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The May 9 edition of the New York Post carries a short article by an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis student named Keith John Sampson. He tells a story of how he was charged with "racial harassment" simply because he was "caught" reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan book. I'm not kidding.  Sampson tells his story: The book was Todd Tucker's 'Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan'; I was reading it on break from my campus job as a janitor. The same book is in the university library . . . . But that didn't...

INDIANAPOLIS — Thank you, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Love, Barack Obama. Obama ended the worst two weeks of his presidential run with a razor-thin loss to Hillary Clinton in Indiana. His salve came earlier in the evening in North Carolina where he trounced Clinton, and the result stands to open the superdelegate floodgates in coming days. The nomination fight is essentially over. But the fact remains that Rev. Wright couldn’t have picked a worse time to speak out and get some national media action. CNN reports that exit polling showed that 48 percent of Hoosier Democrats said the Rev. Wright controversy...

It's that time of year again and this here's a thread to discuss the events at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for those of you interested in that sort of thing.

Even as Barack Obama's campaign celebrated Tuesday's primary results, aides charged yesterday that they would have had an even stronger showing were it not for meddling by an unlikely booster of Hillary Rodham Clinton: the popular conservative radio host and longtime Clinton family nemesis Rush Limbaugh. The impact of Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" emerged as an intriguing point of debate, particularly in Indiana, where registered voters could participate in either party's primary, and where Clinton won by a mere 14,000 votes. As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and...

It was midnight and the nation was still awaiting results from the Indiana primary, one of the biggest remaining prizes of the epic Democratic presidential battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. But as the clock ticked, the questions and accusations grew louder: What was wrong in Lake County? Was this more politics as usual in a county often suspected of harboring Chicago-style corruption? A day after Clinton eked out a narrow victory in the primary, no one raised allegations of illegal activity. But some say old-school politics were certainly at play in the state's second-largest county, at the...

CROWN POINT | The nation watched Tuesday night as Lake County election officials held the fate of the Democratic presidential primary in their hands -- and held it, and held it and held it. The delay provoked a broadside of allegations from national, state and local pundits of election trickery in a county infamous for vote fraud and political corruption. The firestorm continued into Wednesday -- long after election tallies were finalized -- with national news crews storming the Lake County Government Complex in Crown Point, demanding answers to the county's delayed results. To one Lake County political leader, the...

Rush Limbaugh's “Operation Chaos,” the effort to urge conservatives and Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination battle, certainly annoys MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, during primary coverage Tuesday night, denounced the “mischief-making” by “a talk jock.” In the 11:30 PM EDT half hour, Matthews offered a “Keith [Olbermann]-style special comment” about how “anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives.” He called it “a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died,”...

David Plouffe and a series of big gun endorsers are holding a conference call to stress the scale of last night's victory. "He clearly did more than he had to and she did not achieve what she had to," said Senator John Kerry. Both Plouffe and Kerry stressed the importance of the Limbaugh Effect. "Rush Limbaugh was tampering with the primary," Kerry said "If it was not for Republicans taking Democratic ballots, he would have won," he said of Obama. (I'm not sure that's true. The margin was about 18,500; Clinton only got 54% of the Republican votes, which made...

Hillary Clinton eked out a narrow victory over Barack Obama in the Indiana Democratic primary, but top Obama aides say Obama would have won if it were not for conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, told reporters that he attributed Clinton’s lead in Indiana to Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” — his campaign to have Republicans cross over and vote for Clinton to prolong the nomination fight and damage the Democratic nominee. Exit polls appear to back up Axelrod’s claims. Results of the Indiana exit poll found that that 17 percent of primary voters said they would vote...

Indiana's controversial photo identification rule may not have made a major dent in the state's high turnout, but it did frustrate a small group of voters more accustomed to divine law. About 12 elderly Roman Catholic nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph. Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow members of Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, even though they had been told earlier that they would need to get such an ID to vote.

