DALLAS - The second step in the convoluted caucus and convention process followed by Texas Democrats wrapped up this weekend with the party’s county and Senate district conventions.

Now the final step in this three-stage process will take place at the party’s state convention in Austin June 6-7.

At stake are 67 delegates that will remain up for grabs until the June convention, which could be one of the final battles between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their bruising fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton won the state’s primary and most of the 126 delegates that were on the line in that contest, but local media reports suggest that Obama is leading the long, drawn-out battle for the final 67 delegates. The Lone Star State also has 35 “superdelegates.”

Delegates can change their mind between now and the June convention, so it remains up in the air.

“This will not be determined until the June convention and so the Texas Democratic Party is not calling any winners in advance,” state party spokesman Hector Nieto said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

ALTOONA, Pa - Fans of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama might swoon at his speeches. They might stand in awe of his judgment and echo his call for change. But they probably are not impressed by his bowling skills.

The Illinois senator, who is on a six-day bus tour of Pennsylvania to “introduce himself” to the state’s voters, dropped in on a bowling alley in Altoona late on Saturday and, after chatting with some people, put on a pair of bowling shoes to try his hand in a competition with Sen. Robert Casey, who has recently endorsed him.

The candidate’s first attempt was a gutterball.

“I’ve got to get at least something,” he said as he turned around to face a growing crowd.

His next attempt, another gutterball, showed little improvement.

“No worries,” he said. “I’m not done.”

In his defense, Obama pointed out that he hadn’t bowled for 30 years.

Fellow bowlers — even Republicans — lined up for pictures and autographs, surprised that a presidential candidate was hanging out at their local alley. Obama probably is hoping that Pennsylvania voters are like the pins: once you get to know them, they fall more easily.

Obama eventually got a spare but it came after Casey had scored a strike and long after Roxanne Hart, a regular who joined the senators on the lane, had put them both to shame.

“I was terrible,” Obama said, smiling as he emerged from the Pleasant Valley Recreation Center bowling alley.

Hart put it a little more charitably: “He has a lot of potential.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

PITTSBURGH - Sen. Barack Obama held a campaign rally on Friday in the Soldiers and Sailors museum in Pittsburgh. No drama there? Well, the building was used to film a crucial sequence in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”
For anyone not familiar with the 1991 thriller, the scene occurs when serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins, is locked in a large cage from which he toys with Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee played by Jodie Foster .

It’s in this scene that she discloses to him her childhood memory of finding a slaughterhouse for lambs.

The cage is super secure but not secure enough to hold Lecter, who escapes by clubbing his guards to death, stringing one of them up from the walls and then ….

Actually, you should see the movie for yourself. It didn’t win five Oscars for nothing.

Pennsylvania Sen. Robert Casey held a news conference to explain his decision to endorse Obama in the very room where the cage was constructed, a spacious, opulent chamber with an ornate balcony.

Obama, who is running for the Democratic nomination, made no reference to the film in his speech in a hall downstairs.

But there was a distant echo of one of its most chilling lines. Lecter taunts Starling when she visits him in the cage with the words: “People will say we’re in love.”

During his speech, a supporter shouted to Obama: “I love you, Obama.” And he replied smoothly: “I love you back.”

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Cohn. Obama (L) shakes hands with Senator Bob Casey at a campaign event at Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum and Memorial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 28, 2008.

DENVER, Colorado - An Emmy-winning actor who once played a downed fighter pilot in an action movie is narrating a television advertisement for Republican presidential candidate and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who was shot down in real life as a Naval pilot during the Vietnam War.

The 60-second commercial for McCain’s presidential campaign, which will play in the battleground state of New Mexico before being aired more widely, is narrated by the gravelly voiced actor Powers Boothe , who has also appeared in popular television series like “24″ and “Deadwood.”

The commercial opens with spotty black-and-white footage of McCain interviewed in a hospital bed in Hanoi shortly after he was shot down piloting a Navy attack aircraft in 1967.

Smoking a cigarette, he gives his rank as lieutenant commander, describes ejecting from his aircraft and breaking a leg and both arms. He then goes on to give his service number — 624787.

The vintage footage of McCain as a young POW is cut together with images of the now 71-year-old Arizona senator on the campaign trail, urging American voters to “Stand up. We’re Americans. We’re Americans.”

Boothe, whose narration threads together the ad, played a downed F-15 pilot in “Red Dawn,” an over-the-top Cold War action movie released in 1984, about an American high school militia that turned back an invasion by Cuban and Soviet paratroops. In the last season of the hit TV program”24,” Boothe portrayed Vice President Noah Daniels, who briefly assumed the presidency after a terrorist attack.

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DENVER, Colo. - Mitt Romney , until a few weeks ago Sen. John McCain’s rival in a sometimes bitter contest for the Republican Party presidential nomination, says getting back on the campaign trail with the presumptive nominee is fun.

Romney traded blows with McCain for several weeks earlier this year before dropping out of the race and conceding defeat after losing crucial primary contests on Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

With past battles behind them, Romney joined the Arizona senator in Salt Lake City, Utah, at a fund-raising event on Thursday, and then flew with him to Denver, Colorado.

“It’s a lot of fun again. It’s nice not to feel any pressure at all, I don’t have to worry about goofing up,” he told reporters on the flight over the Rocky Mountains.

“I can just stand behind the nominee and do my very best to support his campaign.”

Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, and Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah stood beside McCain at the campaign stop in Salt Lake City in a show of party unity.

McCain said he hoped Romney would join him on the campaign trail in the weeks ahead as he sought to energize the party in the run up to the election in November.

