Deadbeats.

It may have been cute the first day he said it, but with Hillary Clinton's spiraling poll numbers and increasing calls for her to get out of the race, I suspect the last thing she needs is James Carville continuing to run around and call Bill Richardson "Judas," let alone write a full blown piece about it in the Washington Post.

It's just another reminder of the ugliness of the Clinton machine, and it could hardly come at a worse time for Hillary.

He will endorse Barack Obama.

Stunning news.

Peggy Noonan:

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)

This is the second major piece I've seen in recent weeks to seriously mention the possibility that Al Gore may be the answer for the Democrat party's woes.

Looks as though Nanci Pelosi has not been intimidated by Hillary's donors:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has reaffirmed her position that superdelegates should not “overturn the will of the voters” in the face of criticism from top donors to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

“The Speaker believes it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if superdelegates are perceived to overturn the will of the voters,” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said in a statement late Wednesday.

“This has been her position throughout this primary season, regardless of who was ahead at any particular point in delegates or votes.”

In a letter first reported Wednesday on talkingpointsmemo.com, 20 top Hillary fundraisers and donors blasted Pelosi for saying that when the presidential nominating contest nears its conclusion, superdelegates should support whoever leads in pledged delegates.

They cited remarks she made to ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos on March 16.

The idea of a superdelegate mini-convention is starting to be mentioned by party people themselves:

Bredesen is doing something about his concerns. He was in Washington this week to promote his idea for holding a “superdelegate primary” in June, in which the 795 party bigwigs would gather to hear one last time from Clinton and Obama before casting a final vote.

Rather than allow the horse-trading and bloodletting go on all summer, he’d get it over with during a two-day business meeting in a neutral, easily reached city like Dallas.

“Invite the candidates to come and talk if they want, and then literally call the roll,” he explained. “We should not go through the summer and have a divided and exhausted Democratic Party. The inescapable conclusion is: OK, you’ve got to find some way to bookend and bring it to closure earlier. How do you do that? Do it in June rather than August."

The governor said he decided to push the plan because of what he called a “sea change” in opinion among Democratic elites. What once appeared to be a once-in-a-generation blessing — having two strong candidates with significant appeal among Democrats — seems more like a burden now, as the race drags on toward April and May contests that are unlikely to offer any more clarity than the muddled results of the past three months.

Well, maybe not completely. But she's in debt. She's lost Bill Richardson. And she has virtually no realistic path to the nomination.

It is, for all intents and purposes, essentially over.

Three State Department contract employees apparently, and without authorization, accessed Barack Obama's passport information. This happened three times since early January. Two of the employees have been fired and the third has been disciplined. The inspector general has only just been informed, which is astounding to those who have been involved in similar past instances. Condoleezza Rice was only informed about the matter yesterday.

Barack Obama's campaign is outraged, and just issued a statement on the matter a few minutes ago.

Something similar to this happened to Bill Clinton back in 1992.

Stay tuned...

Barack Obama today:

"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes."

That's a direct contradiction to what Obama stated in his hastily arranged interviews on Friday night. This goes directly to his credibility and authenticity as a candidate, and this admission is likely to raise more questions than it answers.

Barack Obama has been so lightly treated by the media, that when the real important questions start flying his way, his campaign people go into hysterics:

I found out late that evening that the entire show was going to be Obama, Obama, Obama and his connection to the Trinity Church in Chicago and the hate-filled rantings of it's retiring pastor Jeremiah Wright.

As I was waiting to go on-the-air, Major Garrett of Fox News was on stand-by to do further reporting on his excellent interview with BHO in which he simply asked a number of questions like: "Did Reverand Wright marry you? Did Reverand Wright baptize your children? How often did you attend church? Did you donate money to the church?"

After that segment aired, Major Garrett's phone started buzzing. He recieved a call from Obama's campaign, and they were REAMING him over the report. From his end, I heard Garrett say "I have nothing to apologize for."

He repeated that several times, and he amplified by saying that he was merely asking questions that everyone wanted answers to.

That did NOT satisfy Obama's people, and Garrett flushed a couple of times while responding to the invective thrown his way.

He finally ended the conversation by saying 'I'll see you guys in April after I go home and visit my three children who barely know their father anymore."

Sorry, but it really strains credulity for Barack Obama - as he is doing so tonight - to assert that he has never heard that the Rev. Jermiah Wright said "God Damn America." It's just not believable. Obama has regularly attended this church. He may not have heard the words as they were said, but it is inconceivable that someone did not approach him, or that he did not hear through the always present church grapevine, that the Rev. Wright said the words.

Yet Mr. Obama stayed at the church, and there is no evidence that he approached the Rev. Wright and took issue with the comments. The reason this has such potential to damage Mr. Obama is because he is basically a blank slate. His campaign is run on a promise of hope and change and optimism, and his failure to distance himself from the Rev. Wright earlier is a contradiction of his campaign's central premise.

I just don't think the manner in which Mr. Obama is going about damage control tonight is going to cut it. He is going have to go much, much further to reassure the American people that in absolutely no way does he even approach sharing the sentiments of the Rev. Wright. And insulting the voters intelligence, by claiming that he was never aware that such comments were made, isn't going to do it.

If the pastor of my church gave a sermon in which he declared "God Damn America," I would leave that church so fast that your head would spin.

That's exactly what Obama's pastor did. And Obama has been a member, and a close associate of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for upwards of twenty years. It doesn't matter whether Obama was personally present. He had to have known about it. For a so far brilliantly run campaign, waiting to address the Rev. Wright issue until now has been inept.

Obama has a lot of explaining to do on this one. This has the potential to mortally damage his candidacy. He will have to unequivocally throw Wright under the bus if he hopes to avoid political disaster.

The despicable comments of Geraldine Ferraro over the last few days, and Hillary's pathetic response to those comments, are too much for even Keith Olbermann:

He is certainly right about one thing. The conduct of the Clinton campaign is making it more difficult for any Democrat to win the presidency in November.

I would only ask Mr. Olbermann what it is that possessed him and others, who are so shocked by the behavior of the Clintons, to believe for a single second that the Clintons - in their brutal pursuit of power - would not do to the Democrat Party what they did to the United States during the 1990s.

Belatedly, but necessarily. She should've left yesterday after her comments that Barack Obama is where he is in this presidential campaign, solely because of the reason that he is black. The comments were despicable. They were even more so coming from her, given that Walter Mondale chose her as his vice presidential nominee in 1984 solely because she was a woman. Her attempted defense yesterday that those who are criticizing her were doing so because she is "white," compounded the situation.

Hillary handled it clumsily, not repudiating Ferraro, but simply saying she "disagreed" with Ferraro. This only led to speculation that Ferraro's comment was deliberately intended by the Clinton campaign. Given what happened in South Carolina, the speculation was reasonable.