(CNN) – How big of an impact did Rush Limbaugh’s ‘Operation Chaos’ have in Indiana? Did GOP voters really cross over to create havoc in the Democratic primary by voting for Hillary Clinton, as he’d asked his listeners to do? -snip- For whatever reason, self-identified conservative voters did overwhelmingly support Clinton – two out of three cast their votes for the New York senator.

What kind of night is one on which Hillary Clinton, in the eyes of many, lost her shot at the nomination? "A great night"—according to Diane Sawyer. Sawyer made her remark at the opening of today's GMA. She started with some shtick with co-anchor Robin Roberts, displaying a series of cards explaining she was losing her voice, then managed to get out these words: DIANE SAWYER: It was a great night last night. What a night, huh? Any ambiguity as to what made last night "great" was resolved when the duo immediately moved to a discussion of last night's primary...

This could be nothing- but with 85% of the vote reported in the Indiana Primary, only two counties haven't reported a single vote - one of them is Lake County (Gary, IND) - a county with a large African American population. Maybe they're trying to 'find' some more votes for Obama. The Dems have done this before, in St. Louis during the 2000 presidential election, and a fe years back in King County (Seattle) during the WA state governor's election. Sorry, but this stuff makes me nervous.

BARACK Obama has conceded defeat to Hillary Clinton in today's Democratic White House primary in Indiana but, on the back of a win in North Carolina, offered himself up as the only candidate who could truly unite American voters. "I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana," Senator Obama told a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina - even amid uncertainty over who had actually won. CBS News called Indiana for Senator Clinton, but others were more hesitant and, several hours after polls closed, NBC News and Fox...

Will Indiana and North Carolina decide anything? In all likelihood, no. If Barack Obama were to cream Hillary Clinton in both states, there would be more pressure on Clinton to quit. But (a) that electoral prospect does not seem likely, given the direction of the recent polls in each state and (b) Clinton would still not leave the race. She would keep on going, hoping for another Reverend Wright-like development that would cripple Obama. And if Clinton manages to win each primary--and a victory for her in North Carolina is way against the odds--there's no way Obama, who will maintain...

WHITE House hopeful Hillary Clinton has claimed victory in the Democratic presidential primary in Indiana, saying it is "full speed on to the White House". With 85 per cent of the precincts reporting, US networks said Senator Clinton was leading rival Barack Obama by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, but had not yet called the race in the midwestern state. Senator Clinton said Senator Obama had recently predicted that Indiana would be the tiebreaker in their battle for the Democratic Party's nomination. "Well, tonight we've come from behind. We've broken the tie, and thanks to you, it's full...

As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary -- and possibly the course of the Democratic race -- hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said that his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you're looking at something for the word to see," Clay,...

Internal Data and Indiana Sources help CrossActionNews call Indiana for Hillary

7:00PM - FOX, CNN, and MSNBC say Indiana too close to call. - TOM BEVAN 6:52PM - Will Clinton get her breakthrough tonight? Initial numbers don't look promising but, again, the final vote could be different than the exits we're seeing now. A split decision looks like the most likely outcome, and if that's the case then the margins will matter. A 10-point Clinton win in Indiana coupled with a 5-point loss in North Carolina can obviously be spun much differently than the opposite: a 5-point win in Indiana and a 10-point loss in North Carolina. To the extent Clinton...

Fox News Channel Prelimary Indiana Result: Hillary 52%, Obama 48%

CBS News has called Indiana for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. Barack Obama had already won North Carolina. --Andrew Malcolm

The Huffington Post's sources are checking in faster than mine. They say the early exits show Obama winning North Carolina by 12, Hillary winning Indiana by 7. Last time, the early numbers from my sources in the chain of data were way, way, off, so as usual take these numbers with as many grains of salt as you deem necessary. UPDATE: Then they change to Obama by 14, Hill by 5. Grains of salt, people. Grains of salt. ANOTHER UPDATE: The suspiciously-rapidly-changing numbers from Huff. Indiana Obama: 50.5% Clinton: 49.5% North Carolina Obama: 60% Clinton: 38% My sources are not...

