A hospital in Ohio is disputing a story often told on the stump by Hillary Clinton, in which a woman was allegedly refused care over an inability to tender $100, and later died of complications from a stillbirth.

The hospital maintains that the woman in question was in the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with them when she died, and had never been refused service. They also say that the Clinton campaign never contacted them to check on the story. "We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," said the hospital's CEO.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said the campaign verifies the anecdotes that they are told. "In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it," Elleithee said. "If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that."

The Colombian government has terminated its contract with chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn's lobbying firm, after he apologized for personally meeting with their ambassador on Monday to discuss strategy for a free-trade deal that Hillary Clinton publicly opposes.

Apparently the Colombians did not take kindly to Penn calling the meeting "an error in judgment." From their statement: "The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable."

Here are some nuggets that have been ferreted out of Bill and Hillary's 2000-2006 tax returns, which were released yesterday:

* Their $10 million in charitable contributions all went to a family foundation run by the Clintons, and it has given away roughly half the money they sank into it.

* Some folks are wondering what Bill Clinton did to earn $15 million from billionaire Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies.

* But Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson isn't saying whether Bill did any work for Dubai, whose ruler is a Yucaipa investor.

* Many of the wealthy donors who bankrolled both Clintons' White House bids frequently pop up in the returns, suggesting lots of cross-over between the political and private sector realms the Clintons move in.

* The returns show that the Clintons' combined income increased by an astonishing 50 times in the first year after Bill left office, highlighting the money-making opportunities awaiting presidents after they leave office.

* Bill's advance on his autobiography was higher than previously thought, checking in at $15 million.

* Here's what the Clintons made last year:

Sen. Clinton's salary $150,200

Sen. Clinton's book royalties $152,864

President Clinton's pension $186,600

President Clinton's book income $4,434,446

President Clinton's speeches $10,145,000

Partnership income $2,750,000

Adviser income from InfoUSA $400,000

Income from savings accounts $485,000

Investment income from Blind Trust $3,515,000

That partnership income apparently comes from Burkle again.

* And finally, Hillary says that the returns show that Bill made all that cash "doing what he loves doing most -- talking to people."

When Congressman Rob Andrews (D-NJ) announced two days ago that he'd be challenging incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the Democratic primary, a lot of readers from outside the state were probably ready to dismiss it as a non-starter — Lautenberg is a four-term Senator, after all, and it's only two months from now to the primary.

But the reality is, this could be a very serious challenge. Lautenberg is 84 years old, with many polls showing that voters think he's too old for the job. On top of that, New Jersey politicians are almost never truly popular, and Lautenberg isn't the exception.

The ambitious pol Andrews has a few things going for him: Relative youth, a lack of any statewide unpopularity, and the support of the South Jersey party organization — whose power is growing and whose zeal to defeat the North Jersey establishment, which has ruled the state since forever, is as feverish as it's ever been.

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More news late on a Friday afternoon: In the wake of reports today that the Michigan revote is really, truly, unequivocally dead, the Obama campaign is now calling for a 50-50 split of the delegation.

Here's the statement from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:

“Senator Obama firmly believes that the Michigan delegation should be seated in Denver. A 50/50 split of the delegates is an eminently fair solution, especially since originally Senator Clinton herself said the Michigan primary wouldn't 'count for anything.' It's now up to the Clinton campaign: they can agree to a fair resolution or they can continue trying to score political points and change the rules. It's time to move forward. Senator Clinton should accept an equitable solution that allows Michigan to participate fully in the convention."

From the Hillary campaign's perspective, of course, this is like nullifying the vote completely and not seating the delegation at all.

Late on a Friday afternoon, in the dead-news zone, the Clintons release seven years of tax returns, from 2000-2006.

In that period, the Clintons racked up a total gross income of nearly $110 million, and an after-tax one of $57 million.

Much of that is Bill's speech income of over $50 million, and his book income, which checks in at nearly $30 million.

From Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson's statement:

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

What the Clintons' tax returns show is that they paid more than $33,000,000 in federal taxes and donated more than $10,000,000 to charities over the past eight years. They paid taxes and made charitable contributions at a higher rate than taxpayers at their income level.

The returns themselves are here.

This should get the Edwards endorsement tea-leaf readers going.

I just got off the phone with former John Edwards adviser Joe Trippi, and he says that Edwards would commend and support Hillary's idea for a cabinet-level poverty czar, which she proposed during a speech today.

