Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.

Defiant or delusional?

They didn't have to.

Many of them - most of them - had clearly made up their minds that they would not support Mrs Clinton, and so this had become a case of whether or not Mr Obama could close the deal. That is what appears to have happened last night.

"If it hadn't been for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, he likely would have won in Indiana," Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said Wednesday on a conference call hosted by the Obama campaign. "Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary and the GOP has clearly declared they want Clinton as a candidate."

Obama now has 1,592 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,419. There are 217 delegates remaining to be pledged. Of those 217, Clinton would need to win 196 to beat Obama, or a victory of 90 percent to 10 percent. That's about as likely as Dick Cheney hitting 50 percent approval.

The newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying New York financier Morris Talansky was questioned in Israel and was set to disclose a role in passing cash to Olmert when he was mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990s.

She said pilots made the decision to go back when mechanisms that control the plane's tail, its up and down steering and the autopilot malfunctioned.

Zogby phone polls in Indiana and North Carolina suggest that women are deserting Hillary.

Ahmadinejad's answer was the second reported instance in which a high Iranian official, when asked about the U.S. presidential contest, has used the word "change" or "changes" in his answer.

Experts on Iranian political discourse believe that the officials' choice of words is intended to be a reference to Democratic contender Barack Obama's campaign theme, "Change We Can Believe In," and to thereby signal that relations between Tehran and Washington will improve if Obama is elected.

Quite the opposite:

Two network polls due out in the next hour or so, I'm told, actually have him moving up against Clinton.

He's moved ahead out of a tie in the last NBC poll, and gained in the CBS/NYT poll. Details on the evening news.

Clinton is certainly right that it is a tragedy that 200 American jobs were killed in a corporate deal that also exported sensitive military technology to China. But she forgets to mention that it wasn't George Bush who was in the key position to stop it -- it was Bill Clinton.

Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity.

KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits.

"The witnesses who testified today raised claims that KBR has previously addressed. The government has reviewed the claims and refused to join lawsuits asserting them," Browne said.

While Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Al Gore, Ed Rendell, Barabara Streisand, Cher, Stan Lee, Brad Pitt, Mike Wallace, Larry King et al may be called to testify and be deposed starting in May, Hillary alone has been protected from explaining her role in her husband's fraud charges.

It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.

Now, I attended church when I was very young, and one of the things I recall about that experience is that nobody ever dared challenge the authority of the guy in the funny robes. He said what he wanted to say and the rest of us sat and listened quietly, no matter how absurd it sounded. I presume that Reverend Wright's church operates with the same rules. Therefore, it is unreasonable to assume that Obama is in any way reposnible for what Reverend Wright has to say about anything. And, while I do not share Reverend Wright's beliefs, I do not disagree with much of what he says. There has been and is racism in this country in many forms, some overt, some covert. And it is hard to imagine any god blessing America after all the commandments our government shattered in the war on Iraq. But whether you agree with Reverend Wright or not, he has a First Amendment right to speak his piece.

In recent days, there have been attempts by the mainstream media to metaphorically tar and feather Barack Obama by his association with Reverend Wright. I was hopeful we had outgrown such things as guilt by association, but political campaigns always seem to bring out the worst in people.

But, if guilt by association is your cup of tea, then read on, because I have a couple doozies to share with you!

The Army decided to review its contracting procedures as several arms-industry officials said that long before the suspension, it was clear the Army had erred by not recognizing risk factors in AEY's history and activities, and by being lured by a very low bid.

Then, in 1948, the U.S. Army hit on a plan that would turn around their loss of rank, privilege and business contracts.

Not up close and personal obliteration, that would spatter one's coiffure with bloodspots and gore, but remotely, dispassionately...all seventy million Iranians, mostly young, and mostly progressive, just like ourselves; men, women and children; human, all too human.

Unlike you, Madam, one of the fabled six percent of the population, the psychopaths. Your body count is already impressive, if one can believe reports. Though you may not be forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne, you are forbad to wade beyond it. To threaten obliteration of peaceful civilian populations, is terrorism. To act it, is a war-crime under the Nurenberg Principles.

Erica Huggins was the lady who served the Panthers by boiling the water for Mr. Rackley's torture. Some years later Ms. Huggins was elected to a California School Board.

How in the world do you think these killers got off so easy?

Of course not.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.

SHE WILL NOT HAVE THE VICTORY SHE NEEDED!!!

And she also said, the campaign is out of money!

If released, the documents would show how often prominent religious conservatives visited the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence, allowing a glimpse into how much influence they exerted on government policy.

According to the U.K.-based antifraud company Netcraft Ltd., someone identified only as "Mox" confessed to the hack in an entry on the Community Blogs section on the Obama site Sunday. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, leads Clinton in the race for the party's presidential nomination. The site exploit occurred just before this week's big Pennsylvania primary.

Did you know that Hillary claims to be named after Sir Edmund Hillary? (he's the guy who first climbed Mt. Everest)

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Well, it turns out that Hillary Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Mt Everest in 1953 -- almost 6 years after she was born ...

Pretty cool trick, huh?

There are many indications that Hillary lacked confidence in the forgery. One was the 30-hour delay in turning it over to the authorities. Another was the refusal to release photocopies, blocking for two years any possibility of independent experts exposing the forgery. The most telling is that on the day the note was found, Nussbaum, Neuwirth and Burton remained in Nussbaum's office working late into the night. Nussbaum's assistant, Linda Tripp, stayed to help them if needed.

She said that one of them came out to borrow one of the typewriters from the outer office shared by Nussbaum and Foster. Pointing out that the cords were taped to the floor, she offered to get one elsewhere. She was told not to bother. Nussbaum told the FBI that they wanted a typewriter to type the note. This suggests that because of Hillary's qualms they were thinking of discarding the handwritten note and switching to forgery by typewriter. Nussbaum said he wanted to substitute a typed copy for the handwritten copy he had made, but he didn't explain why the typewriter had to be one that Foster might have used. There is nothing in the record that indicates that the FBI asked that obvious question.

In 1995, photocopies of the note were leaked on Capitol Hill, and independent handwriting experts were able to analyze it. Three experts were given copies and ample samples of comparable notes written by Foster. Working independently, all three declared the note to be a forgery.

Supporters of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul -- who won six of 12 delegate slots to the GOP national convention at Fourth, Fifth and Sixth District conventions in early April -- think the email was directed at them.

When this reform is enacted, all who wish to stay under the current system could still do so, but everyone else could choose a vastly less complicated system with two tax rates and a generous standard deduction. Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes - what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands from the IRS.

Let's be clear: a John McCain Presidency will be no better than a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama Presidency. In fact, in many ways, a McCain White House will be WORSE than a Democratic one.

Let us not be confused about what Senator Obama said. He correctly stated that small town voters will often vote against their own economic interests, because they simply do not see solutions to those problems coming from Washington anymore.

Clinton has been endorsed for president by more than a dozen unions, according to her campaign Web site, which omits any reference to her role at Wal-Mart in its detailed biography of her.

Has it really come to this? I know it seems that some of our current high officials take an almost perverse pleasure in visiting a variety of barbarities upon various people who have fallen into their clutches, but are we really witnessing the transformation of America into something resembling the worst of the ancient despotisms or modern third world dictatorships? Surely we have not become, in effect, Caligula's Rome or Idi Amin's Uganda, have we?