Four adults were arrested after officers determined two Kokomo children had suffered daily abuse at home, at times including beatings, food deprivation and being bound in a closet, police said....

Cannot be posted due to copyright issues http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/NEWS0502/805060396

Officials in Indiana are reporting a few minor problems as voters turn out to choose between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the drawn-out Democratic race. One clerk said Democratic ballots had not been delivered to two Indianapolis locations, but voters did have the option of using touch-screen machines at both sites. Two polling locations did not open on time because inspectors were late in arriving. Both of them are open now. Many voters already were in line when polls opened this morning, and officials are expecting heavy turnout throughout the day. A Democratic ward chairman in Indianapolis says...

<p>Amid heavy turnout, Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties, where fewer Republican voters might impact down-ticket primary races.</p>

Zogby (special Arabic magic sauce) tracking polls show a big late shift to Obama. NORTH CAROLINA: Obama destroys Clinton 51-37 INDIANA: Obama upsets Clinton 45-43 If Zogby's special sauce is right, HRC's campaign will end today.

Obama's big disconnect By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW For Barack Obama, closing the deal with Democrat voters has become like herding cats: He just can't get them all lined up and coordinated on his side. This nation has a history of looking closely at its candidates and taking their measure before they vote for them. It is a process that Obama shuns and rival Hillary Clinton thrives on -- and therein lies the problem for Democrats. Obama, who leads both in pledged delegates and in the popular vote, cannot close the gap with lunch-pail Democrats, older voters and (for lack of...

Elitism: Days before Indiana's primary, Internet footage seemed to show a Hillary adviser and ex-Bill Clinton Cabinet secretary expressing contempt for the state. No surprise. Top Democrats don't have much use for "flyover country."When, in a PBS interview during the 1996 presidential campaign, Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor was asked to explain President Clinton's popularity, he remarked, "We all like to be loved." But few inside the former first lady's campaign have much love for the longtime friend of the Clintons after seeing the YouTube posting of an excerpt from the much-heralded documentary of the 1992 Clinton campaign, "The War...

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s mailing attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s record on guns appears to include a striking visual gaffe: The image of the gun pictured on the face of the mailing is reversed, making it a nonexistent left-handed model of the Mauser 66 rifle. To make matters worse, a prominent gun dealer said, it’s an expensive German gun with customized features that make it clearly European. “The gun in the photo does not exist,” said Val Forgett III, president of Navy Arms in Martinsburg, W.Va. Forgett's company was Mauser’s agent in the United States when the gun was released, and it...

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.—Archilochus (7th-century BC) Mark Penn might not be appearing before the cameras on Hillary's behalf nowadays, but bet that he is beavering away behind the scenes on his polling. And judging from Hillary's dogged [to mix an animal metaphor] performance on this morning's Today, it's obvious that Penn's turned up one big thing: Dem primary voters hate oil companies. Meredith Vieira gamely tried to get Clinton onto other subjects during her interview. But no matter the question, the answer was almost invariably the same: I Hate Big Oil. Since...

MERRILLVILLE — Friends and family mourned the death of a prominent attorney, a young couple soon to be married and a Mexican immigrant who had long struggled with a drinking problem — all four of them killed in three-car collision Wednesday near the border of Merrillville and Winfield. Only a day after ending a high-profile dogfighting trial, Garry Weiss was driving south on Randolph Street toward his home in Lakes of the Four Seasons after league night at Stardust Bowl in Merrillville. Heading north on Randolph were Steve Hough, 26, and his girlfriend, Amy Bartelmey, 25, who made their home...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Sen. Barack Obama will win the Indiana and North Carolina primaries tomorrow, a top supporter and former Hillary Rodham Clinton backer declared yesterday, prompting the former first lady's campaign to crow that if he doesn't, she deserves to be the nominee. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew of Indiana, who switched his support in the Democratic presidential race from Mrs. Clinton to Mr. Obama last week, said on "Fox News Sunday" that his candidate faces "tough races," but will win. "You're going to see him coming back," Mr. Andrew said. "I think he's going to win...

Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama pushed their final appeals on Sunday before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, with Mrs. Clinton sounding like a full-throated populist in highlighting her stance on the gasoline tax and Mr. Obama seizing on the issue to cast his opponent as a political opportunist. The two Democratic candidates used dueling appearances on the Sunday morning news shows, campaign stops across Indiana, conference calls with reporters and an onslaught of television and radio commercials to square off over pocketbook concerns of voters, especially the high price of gasoline, which has become a defining issue...

Elite Democrats Lose By Salena Zito When it comes to racial issues, the 2008 Democrat primary has been lowered to the most politically correct campaign in history. So low that it has smudged the lens in the way we look at both of the Democrats' candidates. Political correctness or "PC" -- a clothesline tool typically used as a wedge issue against Republicans -- has backfired. To steal a phrase from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, PC is "coming home to roost" for Democrats.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Days before Indiana's critical primary showdown between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, voters throughout the state are flooding county clerk offices with absentee ballots. The Indiana secretary of state's office says more than 14,000 absentee ballots were processed across the state yesterday, boosting the total number of early primary ballots cast to 127,247. That's more than twice the number cast in Indiana's presidential primaries over the past two decades. It's nearing the number of early ballots cast in the 1992 general election, when 162,068 people voted early, and in 1996, when 165,218 early ballots were cast....

Beltway vs. the John Deere voter TRIBUNE-REVIEW by salena zito INDIANAPOLIS -- Joe Andrew, a Democratic National Committee chair for five minutes, lives and operates out of Washington, D.C. But when it comes to giving news conferences about the presidential campaign, his podium is in Indianapolis. That is where Andrew went from Beltway boy to Hoosier to make his "big" announcement on changing sides from Sen. Hillary Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama. And the whole word gasped. Well, not really the whole world. In all honesty, the collective gasp was heard from within the Beltway, that patch of geography where...

RISING SUN, Ind. -- Like Ohio and Pennsylvania to the east, Indiana rarely is a deciding participant in a presidential primary. Yet the battleground for Democrats has moved to the Hoosier State. "That has all changed now," said Judy O’Bannon, a former Indiana first lady. "When the contests were in neighboring Ohio, the stories coming out of there were, 'This is so exciting, and we get to be part of it.' Same thing in Pennsylvania. "All the while, we are waiting here, thinking that it would end before anyone stepped foot in Indiana." O’Bannon, wife of the late Gov. Frank...

Experts say Supreme Court ruling upholding law could disenfranchise minorities, youth and the elderly. Experts say African-American voters — a key constituency of Barack Obama in the primaries thus far — might be disproportionately affected in Tuesday’s Indiana primary by the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the state’s voter identification requirement. Studies show that African-Americans are especially likely not to have the identification necessary to vote on Tuesday. Several other groups, notably elderly voters, disabled voters and young voters, are also more likely than the general population not to have the necessary identification. “The research is pretty clear that...

INDIANAPOLIS — A bank teller who lost the twins she was pregnant with after a gunman shot her in a robbery says the man wouldn't let her co-workers call for help as she lay bleeding. Thirty-year-old Katherin Shuffield, who had been five months pregnant with twin girls, told reporters Saturday the masked gunman refused to let her co-workers call 911 for medical help because he "was more worried about taking the money."

INDIANAPOLIS — Until now, Shirley Morgan had always been the kind of voter the Republican Party thought it could count on. She comes from a family of staunch Republicans, has a son in the military and has supported Republican presidential candidates ever since she cast her first ballot, for Richard M. Nixon in 1972. But this year Mrs. Morgan exemplifies a different breed: the Republican crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. Not only will she mark her ballot for Senator Barack Obama in the May 6 primary here, but she has also been canvassing for him in the...

