memeorandum: Mahdi Army taking significant casualties in Baghdad, South (Bill Roggio/The Long War Journal)

1:10 PM ET, March 30, 2008

Top Items:

Kenneth P. Vogel / The Politico:

Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills — Hillary Rodham Clinton's cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, Balloon Juice, D-Day, Pat Dollard, Ben Smith's Blogs, michellemalkin.com, Sweetness & Light, JammieWearingFool, Prairie Weather and Donklephant

Tim Shipman / Telegraph:

Senior Democrats mull Al Gore's nomination — Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president. — The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton …

Discussion: PoliGazette, The Strata-Sphere, The Moderate Voice, Making conservatives …, Hot Air, Political Machine, The Corner, The Democratic Daily, Weasel Zippers, Gateway Pundit, Althouse, Dean's World and American Street

Washington Post:

Don't Stop Campaigning — THE GROWING chorus among some Democrats and other interested observers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) to get out of the race for the Democratic Party's nomination for president is troubling. We're not promoting Ms. Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) …

Discussion: The Newshoggers, NO QUARTER and The Carpetbagger Report

Michael Powell / New York Times:
Clinton Shouldn't Feel Forced to Quit Race, Obama Says

Discussion: The Newshoggers, Buck Naked Politics, American Street and Shakesville

Steve Clemons / The Huffington Post:
The World is Watching and Wants More: Clinton-Obama Race Should Go All the Way

Discussion: Agence France Presse and The Raw Story

Hillary Clinton / CNN:
Obama: Clinton ‘can run as long as she wants’

Discussion: The Swamp, The Crypt's Blogs, The Carpetbagger Report, marbury and The Page

Jeff Zeleny / New York Times:
The Game's Not Over, Clinton Backers Agree

Discussion: Associated Press and TalkLeft

Bill Roggio / The Long War Journal:

Mahdi Army taking significant casualties in Baghdad, South — About 200 demonstrators held a rally to support the military operations in Basra and Maliki's government, in Diwaniya on Saturday. Reuters Photograph. — With the fifth day of fighting in Baghdad, Basrah and the South completed …

Discussion: Associated Press, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Danger Room, Flopping Aces, Informed Comment, The Strata-Sphere and Big Lizards

MSNBC:

Iraq's al-Sadr orders fighters to stop — Iraq leader calls move ‘step in the right direction’ after hundreds killed — Shortly before Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to desist from attacking Iraqi forces, his militia stormed this TV facility in Basra on Sunday, forcing Iraqi troops to flee.

Discussion: Buck Naked Politics, PoliGazette and Donklephant

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:

Remind me again — who's losing in Basra? — When the Iraqi government finally took the long-expected action to establish control of Basra after the British pullback left it in the hands of militias and gangsters, suddenly the media declared that the country had reached the brink of collapse.

Discussion: The Newshoggers, NewsBusters.org, Roads to Iraq and Macsmind

Reuters:
Iraq's Sadr orders armed followers off the streets

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Redstate and Balloon Juice

Alexandra Zavis / Babylon & Beyond: IRAQ: Not quite the surrender Maliki had in mind

Douglas Martin / New York Times:

Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65 — Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people's rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday.

Discussion: JammieWearingFool, Gothamist, The Moderate Voice, On Deadline, American Street and Blue Girl, Red State

Michael Dobbs / Washington Post:

Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father — Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his “very existence” to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

Discussion: TownHall Blog, JustOneMinute, Hot Air, Blue Girl, Red State, Political Punch, Macsmind and The Page

Nicholas D. Kristof / New York Times:
‘With a Few More Brains ...’ — Ten days ago, I noted …

Discussion: Middle Earth Journal and Vox Popoli

Dallas Morning News:

‘This is crazy’ — With tens of thousands of participants, Saturday's conventions were expected to be chaotic - and they were. — The District 23 convention, one of the largest in the state, was stalled for hours because the credentials of thousands of delegates were either challenged or could not immediately be verified.

R.G. Ratcliffe / Houston Chronicle:
Second Texas Democratic caucuses bring more chaos

Discussion: Wonkette and Patterico's Pontifications

Phillip Martin / Burnt Orange Report:
BOR Exclusive: TX Presidential Primary Convention Results

Discussion: The Newshoggers, TPM Election Central and AMERICAblog

Richard M. Scaife / PittsburghLIVE.com:

Hillary, reassessed — TRIBUNE-REVIEW — Hillary Clinton walked into a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review conference room last Tuesday to meet with some of the newspaper's editors and reporters and declared, “It was so counterintuitive, I just thought it would be fun to do.” — The room erupted in laughter.

Discussion: Political Punch, HillaryClinton.com and The Page

Roger L. Simon:
Annals of the Liberal Blogosphere - It's the Media, stupid!

Discussion: The Other McCain, Crooks and Liars, TBogg, Cliff Schecter.com and Attytood

Reuters:

Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican — VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Islam has overtaken Roman Catholicism as the biggest single religious denomination in the world, the Vatican said on Sunday. — Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics …

Discussion: Atlas Shrugs

TigerHawk:

Teaching about responsible drinking — This is something that has needed to be said for some time: … There is much that is romantic in this article about the joys of wine and such, but to me it is a much simpler question. I drink something with alcohol perhaps 340 nights per year …

Discussion: Jules Crittenden and PoliGazette