memeorandum: Rove: The horns are retractable (Ed Morrissey/Hot Air)

8:15 PM ET, March 30, 2008

Top Items:

Gallup Daily: Obama Now at 52% to Clinton's 42% — McCain still has slight advantage over both Democratic opponents — PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama has extended his lead over Hillary Clinton among Democrats nationally to 52% to 42%, the third consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking report …

Discussion: The Swamp, The New Republic, Balloon Juice and American Street

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

BRAZILE EXPLAINS CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE — Donna Brazile was on This Week this morning and explained how the credentials committee works. If she's right, and I'm sure Brazile knows this stuff like the back of her hand, it's even worse for Clinton than I thought.

Discussion: TalkLeft, Balloon Juice and Donklephant

Newsweek:

How to Win in a Knife Fight — The Democratic race could well come down to the first contested convention in years. Lessons on how to prevail. — After the last Democratic primary is held in early June, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will have enough votes from delegates elected …

Discussion: Dean's World

Big Tent Democrat / TalkLeft:

Obama To Blame If The Dem Contest Goes To The Convention — Obama supporter Josh Marshall: … (Emphasis supplied.) What did Clinton actually say? … (Emphasis mine.) Josh's reaction to this? … (Emphasis supplied.) Excuse me? Not even Barack Obama says MI and FL is resolved.

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
CLINTON: ALL THE WAY TO DENVER

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias, Scripting News, The Carpetbagger Report and The Mahablog

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: D-Day, Wake up America, Truthdig, Pat Dollard, The Reaction, Hot Air, Patterico's Pontifications, The Moderate Voice, Balloon Juice, The Other McCain, Sweetness & Light, Prairie Weather, Donklephant and JammieWearingFool

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: The Reaction, HillaryClinton.com, Liberal Values, Sweetness & Light, Donklephant, Buck Naked Politics, Political Punch, NO QUARTER and The Page

Tim Shipman / Telegraph:
Senior Democrats mull Al Gore's nomination

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

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

Discussion: The Raw Story, Agence France Presse and ABCNEWS

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

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

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

Aqeel Hussein / Telegraph:

Iraqi army forces defect to Moqtada al-Sadr — With gunfire and explosions echoing round him, Lt Hamid Abbas of the Iraqi Army was letting no car pass unchallenged at his makeshift roadblock on the outskirts of a Basra slum. — His closest scrutiny, however, was reserved …

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Remind me again — who's losing in Basra?

Discussion: The Long War Journal, Los Angeles Times, Redstate, PoliGazette, Liberty Street, Middle Earth Journal, The Left Coaster, Roads to Iraq, rubber hose, Instapundit.com and NewsBusters.org

New York Times:
In This Shiite Battle, a Marked Shift From the Past

Discussion: Weekly Standard Blog, Commentary, McClatchy Washington Bureau, The Left Coaster and American Street

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

Discussion: Hot Air, Danger Room, Wake up America, The Strata-Sphere, McClatchy Washington Bureau, Flopping Aces, American Power and Big Lizards

Erica Goode / New York Times:
Sadr Offers Deal for Truce as Fighting Persists in Iraq

Discussion: Associated Press

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

Discussion: Crooks and Liars

Charles J. Hanley / Associated Press:
After years of effort, Iraqi army still can't ‘stand up’

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, Matthew Yglesias and The Newshoggers

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

Discussion: democracyarsenal.org

Aljazeera:
Sadr orders fighters to stand down

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Angry Bear and Classical Values

Michael Scherer / Swampland:

Say It Ain't So, Joe — It's not news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democratic VP candidate, is backing John McCain for President. Nor is it news that Lieberman takes a different view of the Iraq War than most Democrats. But what he said this morning on ABC's “This Week” is certainly news.

Discussion: Weekly Standard Blog

John Amato / Crooks and Liars:
Lieberman makes the Zell Miller transition final: ‘...the Democratic Party changed’

Discussion: American Power and Shakesville

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: Political Machine, Jules Crittenden, The Swamp, Gothamist, On Deadline, LA Observed, Blue Girl, Red State, American Street and The Moderate Voice

JammieWearingFool:
RIP, Dith Pran

Discussion: Dean's World

Jane Hamsher / Firedoglake:

No, John McCain Can't Just Quit — Susan Milligan, writing in the Boston Globe, takes an all-too-rare foray into John McCain's campaign finance hypocrisy. But this bit, straight out of the McCain's disinformation machine, simply isn't true: … McCain took the money all right …

Susan Milligan / Boston Globe:
McCain's commitment to public financing questioned

Discussion: Hold Fast and DownWithTyranny!

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, Secular Blasphemy, PoliGazette and snapped shot

Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:

Rove: The horns are retractable — Karl Rove got interrupted during an appearance at George Washington University on Friday by demonstrators calling for his prosecution as a war criminal. Rove, who had nothing to do with war planning or execution — he ran the political side of the White House …

Discussion: Power Line, BLOGS FOR JOHN McCAIN and JammieWearingFool

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: Sister Toldjah, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog, The Jed Report, Hot Air, Stop The ACLU, TalkLeft, Macsmind, Political Punch, Blue Girl, Red State, Taylor Marsh 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

Al Norman / The Huffington Post:

Wal-Mart Cancels 45 Superstore Projects — “Cannibalization Factor” Eating The Company's Future — According to a list released this week, Wal-Mart Stores has abandoned a record-shattering 45 proposed projects over the past 10 months—often leaving local officials dejected and confused.

R.G. Ratcliffe / Houston Chronicle:

Second Texas Democratic caucuses bring more chaos — AUSTIN — Traffic jams, long lines, crowds, confusion and chaos marked Texas Democratic regional conventions Saturday as an unprecedented number of political activists turned out to help elect presidential nominating delegates for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.