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.

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:

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."

"At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the 'activist base' of the Democratic Party- and MoveOn.org in particular-for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had 'flooded' state caucuses and 'intimidated' her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post. Clinton's remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party's success-regardless of who is the eventual nominee-in the general election showdown."

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]

Hillary Clinton will do her awkward, vaguely joke-ish all-in-good-fun routine with Stephen Colbert this week, which might be more entertaining than her last 500 talk show appearances, as politicians are rarely able to figure out how to be "in" on his joke without saying something regrettable. The news was broken during Colbert's interview last night with Hardballer Chris Matthews, who seemed, honestly, a broken, beaten-down, exhausted shell of his usual self. Seriously. He barely got a word in edgewise and at one point, when discussing his boyhood dream of being a Senator, he looked on the verge of tears. Did last Sunday's amusingly embarrassing Times Magazine profile... actually embarrass him? Nothing else ever has! We think there are serious, fundamental problems with Chris Matthews' world-view and imagine he's probably irreparably damaging the way we conduct democracy but obviously we have nothing against him personally, so we hope he feels better soon! The uncomfortable interview is after the jump.

Hillary Clinton spent Saturday appealing to blue collar voters in Indiana. Which means drinking like a frat boy, obv. At a little neighborhood place called Bronko's in Crown Point, Indiana, Senator Clinton hoisted a mug of beer and then partook in a round of shots with the assembled locals. A shot of whiskey! A shot of blended Canadian whiskey. Dammit Hil, America makes the best whiskey in the world—who's reponsible for ordering Crown Royal? Wolfson? An Associated Press photog was there and captured the whole sad scene. We've got a charming gallery of hot Clinton party photos after the jump. Blue states truly lost.

There is a profound sadness about this clip of Hillary Clinton "dancing" to James Brown at a senior citizens exercise class. [CBS]

In the real world, politics are complicated. On the Web, things seem reassuringly simple, though. Take the Democratic campaign: Polls show Barack Obama ahead, but he doesn't have the necessary delegates to force Hillary Clinton to drop out. Web-traffic analyst Matt Pace of Compete.com believes he has the internet traffic stats to prove that Obama is a shoo-in.

The mean radio lady who ruined American political discourse by calling Hillary Clinton a "fucking whore" is losing her job on a radio network no one listens to and will be forced to work for the largest station owner in the entire country. Hope you've learned your lesson, Randi Rhodes! With Rhodes off to Clear Channel's Oakland AM station KKGN, her former network Air America went looking for someone less grating, and logically came up with comedian Richard Belzer. Here's how the liberal network justified the switch, according to the Daily News:

Oh happy day! Post-feminist "social critic" Camille Paglia is taking your letters over at Salon! Well, "your" letters if "you" are the type of person who writes in to ask why, exactly, noted evil bitch Hillary Clinton only surrounds herself with "passive-aggressive, sadistic, mean, little, petty beta-male pieces of work who would not naturally succeed in a common male-type hierarchy." Paglia's response? That is a very, very good question. She herself has noticed that "the male staff who Hillary attracts are slick, geeky weasels or rancid, asexual cream puffs." Oh, but we've barely scraped the armchair-psychoanalytical surface!

The good news about Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn being booted from Hillary Clinton's campaign, according to an internal Burson email: "Momentum will only improve with Mark's return to our day-to-day business." Ha. The bad news: they can't spell their own (former) clients' names: "We've all received a good number of inquiries about the news reports related to Mark Penn's work with the Clinton campaign and developments in our relationship with the Columbian [sic] Embassy in Washington, which was until Saturday our client." [WSJ]

So Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's doughy chief strategist, finally got booted from the campaign last weekend. The majority of her campaign team hated him for some time, so his departure will be welcomed by insiders. They felt that his strategy was unsuccessful, and they were right. But the specific reason for Penn's departure was his idiot move of meeting with the Colombian government, in his day job as CEO of massive PR firm Burson-Marsteller, to represent them on the opposite side of an issue from Hillary Clinton, while running her campaign. And you know what? This moment was inevitable. The very idea of having a man simultaneously running a presidential campaign and an international PR firm is stupid, and never should have happened in the first place. You fools!

You don't need to see the caucus results; these aren't the results you're looking for... Move along. Despite losing the North Dakota caucuses in February, Senator Hillary Clinton demanded this week that the state Dems hand her their precious delegates. "Clinton made it clear to North Dakota Democrats last night that she believes there is no such thing as a pledged delegate and highlighted that stubborn streak in her appeal for delegates to switch from Obama to her when the Democratic national party holds its nominating convention this August."

Senator Hillary Clinton has been telling a heart-wrenching yarn of late about an uninsured woman who died, and lost her baby, when an Ohio hospital refused to treat her because she couldn't afford to pay a $100 fee. But... Oops! "The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured." Video, after the jump.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, still having their cute little class president election, are advertising in the gay press—the first time any presidential candidates have done so, according to Editor & Publisher. Obama did it first, with "full-page and full-color, in some circumstances, ads in some of the LGBT publications in Ohio and Texas." Clinton hasn't gone that far, but the campaign is planning some buys in Pennsylvania. Obama's campaign site is currently hosting a video featuring, in the words of a tipster, a "super cute, super gay teacher." The Dems have not always been proud of their special relationship with the gay community, but this year, every vote counts. APROPOS OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING The Daily Show talked to college student and Democratic superdelegate Jason Rae earlier this week. His favorite movie is Love, Actually, and his favorite musician is Celine Dion. Correspondent Jason Jones challenged him to an arm-wrestling competition. Video after the jump!

Hillary Clinton opened her appearance on Jay Leno's Tonight Show with some humor: "I was worried I wasn't going to make it [onto the show] - I was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport." It's a funny line, more self-deprecating than her past material, but the audience totally saw the joke coming and it fizzled. Clips:

Suspicious: During a pro-Hillary speech by Bill Clinton at Indiana University, the Barack Obama campaign started giving away concert tickets to Dave Matthews Band. The giveaway was the first opportunity to grab the tickets, and a line formed, partly made up of people who left the Clinton event, according to the Indianapolis Star. One student waited for more than three hours.