"That would absolutely be something Edwards would welcome," Trippi says. "As someone close to him, a cabinet level position on poverty is something he would support 100 percent."

"Edwards pushed both [Obama and Hillary] to focus on poverty," Trippi adds. "She's done something to be commended for."

It's really, finally, definitely official now. The Michigan re-vote is dead, with the state Democratic Party releasing the following statement:

The Michigan Democratic Party has carefully reviewed several proposals for a Party-run primary or caucus as a means of resolving the dispute over the seating of the Michigan delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. We have concluded that it is not practical to conduct such a primary or caucus. We will continue to work with the Working Group, the DNC and the candidates to resolve this matter in a manner which is respectful of the views of Democrats in Michigan, and which is fair to those who voted in the January 15th Democratic primary.

Next stop: The credentials committee.

Late Update: Howard Dean and Sen. Carl Levin, plus some other major Michigan Dem names, have released this statement:

"We are united in our commitment to doing everything we can to ensure that a Michigan delegation is seated in Denver this summer. We also know that any solution needs to be acceptable to both Democratic presidential campaigns. While there may be differences of opinion in how we get there, we will continue to work together to ensure that a Michigan delegation is seated and that the logistics are in place for a Michigan delegation in Denver. We have every expectation that we will succeed in that endeavor, and then go on to win in November."

Late Late Update: Jason Horowitz of The New York Observer reports that Dean got an earful from a roomful of Hillary donors upset that he hasn't done more to resolve the Florida and Michigan standoffs.

Top Clinton strategist Mark Penn has apologized for meeting on Monday with the Colombian ambassador, as part of his lobbying work for a trade deal that Hillary publicly opposes:

"The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it. The senator's well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed."

Meanwhile, Ben Smith reports that the Change To Win labor federation, which has endorsed Barack Obama, is calling upon Hillary to fire Penn.

This is worth a watch: John McCain journeyed to Memphis today to speak about Martin Luther King's assassination 40 years ago and apologized for voting in 1983 against making MLK day a holiday. And it didn't go all that well...

We couldn't help but notice McCain's evocation of King's forgiveness in asking to be forgiven for voting against...the King holiday.

It strikes us as a bit absurd, but hey, in the spirit of this holiday, let's forgive McCain for this one. At least he went there.

An Obama campaign aide confirms to me that "almost all" the $40 million raised last month is for use in the primary.

No such estimate from the Hillary campaign yet, and neither campaign has given out an official primary-general breakdown -- expect them when they file in two weeks.

Either way, this reminds us again what a tremendous financial advantage Obama has heading into the race's final stretch.

In Indiana this morning, Obama gave a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

One interesting bit: Obama brought up his recent speech on race relations, and drew an implicit link between King's lofty goals and his own call for a bigger politics...

Part of the problem is that for a long time, we’ve had a politics that’s been too small for the scale of the challenges we face. This is something I spoke about a few weeks ago in a speech I gave in Philadelphia. And what I said was that instead of having a politics that lives up to Dr. King’s call for unity, we’ve had a politics that’s used race to drive us apart, when all this does is feed the forces of division and distraction, and stop us from solving our problems.

That is why the great need of this hour is much the same as it was when Dr. King delivered his sermon in Memphis.

Obama also emphasized an oft-overlooked aspect of King's legacy -- his battle for economic justice -- and put it in the context of our present problems. Full text of speech after the jump.

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New numbers from the Morning Call find Hillary leading Obama in Pennsylvania by 11 points, 49%-38%.

That lead is down three points from mid-February. Since then, Obama barnstormed the state by bus and unleashed a Pennsylvania ad blitz, which the Call estimates is costing the Obama campaign $325,000 per day, as compared to Hillary's $120,000 per day.

The Obama campaign had some trouble when former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power suggested that Obama's campaign promises on Iraq might not fully guide his actions as president, and now it looks like another one of his foreign policy advisers has similarly strayed off the campaign's message about ending the war:

WASHINGTON — A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Both the Obama campaign and Kahl, who is day-to-day coordinator of Obama's working group on Iraq, say his views expressed here are not those of the campaign in any way. Obviously, candidates surround themselves with multiple advisers with a range of views about stuff, and can't be responsible for all of them.

It's unclear right now whether the Hillary camp will try to make an issue of this today.

