The Boston Globe reports today on the tragic case of Carlene Balderrama, a middle-class homeowner in Taunton, MA.  At 2:30 on Tuesday afternoon, just two and half hours before the scheduled foreclosure of her family home -- where she lived with her husband and adult son -- Mrs. Balderrama faxed a note to her mortgage company.  The note said "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead."

For some reason, police did not get to the house until 3:30, and sure enough they found Balderrama's body.  She had shot herself with her husband's high-powered rifle.

More on the flip.

The New York Times has published the entire text of the email editor David Shipley sent to McCain's representative Michael Goldfarb.  Contrary to the implications on Drudge and elsewhere, Shipley makes clear his willingness to publish McCain's piece, but says that it needs revisions.  Here's a bit from the letter I haven't seen in previous dkos diaries on the subject:

I’d be very eager to publish the senator on the Op-Ed page.

However, I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft. Let me suggest an approach.

More on the flip

I wonder if this piece in the London Times Wednesday might be the backstory behind yesterday's announcement that the US is considering opening an Interests Section in Iran:

US troops in Afghanistan massed close to the border yesterday for a possible attack on al-Qaeda and Taleban bases in the lawless North Waziristan tribal belt in Pakistan.

Reports from the area said that hundreds of Nato troops were airlifted across the mountains from the village of Lowara Mandi, which has been an important base for cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Heavy artillery and armoured vehicles were also being moved into position.

More on the flip.

It used to be a tradition in the United States to have public readings of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July.  People would gather in the public square with some local notable or promising student standing in front of the assembly, Jefferson's timeless words in hand, to read out clear and loud: "When in the course of human events..."

It's not a bad tradition, nor is the Declaration a bad document.  I particularly like this part:

governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [and] whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

I'm not so thrilled about this part:

He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

One hundred fifty-six years ago, the abolitionist and escaped slave Frederick Douglass offered his own thoughts on the importance of the Independence Day holiday.  After the flip, the entirety of his remarks.

Augustine Faucher, the director of macroeconomics at Moody's economy.com, has a column in today's Boston Globe reporting on the state-level political forecasting model his organization has developed.  He expresses a high degree of confidence in the model, noting that over the last seven presidential elections (back to 1980) the model accurately predicted the winner of each state presidential election 86% of the time, and that its success rate in picking the ultimate Electoral College winner was 100%.

The model is based on economic conditions in each state at the time of the election, noting that these conditions "often vary significantly from coast to coast."  It seeks to predict whether the incumbent party will win re-election based on two factors: the national inflation rate over the eighteen months months prior to the election, and the state unemployment rate over the previous two years.

More on the flip.

I just got back from http://donate.barackobama.com where for the first time I contributed to his campaign.  Now, I've been on his mailing list since February, and there's hardly a day goes by I don't get an email from Plouffe or someone else associated with the campaign asking for money.  There are a number of reasons why I haven't donated until now -- personal financial hardship being on the list -- but there is a reason why I'm donating today.

It's not that I disagree with Hunter on the front page.  The FISA sell out is an incredibly big deal, and we all need to be as angry as we can with the Dem leadership for throwing the Constitution under the bus.

However, at moments like this one, when we survey the alternatives in American politics, we realize quite simply we have no better choice.

An interesting piece showed up last week in the Boston Globe's "Brainiac" column regarding the political predilections of Indiana Jones.  The bad guys in the new movie, of course, are Russian Communists, and the film has been condemned by the remains of the Russian Communist Party -- which has called for a boycott.

The Globe's Joshua Glenn, however, puts together a couple of factoids from the blogosphere that indicate perhaps the critics need to go beyond the surface to understand the real Indiana Jones....

Details on the other side.

In the aftermath of the RBC meeting, the NYT has an article up on its website considering the road ahead for the Democratic Party.  Under the somewhat misleading headline "No Road Map for Democrats as Race Ends," the reporting team of Adam Nagourney, Carl Hulse, and Jeff Zeleny essentially look forward to an early withdrawal by Hillary Clinton from the race for the Democratic nomination.

Mrs. Clinton’s associates said she seemed to have come to terms over the last week with the near certainty that she will not win the nomination, even as she continues to assert, with what one associate described as subdued resignation, that the Democrats are making a mistake in sending Mr. Obama up against Senator John McCain.

There's a whole lot more where that came from, find it on the flip...

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler is reporting today that the whole Annapolis meeting was nothing more than a Potemkin village for the rubes at large.  The true thrust of American policy in Israel was established in 2004, when George Bush "personally delivered" a letter to Ariel Sharon in which the US "gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal."

