Two Dutch soldiers became casualty today (April 18) to a road side attack in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. Two more soldiers were wounded, one of them critically. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

One of the killed soldiers is Dennis van Uhm. Van Uhm is the son of Peter van Uhm.

The democratic nomination contest now officially became a two way contest between Clinton and Obama as the third remaining candidate, gadfly, Mike Gravel just witched his party affiliation. This week Maurice Gravel joined the Libertarian Party.

http://www.lp.org/...

Hillary Clinton's communications director keeps sprouting nonsense and lies. According to CNN Wolfson lashed out at the media Monday during a conference call for what he described as a "double standard" in the way the press covers Clinton and Obama.

Furthermore a hypochritical Wolfson maintained it is Barack Obama who is running a negative campaign and that the press largely praises him for doing so. Wolfson accused Obama and his campaign of attacking Clinton in the worst kind of personal ways, attacking her veracity and credibility.

"When we have attempted to make contrasts with Sen. Obama, we have been criticized for it," he said. "That is a fact of life that we labor under. I reject the notion that Sen. Clinton has been engaged in this sort of seriatim attacks on Sen. Obama. I think Sen. Obama's entire campaign against Sen. Clinton is negative.

"I think he has run against her as the status quo, he has essentially called her divisive, he has called her untruthful, he has questioned her credibility, he has said she will do and say anything to get elected," Wolfson also said. " If that's not negative, I don't know what negative is."

The 9th Congressional District of Tennessee is a bit of an "anomaly". It's a majority black district with a white jewish Representative, Steve Cohen. Given this, Cohen is now facing a difficult primary challenge from black female candidate Nikki Tinker.

Now an African-American minister from Murfreesboro, TN, has launched a despicable flyer stating:

Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the JEWS HATE Jesus
see to it that one and ONLY one black Christian faces this opponent of Christ and Christianity in the 2008 election

Florida has 185 pledged delegates and 25 superdelegates who face not being seated at the convention for holding a renegade primary; Michigan has 128 pledged delegates and 28 superdelegates. The DNC's credentials committee meets this summer but as the contest isn’t over yet, it's still not clear which candidate's representatives will be in control of the committee. After all, the credentials committee's seats are allocated through a formula linked to the candidate's performances in the various states. If the committee winds up being controlled by Hillary Clinton this means she has a delegate lead and the Florida and Michigan delegations will be credentialed. In this case she most likely already has the nomination sewn up and no fight will occur as it will not make a difference. But what in the case she doesn't have the nomination sewn up but manages to get a majority on the committee? Then all hell brakes loose...

If Barack Obama controls the credentials committee and he has the nomination sewn up, the Florida and Michigan delegations will be allowed in as well. If the fight's still on however and "his" committee is given the opportunity to deny Sen. Clinton the Michigan and Florida delegates that could put her over the top, that blocking move will without doubt occur.

Lost in all the brouha relating to the coming Super Tuesday was the fact that the Maine GOP party organized their caucuses this weekend.

The GOP caucuses are essentially a nonbinding preference poll and the first stage in a longer process in which delegate support is allocated. Delegates to the state convention in May are elected at the caucuses. The state convention in turn elects delegates to the national convention.

As with Florida and Michigan, this renegade caucus was punished by losing half their delegates: only 18 Maine delegates will go to the Republican convention.

The Maine Democrats will hold their presidential preference votes at municipal caucuses on Feb. 10.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/...

The New York Times has an article about an attempt by Nevada teachers union to block the Hotel Worker’s Union Vote in the Nevada Caucuses.

Nevada’s state teachers union and six Las Vegas residents filed a lawsuit arguing that the Nevada Democratic Party’s decision to create at-large precincts inside nine Las Vegas resorts on caucus day violates the state’s election laws and creates a system in which voters at the at-large precincts can elect more delegates than voters at other precincts.

These precincts were created with the goal to allow thousands of hotel workers - who often cannot leave work to participate in the midday caucuses in their normal precincts - to participate in their party's presidential selection process.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

A written off Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. Although Barack Obama lead in all the latest polls, the only poll that counts proved all the pollsters wrong.

With this Clinton recreates the journey her husband took in 1992: lose Iowa, be written off and then resurrect in New Hamshire. But where Bill Clinton only placed second and claimed the moral victory which lead to his unstopple momentum further on, Hillary managed to win the NH primary outright.