John McCain is now returning contributions totaling $3 million that were raised for the general election, in preparation for opting into the public finance system — a sign that he will not be attempting to privately raise the millions he would need to go up against the Democratic nominee, but which he has had trouble getting on his own.

Instead, the man known for campaign finance reform is asking his contributors to write checks to a new fund — a fund set up to help him pay legal fees and other expenses in his dealings with the public finance system.

It turns out the Democratic campaigns are still squabbling over how they'll debate in North Carolina.

Yesterday we reported that Hillary Clinton had accepted a debate for North Carolina, with a different date from the one originally proposed.

The Obama camp now says they have not yet agreed to the new date of April 27 — after the Pennsylvania primary, which Hillary is currently expected to win — as opposed to their original proposed date of April 19, before the Pennsylvania primary.

Hillary kicked off her appearance yesterday on The Tonight Show with a joke about the Bosnia gaffe that has caused her a lot of trouble in the polls lately: "I was worried I wasn't going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport."

After getting the joke out of the way, she then explained the gaffe as having been a case of faulty memory due to her grueling campaign schedule.

Here's a YouTube of her appearance:

In what could become Hillary Clinton's own version of the NAFTA-Gate controversy that caused Barack Obama so much trouble a month ago, top Clinton strategist Mark Penn reportedly met on Monday with the Colombian ambassador to discuss a bilateral free-trade deal — something his candidate has publicly opposed.

In a case study on the dangers of wearing too many hats, Penn's attendance was in his capacity as the head of his lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller Worldwide. Expect the Obama camp to hit Clinton for this on at least two angles: Hypocrisy on trade, and having as her top strategist a lobbyist for a foreign government.

A new Research 2000 poll of Indiana shows the primary here, perhaps the last true toss-up race of the campaign, to be a dead heat: Clinton 49%, Obama 46.

From the internals: Obama is winning voters age 18-29 by a 63%-36% margin, while Clinton is ahead 60%-34% in the 60+ demographic. Meanwhile, Obama is winning the black vote by a lopsided 81%-16%

The new poll of Pennsylvania from Strategic Vision (R) shows a race that has rapidly tightened in the last three weeks, from a landslide Hillary Clinton lead to only a moderately-sized one:

Clinton 49% (-7)
Obama 41% (+3)

The general election match-ups show that Barack Obama still has a lot of ground to make up here, though, should he ultimately win the Democratic nomination:

McCain (R) 47%, Obama (D) 42%
Clinton (D) 47%, McCain (R) 41%

It would hardly be surprising if the Clinton camp doesn't tout this poll in making their case that they remain the more electable option for the Democrats.

A new CBS/New York Times poll shows Barack Obama continuing to narrowly lead Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary voters nationwide, with no changes at all since last month: Obama 46%, Clinton 43%.

And for the general election match-ups:

Obama (D) 47% (-1)
McCain (R) 42% (-1)

Clinton (D) 48% (+2)
McCain (R) 43% (-1)

A key finding of the poll: 58% of whites say Jeremiah Wright's statements have had no effect on their opinion of Barack Obama, compared to 41% of whites who say they now think less of him. It we assume that many of those 41% were probably McCain voters to begin with, it would appear that the Wright controversy hasn't hurt Obama too badly — at least for now.

Barack Obama has a new Spanish-language TV ad in the Philadelphia market, focusing on issues like education and children's health care:

Latinos have been one of Obama's weakest demographic groups throughout this primary season, and he's also had problems breaking through against Hillary Clinton among working-class voters. Now that he has as big a financial advantage over Hillary Clinton as he does, expect him to saturate the state with ads over the next 19 days, in order to improve the situation with those demographics.

The translated English script is available after the jump.

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A spokesperson for Bill Richardson is adamantly denying what top Hillary confidantes told Mark Halperin and me this morning.

The spokesperson says that the New Mexico governor never...

(a) Promised not to endorse Obama; or

(b) Questioned Obama's chances in the general election.

"The Governor never promised that he wouldn’t endorse Obama," Richardson spokesperson Pahl Shipley emails me. “The Governor has never questioned Senator Obama’s electability. He believes Barack Obama is the right person to lead this country and he will be America’s next President."

So there you have it.

As the race heads into the fourth quarter, top Hillary advisers and supporters are wrestling with a big question:

Is it really politically feasible for her to continue to try to woo super-delegates in the event of a loss in both the pledged delegate count and the popular vote?

