One of the well known commentators here TocqueDeville goes off the deep end in comments on this diary by slangist.

Over at My.barackobama.com the group Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right asking Obama to block FISA now has 19,300 members, some of whom are sending vitriolic emails saying they will no longer contribute or support Obama.

Meanwhile over at the NYT, the lead editorial yesterday criticized Obama's changing positions, and the AP regurgitated unedited republican talking points causing Josh Marshall's eyes to bleed.

What's going on - more after the jump-

We all know that Iraq has been the major beneficiary of the Bush Cheney strategic disaster in Iraq.  But the newly released Senate Intelligence committee report suggests something further:

Iran may have been planting information they knew that Cheney and Bush would use to attack Iraq.

McClatchy has the story: Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

More after the jump

The title will turn off many - who think oh just another dreamy eyed obamabot.  But I have been reading the 2005 book by Doris Kearns Goodwin called Team of Rivals (this got a lot of press recently) - which is a study of how Lincoln used his political skills to keep together a fractious political coalition - that in the end kept the Union together and allowed victory in the civil war.

Granny Doc's pixie dust diary inspired me to think through this comparison more closely.

I think there are enough parallels in the current situation and that which existed in the 1850's to make this a useful comparison.  For those who like politics and history, follow the jump.

Racism may be a more overt factor in Pennsylvania tomorrow than it has been in other recent primaries.

There are a group of white Pennsylvania voters who simply will not vote for Obama because he is black.

Again, McClatchy catches this with superb reporting.

The money quote:

The older folks are still conservative Democrats. They know that change is inevitable, but they want it done right. Obama is too new for them, too different.

"We're not prejudiced," said Pat Archacavage, 49, a restaurant worker in Nanticoke, "but if you have an unskilled black and an unskilled white, the black will get the job. If Obama gets in, will he say, 'We're black, now we're in charge — time for payback?' "

"I don't like Obama," said Betty Tomcho, a Nanticoke retiree. "There's going to be trouble because there will be a lot of colored people around."

more after the jump

There are some journalists left in the U.S.  Many work for McClatchy, a company that owns a string of local papers, and though not a wire service, a wire service, and  runs a washington bureau among other things.

Here is an example of some real reporting:  

Clinton backers worried by mood in Pa.'s Lehigh Valley

Interest in the Clinton-Obama race is high, from the comfortable middle-class enclave of Victorian homes on Easton's College Hill, to the working-class neighborhoods on Bethlehem's old industrial South Side, to the upscale developments near the interstates.

More than 6,000 new voters have registered in Lehigh County since last April, and nearly six times that many since the last presidential contest in 2004.

"For working-class people to be able to make a living, it's just getting harder and harder," Rodriguez said as he and his wife, Amelia, walked into the Sunrise Diner for lunch. "We should at least be comfortable, and it seems like we're living week by week."

He plans to vote for Obama, who campaigned in the valley last month and drew several thousand people for a speech at Muhlenberg.

follow the jump

Here is a perfect illustration for anyone who wants to see how Halperin -- the mini Drudge-  is in the toilet with Clinton.

His screaming headlines cover 5 links to Clinton's attacks on Obama on Elitism, and his link to Obama's response is broken.

I guess that's because he doesn't think anyone needs to hear Obama's responses anyway.  They are just for elitists after all -- not for those who hunt and pray like Hillary "the Hunter" Clinton.

See the actual screenshot below

Hillary Clinton goes on the attack, and Obama's popularity soars.

Al-Maliki, at the urging of Dick Cheney attacks the most popular mass leader in Iraq- Muqtada al-Sadr, and finds his troops bogged down in Basra, losing neighborhoods in Baghdad, losing control of cities in the South, and generating daily attacks on the Green zone.

Is there a pattern here?

follow me after the jump

The Obama campaign this morning has said

"The American people are not going to elect someone who isn't seen as honest and trustworthy."

and that has been diaried hereby dansac

In fact, a simple story in the fact check section of the Washington Post is absolutely devastating.   It is the kind of story that would permanently cripple a candidate, because the lie is so black and white.

see the details after the jump

This is too funny for words.  I don't know that it really deserves a diary, but I just want to call attention to what Al Gordiano has posted over at the field.

Peter Daou Hits the Panic Button

Peter- who was a prominent blogger who took the unfortunate job of heading up Hillary's on-line operation, has called on his fellow bloggers to fight back against the words Obama is using against Hillary.