He will face Democrats Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois or Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking (McCain (L) listens to Romney at a news conference in Denver on March 27, 2008)

A story in the Washington Post "U.S. Steps Up Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan has attracted attention worldwide. It says the United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations there. 

"Over the past two months, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft are known to have struck at least three sites used by al-Qaeda operatives," it says. "The moves followed a tacit understanding with (President Pervez) Musharraf and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani that allows U.S. strikes on foreign fighters operating in Pakistan, but not against the Pakistani Taliban."

Stories of missile attacks by unmanned CIA-operated Predator drones in Pakistan are not new, and nor indeed is Pakistani anger at what it sees as a violation of its sovereignty. In early February I highlighted a story by the Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai in The News saying that the American policy of hitting targets inside Pakistan had now become "the norm than the exception". Neither U.S. nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory.

What is new is the amount of attention the missile attacks are now gaining, particularly in the United States.  It's worth reading the comments on the Washington Post article -- 161 of them when I last looked -- to see how many people are learning about them for the first time.

Some comments give credit to Senator Barack Obama for suggesting targeted attacks on Al Qaeda militants in Pakistan -- an idea he repeated this month, as I noted in a previous entry on this subject. As far as I know, the Predator attacks -- including one in Bajaur Agency in January 2006 that was reported to have killed up to 18 people, including women and children -- started before Obama suggested the idea. But he does seem to have got people talking about them.

So here is the question. If the American public is now waking up to the notion that the United States is launching missile attacks in Pakistan, will that affect U.S. policy? Will it become a U.S. election issue? And what does it mean for Pakistan and its new government?

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton wants to be a grandmother.

At least that’s what her daughter says, and the 60-year-old Democratic presidential candidate isn’t disagreeing.

Chelsea Clinton introduced her mother at a fundraising event in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday by saying the New York senator would be the best president for coming generations — including, potentially, the 28-year-old’s own future children.

“I believe that my mother is the most progressive and the strongest and the most prepared candidate to be the president that I think we all need,” the former first daughter said.

She urged the audience to campaign for her mother “so that we can have the president that we need not only for us and our generation but for your children and the grandchildren that I know my mother wants to have.”

Grandchildren? Hillary Clinton, who was listening intently to her daughter speak, beamed and nodded when she heard those words.

Chelsea probably doesn’t have a whole lot of time to be thinking about starting a family, though. The Stanford University graduate said she had visited more than 30 states and some 85 schools while campaigning for her mother.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Sen. Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea arrive at a campaign fundraiser at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., on March 26)

Campaigning for her mother, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton answers lots of questions from potential voters at campaign events but never from reporters.

But in Indianapolis on Tuesday, Clinton brushed aside a question from an individual in the crowd who asked for her take on her mother’s handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, WISH-TV reported.

“Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know, 70 college campuses that I’ve now been to and I do not think that’s any of your business,” Clinton responded according to the station.

The crowd at the student union at Butler University applauded, WISH said. That was supposed to be the last question, but Clinton insisted on taking one more question, the report said.

When it was revealed in 1998 that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with Lewinsky, the news set off a protracted drama that led to his impeachment and a failed attempt to remove him from office.   

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- Photo Credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton applauds as her daughter Chelsea takes the stage at a rally in Austin, Texas on March 3)

UNIONTOWN, Pennsylvania - U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants voters to see the Democratic nomination race as an interview, and she says her resume of experience means she’s the right person for the job.

But the New York senator made light of the length of that interview process in her race against rival Barack Obama and said sometimes people make their decisions based on silly things — like hair.

“Consider this a job interview,” Clinton told a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday evening.

“If it’s a job interview, which I think it is — it’s one of the longest job interviews on record … you have to ask yourself, who would I hire?”

The New York senator’s preferred answer, of course: Hillary Clinton. But one thing she doesn’t want you to take into account is her haircut.

“If they don’t particularly like your hair style, they can vote for you or against you,” she remarked about job interviews in general, saying sometimes selections were based on fickle criteria.

Clinton was famous for changing her haircut during her years as first lady but has kept a fairly consistent style since joining the Senate and, more recently, running for president.

The race between Clinton and Obama, a senator from Illinois who wears his hair short, is likely to go on through at least June when the final state-by-state nominating contests are held. 

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-Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer (Clinton speaks at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia)

SALEM, Ore. - Conventional wisdom suggests New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama ’s bid for the Democratic nomination matters most among Hispanic voters where, as a Hispanic himself, Richardson could have most influence.

Following that logic, the endorsement would have made more impact before Texas primary on March 5 or, even better, before Super Tuesday’s primary in California. Sen. Hillary Clinton won the big Hispanic vote in both states handily.
The point was made by Clinton’s campaign strategist Mark Penn.

“You know, I think New Mexico is a state that, actually, we won,” he said. “And if Senator Obama’s campaign wanted to follow what they tell everyone, they certainly would be telling Governor Richardson to be casting his pledged delegate to us.

“But I think that, you know, perhaps the time when he could have been most effective has long since passed and — long since passed.”

But Richardson, who had been in the Democratic presidential race until dropping out in January , told a news conference that point of view was “unfortunate” and reflective of an outmoded politics of ethnic identification that he said Obama opposes.

President Bill Clinton appointed Richardson energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the Clintons had courted his endorsement assiduously.

Richardson called Sen. Clinton on Friday to explain why he was supporting her opponent and it was a difficult phone call.

“Let me say we have had better conversations,” he said. 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Richard Clement (Obama (left) and Richardson wave to the crowd at a rally in Portland, Ore., March 21 after the New Mexico governor endorseed Obama’s presidential campaign.)