Update: 1:17pm Hillary wins Nevada -- and takes the Las Vegas strip.

Update: 1:05 pm PT: Hillary wins the Bellagio and the Tropicana caucuses. She has four of nine of the at-large caucuses so far.

Update: 1:00pm PT 60% of precincts reporting and Hillary leads Obama 50% to 45%. Interestingly, with 58% of Clark County in, Hillary is leading Obama 55% to 42%.

Update: 12:51 pm PT Obama has left Las Vegas for Chicago. He won't be making any remarks. I'd say that means he doesn't expect to win. 25% of precincts are in and Hillary is leading but not enough votes in yet to call the race.

More below:

Bump and Update: ABC had Ron Paul beating John McCain. Now they say McCain is in second place.

The Republicans started their caucuses two hours earlier than Democrats.

Fox News and NBC have projected Mitt Romney the winner.

Update: NBC has McCain second and Ron Paul third. CNN has them tied right now.

Speaking for me only

With this story coming out that Obama was the politician who received contributions of illegally gotten funds from an associate of corruption accused Tony Rezko, let me state my view that like the Norman Hsu contributions received by various pols, including Clinton and Obama, it is clear that Barack Obama did absolutely nothing wrong and this should be an absolute non-issue. It would be wrong of any campaign to try and make hay of this. I hope they do not.

The Washington Post in an editorial today castigates Nevada for choosing Saturday morning to hold caucuses when religious conservative and observant Jewish people and 7th Day Adventists will have to choose between their faith and their desire to participate in caucuses.

Last week, Just Engage, the official blog of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs weighed in with Separation of Shul and State. [More..]

Anyone have a prediction for the Nevada caucus results?

I think Hillary Clinton will win. The Washington Post reports Obama's senior campaign advisor David Axelrod may be leaning towards that view as well:

"Senator Clinton has some real structural advantages here," said Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. "She started off with a strong lead. They've run a very, very aggressive campaign. We recognize that there are significant barriers. I think it's going to be a very competitive race, but I think she has an edge going in."

I hope Edwards makes a strong showing. I'd really like him to stay in the race.

Poll below.

Update [2008-1-19 13:24:46 by Big Tent Democrat]: Romney wins Nevada.

As of December, 2007, for active registered voters:

• 980,400 active registered voters
• 397,247 Democrats
• 392,362 Republicans
• 141,195 Unaffiliated

The numbers for total registered voters are:

• 1,235,616 total registered voters
• 499,850 Democrats
• 480,437 Republicans
• 189,112 Unaffiliated

Active voters are defined as "registered voters who maintain a current residence address with their local county clerk and the Secretary of State’s Office." [More...]

Josh Marshall points to Bill Moyers' commentary on the brouhaha over Hillary's LBJ/MLK comments. Moyers also provides a wonderful tribute to both LBJ and MLK. Watch it. A great piece.

Maybe I'm just fixated on Las Vegas today as I wait for the caucus results, but this CLE (continuing legal education) program for public defenders and private defense counsel sounds great -- and, it's only $90 for the weekend. Check it out here. There's even a poker tournament:

2008 WORLD DEFENDER POKER CHAMPIONSHIP (LIMITED TO 50 ENTRANTS)
Sunday afternoon, 2 pm to 5 pm??: After the MCLE program, we will be holding the 2008 World Defender Poker Championship. Sara Cooper, a public defender from Arizona won the 2005 title, and Public Defender David Daniel from Media Pennsylvania won the 2006 event. Entry fee will be $50 per person, (pay in advance with your Retreat Registration).

More...

Speaking for me only

eriposte takes Markos Moulitsas' unsound post at daily kos on the Party of Ideas and debunks it (see also Crashing The Gates co-author Jerome Armstrong gently disagree with Markos.), using Markos' own words. It uses some definitive statements from "Crashing the Gate," Markos and Jerome Armstrong's book on Democratic politics:[More...]

Denver civil rights lawyer David Lane intends to subpoena Dick Cheney in the civil rights lawsuit he brought against Cheney's secret service detail. Details of the incident and lawsuit are here.

Steven Howards and his son were walking by a Dick Cheney event this summer in Beaver Creek, on their way to a piano lesson. Howards told Cheney he didn’t approve of his war policy. When Howards walked back from the lesson, passing the site again, he was arrested. Charges later were dropped.

The New York Times had a feature article on the case yesterday. What's become the big story in the case is that the Secret Service agents are accusing each other of making stuff up. [More...]

Since President Bush doesn't believe that lying to federal investigators or grand jurors really deserves punishment (at least in the case of his friend and fellow rascal Scooter Libby), do you suppose he'll commute the sentences of Pro Bowl defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield or Olympic medalist sprinter Marion Jones?

Oh, and to all the disgruntled Republicans who complained that nobody gets charged or convicted or punished for what Scooter Libby did -- tell that to Stubblefield and Jones.

If there is a nightmare that haunts criminal defense attorneys, it is being forced to remain silent when speaking out would prevent an innocent man from going to prison ... or worse. That was Leslie Smith's dilemma after he watched prosecutors coax his client, William Jones, to change his story so that it would match other evidence. Prosecutors used Jones to convince a jury that Daryl Atkins shot a man to death, resulting in a death sentence (later vacated) for Atkins.

“As he began to describe the positions of the individuals and the firing of the shots,” Mr. Smith said last month, referring to his client, a prosecutor “reached over and stopped the tape recorder.” ... The problem was that Mr. Jones’s account did not match the physical evidence. “This isn’t going to do us any good,” Ms. Krinick said, according to Mr. Smith.

For 15 minutes, Mr. Smith said, prosecutors coaxed and coached Mr. Jones to produce testimony against Mr. Atkins that did match the evidence.

After being told by ethics authorities for years that he could not reveal the prosecutor's misconduct, Smith finally received approval from the state bar's ethics authority to tell what he knew.

His testimony caused a state court judge in Yorktown, Va., to commute the death sentence of Daryl R. Atkins to life on Thursday, citing prosecutorial misconduct.

Smith's pursuit of the right result saved Atkins from facing the possibility of a second death sentence. Let's hope both Smith and Atkins can finally sleep easy.