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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080422/pl_nm/usa_politics_iran_dc&printer=1;_ylt=AgHS711vSCz6dVRGpZ.x0x0b.3QA Clinton says U.S. could "totally obliterate" Iran By David Morgan Tue Apr 22, 1:43 PM ET Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel. On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state. "I want the...

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continued to pull away from rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois as the campaigning in Pennsylvania ended and voters prepared to cast ballots Tuesday, the latest Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows. Clinton now leads Obama, 51% to 41%, having gained three points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, pushing her beyond the poll’s margin of error to create a statistically significant lead for the first time in the Pennsylvania daily tracking poll. Meanwhile, 6% remained undecided and another 3% said they preferred someone else in the two-day tracking poll....

RUSH: Do you remember the genesis of MoveOn.org? The whole point of MoveOn.org, it was a Clinton front group. "Move on," meant, "Can't we move on from the impeachment? Can't we move on from all of these scandals? Can't we move on from all of these little Chihuahuas yapping at the heels of the Clintons? Can't we just move on?" With that in mind, in February 2008 in a closed door fundraiser (phone quality here), this is Mrs. Clinton talking about MoveOn.org. HILLARY: We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic...

It was one of those typical questions from a reporter gaggle on Capitol Hill: Does Harry Reid think the protracted nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will harm the party? Reid didn't miss a beat. "It makes me bitter," he deadpanned. Reid has such a dry humor that you actually have to pause and look at him to make sure he's not being serious when he's attempting comedy. But his usual grimace in front of reporters quickly turned to a grin as he capitalized on the now infamous "bitter" comment made by Obama at a San Francisco area...

Former President Carter and Al Gore have discussed plans to tell Hillary Rodham Clinton that she must abandon her presidential bid, for the sake of the Democratic Party. "They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence." The newspaper said the message will be delivered — it's just a matter of when. Barack Obama leads Clinton in the race for pledged delegates, and political experts say its nearly impossible for her to catch. But she retains a lead among superdelegates, and...

Former US president Bill Clinton said Friday he has been ordered to hold his tongue by his wife Hillary for reviving an embarrassing story about her trip to Bosnia in 1996 while out campaigning. "Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am," the grinning ex-president said during a campaign stop in Indiana, according to television pictures. A series of gaffes have made Bill Clinton somewhat of a liability in his wife's campaign for the Democratic White House nomination. And he put his foot in it again Thursday by...

A bitter Sir Elton John thinks America's sexism may be sinking his friend Hillary Rodham Clinton. John, a knighted British subject, said that gender discrimination is behind Clinton's problems in the polls as he addressed 5,000 Clinton supporters at Radio City Musical Hall last night in an event that raised $2.5 million for the cash-strapped campaign. "I never cease to be amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country," said John, wearing a spangled black evening coat over a vermilion silk shirt. "I say to hell with them. ... I love you, Hillary, I'll always be there...

Hillary Clinton should hang in there and run a good race. And she has vowed to do so. Clinton has been under unprecedented pressure to bow out of the divisive Democratic primary and to clear the field for her opponent -- Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Among those who want her to throw in the towel are, of course, Obama’s supporters. But many other Democrats are trying to push her out of the contest on the ground that a contentious race can hurt the party and could help their Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Clinton also has been...

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco. Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will...

Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter has hinted that he might cast his vote for Senator Barack Obama to aid his emergence as the candidate for the Democrats in America’s bid to elect a new President. Carter, who is a Super Delegate from Georgia State, gave this hint at a media interaction after the Carter Center Awards for Guinea Worm Eradication in Abuja yesterday. Carter, who was accompanied by his wife Rosalynn, did not profess a direct support for Obama but rather choose to make a veiled statement. “We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that...

THE RACE: The presidential race for Democrats nationally THE NUMBERS Barack Obama, 49 percent Hillary Rodham Clinton, 39 percent ___ OF INTEREST: The two rivals' standings in the Pew Research Center poll have changed little from late February, the latest indication that so far Obama has weathered the controversy over provocative sermons by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. While Obama has a mostly favorable image among white Democrats, those with unfavorable views about him are likelier to say equal rights for minorities have gone too far and to oppose interracial dating. Almost one in four white Democrats who...

Are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elton John breaking U.S. laws by allowing the British pop singer, a foreign national, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign by performing a concert on her behalf? That's the question Inside the Beltway put to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday, which does not rule out the possibility. First, some background supplied by the FEC: The goal of the 1966 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was to "minimize foreign intervention" in U.S. elections by establishing a series of limitations on foreign nationals. In 1974, the prohibition was incorporated...

Now that Hillary Clinton has been nailed in an outright fabrication of her role in Bosnia, it is time to remind ourselves of another, even more galling fantasy that Hillary tried to sell the voters. After 9/11, Hillary had a problem. New Yorkers were desperately focused on their own needs for protection and they were saddled with a Senator who was not one of them -- an Arkansasn or was it a Chicagoan? Interviewed on the "Today" show one week after 9/11, she spun an elaborate yarn. The kindest thing we could say was that it was a fantasy. Or...

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is seeking to play down news that the former first lady gave an incorrect account of landing in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire, and refused to answer additional questions about a flap that could hurt her chances of catching Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the race for the Democratic nomination. “We’ve said all we’re going to say on that,” said Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer on a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters. A video from CBS News had shown that Clinton’s version of having come under sniper fire was not...

U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, whose district includes much of Martin and St. Lucie counties, is hoping he won’t have to attend the Democratic Party national convention in Denver in August. If he does go, that will mean the Democrats still haven’t decided a nominee for the presidential election. And if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the nomination by August, Mahoney says we may see a brokered convention, meaning the nominee could emerge from a negotiated settlement. “If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top...

Hillary Rodham Clinton upped the tempo of her fundraising and her spending last month, only to be eclipsed by rival Barack Obama. At month's end, with debts of nearly $9 million, her money was nearly spent and he was sitting atop $30 million in available cash. Obama's campaign spent at a rate of nearly $1.5 million a day in February, a crucial month that began with the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday and ended with both candidates marching to a showdown March 4 in Texas and Ohio. Clinton, riding her best fundraising period yet, spent about $1 million a day on...

The Clintons are trying to steal the nomination from Barack Obama — and he can't let them. The Clintons' campaign attacks put Obama in a bind. If he doesn't answer in kind, he's toast. But if he does, they'll have forced him off his winning message of hope and change from the bitter politics of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras. If they pull him off his game and onto theirs, they can wrest away the Democratic convention victory that he's earned. The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates. Obama must...

After weeks of intense pressure, and more than a year after announcing her presidential candidacy, Sen. Hillary Clinton has offered little explanation for why she has delayed releasing the tax returns made public by most other Democratic presidential candidates in recent years. "What is the holdup?" said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks the role of money in politics. "She hasn't exactly made it clear as to what process is making it so cumbersome to just release them." Past Democratic presidential candidates have set a precedent for releasing their tax returns before or...

Republican crossover voters apparently helped win the Democratic primary in Texas for Hillary Clinton — with one in every 10 Democratic votes came from Republicans. And they could have been heeding the call of top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh, who had been urging Republican listeners to vote for Hillary to prevent the Democrats from unifying around Obama and to keep the two candidates battling each other. “Hillary Clinton is back in the race, thanks in some small part to Republican voters mindlessly following the commands of radio entertainers and crossing party lines to vote for the candidate they view as...