I'm not seeing a lot of news to write about yet today, so here's an open thread for those of you who do. Just remember, you can't call anyone, including public figures, "liars" on this site. I have routinely deleted comments calling both candidates that name, or characterizing their statements as "lies." It's okay to refer to statements as "inaccurate" when there is adequate support for it.

The best way to stop an open thread from becoming dominated by those who want to harp on a story few TL readers are interested in is to ignore their comments. Talk about what interests you, not them.

Does anyone not hate flying anymore? Remember the plight of the passengers stranded for hours on runways due to weather who were not be allowed to deplane?

Those experiences were part of what led to the New York's passage of the Passenger's Bill of Rights Law. Today, the Second Circuit ruled the law invalid:

A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that New York's new state law interferes with federal law governing the price, route or service of an air carrier. It was the first law in the nation of its kind.

The Court held only the feds have the power to make these kind of rules. The case is Air Transport Association v. Cuomo, 07-5771, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Manhattan).

New polls from Rasmussen are out today.

Nationally, Hillary maintains her recent and slight (and subject to the margin of error) lead over Obama. Today it's Hillary 46, Obama 43.

In the McCain contest (one I truly believe doesn't matter until we actually get a candidate): McCain beats Obama by 9 and Hillary by 5.

As to favorability,

Clinton is currently viewed favorably by 74% of Democrats nationwide, Obama by 67%.

As to the electoral college math,

Democrats l[are]leading in states with 200 Electoral College Votes. Republicans are favored in states with 189 Votes. When “leaners” are added to the total, the Democrats lead with 247 Electoral Votes to 229 for the GOP. A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House. Leaners are states that narrowly lean to one party or the other at this time but remain competitive.

[More...]

Eric Boehlert at Media Matters on the shameful press reaction to the release of Hillary Clinton's white house schedules:

How dreadful was the news coverage last week surrounding the official release of Hillary Clinton's public White House schedule from her eight years as first lady? So bad that I found myself in rare (unprecedented?) agreement with at least two prominent conservative bloggers who noticed the same thing I did: The Beltway press corps is, at times, a national embarrassment.

...Surveying the news coverage, conservative blogger Rick Moran posed the same question I had last week, "Do we really need to know where Hillary was when Monica Lewinsky was with her husband? Or where she was when Vince Foster committed suicide? ... And does it deserve this feeding frenzy from the media?"

More...

Notice to new readers and commenters at TalkLeft.

You may not chatter here or try to dominate the discussion. I will be calling out offenders by name. If they don't stop, they will be banned and every comment they have ever left on the site will be erased.

Mark L posted 91 comments today. Captain Howdy 65. Flyerhawk posted 51. Exeter 41. Digdugboy 26. JGarza 22. Many more were deleted.

Tomorrow these posters are limited to ten comments in 24 hours total. All in excess will be deleted.

I do not have time to monitor comments all day. I also pay for the bandwidth here. Commenting is a privilege, not a right.

I don't care what the practice is at other blogs. This one is mine, I make the rules, and commenters will follow them or have to post elsewhere.

Our comment rules are here.

They are summarized below the fold:

Update: I hear Rush is criticizing what I said on his radio show today, apparently confusing "posting online" with e-mails, as if I suggested the Government search e-mails for evidence of voter fraud. I never mentioned e-mails. What someone posts on a public blog or message board is hardly private. After all the times I stuck up for Rush, my feelings are hurt. (/sarcasm.)

Above is a 40 second clip of my answer to Dan Abrams on his show tonight on whether Rush Limbaugh could be liable as an aider and abettor to voter fraud for telling his listeners to register as Dems to vote for Hillary Clinton to give John McCain a better chance in November. (MSNBC has full segment here.)Backstory here, and from Wired and Alternet.

After Ohio, Rush moved on to induce Republicans in PA to register as Dems and vote for Hillary. [More...]

How refreshing to hear a politician, in this case David Paterson, the new Governor of New York, acknowledge using drugs in their youth and rather than apologize for it or calling it a mistake, point out:

"More Americans have tried a lot more during that period of time and gone on to lead responsible lives and hopefully have lived their lives to their fullest," he said.

Here's what Obama said about his drug use:

"I was a confused kid and was making a bunch of negative choices based on stereotypes of what I thought a tough young man should be," he said of the period depicted in that section of the book. "Those choices were misguided, a serious mistake.

I'll take more like Paterson please.

Update: The New York Times has a list of politicians and their comments on past drug use.

By Big Tent Democrat

You are entering a world of pain. An apt metaphor for the current primary fight. This is an Open Thread.

BTW, Jeralyn is on MSNBC now, talking about the Limbaugh/Dem for A Day stuff.

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

What do pols care about the most? My consistent answer has been that they care about winning their own elections above all else. Of course, they won't say it that way. They will argue, and maybe even believe, that there is nothing more important to the commonweal than their election to office.

Steve Benen cites Jon Chait:

An easier question to answer is, How much does Clinton value her own interests versus those of the Democratic Party? And here the answer is very clear: Clinton is acting as if she doesn’t care about the Democratic Party’s interests at all, except insofar as they coincide with her own.

Benen's response gets it right:

[A]t Clinton HQ right now, a team of advisors are likely thinking, “If Obama’s the nominee, Democrats lose. We may be the only ones who realize it, and we may only have a 10% shot, but we need to keep fighting . . . in order to save the party and protect the party’s interests.”

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Noam Scheiber's much cited piece contains a discussion of how Obama can finish Hillary off:

To make it happen, Obama would have to overtake Hillary among superdelegates--a key psychological barrier. He'd have to limit his margin of defeat in Pennsylvania to ten points, then hold serve two weeks later in North Carolina and Indiana, a pair of states he's slightly favored to win. At that point, Hillary would face nearly impossible odds of overtaking him in the delegate race. . . . MORE

The latest Gallup poll shows Hillary and Obama in a statistical tie.

The results confirm Gallup's March 22 report showing that Clinton's recent lead in the race -- apparently fueled by controversy dogging the Obama campaign over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- had evaporated.

At the same time, thus far Obama has not been able to reestablish the clear frontrunner position he enjoyed in late February, and again in mid-March. As has happened so often over the past six weeks, the race among national Democratic voters has become "too close to call."

As to the popular vote, pledged delegates, super delegates, electability and electoral votes, here's some things to think about:

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Writing approvingly of a TPM post I lambaste here, Markos writes:

The Clinton campaign has realized that the rules don't work in their favor, that if we follow the rules as agreed upon before the first caucus vote was cast in Iowa, that they have no chance of winning. . . . Again, as I noted before, the only way Clinton can win this race is with a coup by superdelegate . . .

Kos uses the pejorative term "coup" to describe the Super Delegates not voting for the pledged delegate leader. Let's leave aside the issue of whether the word "coup" makes sense here - and let's focus on whether the rules allow this. The answer is obviously yes, they do. It seems to me that it is Obama supporters like Markos who are complaining that the rules MAY NOT favor Obama. It is they who are whining that the rules permit Super Delegates to pick a nominee who is not the pledged delegate leader. I do not like the rules either. But for a different reason. They allow Super Delegates to pick a nominee who might not be the popular vote leader.

More . . .