Hillary Clinton or one of her allies is reaching out to gun owners in Indiana. Two voters report receiving a telephone call from a woman, reading from a card, who said that if the voter valued his (and in one case her) guns, they ought not "trust Obama" and should vote for Hillary Clinton instead. One caller reports interrupting the phone banker with a question about Clinton's "pretty terrible" record on guns, but the caller was undaunted and kept reading the script.

Forgoing for a moment the dirty trick of the doctored clip from “The War Room,” which falsely had Mickey Kantor using a racial slur, the filmmaker behind the documentary has posted the clip on his Web site to clarify that other point of confusion -- what Kantor was referring to when he cursed. (An apparent source of confusion since the movie came out and some newspaper writers thought he was cursing Indianans. See previous post for that.) Filmmakers Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker write: "We would like to respond to some erroneous statements made today about our film, THE...

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton stood in a Washington Township gymnasium last month and publicly said President George W. Bush was forcing the American military to rely on "Chinese spare parts" by allowing the sale of a Valparaiso defense contractor. But fresh questions are being raised in the wake of Hillary's much-publicized comments questioning why Bush failed to stop Chinese investors from moving Magnequench to China and closing the Northwest Indiana plant. For example, if the sale of the company to Chinese investors was going to jeopardize national security, why did President Bill Clinton's administration approve it in 1995? Magnequench made...

In the stretch run of the Indiana primary race, Hillary Clinton picked up the endorsement today of the state's largest newspaper, which called her "well prepared for the rigors of the White House" and "tough, experienced, and realistic about what can and cannot be accomplished on the world stage." The Indianapolis Star praised Barack Obama's eloquence and his ability to connect with voters "many who formerly felt disenfranchised." It also criticized Clinton for pandering to voters by proposing a summer gas tax holiday -- an idea panned by most economists and unlikely to pass in Congress. But in what it...

As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton pick through this state's primary results come Tuesday, the last person on their minds will be Bart Peterson. Yet the Peterson ghost may well come looking for the eventual Democratic nominee. Mr. Peterson was, until recently, the popular Democratic mayor of this fine city. Then voters went to the polls in November and threw him out in favor of an unknown and underfunded Republican. It was among last year's biggest political upsets, and marked the first time in 40 years Indianapolis voters had canned a sitting mayor. The source of their anger? Taxes. In...

I know its a bit early for NC and IN predictions, but I wanted to toss this out there now: Hillary Clinton will win Indiana and North Carolina. NC: Clinton +2 IN:+10. But the real question is WHY? A month ago, I would have told you, “It would take some miracle (or a mega-gigantic Obama gaffe) to get Clinton the nomination.” And, well, there’s been no gaffe of that nature, really. I mean, Rev. Wright, sort of, but nothing of the nature that would show this kind of change in North Carolina. No, two things that I didn’t think would...

It's turning out to be a red-letter day for Hoosiers. This morning, Joe Scarborough tricked Mika Brzezinski into agreeing that the famous coach of the Indiana basketball team was Bear Bryant, of all people, rather than Bobby Knight. This afternoon on MSNBC, when Howard Wolfson questioned the Hoosier bona fides of a superdelegate who today announced he was switching from Clinton to Obama, Andrea Mitchell turned the Clinton aide's gambit back on Hillary with a vengeance.

Even after finding out Barack Obama hangs out with racists, terrorists, and crooks like Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko. They seem more insistant on backing him. If Hillary wins Indiana and comes close in North Carolina Tuesday that will have the superdelegates spinning.

ABC reporter Jake Tapper on Wednesday night undermined Hillary Clinton's campaign trail tale blaming the Bush administration for allowing a Valparaiso, Indiana manufacturer of magnets for smart-bombs to move to China, costing 200 jobs and giving the technology to the communist regime. Tapper, however, pointed out that the sale occurred in 1995 and was approved by....the Clinton administration. “Senator Clinton decries how the company Magnequench moved from Indiana to China in 2003,” Tapper reported, “but there's one key part of the story Senator Clinton tends to leave out: Her husband's role.” He elaborated: Over and over again, Clinton blames President...