memeorandum: Questions of timing emerge on Iraq offensive (Peter Spiegel/Los Angeles Times)

2:50 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, The Reaction, michellemalkin.com, The Other McCain, D-Day, Pat Dollard, Balloon Juice, JammieWearingFool, Prairie Weather, Sweetness & Light 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, Wake up America, Hot Air, The Moderate Voice, Making conservatives …, The Strata-Sphere, Political Machine, The Corner, The Democratic Daily, Weasel Zippers, Gateway Pundit, Althouse, Dean's World and American Street

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: Sweetness & Light, Political Punch, HillaryClinton.com and The Page

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, Open Left, The Carpetbagger Report and NO QUARTER

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion: Associated Press and TalkLeft

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

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: Associated Press, Gateway Pundit, New York Times, Buck Naked Politics, The Glittering Eye, The Seminal, American Power, American Street, Donklephant, Winds of Change.NET, Times of London and Informed Comment

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 Long War Journal, PoliGazette, Roads to Iraq, NewsBusters.org and Macsmind

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: McClatchy Washington Bureau, Wake up America, Danger Room, Flopping Aces, The Strata-Sphere and Big Lizards

Aljazeera:

Sadr orders fighters to stand down — Muqtada al-Sadr, an Iraqi Shia leader, has ordered his fighters to withdraw from the streets of several provinces, six days after Iraqi forces mounted a crackdown against Shia armed groups. — “We want the Iraqi people to stop this bloodshed …

Discussion: Washington Monthly and Classical Values

MSNBC:
March 30: Gen. Michael Hayden, political roundtable

Discussion: The New Republic and The Page

Sholnn Freeman / Washington Post:
Shiite Cleric Sadr Offers Conditions for Cease-Fire

Discussion: Crooks and Liars

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

Peter Spiegel / Los Angeles Times:
Questions of timing emerge on Iraq offensive

Discussion: Informed Comment, Angry Bear and Washington Monthly

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: TalkLeft, TownHall Blog, Sister Toldjah, JustOneMinute, Hot Air, Blue Girl, Red State, Political Punch, Taylor Marsh and Macsmind

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

Discussion: Middle Earth Journal and Vox Popoli

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

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

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, Gawker and PoliGazette

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

CLINTON: ALL THE WAY TO DENVER — Sen. Clinton gave a pretty astonishing interview to the Washington Post in which she appears to say she will stay in the race till the convention in August, where she will take her fight to the credentials committee to have the delegates from the non-sanctioned Michigan and Florida primaries seated.

Discussion: TalkLeft, Scripting News and The Carpetbagger Report