Senator Barack Obama's "official blogger" has ties to the Communist Threat that could bring this nation to its very knees! "Sam Graham-Felsen, a journalist-on-leave from The Nation, joined 'Obama for America' in March 2007 where he works for the New Media department as the official blogger, daily presenting the campaign's public face. Now he's under fire for his reputed Marxist sympathies from bloggers at Common Ills on the left and Little Green Footballs on the right."

Hillary Clinton campaign site VoteHillary.org is vulnerable to a common exploit known as cross-site scripting (XSS), as demonstrated by Finnish security specialist Harry Sintonen. He says he's not particularly interested in American politics, according to Netcraft, which first reported Sintonen's research. He was just inspired by the attack on sites maintained by the Barack Obama campaign to see if Clinton's were also vulnerable to XSS exploits. This may redefine "political hack." But any hope that the electoral system itself might prove so pliable to technological alteration is too audacious to discuss.

Remember those weird meatheaded tools in Abercrombie gear who distracted everyone during Obama's rally in Evansville? Well, now you can be one of them! Sort of! By buying these Obamacrombie shirts, which are not licensed or sanctioned by either Obama or Abercrombie and Fitch so they'll probably be shut down in minutes. [Obamacrombie]

Those three distracting guys behind Barack Obama during his concession speech last night may all have been wearing Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts, but they were not part of a marketing campaign for the "edgy"/racist/twattish youth clothing retailer, the company tells USA Today. And while the Obama campaign is obviously guilty of bad crowd control for letting the jumpy "toolboxes" stand in the camera frame, they say they didn't put them there on purpose, or pick out their outfits, or even know who they are. For now, the Obama Abercrombie chuckleheads remain a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma, at least until their viral YouTube video comes out, or they sign some kind of Ritalin endorsement deal. After the jump, TV host Stephen Colbert floats his own dark theory about the A&F incident.

So Hillary's "leaked" internal polling numbers gave her an 11 point lead in Pennsylvania, and Obama publicly predicted he'd lose by 8-10 percentage points. TV talking heads decided she needed to win by "more than 10 points" to justify staying in the race. And Clinton ended up clobbering Obama with 9.2 percent victory! Then, oddly, everyone suddenly admitted that the entire Pennsylvania primary was an elaborate farce with no actual point.

This mystery is bugging me: Why were the three young guys behind Barack Obama during his concession speech tonight all wearing Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts? Maybe it's a plot by the Obama campaign to win back the gay community, which has something of a taste for the youth clothing retailer and, especially, its catalogs, but whose vote is basically owned by Hillary Clinton. But gays aren't really a swing vote in the upcoming Indiana or North Carolina primaries, nor in the Democratic party's upcoming battle against Republican nominee John McCain. Perhaps, instead, this is some kind of bizarre attempt at product placement by Abercrombie, trying to latch on to some of Obama's rock-star appeal. Watch the Abercrombie boys shuffle around and holler during Obama's speech in the video after the jump.

The major networks are calling the Pennsylvania primaries for Hillary Clinton, and with 31 percent of precincts reporting she has a comfortable 10 percentage point lead over Barack Obama, not that her margin of victory really matters, because Clinton has already promised to keep arguing with her Democratic presidential rival forever, until every last American is a broken alcoholic begging for mercy from this endless campaign. "Mrs. Clinton is leaving no doubt that this race goes forward," said the Times tonight. The next primary is May 6, in Indiana and North Carolina. Even if Clinton ends up with a vanishingly small margin of victory in Pennsylvania and virtually no chance of winning the nomination, the media is still going to be saturated with campaign "news." Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy a couple more bottles of scotch..

So! Tonight! Pennsylvania's Primary! The current CW sez Clinton will win—her internal numbers have her 11 points ahead, public polling has a slightly narrower margin. But she needs a HUGE win to, uh, overtake Obama in the popular vote. The delegate thing? Well, that's a much harder gap to close. Hey, remember how Hil was inevitable? Anyone? It was less than a year ago that she was the unstoppable presumptive nominee. What happened? We went back in time, with our magic Googling time machine, to dissect 18 months of campaign spin, media narratives, and pundit bullshit to figure out how Senator Hillary Clinton went from our next President to this increasingly desperate-looking figure.

Hilarious Prediction Watch: "The Rezko business is also not likely to hurt [Barack Obama], because his principal rival will probably be Hillary Clinton, and she's not going to bring up the topic of questionable land deals." –Slate's John Dickerson, December 14, 2006.

Barack Obama was on the Daily Show last night. It was a satellite interview, and it was Jon Stewart interviewing a politician he actually respects, which is generally (invariably) a recipe for awkwardness. But it turned out fine. Better than expected, actually, because Stewart actually made jokes in the second segment, and Obama played along without embarrassing himself. Then Stewart made Obama solemnly ask if America was happy with its cell phone service. Clip attached.

Some shadowy 527s—and one li'l 501(c)4—with hilarious names like "Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America" and "The Legacy Committee" and "The Justice Society of a New and Safer America" bought some airtime in North Carolina to show off their gross Willie Horton-style attack ads about how Barack Obama is soft on crime. Did you know he is against the dealth penalty? It's true! You can learn all about it after the jump.

Katie Couric is the only evening news anchor who has not hosted a Democratic presidential debate in this election cycle, and there have been 21 debates, so that's kind of sad. What's sadder is that it looks like the CBS Evening News anchor might never get to host a debate, ever. First it was the writers strike that got in Couric's way, then Hillary Clinton rejected her first proposed date, April 19, because it was on the first day of Passover. Then Couric came up with a date that worked for Clinton, April 27, but now the Obama campaign says that won't work, probably because it's the Islamic day of elitism and Obama will be burning a flag in a madrassa to celebrate.

