Showtime in Wyoming: Bill Clinton vs. Barack Obama
The Eagles, Doolin' Dalton/Desperado Reprise, 1974 (with Linda Ronstadt singing in this segment and she's not the one wearing Jersey number 12)

Well the stage was set the sun was sinkin' low down
As they came to town to face another showdown
The lawmen cleared the people from the streets
"All you blood -thirsty bystanders, will you try to find your seats?"
Watch 'em duelin'
Doolin-Dalton
High or low ,it's all the same

The AP:

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has announced that he will visit Wyoming on Friday for a town hall meeting in Casper and a rally in Laramie.

...The Clinton campaign announced today that former President Bill Clinton will swing through Wyoming on Thursday on behalf of his wife's campaign.

Bill Clinton's stops will include a speech at 10:45 a.m. at Central Wyoming College in Riverton. He'll then travel to southwestern Wyoming for a 1:45 p.m. event at the Sweetwater County Events Complex in Rock Springs. The former president will wind up his Wyoming appearances in Laramie with a speech at the UniWyo Sports Complex at the University of Wyoming at 5 p.m.

Will it matter? I love the state, but it really is Dick Cheney country. In 2004, John Kerry won one county, Teton, with a total population of 18,000 and a population density of five persons per square mile.

The chances of a Democrat winning in November? When H*ll Freezes Over, Get Over It.

Update below: Hillary's going to Wyoming too.

By Big Tent Democrat

Your second turn. Go Gators! This is an Open Thread.

Big Tent Democrat

Todd Beeton has Howard Dean's statement:

We're glad to hear that the Governors of Michigan and Florida are willing to lend their weight to help resolve this issue. As we've said all along, we strongly encourage the Michigan and Florida state parties to follow the rules, so today's public overtures are good news. The rules, which were agreed to by the full DNC including representatives from Florida and Michigan over 18 months ago, allow for two options. First, either state can choose to resubmit a plan and run a party process to select delegates to the convention; second, they can wait until this summer and appeal to the Convention Credentials Committee, which determines and resolves any outstanding questions about the seating of delegates. We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time. The Democratic Nominee will be determined in accordance with party rules, and out of respect for the presidential campaigns and the states that did not violate party rules, we are not going to change the rules in the middle of the game.

. . .

(Emphasis supplied.) I have a plan. But Howard Dean needs to be more proactive than he seems to want to be in this letter. I hope there is something being done with more urgency than Dean is showing here. More . . .

The comments to our threads are filling up pretty quickly, even with the "stay on topic" rules. That's a good thing.

If the comments stay as full, I may be taking requests for volunteer comment moderators.

Since I'll be out for a few hours, here's a place for you to decide the topics and keep the conversation going.

NOTE - BTD Comments closed. There is a new Open thread. Go Gators!

Despite Big Tent Democrat's five posts on Florida here today, not all has been said.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's campaigns are now okay with a second Florida primary:

Now the Clinton campaign has begun expressing openness to a do-over. "Let's let all of the voters go again if they are willing to do it," said Clinton adviser Terry McAuliffe Tuesday night on MSNBC. "Whatever we have to do to get people in the system, let's do it."

Obama's campaign says it would participate if one is decided upon by the Party, but is not going to do anything to make it happen. It sounds decidedly luke-warm on the prospect:

"We're going to abide by their rules as they exist now and whatever happens in the future," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters Wednesday.

"I don't think it's for our campaign or her campaign — we're in a heated contest here — to have to be the facilitators here," Plouffe said. "This is between the DNC and those state parties."

It makes sense Obama would be only luke-warm to the idea. Just look at the results from the Florida primary, a scant 5 weeks ago. He won only the northern counties closest to Georgia and the deep south. He won no county below the top of the state.

[More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

TPM on the Texas Caucuses reporting:

A lot of readers have wondered why the Texas caucuses have been so slow to report to the media. The answer: They're not reporting in great numbers anymore, and they don't actually have to. Nonetheless, we might still have a decent estimate of the final result for you to consider.

. . . The results that have come in came from a voluntary system set up in order to help the media get an idea of what to expect the final delegate result to be. . .

Heck of a way to pick a nominee. Yep, love those caucuses.

The AP reports:

The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

....[The breach was] caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested.

Details will be forthcoming in a report by the Justice Department Inspector General. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Is Donna Brazile upset about this?

Obama campaign advisers are already making good on promises to confront Hillary much more aggressively on new fronts, hammering her on a conference call over her failure to release her tax returns.

. . . In response, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson sought to shift the discussion back to the Rezko story, a tale the Hillary camp will be hitting on relentlessly in the weeks ahead. "Their tax returns since they left the White House will be made available on or around April 15," Wolfson said, speaking of the Clintons. "Instead of making false attacks, we urge Senator Obama to release all relevant financial and other information related to indicted political fixer Tony Rezko."

Are we getting the vapors yets? For the record, I personally could not care less about seeing Clinton's tax returns or Obama's Rezko records.

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Marc Ambinder:

A joint statement from the governors of Florida and Michigan:

“The right to vote is at the very foundation of our democracy. This primary season, voters have turned out in record numbers to exercise that right, and it is reprehensible that anyone would seek to silence the voices of 5,163,271 Americans. It is intolerable that the national political parties have denied the citizens of Michigan and Florida their votes and voices at their respective national conventions.

According to the DNC and RNC, Florida and Michigan have violated party rules by moving up their primaries. Today, we each will call upon our respective state and national party chairs to resolve this matter and to ensure that the voters of Michigan and Florida are full participants in the formal selection of their parties' nominees. We must restore the rights of the more than 5 million voters whose voices have been silenced.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Pssst, Governors, do I have a plan for you. Commenter Coral Gables brings us the FL Dem Party reaction:

By Big Tent Democrat

Kevin Drum writes:

Atrios:

The campaigns and candidates themselves may not get nasty, but I get the sense that supporters of the various candidates are getting angrier at the other camp. Sure a lot of this is just relatively harmless virtual world internet flaming, but it has real world manifestations too.

This has sort of taken me by surprise too. I'm reminded of the old saying that the smaller the stakes, the more vicious the battle. Obama and Clinton are obviously different in some important ways, but overall there just aren't any huge gaps between them, either in ideology or governing theory. . . . I confess that I have a hard time understanding the level of vitriol that the race has produced among supporters on both sides. . . .

Yep. On the flip, I will show you what I mean.

NOTE Comments closed.

The jury has been selected in Tony Rezko's federal criminal trial. Opening arguments are tomorrow. Each side is expected to take an hour to present their arguments.

The Judge is not disclosing which jurors were selected, either by number or name.

The new sentencing guidelines with reductions in crack cocaine sentences went into effect two days ago.

In two days, the courts have granted 400 motions for sentence reductions. A few inmates have been able to leave jail immediately.

These reductions are modest in size, don't apply to everyone and should be heralded by everyone concerned about justice and fairness. The exceptions, not surprisingly, are the Bush Administration and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who continue to criticize the reductions.

Sentencing Law and Policy has much more on how the implementation of the reductions is progressing.

I'm looking forward to a Democratic President in November who will provide Congress with an impetus to move on legislation that will eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder once and for all, and also reduce or eliminate the true cancer on the criminal justice system -- mandatory minimum drug sentences.