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Iran Brokers Call for Ceasefire; Bush reduced to Irrelevancy in Iraq; Fighting Continues — Iran Brokers Call for Ceasefire; — Bush reduced to Irrelevancy in Iraq; — Fighting Continues — McClatchy provides a lot of important detail about Sunday's surprising developments regarding …
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TPMMuckraker, Babylon & Beyond, Firedoglake, Washington Monthly, Big Lizards, Matthew Yglesias, New York Times and Commentary
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Iranian general played key role in brokering Iraq cease-fire
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The Newshoggers, missing links, Telegraph, Abu Aardvark, Flopping Aces, Washington Post, Connecting.the.Dots, Sister Toldjah, Middle Earth Journal, Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008, Washington Monthly, Taylor Marsh, Angry Bear, American Street, New York Times, The Long War Journal and Pajamas Media

“Part of the Problem” — Persians magnanimous agree to call off their Shiite militias.
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Whiskey Fire

Clinton, Obama, and the Racial Divide — It has now become conventional wisdom that Barack Obama has weathered the storm over Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Exhibit A in the discussion is last week's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, which, it is said, shows that Hillary Clinton suffered more than Obama from the Wright controversy.
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New Backing for Obama As Party Seeks Unity — WASHINGTON — Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama's side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up. — Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is expected …
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Associated Press, NPR Blogs, Salon, CBS News, Don Surber, Telegraph, Boston Globe, Comments from Left Field, PoliGazette, Political Machine, MSNBC, TPM Election Central, Hotline On Call, Examining Presidential …, Democratic Strategist, The Campaign Spot, The Moderate Voice, The Democratic Daily, Top of the Ticket, The Page, American Street, The Jed Report, Digg, Shakesville and Oliver Willis

Election 2008: New Jersey Presidential Election — New Jersey: McCain in Toss-Up with Both Clinton and Obama — John McCain holds statistically insignificant leads over both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in New Jersey. It's McCain 45%, Clinton 42% and McCain 46%, Obama 45%.

Rosy Words for Clinton by '90s Nemesis — To Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Richard Mellon Scaife qualifies as a charter member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy,” having bankrolled an elaborate multimillion-dollar campaign throughout the 1990s to unearth damaging information about the couple.
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Spin Cycle, Dick Polman's American Debate, Matthew Yglesias, No More Mister Nice Blog and The Caucus


Interviewing Six Conservative Female Bloggers On Dating — One of the great things about my other blog, Conservative Grapevine, is that I get to link a wide variety of articles and see which links draw the most clicks. While doing that, one of the things that I've found is that any article about dating tends to do really well.


Obama had greater role on liberal survey — During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion- positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he's projected during his presidential campaign.
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FROM BAD TO VERSE FOR HILL — AIRPORT'S GIRL POET STUNNED BY SNIPER TALE AS INSULTED FELLOW BOSNIANS RIP ‘LOW BLOW’ LIE — SARAJEVO, Bosnia - The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked - and her countrymen infuriated …
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Gawker, Hot Air, TownHall Blog, MSNBC, Spin Cycle, The Page, JammieWearingFool and Weasel Zippers


Clinton didn't pay health insurance bills — Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Clinton's struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out. — Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama …
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The Swamp, Megan McArdle, The Moderate Voice, Pandagon, Daily Kos, Political Machine and Don Surber


Superdelegates: A guide to the undecided — In a Democratic nominating contest that could ultimately be decided by their votes, divining the intentions of the 794 Democratic superdelegates has become something of a Washington parlor game. — By nearly all counts — generally measured …
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Ickes is Clinton's not-so-secret weapon — The veteran political operative is relentless in his drive for Democratic superdelegates. — ARLINGTON, VA. — Harold M. Ickes never forgets a favor, especially if he's the one who did the favor. So the veteran political operative made sure that …
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Wonkette

Biography Isn't Enough — The McCain campaign's first general election ad, released Friday, includes moving footage of him as a prisoner of war. What was Democratic Chairman Howard Dean's reaction? “While we honor McCain's military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader …
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Marc Ambinder, Jonathan Martin's Blogs, Wonk Room, PrezVid, Shakesville, MSNBC, Connecting.the.Dots and No More Mister Nice Blog

The Dilbert Strategy — Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack of any actual ideas about what to do, managers sometimes make a big show of rearranging the boxes and lines that say who reports to whom.
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Firedoglake, Prairie Weather, DownWithTyranny!, The Washington Independent and Calculated Risk

Gray Lady vs Jeremiah Wright, Round 2: Did Wright intimidate the Times into pulling punches? — The New York Times has responded to an angry letter written by Rev. Jeremiah Wright — more than a year ago. The letter resurfaced this past week, and it contains accusations of misrepresentation and …
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OOPS — Racial healer Lou Dobbs explains how he's sick of “cotton pickin'” black leaders telling him how he can and can't talk about race (he catches himself at the last minute — sorta) ... Special thanks to TPM Reader AR for the catch. — Late Update: Whenever we do posts like this …


Jackson Gets Evicted: White House Officials Questioned His ‘Ability To Continue To Lead The Agency’ — Today, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced his resignation, effective April 18, marking the exit of one of Bush's few remaining holdovers from Texas.
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bizjournals
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The John McCain “centrism” fallacy — In a lengthy and largely (though not completely) admiring profile of John McCain, Newsweek's Michael Hirsh writes: … (There's that generous and patently false “McCain-was-merely-mistaken” media defense again). And there's also this:
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