The Left Anchor

From McClatchy DC:

The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for next Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Clinton threatened to sue over the party’s complicated delegate selection process.
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This is the kind of fear-mongering nonsense I’d expect from a Republican. But from one of our leading Democrats? Her campaign gets sadder by the day. Who in the world is making the decisions on this stuff? Is this another Penn tested piece? Because I’ll take my gut reaction over his polls any day, and this ad is going to backfire hugely for the campaign. I can’t imagine any Democrat being swayed by this GOP-lite approach. Pathetic.
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Holy crap. They got this out fast. I already noted that the Obama campaign responded rapidly to Hillary’s new “It’s 3 A.M.” ad, but now they’ve got their own take on that ad. I don’t know yet if this is just for viral distribution on the internet, or if it’s airing on television Obama’s You Tube site claims this ad is airing in Texas.
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I’ve made no secret of my distaste for Hillary Clinton’s two senior advisers, Mark Penn and Harold Ickes. Neither of them ever had a good bead on what this race was going to be about (despite Penn’s reputation as a great pollster) and both of them contributed rhetoric to the race that could only serve to damage their candidate. And even though we’re still a few days away from March 4, the finger pointing inside the campaign has begun to escalate as senior staffers each try to shift blame to one another for their candidate’s flailing campaign. The New York Observer has a piece out today with a straight-forward title: Ickes: Blame Penn.
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The New York Times has a story today about Bush’s “robust” language concerning FISA. The Senate, of course, has already passed a bill that includes the controversial telecom amnesty provision, but the House is thus far holding strong against it. The president warns that it’s “dangerous, just dangerous” to continue to drag out this debate. Of course, considering the telecom amnesty provision is the only real point of contention, and Bush’s own statements that he will veto any bill that comes to his desk without it, he is either lying about the danger, or is more concerned with protecting telecoms than with protecting American citizens personal liberties. Of course, in this administration, there is no law except the law of Bush. If the telecoms were asked to do something illegal by the government, then they were obligated to do so:
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Ezra’s got a new article up over at The American Prospect which tackles the reasons the current health insurance system fails us, and his view of the basic structure of the system that would be necessary to provide us all with decent health insurance. He sums the latter up in five points:
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Time published a piece this week which takes a look at Obama’s grassroots operation in Ohio. Obama’s ground game has been a key element of his startlingly large margins of victory. I wrote some more about this here after a Wall Street Journal article last month which examined his ground game in South Carolina. The author of the piece noted how Obama was skirting around the typical avenues to organizing because Clinton had all the establishment endorsements. The article was published pre-South Carolina, and at the time, there was still some question at just how influential those establishment leaders in the black community would prove to be. This answer was “not very,” and Obama rode on to an overwhelming victory.
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A new study released by the University of South Carolina has concluded that incentives offered by the state to attract more film productions resulted in a net benefit to the state’s economy. This will, hopefully, resolve the issue between the Department of Commerce and the South Carolina Film Commission, which began last summer when the Dept. of Commerce and Gov. Mark Sanford decided to re-configure the incentives program. From Channel 2 in Charleston:
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The blogosphere’s favorite son, Sen. Chris Dodd, endorsed Barack Obama today. His endorsement reflected the feeling that as March 4 approaches (and Obama continues to rise in the polls), this race is drawing to a close:

“It is now the hour to come together,” he told reporters in Cleveland. “I believe the hour has come now for us to make that choice – to stand up and say we’re going to get behind this candidacy.”
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Hillary Clinton gave an interview to a local PBS show, Texas Monthly Talks, the other day, and though the interview won’t air on TV until next week, a clip regarding the Florida and Michigan delegates is already on-line. In it Clinton continues her case that her wins in Florida and Michigan should be counted as valid victories:

The press seems to have missed the distinction if that’s the case. The talk is that you agreed not to seat the delegation.
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