Some Hillary advisers and supporters now appear to be concluding that the answer is No. Without a popular vote victory to offset Obama's expected victory among pledged delegates, they say, it will be difficult indeed to make a case to super-dels that they should support her.

One Hillary adviser confirmed to me that he believes that if she falls short in the popular vote, it will become very tough to continue making the case to super-delegates that they should decide their choice based on electability alone, though this adviser said that an unexpectedly big string of victories could conceivably shift the dynamic somewhat.

Says another adviser: "It's much harder to make the case to super delegates without the popular vote. You have to give the super-delegates something to work with. You have to give them political cover to support her in opposition to what the pledged delegates represent."

Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson would only say: "The popular vote is an important metric that automatic delegates will look at in making their decisions."

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A new InsiderAdvantage poll of Pennsylvania shows this primary down to a dead heat: Clinton 45%, Obama 43%. The poll gives some measure of corroboration to yesterday's Public Policy Polling (D) survey, which put Obama nominally ahead by two.

From the internals: Clinton leads only 49%-40% among whites, while Obama is ahead 56%-29% with black voters. Clinton is ahead 49%-38% with women, while Obama is ahead 47%-41% with men.

During an interview on CNBC, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine not only said it would be very tough to for Hillary Clinton to get super-delegate support if she loses the national popular vote — he himself is "reserving the right" to switch his own vote if she doesn't come out on top in that metric:

Corzine has been one of Hillary's biggest supporters, leading almost the whole party in his state to back her, so even this small bit of doubt from him could mean serious trouble ahead — though obviously, Corzine expressed his confidence she would win the popular vote, counting both Michigan and Florida.

Get ready for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to debate in North Carolina. The Hillary campaign just announced via press release that she's accepted an invitation to debate in the state on April 27, on CBS.

Obama had previously challenged her to a North Carolina CBS debate, at the same time as he accepted her challenge to meet in Philadelphia, but apparently it was held up until the proposed meeting could be rescheduled. The new date would put the debate after the Pennsylvania primary, with Hillary likely to have just won a big contest and be heading into the debate with some momentum.

We were reluctant to post on this earlier without official confirmation, but now we have it: A spokesperson for Jimmy Carter confirms that he made some very kind remarks about Barack Obama, and all but announced his support for the Illinois Senator.

Carter was asked about the primaries at a press conference during his tour of Nigeria, picked up by the Nigerian paper This Day, and here's what he said:

"We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that Obama won in my state of Georgia. My town which is home to 625 people is for Obama, my children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a super-delegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for but I leave you to make that guess."

Hillary Clinton has her first ad up in North Carolina, in which she speaks directly to the camera to promote a new Web site called NCAskeMe.com, at which she'll take voters' questions:

The ad seems to serve two purposes. By stressing that "these are not typical times," it plays into her theme that she's the serious, issue-oriented candidate the country needs to solve its problems. And by promising that this isn't a typical ad, and opening herself up to questions from the public, she also seems to be trying to project the sort of free-wheeling style that Obama has all but mastered on the trail.

Here's an interesting peek at some of what was going on behind the scenes in Chicago during the controversy over Jeremiah Wright, the pastor at Obama's Trinity church.

I'm told that top Obama adviser David Axelrod privately tried to help Trinity with its raging public relations problem by asking one of Chicago's top P.R. firms to go in and help the church deal with its P.R. mess.

Axelrod confirms to me that amid the controversy, Trinity put out word that it was overwhelmed by media calls and in need of help. Axelrod confirms that he called Jim Terman, the president of Jasculca-Terman and Associates, a major Chicago P.R. outfit that specializes in doing crisis P.R. management for corporations and large institutions.

"I called Jim Terman and asked if they were interested in helping out and they followed up with the church," Axelrod emails, adding that his involvement ended there.

Terman himself confirmed that Axelrod had asked him to help Trinity -- and confirmed that his firm was currently doing pro bono work on the beleagured church's behalf.

"Trinity is a well respected institution in this town, though you wouldn't believe it from the national press," Terman said, adding that he has known Axelrod for 25 years. "David was interested in helping the church -- the guy he's working for happens to be a member of the church."

It's unclear whether Axelrod was operating partly out of worry about how the controversy was impacting Obama -- after all, the church was the first to sound the call for help. But this is nonetheless noteworthy -- a glimpse at a previously-unseen aspect of the Obama camp's efforts to deal with the whole situation.

