UPDATE - Clinton 45- Sanders 42- O'Malley 3.

Trump 28, Cruz 23, Rubio 15, Carson 10.

6:45 pm Eastern time tonight, Ann Selzer drops her final Iowa poll. For those who don't know Selzer is the gold standard for Iowa - THE poll. So we'll know a bit better what to expect at the Iowa caucus then.

But here's what we've always known - the Iowa caucus on the Dem side is a travesty. There are many reasons why it should not go first - mostly because it is basically an all white state (like NH that follows it), thoroughly unrepresentative of the demographics of the Democratic Party.

But the actual Dem caucus process itself is ridiculously undemocratic. There is no secret ballot. There is no connecting statewide votes with actual delegates chosen. There is a 15% viability requirement PER PRECINCT! It is truly awful in every sense.

Ironically, it's possible Sanders will get more voters out Monday night and "lose" the caucuses. We'll never actually know as vote totals are not reported just delegate counts.

It's long past time to end the travesty known as the Iowa Caucus going first in Presidential primaries.

Josh Gerstein and Rachel Bade:

The furor over Hillary Clinton's use of a private email account grew more serious for the Democratic presidential front-runner Friday as the State Department designated 22 of the messages from her account "top secret." [. . .]

"These documents were not marked classified at the time they were sent [and they weren't sent by Clinton imo - BTD my emhphasis] ," Kirby said in a statement.

Sound familiar? It should because it is the same story I've been writing about since this nonsense started. See in particular State v. IC classification battles:

Busy day. I'll write a little bit on Iowa and EGhazi (same story, different day) tomorrow.

Open Thread.

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At last night's Dem forum, when asked who her favorite President was, Hillary Clinton picked Abraham Lincoln and said:

You know, he was willing to reconcile and forgive. And I don't know what our country might have been like had he not been murdered, but I bet that it might have been a little less rancorous, a little more forgiving and tolerant, that might possibly have brought people back together more quickly.

But instead, you know, we had Reconstruction, we had the re-instigation of segregation and Jim Crow. We had people in the South feeling totally discouraged and defiant. So, I really do believe he could have very well put us on a different path.

Ta Nahisi Coates thinks Clinton was adopting the Dunning School view of Reconstruction:

A grand jury in Houston indicted two people who are part of the group that made headlines last year with videos falsely claiming Planned Parenthood sold organs of aborted fetuses.

The Houston grand jury, which was empaneled to investigate Planned Parenthood after the Center for Medical Progress released its undercover footage last year, indicted the center's founder and another activist on Monday. The indictment was the first time anyone with the anti-abortion group has been charged criminally since the videos began surfacing last year.

Planned Parenthood was cleared of any wrongdoing. [More...]

Here is President Obama's op-ed in today's Washington Post explaining why he has ordered the end of solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons.

Here is the Justice Department report on the effects of solitary confinement -- Obama says he adopted its recommendations. The report has 50 guiding principles. Obama writes:

The Justice Department has completed its review, and I am adopting its recommendations to reform the federal prison system. These include banning solitary confinement for juveniles and as a response to low-level infractions, expanding treatment for the mentally ill and increasing the amount of time inmates in solitary can spend outside of their cells. These steps will affect some 10,000 federal prisoners held in solitary confinement — and hopefully serve as a model for state and local corrections systems. And I will direct all relevant federal agencies to review these principles and report back to me with a plan to address their use of solitary confinement.

[More...]

Thread.

Those of you who lived the 2008 election with us at Talk Left will be interested to hear this from President Obama in his interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush:

Obama hammered away at the notion that the New York senator was on the wrong side of generational change, and his team successfully convinced reporters that every Clinton campaign swipe was an underhanded personal attack – something he’s less than proud of in retrospect.

“The truth is, in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff I think got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising,” he admitted. “And there were times where I think the media probably was a little unfair to her and tilted a little my way in calling her out.”

Sound familiar? Anyway, the entire interview is basically a de facto endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President.

Donald Trump:

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any voters. Okay? It's like incredible."

I don't even know how to respond to this. If you do, feel free to weigh in.

ISIS media center al Hayat released a video today of the Paris attacks. It has some photos that were in the most recent issue of Dabiq magazine, shows the attackers making statements (not together), has a lot of gruesome beheadings, highlights its encryption of messages, and ends with a threat to Great Britain.

I don't publish links to ISIS videos, so don't put them in comments. But I also won't say as do some arrogant journalists, "I watched it so you don't have to." If you want to know what ISIS is saying through it's videos, spend some time googling al hayat and you'll find it. [More...]