Inevitably, Barack Obama's campaign has been forced to drop the foreign-policy adviser who said that Hillary Clinton is a monster, which is fine, but to a British journalist with no discretion, which isn't. Samantha Power, the frighteningly accomplished author and academic who blabbed, resigned today. But watch out for the collateral damage. First of all, Barack should not wait for the invitation to George Clooney's villa by Lake Como; Samantha Power, who got sweaty with the Hollywood star on the basketball court, was the campaign's Clooney connection. And, second, expect the prospects of Cass Sunstein, tipped for the Supreme Court under an Obama presidency, fade a little: the distinguished law professor recently left his long-time partner and Chicago University to be with Power, according to Above The Law.
Photo: Men's Vogue]

Bi The Way, a new documentary about that beloved 90s trend of being bisexual, proves that the decade is back in a big way. And only nine years after we said goodbye to the trends of worrying about AIDS and listening to the Black Crowes before reviewing them! The movie even features 90s talking head Michael Musto. Free weeklies may be out, but the Village Voice columnist is back since his Lindsay Lohan as Marilyn Monroe spread this week. (Fortunately, filp-flops and socks were never in, so we don't need to worry about that coming back.) Nearly NSFW trailer and proof that the 00s are recycling the 90s, which is also very 90s, after the jump.

Even the Texas Gays, who could probably kick your ass, buy into the condescending media narratives of Hillary Clinton: she's "a diva", you see, and also "that reliable, ubiquitous straight girl who hangs out with the gang," which is the nicest way of describing a "fag hag" we've heard in some time. Not that we understand exactly how Senator Clinton fits that description, or which band of merry queens she spends her time cracking wise with, but these tough gay residents of Gun Barrel City, Texas still seem to like her. And while her husband shepherded both "don't ask, don't tell" and the vile Defense of Marriage Act through Congress, and while Obama is the only current candidate to plainly say that DOMA needs to be repealed, not "fixed," the patrons of the Friends bar love their unlucky-in-love straight girlfriend Hillary. Politics is all projection and fantasy, hooray! [WP]

Ha ha, you thought the endless nightmare battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was finally coming to a close, but Hillary just won Texas, Ohio and precious Rhode Island, gave a chipper speech and ordered aides to convene a special EMERGENCY conference call to slam Obama for doing crafty evil things to the proud caucusers of Texas, which means the seven weeks until the next important primary are going to eat your soul. Sure, there will be twee little elections in Mississippi and Wyoming to interrupt the arguing, but until Pennsylvania awards its 21 delegates on April 22, Clinton and Obama will mostly just be left torture everyone with endless bickering. What exactly will they yell at each other? Predictably, the Obama campaign said Clinton is going to throw all kinds of mud, while the Clinton campaign said it also thought Clinton would throw all kinds of mud:

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is winning in Ohio and tied with Barack Obama in Texas. She may yet live politically to fight another day, including in April and May contests in Pennsylvania, Oregon and North Carolina. But she'll have to placate a press corps no doubt traumatized and, perhaps, a touch hurt by her recent decision to set up their desks in the restroom of an Austin, Texas community center. As noted previously, the Wall Street Journal last night highlighted writers Tina Brown and Gail Sheehy's proximity to a set of urinals. Now Getty Images has a sad photo showing the campaign hacks' exact working conditions. Click on the pic at left for a larger version.

Poor Hillary Clinton was on The Daily Show last night, live via satellite from Austin, Texas. The interview was long, and awkward, and generally bad television. As for the wisdom of appearing on a basic cable comedy program the night before one of the most important elections of her political career, Senator Clinton was self-deprecating: "it is pretty pathetic."

Tonight, Vermont and Rhode Island decide the fate of the Democratic Party, and perhaps the nation. Texas and Ohio are maybe involved too, but we can't confirm. WHAT WILL HAPPEN? Hillary will see her shadow and we'll have seven more weeks of campaigning. Ohio is hers to lose. If it's close enough, there's no reason for her to drop out. All the calls to the contrary are from members of the press desperate to move on to the next story. Don't say we didn't warn you! [Slate]

In an effort to rescue her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been trying to butter up the press, including by pretending to like author and magazine writer Gail Sheehy, who aired Clinton's dirty laundry throughout the 1990s. Well, that ruse is up: Clinton last night installed the pack of reporters trailing her campaign in the men's room of an Austin community center. All the female reporters rushed to avoid the urinals, but former New Yorker editor Tina Brown, who is working on a biography of Clinton, lost out and ended up "gamely typing away close to a toilet," according the Wall Street Journal. And Sheehy? She leveraged the insult into the best sort of revenge, the kind played out in front of television cameras:

If you haven't yet seen the bizarre Jack Nicholson ad for the Hillary campaign, well, feast your eyes on the video above, sure to be studied as the ultimate example of celebrity endorsements gone wrong by generations of poli-sci majors enrolled in "Hillary '08: Sketches In Failure." In it, a variety of trademark Nicholson psychopaths mumble vaguely pro-Clinton lines of out-of-context dialogue. (Good thing, too, as the line pulled from A Few Good Men, Gawker point out, is followed by the very un-presidential rumination, "Promote 'em all, I say, 'cause this is true: if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by.")