Israel's expansion of West Bank settlements, of course, is one of the major obstacles standing in the way of an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.  Bush's 2002 Roadmap for peace explicitly prohibited settlement expansion and the AP reports today that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Bush's help to rein in Israeli settlement activity.

More on the flip

The wire services are reporting this morning on Jimmy Carter's announcement today on ABC's This Week of his intention to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal during Carter's upcoming visit to Syria.  Prior to today, there had been much speculation that he intended to do so, but the Carter Center had refused to confirm whether or not the meeting would take place.

In comments with ABC's George Stephanopoulus, Carter reportedly said:

It's very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians.

More on the flip

With the attention of the American public distracted by tomorrow's appearances on Capitol Hill of Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, the war in Iraq has entered a new and extremely dangerous phase.  Following the collapse of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's foolhardy, ill-planned assault on the Sadrist Mahdi Army last week, the US Army has apparently decided to seize the bull by the horns and destroy Sadr on its own.

That is the context behind the much bally-hooed headline of today that Sadr has offered to lay down his arms -- if Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani  orders him to do so.

This just up on the AP wire:

Officials in Iran confirmed for the first time Saturday that the country played an important role in brokering a recent truce between the Iraqi government and anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iran's Shiite government helped end the clashes between Iraqi government troops and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia for the sake of Shiite unity, said a senior Iranian official who deals with Iraq.

"It is in Iran's best interests to see unity among Shiite factions," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A quick rip-n-read.  The AP has a story up on the wire right now that in order to salvage its Mideast peace effort, the Bush administration has recognized political reality and abandoned its longstanding policy of no negotiations with Hamas:

To defuse the threat from Gaza militants to Israel and President Bush's Mideast peace program, the U.S. has decided that the ends justify the means.

More on the flip...

Off the Reuters wire, the following story:

Brazil's foreign minister on Monday condemned a Colombian military strike on rebels inside Ecuador and called on Bogota to offer an explicit apology.

"The territorial violation is very serious and needs to be condemned," Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said in Brasilia. "Brazil condemns any territorial violation."

Amorim also said the Colombian government should offer an "explicit" apology to contain the growing crisis prompted by the weekend raid, in which Colombian forces struck at a FARC rebel camp inside Ecuador.

More on the flip

It's totally clear at this point that the Super Tuesday results on the Democratic side were inconclusive -- a virtual tie -- while McCain emerged as the clear frontrunner on the Republican side.  We've also seen in a number of diaries today (e.g., here, here, and here) that Democratic turnout was much higher than the Republicans.

We've got some total numbers now that show not only how close our race was, but also how much we blew the GOP out of the water yesterday.  I think these numbers bode well for Obama in the primaries, but they show once again the Republican contest is simply about the right to lose to a Democrat in November.  Follow me to the other side for more...

Democrats in MA -- and throughout the country -- should be breathing a sigh of relief right about now, because it looks like newcomer Niki Tsongas (MA-5) has a clear ride through to re-election in the fall.

Tsongas's biggest threat was a rematch against Jim Ogonowski, the former Air Force officer and the brother of a 911 martyr who had run against her in the special election to replace Martin Meehan last year.  Ogonowski ran a tough campaign and picked up 45% of the vote -- to Tsongas's 51% -- in what has historically been a safe Democratic district.  The speculation at the time of the special election was that Ogonowski would come back this year, perhaps pulling off the upset this time around.

Instead, he shoots himself in the foot and guarantees Tsongas's seat.  Details on the flip...

The New York Times reports today that Israel is pressing Egypt to use force against Palestinian civilians in order to restore the international border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt:

There were small clashes throughout the day, with short episodes of rock-throwing. Egyptians fired guns into the air and aimed water cannons above the heads of the those in the crowd to keep them back. The new breaches in the wall were large enough for cars and trucks to drive through, and some Egyptian guards then retreated.

Egypt is under pressure from Israel and the United States to restore the international border and regulate it, but does not want to use excessive force against the Gazans, whom the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, has insisted are starving under the pressure of Israeli restrictions on imports and travel.

Meanwhile, Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Arun has been forced to resign from the Nonviolence Institute he founded because he dared criticize Israeli militarism.  Details on the flip.

Boston Globe has very early returns from NH.  With 1% of precinct reporting, Obama and Clinton are tied with 40%, followed by Edwards with 15%.  Richardson has 3% and Kucinich has 1%.

On the Republican side, McCain leads Huckabee 46%-18%.  Paul and Romney are tied at 14%, while 911uliani and Gramps each have 4%.

The numbers aren't all that meaningful yet, but they're something.

UPDATE:  Front page thread now open.  Take the conversation over there.