• Avedon Carol on Eric Boehlert's and Jamison Foser's Media Matters column. Check out all three.

I'm trying to follow the Iowa county assembly votes today. Here are the January caucus results so you can compare when today's numbers become available. Nieman at Daily Kos may be keeping track.

This is an open thread, with a caveat. We are not commenting (and neither should you) about a candidate and his pastor. Any comments about it will be deleted. People have shown they can't discuss it rationally, and what's okay to one person is insulting to another. My decision, with the full support of Big Tent Democrat, is that it will not be on this site.

As to other topics, the floor is your's.

Via Drudge, here are this week's cable news ratings:

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 2,979,000
FNC HANNITY/COLMES 2,280,000
FNC GRETA 1,896,000
CNN KING 1,640,000
FNC HUME 1,530,000
CNN COOPER 1,417,000
FNC SHEP 1,392,000
CNN DOBBS 1,057,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,001,000
CNNHN GRACE 605,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 507,000

For political shows, Hardball is on the bottom and Olbermann right above him. Will this tell MSNBC anything?

The AP reports that Hillary Clinton supports the proposed Michigan re-vote plan.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton Saturday said she supported a plan being developed by Michigan Democrats to hold a new primary in June.

As to both Michigan and Florida,

"I feel really strongly about it," Clinton said. "The 2.5 million people (in Michigan and Florida) who voted deserve to be counted. If it were my preference, we'd count their votes but if not, then they should have the opportunity to have a full-fledged primary waged for them and revote."

Where's Obama on this? Hedging.

Spokesman Tommy Vietor Saturday said the campaign was open to a "fair and practical" resolution of the conflict...."We will evaluate the details of any new proposed election carefully as well as any efforts to come to a fair seating of the delegates from Michigan."

Hillary also address the "big state" issue and electability today: [More...]

This fellow needs a bit more training:

An Air National Guard jet mistakenly dropped a 22-pound, nonexplosive practice bomb on an apartment complex in Tulsa, damaging the foundation, but no one was injured, the police said.

Beware of zealots. Today's zealot is Greg Gambril, the district attorney in rural Covington County, Alabama, who is making a name for himself by prosecuting women who use drugs during their pregnancies.

Over an 18-month period, at least eight women have been prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant in this rural jurisdiction of barely 37,000, a tally without any recent parallel that women’s advocates have been able to find.

Gambril's prosections are likely to convince drug using women to avoid seeking medical care during their pregnancies, lest they face imprisonment. Physician-patient privilege assures that won't happen, you think?

Police affidavits make it clear that local doctors are cooperating in these investigations.

Separating women from their newborn children doesn't promote "family values" -- it simply prevents mother and child from bonding during the child's critical formative years. Sensible alternatives would focus on helping women, not sending them to prison.

It isn't at all clear that the prosecutions are consistent with the law upon which Gambril relies: [more...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

This afternoon, the Clinton campaign offered up chief campaign strategist Mark Penn and Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer to "discuss" the Rezko issue - demanding "Obama answer all of the questions" plus various and sundry attacks by Clinton and Obama on each other. This conference call raised questions for me, about the Clinton campaign.

Instead of offering any news or positions on the Florida/Michigan situation in their opening statements, a situation which is urgent now, the Clinton campaign gave the same old same old on Rezko. We have heard it all before. If you care about Rezko (and not only do I not, I am sick of hearing about it), then whoopee. But I would have thought the Clinton campaign would rather have discussed the work it is doing to insure that the will of the Democratic voters of Florida and Michigan is counted. My mistake.

More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Via eriposte. Taking his cues from Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein casually smears Hillary Clinton.

His blog is published by The American Prospect, where previous casual smears of Clinton have been published.

One hopes that TAPPED will improve its standards. There will be no comments to this post.

This revelation is unsurprising:

The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday. ... The C.I.A. emptied its secret prisons in the fall of 2006, when it moved 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but made clear that the facilities could be used in the future to house high-level terrorism suspects.

How is it possible that a country founded on the belief that individuals must be protected from the unreviewable actions of a powerful government could condone clandestine confinement in secret prisons? Despotism in action:

Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he signed an executive order that formally reiterated the C.I.A.’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon.

It may be extreme but not entirely unfair to make this comparison.

The Iowa County Assemblies are today. The 99 counties will select delegates to the state convention.

The pledged delegates from the caucuses are allowed to change their mind. In addition, it's unknown what John Edwards' delegates will decide to do: stay with Edwards as his Iowa campaign heads are urging or switch to Obama or Hillary.

Obama has been pitching Edwards' delegates in Iowa for two weeks. Hillary began this week.

By Big Tent Democrat

NYTimes:

Democrats in Michigan and Florida struggled Friday to resolve the impasse over their disputed January primaries, coming up with a plan to hold a June primary in Michigan while remaining deadlocked in Florida.

. . . Pushing to seat the Florida delegates, at least one top Clinton fund-raiser, Paul Cejas, a Miami businessman who has given the Democratic National Committee $63,500 since 2003, has demanded Democratic officials return his 2007 contribution of $28,500, which they have agreed to do. “If you’re not going to count my vote, I’m not going to give you my money,” said Mr. Cejas, who was the United States ambassador to Belgium from 1998 to 2001.

. . . MORE

In addition to being interviewed by the Chicago Tribune this week about Tony Rezko, Barack Obama also sat down for an interview with the Chicago Sun Times. More statements by Obama from the Sun Times interview:

Is Rezko still a friend?

"Yes,'' Obama said, "with the caveat if it turns out the allegations are true, then he's not who I thought he was, and I'd be very disappointed with that.''

And it's that friendship, Obama said, that probably kept him from realizing it was a mistake to enter into a real estate deal with Rezko.

"Probably because I'd known him for a long time, and he'd acted in an aboveboard manner with me," he said. "And I considered him a friend. ... It's further evidence that I'm not perfect.''

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kaas writes today about Obama's latest statements, "It's almost believable. As in, almost, but not quite.

The audio of the 80 minute Sun Times interview is here. The transcript is here (pdf).

In a just published interview with Sen. Barack Obama, the Chicago Tribune reports:

Indicted Chicago businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko was a more significant fundraiser for presidential candidate Barack Obama's earlier political campaigns than previously known. Rezko raised as much as $250,000 for the first three offices Obama sought, the senator told the Tribune on Friday.

Obama also said for the first time that his private real estate transactions with Rezko involved repeated lapses of judgment. The mistake, Obama said, was not simply that Rezko was under grand jury investigation at the time of their 2005 and 2006 dealings. "The mistake was he had been a contributor and somebody involved in politics," he said.

Repeated lapses of judgment. The Tribune says that's how Obama views it.

The interview raises another question: Obama's naivite.

Obama said that when he questioned Rezko about news reports of his questionable political dealings, his friend assured him there was nothing wrong. "My instinct was to believe him," he said.

He relied on his "instinct" and didn't do anything to verify it. [More...]