Poll Shows Clinton With Solid Lead Among Democrats  —  By a wide margin, Democrats view Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) as the party's candidate best positioned to win the general election, and she holds a double-digit lead over Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the race for the nomination, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Politico Playbook: First date  —  Good Monday Morning.  —  YOU were the TIME person of the year (great resume fodder) and now YOU (or some of you, at least) get to help out host Anderson Cooper and electronically ask the Democratic candidates questions during the two-hour CNN/YouTube debate at 7 Eastern tonight.

Democrats Press House to Expand Health Care Bill  —  After a rare bipartisan agreement in the Senate to expand insurance coverage for low-income children, House Democrats have drafted an even broader plan that also calls for major changes in Medicare and promises to intensify the battle with the White House over health care.

Deceased Farmers Got USDA Payments  —  The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report.

Unlikely Adversary Arises to Criticize Detainee Hearings  —  NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Stephen E. Abraham's assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.  —  A lawyer in civilian life, he had been decorated for counterespionage …

KILLITARY: Lefties Dropping the Fiction of 'Supporting the Troops'  —  The leftist blogosphere went out of their way to cover this one up as quickly as possible.  —  It was posted at Daily Kos, as Ace relates.  But the Kidz are on edge about their credibility, so it was deleted within hours, without a word of explanation.

Al-Qaeda faces rebellion from the ranks  —  Sickened by the group's barbarity, Iraqi insurgents are giving information to coalition forces  —  Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person's face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda …

U.N. suspends peacekeepers amid sex abuse charges  —  ABIDJAN, Cote d'Ivoire (Reuters) — The United Nations said on Saturday it had suspended a Moroccan military contingent from its peacekeeping mission in Cote d'Ivoire while it investigated allegations of widespread sexual abuse.

Natl.  Intel Director Worried About Terror Sleeper Cells in U.S.  —  Believes Small Numbers of al Qaeda Operatives Are in This Country Raising Funds  —  The nation's top intelligence official today went further than ever before in outlining what he described as a heightened threat of an al Qaeda attack on American soil.

Democrats Lead By $100 Million In Money Race  —  WASHINGTON — With more than a year to go before the 2008 elections, Democratic candidates have raised $100 million more in campaign contributions than Republicans, putting them on track to win the money race for the White House and Congress …

Associated Press, MSNBC and CNBC Seen as Having Liberal Bias  —  In the final poll of a series measuring perceptions of media bias, the Associated Press, local television stations, MSNBC, and CNBC are all perceived as tilting to the left when reporting the news.

[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: The French Connections  —  What happened to America's Internet lead?  Bad policy.

TV provides poor signal for Hillary  —  When Hollywood producer Rod Lurie created fictional president Mackenzie Allen in 2005 for the show "Commander in Chief" he made no mistake about one of his goals: tilling the soil of popular culture so that it would soon be easier for a real woman to take root in a nonfiction Oval Office.

In the Heart of Freedom, in Chains  —  Elite hypocrisy, gangsta culture, and failure in black America  —  Two April days threw a clarifying light on the state of race in America.  On the 11th, North Carolina's attorney general exonerated three white Duke students of the rape charges …