To me, Hillary's victory in New Hampshire was caused by three things:

1. the women vote came home to her, perhaps aided by the tearfull moment and the reaction towards it.

2. although the vote in the Democratic primary outnumbers the vote in the Republican by some 60.000 votes, independents broke not enough towards Obama. Perhaps the Obama campaign became a victim of its own (apparent) sucess. Independents seeing and hearing all the noise about an Obama lead might have thought it wasn't necessary for them to chose a Democratic ballot and voted for McCain

3. Older voters overwhelmingly outnumbered younger voters, a proportion that benefited Clinton. Sixty-seven percent of Democratic primary voters were over the age of 40, and they were breaking heavily for Clinton.

According to politics1 The National Enquirer - yeah a sleaze machine - hitting the streets on today, will feature a scandal story about John Edwards fathering a soon-to-be-born "love child."

In October the National Enquirer already claims Edwards had an 18-month affair with female staffer on his campaign. The aforementioned staffer is supposedly now six-months pregnant and in hiding. Edwards and the staffer reportedly are vehemently denying the story but the tabloid claims it has interviews with friends of the woman in whom she reportedly confided about the Edwards details. The tabloid also claims to have emails and other evidence supporting the story.

http://www.nationalenquirer.com/...

A federal court ruling on June 8 that forces Mississippian voters to register by party could have the dire effect of returning the state of  Mississippi to the days of racially polarized politics. In his ruling, that still can be appealed, Judge Pepper ordered the state Legislature to put a new registration and primary system in place by August 31, 2008 and that photo identification for voters should be instituted. As a result, many white Democrats will now probably opt definitively for the GOP. Possibly ending a persistent anomaly in a southern state that went twice by a large margin for Bush, and where 85 percent of white voters voted for Bush in 2004, but where hundreds of local officeholders still remain Democrats.

Republican-leaning voters in Mississippi have long been able to cross party lines in primaries, voting for moderate Democrats in state and local races while staying loyal to Republican candidates in national and some state wide races. By limiting these white voters to Republican primaries, the court ruling will push centrist Democratic candidates to the other party, simply in order to survive, and will turn of white voters from the party even more. And this time not only for the federal elections.

I don't know wether this has been diaried before, but ABC has an interesting article by BETH FOUHY about Al Gore, the Oscars and a possible 2008 Presidential bid. If it has been diaried before, use this as an other diary to vent your comments vis-a-vis a possible Gore run.

http://abcnews.go.com/...

In today's Washington Post Chris Cillizza takes a first look at the top ten vulnerable House seats as he sees it.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/...

According to Cillizza several of the seats we just won have a decided GOP lean and will be very endangered, other Democratic incumbents - like the two Georgia guys - benefitted from the strong national wind at their backs and might be in real trouble in '08.

On the other hand Cillizza sees several Republican incumbents barely squeaking by in 2006 and expects them to face well-financed and serious cchallengers in 2008.

You'll find the complete list and his analysis bellow the fold

Apparently, two men who were widely expected to retire - Republican Senators Ted Stevens of Alaska and Pete Domenici - will run again in 2008...

For a more thorough analysis of our chances in Alaska and New Mexico see below the fold.

Today, November 12, 2006, former President Gerald Ford surpassed Ronald Reagan as the longest lived United States president ever. Gerald Ford now is 93 year and 121 days old.

With the midterm election over we Democrats have 9 new members for the Senate:

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA)
Sen. James Webb (D-VA)
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

This means we have taken over the US Senate and come January will form the majority.

Well, as we all know, the United States Senate counts 100 Senators. This diary is about whom we least like, be it because of his or her personality or political views.

With the challengers for the 2006 Senate contests nearly all set, I thought it to be time to look forward to 2008 and to ponder who'll retire, who might be vulnerable and who could be seen as possible "major challengers".

Below, I'll give an analyzis of the various satets which may be in play or possible retirements.

In today's WaPo, Dionne gets it right with regard to petty partisanship. In the aftermath of Lamont's victory and the GOP's effort to tie him with weak on terror, Dionne squarely lays the blame with Cheney, Mehlman and Snow.

A MUST READ!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...