Oh, hey, all three U.S. presidential candidates will stoop to a level of pandering heretofore only imagined by theoretical physicists and appear on tonight's episode of World Wrestling Entertainment's Raw. John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama were all invited to appear in the ring, and they were all wise enough to decline. Still, they happily taped appearances, to air tonight on USA. "WWE has tried to get the presidential candidates to square off before," according to Broadcasting & Cable. "It was unable to arrange an arm-wrestling match between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000." Thank god things are different this time around. [Broadcasting & Cable] Update: OH GOD IT'S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT. "DO YOU SMELL WHAT BARACK IS COOKING?" He actually says this. Seriously. Clip after the jump.

In the clip embedded below, an Obama supporter demonstrates how "someone hacked into Barack Obama's site" and changed a link into Obama's Community Blogs so that it instead directs users to Hillary Clinton's home page. We're shocked. Obama's Web presence is the product of Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes. Anyone familiar with that platform knows it's entirely resilient to human error or internal corruption. The video demonstrating the hack:

Wondering what will happen in tomorrow's Pennsylvania primary? You could look to national trends or polls of likely Pennsylvania voters. Or you could make like NBC and only poll the important voters of Pennsylvania: gun-owners, bowlers, and, yes, beer-drinkers. Nothing proves that you understand the working class like reinforcing a cartoon stereotype of blue-collar life! Of course the bowlers and gun-owners don't care for Obama. The beer-drinkers, though, are split. They should've specified domestic beer-drinkers, we're sure the Obama votes are coming from import snobs. Guzzling Kölsch and eating caviar! Elitists!

Last week (or a century ago), Barack Obama got in a bunch of trouble for making a "gaffe", which is a inside joke/cliche word political journalists use when a candidate accidentally (and inelegantly) says something he or she actually believes, and then the journalists beat up on the candidate for a month or so over it. His gaffe was that he said white blue-collar people seek solace in cultural identifiers like religion and guns when the economy fails them. Regardless of whether you find that to be a condescending notion, it seems harder to argue with his statement that these voters are "bitter," because everyone in America is "bitter" these days. Still, it became known as "bittergate," and it topped the headlines last week just as Hillary's snipergate did the week before. Obama is an elitist, we were told, over and over and over again. Elitist! And latte-sipping! Someone (Dowd?) probably called him "effete," too. After a full week of hammering this point home, that Obama is elitist, Hillary pulled ahead of Obama in the national polls for the first time in months, finally. She pulled ahead one point, on Saturday. And on Sunday, Obama was back ahead by 2. Pennsylvania's primaries are tomorrow (FINALLY THANK JESUS) but they won't solve this horrible horrible mess.

Nancy Franklin: "Charles Gibson, ABC's nightly-news anchor, moderated, and was greasily avuncular and patronizing; if ever Gibson was in danger of raising the questioning to a level that might actually yield something useful for viewers, George Stephanopoulos, ABC's Sunday-morning political quarterback, was by his side to make sure that didn't happen." Hendrik Hertzberg: "Seldom has a large corporation so heedlessly inflicted so much civic damage in such a short space of time... If Gibson and his partner, George Stephanopoulos, had halted their descent at the level of the fatuous, that would have been bad enough. But there was worse to come."

If you want to be president these days, it's not enough to have an appealing platform, strong public speaking skills or even to look polished on television. You also have to prove you're at least slightly cool. Blame Bill Clinton for blowing the saxophone on Arsenio Hall in 1992. It's a measure of how important this yardstick has become that both Democratic presidential candidates showed up on Colbert Report last night, plus third-place John Edwards, who has been out of the race for months. Hillary Clinton was funny in a skit in which she fixes a video screen, even if she didn't find the breakthrough moment her husband did in 1992. Barack Obama was a bit more aloof, perhaps strategically so; he not only appeared via satellite but also hewed much closer to his campaign personality than Clinton. Edwards was by yards the funniest, probably because he has the least to lose. Evaluate would-be leaders of the free world on their ability to crack comedy-show jokes after the jump, where you'll find video of Clinton, Obama and Edwards on Colbert.

The Times notes that, in last night's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton repeatedly went after Barack Obama, "assisted... by vigorous questioning by the two moderators from ABC News, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous." Crooks And Liars' Nicole Belle agreed the moderators were aggressive, but didn't think it was the smart kind of aggressive. So she and her colleagues put together a video consisting only of the "more egregious" questions, designed to show ABC it is "HURTING America." The least substantive question in the video, however, doesn't come from anyone at the network, but from a Pennsylvanian who asks why Obama isn't brave enough to wear a flag on his lapel. A real elitist would have lost it, right then. [Crooks & Liars]

Bruce Springsteen endorsed Barack Obama, leading to terrible headlines across this great nation and plenty knee-jerk hipster Boss-hate. Whatevs, guys, Tunnel of Love is a desert island disc. The political question: does it matter? Does Bruce still have blue-collar cred? He's wasted a bit less of it than some celebs have by not blogging on HuffPo or whining about dead polar bears, but he also appeared with John Kerry back in 2004 and we all know how that turned out. Anyway, biggest endorsement since Oprah! But endorsements still don't really matter! Bruce says Barack "speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years," which is a reference to white people made bitter after their jobs disappear and clinging to god and guns. Those are pretty much the people Bruce sings about when not singing about his wives. After the jump, a collection of utterly terrible Springsteen lyric jokes we removed from this post.