The list is below the jump

Leaders and leadership matter.  There is a stunning op-ed in the New York Times today, reviewing once again the subtle messages in the 3 am ad Hillary released against Obama on the weekend prior to the voting in Texas and Ohio.

Orlando Patterson claims that the real message in the ad is the danger that Obama is black.  

He goes on to say

For more than a century, American politicians have played on racial fears to divide the electorate and mobilize xenophobic parties. Blacks have been the “domestic enemy”, the eternal outsider within, who could always inspire unity among “we whites”

In the ad, the danger was not the ringing telephone.  It was that a black man might answer it, and it may be a black man protecting your sleeping daughter.  He did not come to this conclusion lightly.

Read the whole piece, and follow the implications after the jump

The Obama campaign agrees that Hillary had a starring role in Bosnia.  The trip where she said

I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo.

turns out to have been critical.  In fact, here is a photo from that trip.

Ben Smith at Politico supplies the details from the campaign:

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs emails reporters with a picture of Clinton,  Sheryl Crow [and comedian Sinbad] from a 1996 trip to Bosnia, linking a series of recent articles including this Chicago Tribune piece making the point that Clinton wasn't a central player on foreign policy in her husband's administration.

more thoughts after the jump

Why did Obama lose Texas and Ohio?    I think those who are serious Obama supporters must think long and hard about that question.  Last night was a chance to end the campaign, and force the Clinton dynasty to crumble.  But it didn't happen.

I think there are three reasons:  fear, racism, and the old democratic machine.  

More after the jump

This is really bad.  I know there have been discussions about the NAFTA memo leaked to the AP, which Clinton then used to accuse Obama of hypocrisy on NAFTA, after an unsolicited discussion with an Obama adviser was written up in a negative way by the Canadian government.

But it now appears that this was an active dirty trick by a right-wing prime minister to force more disarray among democrats and help elect a republican in 2008.

Here is the link to theInternational Tribune Story today.   (hat tip to Josh Marshall)

more below the jump

As might be expected, the Republican party cannot stay away from racist and anti-religious smear attacks on Barack Obama.

After seeing a link to today's  Tennessee Republican Party Press release (via The Page) , I sent them an email.

(spoiler alert- this references the climax of the movie "there will be blood")

jump below the fold.

AP has just released some of their generic exit poll data from Wisconsin.

Sorry -- no numbers here -- that will have to wait.

Follow the jump to see a quick summary

Words Matter.  

They have always mattered in our democracy.  Those who claim words don't matter would cut the heart out of democracy.

Our founding fathers knew that democracy depended on literacy, on words.  Why is it that once farmers in young America established a town, the first things they built were schools, churches, and libraries -- all temples to the power and meaning of words.

Words are what liberate a free people to choose their own destiny.  That is why freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly -(often to hear and discuss speeches) were among the fundamental revolutionary ideas of our great experiment in democracy.

To say that words matter does not mean deeds don't matter.   There is no a dichotomy - choose words or deeds.  Instead, there are two competing world views in the democratic party -- one that sees words as irrelevant to deeds because the real power lies with the insiders, and the other that calls upon us to take our future into our own hands -- use words to accomplish deeds.

Obama's speech last night crystalized the essence of this campaign - follow me below to see why this was such an important moment.

Here is the lead from the New York Times Story

MILWAUKEE – Representative John Lewis, an iconic figure from the Civil Rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.

This is amazing.  I have always thought the blather about super delegates currently in the media was a smoke screen, that would drift away as the breeze of Obama's momentum came in.  The story line for the Clintons is terrible -- they have been arguing that super delegates should make up their own minds, and their delegates are defecting to Obama.

more after the jump

I think Paul Krugman and Greg Sargent are on to something.  I don't agree with them.  But we Obama supporters need to listen to what they are saying.

We need to avoid falling into the trap of seeing MSM and republican enemies as our allies.  They are not.

Krugman is right that there is a media hatred of the Clintons -- also extended to Gore, and to many democrats. This hatred will rapidly be extended to Obama.  Remember the Madrassa story on Fox.   Where he is wrong is to attribute this simply to the proclivities of the beltway journalists.

They were basically willing pawns in the rightwing noise machine, funded by Scaife and others, with the deliberate strategy of undermining all democrats in the minds of the public.  It is no accident that we have  stories about $400 haircuts, alpha males (with Gore), Billary, and a host of misogynist and gleeful anti-woman commentary.  The whole impeachment thing was a trap.

We need to avoid falling into a trap again.  (follow the jump)