10:10 p.m.-- Andrea Mitchell reports a conference call from the Clinton campaign--which seems to be saying that it may launch legal challenges to precinct caucuses in Texas. Houston, Harris Cnty, is mentioned. With 14 percent of the vote in, Obama still leads Clinton in Texas, as he has from the earliest precincts--this before any of the big cities are in. Looks as though the Clinton people are reading this right.

Meanwhile, on the GOP side, McCain as expected won all four states today--Huckabee came out and gave a cheerful concession speech; his wife got a big hand from the crowd ...   more »

7:47 p.m. Back to MSNBC: all the commentators on Ohio, where less than one percent of the vote has come in, are agreed that the candidates are each getting their own demographics (divisions) back. Somewhat regrettable, but it's still too early to call.

7:54 p.m. Joe Scarb is back on, desperately putting together the silver lining for Clinton--says that her coalition is coming back together. This wd all the segments of groups that have less access to information, particularly to alternative sources than the big media outlets. Scarb argues that these are voters that John McCain cd get. Pat Buchanan ...   more »

6:40 p.m. Keith Olbermann asking questions of Andrea Mitchell, stationed at Clinton campaign headquarters in Ohio: Mitchell slips in that Bill Richardson is going to endorse Obama.

Olbermann interviews John Kerry, who has already endorsed Obama. Kerry is good on prospects for the Dem race from here on out, incl the point that it is mathematically almost impossible for Clinton to close her deficit in delegates, if the primaries are close tonight, even if she wins.

Exit polls turn up a nasty detail: in Texas, which permits crossover voting in its Dem primary--allowing Republicans to pick the Democratic candidate they ...   more »

4:39 p.m.--John King with a map of Ohio, and Wolf Blitzer-- outlining areas of the state where each Dem candidate might hope to do well, heavy emphasis on ethnicity and socioeconomic background to exclusion all else, i.e. divisions. Somewhat disheartening, but that's television for you. On election days, at least.
 Wolf Blitzer at least does a cheerier bit: "Obama for Obama," meaning the city of Obama, Japan takes an interest in the candidate of same name. The city says nice things, too.

5:00, and it's Hardball, w/ Chris Matthews. Howard Dean, Dem chair, comes on for interview: yes, he met ...   more »

4:02 p.m. All channels okay--Back to MSNBC, from Ohio, holding forth on weather conditions, said to be messy. But still expecting a record turnout. Some concerned commentary about the effect of bad weather on senior citizens, who are conceived to be mostly Clinton supporters. The MSNBC personnel do not want them to be kept from the polls in Ohio today.

4:09 p.m. Jack Cafferty comes on, preliminary to his show, up next in the lineup. Cafferty mentions the Clinton attacks re Canada and Rezko, and refreshingly points out that Barack Obama has not brought up any of the numerous scandals ...   more »

No way to tell what the problem was. MSNBC was lost to me for more than 20 minutes--never happened before--still had NBC and CNBC. Anyway, as of

3:34 p.m. Everything up and running, at least the commentators are. Norah O'Donnell briefly interviews former Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card--who also, like every other Repub, is obv rooting for Hillary Clinton to win the Dem nomination. O'Donnell shows him a cover article attacking Obama on the newest Weekly Standard, the right-neocon periodical that did so much to bring about the Iraq war, and asks him, Did the Clinton campaign ...   more »

2:49 p.m. Unusual twist on the live-blogging effort: It has been well over ten minutes now, and I still cannot get MSNBC to come back on. The other channels and networks are still with me--everything from Ellen DeGeneres to CNN--but MSNBC is black.

Solid black.

Nothing.

Turning to a different medium, we do still have P. M. Carpenter's very worthwhile piece on www.buzzflash.com today. The title is "Hillary Clinton's Monstrously Blind Demolition." Good work.

Buzzflash got cited in the congressional testimony of D.C. attorney Barry Coburn, last week, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the use of ...   more »

1:29 p.m., and John McCain speaking in Texas, about Iraq. Things are not looking hopeful for the public good, here: As always, Iraq is "the central battleground" in the global war against Islamic extremist jihadists--at least they've stopped calling it a 'war on terror'. But of course he does not mention, cannot mention, that al-Qaeda and the other groups HAD NO NETWORK IN IRAQ until its government and infrastructure were destroyed by military force.

McCain also says the surge is working. He does not mention that much of the 'pacification' to use the Hitlerian term is owing to ethnic dispossession ...   more »

Update, 11:30 a.m., and back to CNN: Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News, which endorsed Obama, says on air that turnout is really good in Houston and Dallas, good but less good in South Texas. The conventional wisdom as ever is that the urban turnout benefits Obama, the So Texas turnout wd benefit Clinton. There was massive early voting in Texas, of course, all of it while the trend lines were going toward Obama if that's meaningful.   more »

Live-blogging another primary day, the primaries in Vermont, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island--VOTR as Keith Olberman said last night--as they unroll on the big media outlets.

Morning on MSNBC, and we're not off to a good start. Morning Joe and his sidekicks and assorted panelists are boosting Hillary Clinton like a trampoline. A four-person colloquy starts off, somewhere after 9:30 a.m., by downplaying the voters. Typical line, and undoubtedly sincere: the politics of selfishness, renamed 'conservatism,' requires that, after all: Raising that hackneyed query about Which candidate do you wanna have a beer with--this one works against Obama, in their ...   more »

As the town of Washington returns to business in early September, 2003, the business of sustaining the war and its concomitant profiteering continues. The administration also continues its consistent support of the top level of management in the international petroleum industry. As ever, the attacks of 9/11, still not completely investigated, are used as the pretext for every fiscal and economic policy inimical to the interests of the majority of the population. Top figures in the administration use a series of commemoration appearances to defend their handling of the war, and Rumsfeld is heckled at one of his speeches. Osama ...   more »