whether U.S. technologies are just being overlooked -- Wolf.

BLITZER: One quick question I'm sure a lot of our viewers jump out -- and you referred to it in your piece, Zain. You mean to say there's no company in the United States of America that can manufacture a passport complete with the new high tech chip?

VERJEE: That's what the State Department, as well as the GPO, told us. What we learned also, Wolf, was SmartTrac -- that's that Dutch company in Thailand -- is saying that it's going to build a new production facility here in the U.S., in Minnesota.

They're saying that it should be up and running by the summer. But of course there's a lot of outrage about this, many saying U.S. companies should have this kind of technology and this is something that the Committee on Homeland Security is going to be looking into. BLITZER: Pretty shocking. It's hard to believe that there's no company in the United States who can do this.

Hillary Clinton is Really Under Fire Now

Hillary lied about being in danger while visiting Bosnia. But she's really under fire now. The Clintons just can't stop lying:

Hillary Clinton has finally admitted that she "misspoke" when claiming that she came "under sniper fire" in Bosnia during a March 1996 visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. At first, the Clinton campaign maintained that the "misstatement" was limited to one occasion on March 17 when she talked about running across the tarmac "with our heads down." In an interview yesterday with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the senator from New York attributed the mistake to her "sleep-deprived" condition.

A review of the record shows that she provided embellished stories of her visit to Bosnia on at least two previous occasions, while campaigning in Iowa in December and in Texas in February. By the end of the day, Clinton was making a joke of her ordeal: "I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human, which, you know, for some people is a revelation."

THE FACTS

While Bosnia may have still been considered a "potential war zone" in March 1996, there were no open hostilities. NATO troops were patrolling the area in force, engaged in tasks such as clearing mines and blowing up old ammunition dumps. According to Adrian Pandurevic of Associated Press TV, "there were no armed groups roaming Bosnia, or any significant threat," and "the former front lines had been bulldozed." He described claims of "sniper fire" in and around the Tuzla air base as "simply ridiculous."

Quick, change the subject. By the way, why didn't you leave Bill Clinton when he was cheating on you all these years. Don't you and Bill have a loveless, cynical arrangement:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday said she would have left church had her pastor talked about the United States the way rival Sen. Barack Obama's did.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton shot back: "It's disappointing to see Hillary Clinton's campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention [from the Bosnia flap]."

Even Conservatives, like David Brooks, are calling for Hillary to step down before she harms the chances of Democrats winning the White House in the fall:

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she's just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.
First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.
Second, Obama's lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.
Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi's judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they're drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she's probably down to a 5 percent chance. Five percent.
Let's take a look at what she's going to put her partythrough for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we'll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we'll have the daily round of resume padding and sulfurous conference calls. We'll have campaign aides blurting ''blue dress'' and only-because-he's-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

There could be a movement in the works by the Democratic hierarchy to end the campaign and chose a nominee before the convention:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says the Democratic presidential nomination will be decided before the August convention.

“It will be done,” Reid said of the ongoing nomination battle in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal last week.

As the intense fight between Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) heads into the spring, some party insiders are nervous the protracted battle will help Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.