Barack Obama is on the air in Pennsylvania with this spot about plant closings, an apparent play for blue-collar voters:

The ad has already run in Indiana, too. Its low-key pitch, a sharp departure from the stirring oratory in most of his other ads, seems to be part of a pattern of Obama refocusing himself on bread-and-butter issues in order to appeal to working-class voters in the remaining states.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson was asked whether it's the Hillary campaign's official position that Obama can't win a general election against McCain, as Hillary is reported to have privately argued to Bill Richardson.

Wolfson's answer:

"No."

For some time now, the Hillary camp has been in a bind on this front. As her odds grow longer, it becomes necessary to sound the alarm about Obama's chances in a general election ever more loudly, to the point where the argument risks straying over the line into an assertion that he can't win at all.

Simply put, the campaign is struggling to strike a difficult balancing act: How to sow serious and enduring doubts about Obama's electability while simultaneously maintaining loyalty to the larger Democratic cause? Life ain't easy sometimes.

Late Update: I've changed the above hed in response to a very technical, though not illegitimate, objection a few of you made to the original.

Late Late Update: Here's the audio from the call:

Here are Obama's March fundraising numbers, just out from the campaign:

Total Raised in March: More than $40 million

Contributors in March: More than 442,000

First-Time Contributors in March: More than 218,000

Average Contribution: $96

Total Contributors to Date: More than 1,276,000

This morning, Mark Halperin quoted a Clinton "associate" saying that Bill Richardson privately had confided to the Clintons that he thought Obama couldn't win a general election.

Now I've got more. A top Hillary adviser confirms this, telling me:

"Bill Richardson repeatedly promised he would not endorse Obama -- and the reason he gave was that Obama wasn't ready -- he couldn't be elected."

After the news broke yesterday that Bill Clinton grew angry in a meeting with California super-delegates, and asserted that Richardson had promised five times not to endorse Obama, a Richardson spokesperson denied that Richardson ever promised Hillary any endorsement.

But that isn't what is being reported. Rather, what's being reported is that Richardson promised he wouldn't endorse Obama. Shipley didn't return my call asking for comment on that.

Now a top Hillary adviser has asserted to me that this happened, and claims that Richardson said the reason for this was that he didn't think Obama could win.

We'll be reporting this out more today.

Time magazine's Karen Tumulty interviews prominent Hillary backer and Fox News fan Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and finds him in a particularly feisty mood about the press' coverage of Hillary and Obama...

In a recent appearance on Fox News -- not exactly considered friendly territory for the Democrats -- he congratulated the network for having done "the fairest job [and] remained the most objective of all the cable networks." In an interview with me, the governor was again in media-critic mode. "It took Saturday Night Live to bring some fairness to this election," Rendell said, referring to the show's now famous skit lampooning the media's crush on Obama. "It's stunning. Does Keith Olbermann get checks from the Obama campaign?"

Relatedly, is it just me, or has the tone of MSNBC and NBC towards Hillary changed of late? I reported here recently that top Hillary advisers had lodged repeated behind-the-scenes complaints about Chris Matthews, and the Hillary campaign publicly went to war with MSNBC over the network's protracted and palpable hostility towards her and its rather generous coverage of Obama.

Is the pressure working? The other day, NBC's Andrea Mitchell ran a soft-focus piece on Hillary's girl-hood, and there's been a more Hillary-friendly feel on the network in recent days. It certainly feels like the network's trying to make nice with Camp Hillary now.

Democrats are facing what could prove a major difficulty in the general election: During the fall campaign, John McCain might have not one, but two sons serving in Iraq.

For the Democrats, that possibility could make it much more difficult to hit McCain on Iraq policy. And while McCain himself has avoided mentioning it in his speeches, at least for now, you can bet his surrogates will be more than happy to bring it up every time the Dems hit him on the war.

In an interesting statistic from North Carolina, the number of registered Republicans has actually gone down by about 6,700 this in this Southern state — while over 165,000 new voters have joined the rolls from the Democratic campaigns' registration drives.

While it's not a guarantee that the state could go Democratic for president, it could still be a good measure of overall partisan enthusiasm. If more voters are switching from the Republicans to being Democrats or independents, it could be a hint to down-ticket campaigns about which voters to target in order to retain Democratic seats and go after Republican ones.

