News Roundup, 3/20/08: Michigan's Probably Out

Michigan's re-vote chances went from slim to none yesterday.

Discussions broke down over who would be permitted to vote in the do-over primary. The plan would have prohibited anyone who voted in the Republican primary from voting in the do-over Democratic primary, which would have potentially hurt the Obama campaign's performance, as they tend to do better in open primary states where he can pull crossover
votes.

There are reports this morning of a last-ditch effort to salvage the chances for a re-vote in Michigan, but things are looking grim.

John McCain seems to be content in running the Bob Dole campaign of 1996 — except instead of making his speaking gaffes about the "Brooklyn Dodgers," he is apparently more interested in making up threats about Iran. McCain's been touring the Middle East, and during his stay in Jordan, he echoed some comments he'd made earlier to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt:

"Al-Qaida is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran."

Fortunately, this time around Sen. Joe Lieberman was there to help extricate his foot from his mouth. After a bit of whispering into his ear, McCain corrected himself:

"I'm sorry; the Iranians are training the extremists, not al-Qaida. Not al-Qaida. I'm sorry."

The video of the event is here.

Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq conflict, and despite the protests and rioting, the Bush administration was happy to give another optimistic speech about the war — how many of those have since it began? And Cheney would like you to know that, no, despite the fact that you're in the majority in wanting our troops to come home, he doesn't really care about such things as the will of the electorate. No surprise there.

For those of you who were waiting for all those documents from the Clinton administration detailing Hillary Clinton's involvement, they have now been released.

And good news in the state: first, Congressman Chet Edwards, commonly the most heavily targeted Democrat in the state, doesn't seem to have much opposition this cycle and is considered a safe Democratic seat by Congressional Quarterly, and second, Craddick has had an ethics complaint filed against him for inappropriate use of campaign funds to pay for some exorbitant travel expenses.