Anyone see Boston Legal tonight? It was very funny, with the firm suing the Democratic party over pledged delegates. They had a guy named "Wolf Blitzkrieg" from the "best political news team on television" who kept making a fool of himself. It's still on here, so I can't tell you what happens yet, but it's a very good ribbing of the Dems.

And yes, Hillary rocked on O'Reilly. She did a great job on health care and oil and taxes and she didn't give an inch to O'Reilly who seemed pleased as punch to have her on. He was very cordidal. He'll be airing part two of the interview tomorrow -- in it they discuss torture and Iraq.

If you'd rather discuss something else, that's fine, we'll make this another open thread.

Big Tent Democrat has plans this evening and I'm off to take the TL kid out for a big steak dinner to celebrate his passing the bar.

Feel free to hold down the fort --just please try hard not to burn the place down.

This is an open thread.

Update: Comments now closed.

Fox News has a new poll out. Full poll results are here. (pdf)

Nearly half of Democrats (48 percent) think Hillary Clinton has a better chance of beating John McCain in November — 10 percentage points higher than the 38 percent who think Barack Obama can win, according to a FOX News poll released Wednesday. This represents a significant shift from March, when Democrats said Obama was the candidate more likely to beat McCain.

Democrats continue to favor Clinton as their party’s leader, albeit narrowly: 44 percent want her to win the nomination and 41 percent want Obama. Last month Clinton was preferred by 2 percentage points.

There's also an NBC/WSJ poll out taken of all voters, not just Dems. It finds Bush is a liability to McCain and Obama's "bitter" remarks cost him in favorability, as did Rev. Wright.

More...

James Wolcott examines the split among progressive bloggers over Hillary and Obama in the new Vanity Fair.

The vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture at Daily Kos, the most activist site in the liberal blogosphere, reflects a party-wide split. What really rankles, as Democrats tear at one another, is the free pass they’ve given McCain—and the White House.

Wolcott names many bloggers (we're not among them). Here's a snippet. [More...]

The Government isn't giving up on challenging the reversal of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio's insider trading conviction. Today it filed a petition in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals seeking a review of the reversal by all of the Judges on the court. The reversal was decided by a panel of three judges. The Petition alleges the panel erred in holding that the trial judge was wrong to exclude Nacchio's expert witness.

First, the government challenged the panel's ruling that the district judge "lacks discretion to exclude expert testimony even where the government's motion to exclude the evidence challenges the expert's reliability and the defendant's written opposition makes no showing of reliability and does not request an evidentiary hearing."

[More...]

Hillary Clinton will be on Fox with Bill O'Reilly tonight. In case you aren't able to tune in, here's what she says about Rev. Wright and Obama.

O'Reilly: "Can you believe this Rev. Wright guy? Can you believe this guy?"
Clinton: "Well, I'm going to leave it up to voters to decide."
O'Reilly: "Well, what do you think as an American?"
Clinton: "Well, what I said when I was asked directly is that I would not have stayed in the church.
O'Reilly: "You're an American citizen, I'm an American citizen, He's an American citizen, Rev. Wright. What do you think when you hear a fellow American citizen say that kind of stuff about America."
Clinton: "Well, I take offense. I think it's offensive and outrageous. I'm going to express my opinion, others can express theirs. It is part of just, you know, an atmosphere we're in today."

Congratulations to Nic, the TL kid. The Colorado Bar Exam results (pdf) came out today. He's officially the newest criminal defense lawyer on the block.

Well done, Nic!

It is a bad thing now apparently:

[I]t should be pointed out that a non-profit group focusing efforts on registering unmarried women in presidential primaries has to know that their activities will almost certainly help Hillary Clinton, as that is probably her strongest demographic.

Unbelievable.

Barack Obama's campaign filed a complaint with the FEC today over a 527 group's ad attacking Obama's economic plan for having no specifics.

He didn't always feel that way about 527 ads. When a group supporting John Edwards aired one in Iowa he was critical, saying:

You can't just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time."

But when a 527 group aired a shameful ad on Spanish radio stations in Nevada that re-injected ethnicity into the campaign, an ad that supported him and attacked Hillary in Nevada,

A spokesman for Obama, Bill Burton, did not condemn the ad or the independent spending specifically, but instead attacked Clinton.

More...

NOTE - Page Gardner responds. I am curious about this story, via Atrios:

N.C. residents have reported receiving peculiar automated calls from someone claiming to be "Lamont Williams." The caller says that a "voter registration packet" is coming in the mail, and the recipient can sign it and mail it back to be registered to vote. No other information is provided. The call is deceptive because the deadline has already passed for mail-in registrations for North Carolina's May 6 primary.

(Emphasis supplied.) As far as political dirty tricks go, this is a pretty bad one. If the deadline for registering has passed, either someone has registered or they haven't. How does "tricking" them into thinking they can still register help any candidate? My point is this sounds like incompetence, not malevolence.

But when Hillary Clinton is involved, the search for malevolence is relentless:

Nice get for Obama. Baron Hill is a conservative Dem in the hard fought (it has flipped in each of the last three elections) Southern Indiana 9th District. I assume that absent the repudiation of Rev. Wright, this would not have been publically announced.

Clinton picked up the endorsement of Bill George, President of the PA AFL-CIO and Rep. Braley of Iowa came out for Obama.

Update (TL): If there are more today, we'll update here.

Chelsea gets her mom a new superdelegate:

More...

There are other things going on in the world beyond a discussion about a pastor. For example, Atrios writes:

It appears the Atlantic has hired a pretentious commentless blogging git whose gullible advocacy led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. How he manages to live with himself is a mystery, and why The Atlantic thinks we should live with him is a deeper one.

Surprisingly, Atrios is not discussing Andrew Sullivan. With Obama love, all is forgiven.

This is an Open Thread.