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E.J. Dionne $22.95
By Carl Oglesby $16.50
$35
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By Joe Conason — The most puzzling aspect of John McCain’s political persona is his habitual attraction to George W. Bush’s bad ideas.
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By Marie Cocco — Add doctors to that growing list of Americans who would like to see some form of national health insurance.
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By Ellen Goodman — Many families are split when it comes to the race for the Democratic nomination, and that says something about the dialogue between generations.
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 Flickr / Llima
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A new poll shows Barack Obama taking a lead over Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania for the first time. His two-point advantage marks a shift of 28 points from the last Public Policy Polling survey, which was conducted just before Obama’s race speech. Other polls show Clinton holding a lead, though by diminishing margins.
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At least two of the presidential candidates decided to have a laugh this April Fools’ Day. Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to a winner-take-all bowling tournament, while John McCain stopped by CBS to take revenge on David Letterman for all of those old-man jokes.
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 Flickr / moose.boy
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The Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard argues that Howard Dean and Harry Reid’s big idea for settling the Democratic nomination should have Democrats worried about a lack of leadership in their party. Reid and Dean both have called for superdelegates to make a decision by early July—a little under two months before the convention in Denver.
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 Flickr / mstearne
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Barack Obama recently decided to get more competitive in Pennsylvania, thanks to prodding from his supporters. Two recent polls show that his efforts there might be paying off. He still trails Hillary Clinton, but he’s closing the gap. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s able to outspend her by a significant margin.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Even Obama has said his rival should stay in the race, but how will she campaign? Negativity has hurt the once-mighty Clinton brand.
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By Marie Cocco — Have you noticed something similar about those Obama campaign surrogates and the media soothsayers who have started a drumbeat to force Clinton out of the campaign? Hint: They tend to share a certain anatomical attribute.
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 Flickr / shanda.w
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Documents obtained by The Politico suggest that Barack Obama has moderated his positions on several issues since his early political life, a charge the candidate denies. He has also tried to distance himself from the label of “most liberal senator.” Perhaps the former community organizer doth protest too much?
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The national media have made a pariah of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor, by replaying carefully selected snippets of his sermons without context. Here are extended versions of two of Wright’s more controversial statements.
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A couple of recent polls have indicated that Clinton and Obama supporters would be so devastated by their candidate’s loss they would throw their support to McCain. Bill Maher asked Dan Savage to investigate the claim, and Savage concluded that voters were “having a little fit now, because they’re not going to have that little fit in November.”
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By Fred Branfman — What kind of look back to the ‘60s manages to almost entirely ignore or miss the point of the Vietnam War?
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 nytimes.com
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An interim decision by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday marked the beginning of what could become a two-tiered road system in the West Bank. With two separate legal systems for Palestinians and Israelis already in operation, critics fear segregated roads would lead toward further institutionalization of apartheid in the occupied territories.
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By Eugene Robinson — Talk about not being able to catch a break. To pummel a boxing metaphor, it was Barack Obama who got tagged with a roundhouse right, flush on the chin—but it was Hillary Clinton, from early indications, who ended up nursing a sore jaw and wondering what it was that hit her.
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By David Sirota — Since the 1960s, bigotry has undergone an aesthetic makeover. Today, the most pernicious racists do not wear pointy hoods, scream epithets and anonymously burn crosses from behind masks. They don starched suits, recite sententious bromides and stage political lynchings before television cameras.
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Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Germany —
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Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama gave major economic policy speeches Thursday, outlining specific proposals and highlighting John McCain’s relative weakness on the subject. Obama called for a boost in regulation and an additional $30 billion in stimulus while Clinton proposed a job retraining program.
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By Marie Cocco — Some days, there’s just no forgetting that Dick Cheney is still the vice president. We’ve had a few of these recently, with Cheney traveling to Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East on what might be called a goodwill mission, if the person making the trip were not Dick Cheney.
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By Ellen Goodman — At the end of two terms, a President McCain would be 80. Should voters care about that? The question is an important one that shouldn’t be avoided just because it’s uncomfortable.
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Hillary Clinton has admitted that she misspoke about her trip to Bosnia, but if she hadn’t, it might have looked something like this. Or not.
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Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” is meant to throw the Democrats into disarray by keeping their primary race close, but according to MSNBC’s Dan Abrams, it just might be illegal.
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 wikipedia.org
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In a cryptic conversation with a Las Vegas paper, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Democratic nomination would be resolved before the convention: “It will be done.” “Magically?” the reporter asked. “No, it will be done,” Reid repeated. “I had a conversation with Governor Dean today. Things are being done.”
