Breaking News: Pro-Clinton push poll erupts in California  —  Ed Coghlan was just starting to prepare his dinner in the northern San Fernando Valley the other night when the phone rang.  The caller was very friendly.  He identified himself as a pollster who wanted to ask registered independents …

BULLETIN: California's First Lady Maria Shriver Endorses Barack Obama (UPDATED)  —  California's first lady Maria Shriver has just appeared as a special surprise guest at the rally for Barack Obama in Los Angeles to endorse him for President.  It was aired live on CSPAN.  —  “I wasn't on the schedule,” she said.

Unbelievable and Assaultive Strip Search on an Innocent Woman  —  Raw Story: (h/t Existentialist Cowboy)

john mccain: the list of infamy  —  Every time I post something about the problem for liberty-minded conservatives with the direction the Republican Party has been taking since the first George Bush administration, I get a lot of pushback that can generally be divided into two types.

The Latest on Gore  —  According to a source close to Al Gore, multiple people in the former VP's orbit are in touch with him on a regular basis to urge an Obama endorsement.  According to this source, Gore's hesitation is three-fold:  —  1.)  The memory of the ill-fated Dean endorsement looms large for him.

Virginia Beach police seize photos from Abercrombie store  —  Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges.

Boasting in Boston  —  I am so confident of both a Patriots win today and a Romney win in Massachusetts on Tuesday that I made this pledge on the air Friday: “If the NY Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, I will vote cast my Super Duper Tuesday primary vote for (shudder) John McCain.”

A Romney Comeback?  —  Not likely.  But neither is Hugh Hewitt being delusional when he throws out Rasmussen numbers showing Romney gaining in places like Tennessee and Missouri, California and Georgia.  So far, the Republican primary campaign has demonstrated fairly emphatically …

Pentagon Seeks Record Level in 2009 Budget  —  WASHINGTON — As Congress and the public focus on more than $600 billion already approved in supplemental budgets to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for counterterrorism operations, the Bush administration has with little notice reached a landmark in military spending.

Lipinski Attacks OpenLeft, Pera Donors, With a Barrage of Cliches  —  Rick Perlstein has a great piece on how we're not about to get beyond the 1960s.  Apparently Dan Lipinski's campaign read the article, because here's a flyer they are circulating attacking us as dirty hippies.

Grateful Dead to reunite for Obama concert  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Life!)  - The Grateful Dead, the San Francisco cult rock band that has played at political events since the 1960s, will reunite on Monday for the first time in four years to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a spokesman said on Friday.

What These Eyes Have Seen  —  He's endured the unendurable, and survived.  Inside the mind and heart of John McCain. … During the 2000 election, Republican smear artists trying to stop the presidential campaign of John McCain spread rumors that the former POW was “nuts” because he had been …

The blog less traveled...  So many folks email me or ask me in person how PHB gained its readership.  There are lots of factors —  * timing: since the launch on July 2004, blogs have grown at an exponential rate;  —  * blogwhoring or diaries at larger blogs: in the comments at Americablog …