... and they seem to be wetting themselves with glee at their "discoveries" while doing screen-captures with both hands.

Looks to me as though a bunch of creeps used the personal blogging features of the MyBarackObama website to plant weird, racist and reprehensible personal blogs that call for all manner of vile things under what appears to be the candidate's official imprimatur.

Now, in what looks like a coordinated effort, the usual suspects like Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Powerline and Atlas Shrugs are suddenly discovering all those blogs and publishing their screen captures as though they were the official Obama positions.

Some nights, you really need that Boilermaker.

CBS News is reporting that Hillary Clinton cut her customary hour-long stump speech to five minutes when a crowd of Philly Democrats declined to pay her any mind.

Hillary Clinton was forced to cut her normal stump speech short when a chatty and meddlesome crowd kept her from grasping their attention. Clinton, who was addressing the Philadelphia County Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, spoke for just over five minutes, despite having the press arrive almost two hours beforehand.

Austin / Travis County (Texas) Democratic voters gave a big margin of victory (65-35%) to the District Attorney candidate endorsed by retiring DA Ronnie Earle.

First Assistant DA Rosemary Lehmberg gave Earle credit for her win  following her Tuesday trouncing of fellow assistant district attorney Mindy Montford.

Doubts about Montford's independence also were raised by bloggers who tied her to lobbyists, politicians and other special interests - including Karl Rove - in the days before Tuesday's runoff vote.

Republicans could not find anyone to run for the job, so Lehmberg will face no opponent in the general election, barring a write-in candidacy by someone as yet unknown.  She would be the first female DA in Travis County history.

If Hillary Clinton is counting on massive Latino support for her candidacy in Texas, there may be a generational flaw in her plan, an article in the San Antonio Express-News suggests today.

Reporter Gary Sharrer notes that

 San Antonio's first Hispanic mayor Henry Cisneros, 60, is supporting Clinton. The city's second Hispanic mayor, Ed Garza, 39, elected 20 years after Cisneros, is supporting Obama.

Contrasting the different political allegiances of elected Hispanic officials with their elected-official children, Sharrar's article found opinions aligned more with age than ethnicity.

In Austin, TX, District Attorney Ronnie Earle is warning that a narrow Texas appeals court majority is about to create two classes of felony crime through a ruling that would let Tom DeLay escape trial for conspiracy to violate the Texas Election Code.

If he can’t persuade them to reconsider, police and prosecutors would be powerless to bring conspiracy charges in a wide variety of felony crimes, perhaps including the next pair of Columbine-style killers who plot to bring their guns to a Texas school.

Four dissenting judges on the nine-member Court of Criminal Appeals agree that the court is about to make bad law and bad public policy in the course of throwing out a conspiracy charge against DeLay and two accused co-conspirators.  Earle is trying, with a motion for rehearing filed Thursday, to persuade at least one more justice to reconsider.

He's asked for a rehearing after a bare majority of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals threw out conspiracy charges against Tom DeLay and two other defendants.  
(crossposted in part in comments at Burnt Orange Report)

Despite DeLay's loud declarations of victory, Earle's request for rehearing and reconsideration is not a vain one.  The Court of Crims - the highest court for criminal cases in Texas' split system, has been known to change its mind.  And in this ruling, says the author of the minority's dissent, they've created bad public policy and defied common sense in letting DeLay rely on a suspect ruling in a 30-year old drug case to skate around conspiracy charges.

Earle called the majority's reasoning "tortured."

The Texas House of Representatives, steaming about Speaker Tom Craddick’s repeated declarations that he has absolute power over who may speak in the 150-member chamber, boiled over after midnight Monday morning with some members walking out into capitol corridors echoing with cheers and catcalls where state troopers rushed to separate dissident camps
UPDATE - Link to local TV report KEYE TV

The fate of some 30 major bills pending before Monday midnight’s statutory end of the session seemed bleak following the walkout and at least one former member argued that the $153 billion state budget may also hang in the balance if a quorum of members does not return to allow it to be formally signed.

Tempers have flared openly since Friday when Craddick refused to recognize members who wished to call for a vote on whether to dump him and elect a new speaker - something that hasn’t happened to a sitting speaker since 1871.  

Popular Austin blues pianist Marcia Ball rattled the church windows with "Great Balls of Fire" as hundreds of friends and fans of Molly Ivins leapt to their feet and clapped out the rhythm Sunday in a farewell memorial service for the internationally known columnist.

It was a service that richocheted between quiet remembrance and roars of applause in the domed sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church in Austin, an easy stroll from the larger dome of the Texas Capitol, where Ivins first found a happy hunting ground for her political barbs as co-editor of the Texas Observer.

We Texas Democrats are being told to focus on the ground at our feet, at the little steps we need to take to rebuild our party by inches, the shuffle-steps of precinct, county and district gains that some day, some decade, will lead us back to the statehouse.

The press, the pundits and the poli-sci profs are the doleful Greek chorus urging this path on us as our only sensible choice - Texas Democrats are dead, my dears - no money, no chance, so sorry.  Run along now, and file for county commissioner.

Focusing on fundamentals is never bad advice, but this year we would be fools if we didn't also raise our heads and look up...