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 thepage.time.com
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Lost in the discussion of the Rev. Wright controversy and its impact on the Obama campaign is the fallout for the minister himself. Wright’s first public events since his sermons went YouTube, a revival in Tampa and a series of sermons in Houston, have been canceled. A third event, where he is supposed to be honored, has been downgraded to “pending.”
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 businessweek.com
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With 20 debates between the Democratic candidates already in the books, and another scheduled before the Pennsylvania primary, it’s a little hard to believe that CBS News hasn’t yet had the opportunity to ask a few gotcha questions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Katie Couric may just get the chance.
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 barackobama.com
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Barack Obama posted his tax returns for the last seven years on his Web site Tuesday. It’s a direct challenge to his opponent, who has indicated that she will release hers about three days before the Pennsylvania primary in late April.
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By Eugene Robinson — Four thousand. When U.S. military deaths in Iraq hit a round number, as happened Sunday, there’s usually a week or so of intense focus on the war—its bogus rationale, its nebulous aims, its awful consequences for the families of the dead. Not likely this time, though.
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With the next contest still weeks away, the Democratic candidates, their staffs and surrogates can hardly take a breath without a heated exchange between the campaigns in the form of an angry memo or conference call to the media. Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama has been but the latest opportunity for such organized squabbling.
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Even some Hillary Clinton supporters have expressed reservations over the role of the former president in the campaign. Others have argued that the media and the Obama campaign exaggerate when it comes to his comments. Whatever the case, Bill’s mouth has gotten him into trouble again.
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By Anthony Heilbut — What accounts for the strange need of some white scholars—from the plantation nostalgists of the late 1890s to the “Blues Mafia” of the 1960s—to honor African-American culture by trying to save black people from themselves?
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 latime.com
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New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who gave up his own run at the nomination in January, is endorsing Barack Obama. The nod from the country’s only Latino governor comes at a point in the campaign when the Hispanic vote will be less of a factor. Updated.
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Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo argues that John McCain’s foreign policy shortsightedness makes him unfit to command. It’s not just Iraq, Marshall says, but a pattern of looking at the world simplistically.
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 nara.gov
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Journalists have been poring over the 11,000 or so pages of Hillary Clinton’s White House public schedules, just released by the National Archives and the Clinton Library. So far, they haven’t found much worth reporting.
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As the controversy over remarks by his former pastor continues to get play in the media, Barack Obama escalated the damage control by giving a major speech on the subject of race and politics. His ability to distill the conflict and character of America into moving rhetoric is as impressive as ever, but will it be enough to weather this storm?
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 AP photo / Hadi Mizban
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By Scott Ritter — As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I find myself thinking back on how we got ourselves into this predicament. ... As I examine where we are today and contemplate our future and those who are positioning themselves to play a role in Iraq, it seems to me that there is at least one such incident, a dinner party I attended at the home of Ahmed Chalabi in June 1998 that is worthy of a more public illumination.
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Shortly before the Ohio and Texas primaries, Tina Fey offered a raucous endorsement of Hillary Clinton that ended with the slogan, “Bitch is the new black.” Her friend and colleague Tracy Morgan has a few things to say about that.
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 AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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A new Zogby poll suggests that John McCain has capitalized on his rivals’ ongoing combat, beating both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a hypothetical matchup. But Ralph Nader also did better than expected, with 5 to 6 percent of the vote, mostly from progressives and independents. Updated
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It was only a matter of time before Barack Obama would have to weigh in on the controversy surrounding the sermons of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose rhetorical flair sometimes verged on the incendiary.
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist reports that monsters all across the country are offended by the remarks of a Barack Obama campaign aide in which she called Hillary Clinton a “monster.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Now that the aggressive Eliot Spitzer has resigned in disgrace, New York state reformers are hoping that a progressive agenda will be preserved by a man with a very different style, David Paterson.
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Keith Olbermann usually reserves his scorn for the likes of George W. Bush, but, he says, “events insist” that he offer one of his “special comments” to Hillary Clinton over what he says appears to be a pattern of prejudice among her surrogates.
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By Ellen Goodman — To think that I had never focused blame on this particular part of the male anatomy. But there was anthropologist Helen Fisher on the “Today” show explaining that Client 9’s destiny was in his eyebrows. And his cheekbones.
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 aoc.gov
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All three presidential candidates are scheduled to be back in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. A Republican senator has proposed a yearlong ban on earmarks and, shocking though it may seem, John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are apparently on board with the idea. Their colleagues in the Senate, however, are somewhat less enthusiastic.
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Willie Brown is a familiar name to many Californians, as one of the state’s most powerful and notorious politicians. Here he talks with Tavis Smiley, who asks about Brown’s new book, which is reported to be surprisingly frank.
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 AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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According to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, Americans want the next president to be a Democrat, by a whopping 13-point margin. But when asked about the candidates by name, John McCain pulls into a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
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