The GOP may be on the verge of losing what should have been a safe seat in Louisana. An internal Republican poll in advance of one of the upcoming special elections in the state reportedly shows that former state Rep. Woody Jenkins, who is expected to win the Republican primary runoff this Saturday, is losing by three points to expected Democratic nominee Don Cazayoux.

The district went to President Bush by a 19-point margin in 2004, so this would be a particularly juicy pickup for national Dems.

After reports that Hillary Clinton told Richardson that Barack Obama can't win, one Clinton source now says just the opposite happened — that it was Richardson who said Obama can't win, and now he's lying about it after he endorsed Obama, anyway.

One unnamed Clinton associate told Mark Halperin: "Bill Richardson is clearly embarrassed that he broke his promise to them. He should come out and tell the truth and admit that he told both Clintons that Obama wasn’t ready and can’t win."

John McCain's campaign has rolled out a rebuttal ad to Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. economic crisis ad, which singled out McCain instead of Barack Obama. No media buys have been announced yet for the ad, which charges that both Hillary and Obama would answer economic troubles by raising your taxes, but here it is:

The ad is an awful lot like Barack Obama's original rebuttal to Hillary's 3 a.m. ad in Ohio and Texas, using mostly the same footage and the same introduction to then parody her — and in his case, it wasn't too successful.

The Democrats now have a divisive Senate primary on their hands in New Jersey, with Congressman Rob Andrews announcing that he is challenging incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the June primary.

Andrews' big issue will probably be Lautenberg's age — the Senator is 84 years old, and polls have shown opposition to him getting another term because of it. On the other hand, expect Lautenberg to hit Andrews for his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War, and to have the whole might of the New Jersey Democratic machinery at his back.

By the way, this primary could be the biggest challenge Lautenberg faces this year — as we laid out last week, the Republican candidates aren't exactly an impressive bunch. So whoever wins, this might still be a safe Democratic seat anyway.

Here's a case study in the problems that the Republicans have been having recruiting House candidates: The man they thought would be a top get for an open Dem-held seat decided that not only is he not running, but also that for now he's not even becoming a Republican.

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It's 3 A.M. And the phone's ringing in the White House.

Again.

On a conference call with reporters just now, the Hillary campaign unveiled a new ad for Pennsylvania featuring another ringing phone, only this time the emergency in question concerns the economy, and the target of the ad isn't Obama, but McCain...

What would happen if the economic red phone and the national security red phone both rang at the same time? Who would be better equipped to handle that?

Seriously, though the original 3 A.M. ad came under some criticism, the Hillary campaign is not only sticking with this approach, but they're also claiming that one goal of the current ad is to remind Pennsylvanians of the last one.

"It will remind people of the previous ad they've heard about," Hillary chief strategist Mark Penn said on the call.

Also on the call, Hillary advisers acknowledged that they expect to be outspent two-to-one in the state. "We will not have the resources that Senator Obama has," said Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson, adding that they also expect to be badly outgunned in Indiana and North Carolina.

Late Update: Here's some audio of the whole Clinton campaign conference call. Enjoy.

Everyone's been talking today about Karl Rove's big interview with GQ magazine, but I wanted to highlight this bit, in which Hillary's red phone ad earns praise from the master of fearmongering himself.

Asked about the ad, Rove says...

It was a gutsy, dangerous move. She figured out that she had to do something to raise the issue of: Is he fit to be president? And this was a way to do it. I happened to be in Texas a week before the ad popped, and all of her surrogates were hitting him pretty hard on the thinness of his experience. They were pretty brutal. And this ad sort of fed into that.

We don't imagine that Hillary ad guru Mandy Grunwald will be putting this one on her resume anytime soon. On second thought, maybe she will -- it's a high honor, after all.

Separately, Jonathan Martin ferrets out this key passage in the interview, in which Rove previews the coming GOP attack on Obama's patriotism:

There are Democrats, particularly blue-collar Democrats, who defect to McCain because they see McCain as a patriotic figure and they see Obama as an elitist who's looking down his nose at 'em. Which he is. That comment where he said, you know, "After 9/11, I didn't wear a flag lapel pin because true patriotism consists of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin"? Well, to a lot of ordinary people, putting that flag lapel pin on is true patriotism. It's a statement of their patriotic love of the country. And for him to sit there and dismiss it as he did...

As we've noted here before, should Obama be the nominee, we're going to see a GOP assault very similar to what hit Gore and Kerry -- Obama thinks he's better than you ordinary Joes, and he thinks patriotism is for rubes. Get ready.