This is just weird. Josh Marshall says it sounds like a loyalty oath, but I'll take it one step further and say that it feels like an ideological blank check to classify any future action Petraeus takes as movements in a just war. Or it could just be a craven way to trick people into signing up for Cornyn's email blast / fundraising list. You decide.

General David Petraeus is testifying before Congress today along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker on political and military progress in Iraq. The line from the prepared remarks appears to be that Petraeus will ask for more time and money and will recommend against withdrawing troops for 45 days after July for further assessment. Through two hearings today, Petraeus and Crocker will receive questions from Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, all three remaining presidential candidates.

Yet more evidence of his inability to keep pace with the Democratic candidates: McCain's fundraising brought in $15 million in March.

Disregarding the fact that "union busting" in Colombia means "murdering organizers" and most other objections to the proposed free trade deal with Colombia, today President Bush sent the deal to Congress for consideration. This will force a vote on the agreement within 90 days, coming it right before Congress will take off for the fall campaign recess.

DNC chair Howard Dean says that a deal on seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan is unlikely to materialize before June. What he's saying makes sense — obviously crafting the deal will be an involved process, and the candidates are running their races at the moment. I can also see how neither campaign would want to agree to something before seeing where they end up in the remaining contests.

Earlier today I came across this interesting bit in NetNewsWire (my feed reader) from Marc Ambinder about a new website launched by a former employee of Senator Hillary Clinton's former Campaign Manager, Patti Solis Doyle: Vote Both.

Vote Both encourages Democrats to support a Clinton-Obama ticket. Note the order there.

Get this: not only are Limbaugh's ratings actually higher during his commercials, but they are also higher when he's saying negative things than when he says positive things. I'm not sure what that all means about him or his loyal listeners, but the line for theses and dissertations by all you communications grad students out there forms on the right.

R.G. Ratcliffe has prepared an examination of Tuesday's Democratic runoff in the Texas Railroad Commissioner race between Dale Henry and Mark Thompson. Dale Henry was the Democratic nominee for the open Railroad Commission spot in 2006, but was beaten in the general. Mark Thompson is more or less a total newcomer to electoral politics, but he came out on top of the field on March 4 in a surprising development and forced a runoff with Henry.

Hotline presents the high points from yesterday's political talk shows. My favorite blurb, from Senator John Kerry in the Black Den of Fox News Sunday, who put the idea to rest that when John McCain said 100 years in Iraq, he didn't mean it:

On the 100 years war issue, John McCain is being disingenuous, because what he said in that interview was as long as there is no violence — which indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of Iraq itself. Our own national intelligence people tell us it is the American presence that is attracting jihadists and creating violence. So if he's talking about being there for 40 years, 100 years, he's talking about attracting more and more terrorists and not paying attention to the larger challenges.

Weekend reports say that the Defense Department will reduce the maximum deployment time for soldiers' combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months, with an equal amount of time at home before being redeployed. This kind of action, which is a step in the right direction for preventing a further wearying of our forces, has been proposed by General George Casey. And plenty of Democrats.