Tomorrow, primary elections will be held in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island. This is basically the last important contest in the race for the Democratic nomination until late April so journalists, exhausted by covering the same story for so long and eager to get to the next chapter they all have more or less written out already in their heads, will be praying for a quick, painless end to Hillary Clinton's campaign. And Bill said, a few weeks ago, that if Hillary loses tomorrow, she can't be President! Unfortunately tomorrow's contests will probably end up being as decisive as Super Tuesday (remember that? the night everyone won!). Then there will be more than a month of treading water and rehashing the same storylines over and over again. And the storylines likely to be advanced and debated every night on cable and blogs and in magazines are pretty likely to resemble these Hillary-friendly narratives:

Aging movie star Jack Nicholson tried to put together a video endorsement of Hillary Clinton using clips from his old movies, but just ended up creating this weird creepy thing that doesn't really help the struggling Democratic presidential nominee. The idea was that Nicholson's characters would say things that, ripped from the original context, sound vaguely supportive of Hillary. But of course no one can forget the original context. In the endorsement video, Nicholson's character from "the Shining" says to a bartender, "things could be a whole lot better," which is supposed to be a nod to Clinton's platform of change. But in the movie, Nicholson then goes on terrifying kill-crazy rampage — not exactly the kind of guy you want delivering your political message. More creepy: Nicholson's Marine officer character from "A Few Good Men says in the endorsement video, "There is nothing on this earth sexier, believe me, gentlemen, than a woman you have to salute in the morning." Which is kind of fun and racy. But here's how that line continued in the movie: "Promote 'em all, I say, 'cause this is true: if you haven't gotten a blowjob from a superior officer, well, you're just letting the best in life pass you by." Full insane ad after the jump.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spent an entire day with a reporter for Us Weekly who asked "boxers or briefs" and other similarly pressing questions. The Times is kind of in a snit about it because when Us had Hillary Clinton in its pages, it was to have her make fun of her own worst outfits. Actually, the Hillary story was pretty fun compared with Obama's profile, where he comes across fairly vanilla, which is like a deadly sin in a celebrity magazine. Nevertheless, he does make fun of Stevie Wonder bumbling into things, which is kind of cool, and you'll never ever guess what his favorite TV show is:

Hillary Clinton's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has perfected the geographic excuse. South Carolina wasn't representative because the primary electorate was so black; defeat in Delaware didn't count because the state was so small; Maine held a caucus, dominated by Obama-loving activists, and it snowed. Clinton headquarters used the same playbook when dismissing the endorsement of Barack Obama by Arcade Fire, the indie band. They're Canadian, the Clintonites claimed, so their support doesn't count. Except the band members, as noted by Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, actually grew up in Texas, the biggest state up for grabs in the Democratic race this coming Tuesday. Despite the rush of actors and musicians to Obama's camp, Hillary does retain some cultural cred. Last night's appearance by the Senator on Saturday Night Live , though it lacked the impact of her husband's saxophone show on Arsenio in 1992, wasn't entirely embarrassing. Click for the clip.

It's 3 a.m. and a telephone is ringing—do you know where your kids are? They are in bed! But who will answer their phone? It is terror calling, and when terror calls, who do you want to answer? You want MOM, that's who! That is basically all we can decipher from this awesome and totally 100% real Hillary Clinton campaign ad, about what to do when the world is calling from inside the house. Watch it yourself and cower in fear of a world in which HOPE LETS TERROR GO TO VOICEMAIL, after the jump.

During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, he was accused by Democratic rival Jerry Brown of funneling money through his wife's law firm. Hillary Rodham Clinton, responding to the charges by affirming that her business was one she took seriously, famously said, "You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life." That quote, replayed endlessly, debated in columns across the country, was one of the first Hillary Clinton missteps seized upon by Republicans as proof that Hillary was a terrifying, corrupt, ball-crushing feminazi bitch. All this is a pretend-think-y historical intro to two funny Hillary Clinton photos, btw. One of which, above, is on her campaign site right now, in an inexplicably SPLOID-esque (or lolcat-esque) sans-serif-text-on-odd-image thumbnail. The other is on top of Drudge, and it's below.

Hillary Clinton, who generally comes off way as more prepared and well-spoken than Barack Obama in their televised debates, has, naturally, received quite a bit of flack for her occasional attempts to crack jokes. These jokes—"change you can Xerox" and "no one asks me if I want a pillow"—are mostly harmless, but her delivery is terrible. Despite this, her family and friends insist she is actually a funny person. And they're right. In the clip above, she is very funny. The only problem is that she's also sarcastic, in the real sense of the word, and not the Michelle Obama sense of the word. That is maybe the worst possible way to differentiate yourself from Barack Obama, who inspires sarcastic people with his earnestness. We, with help from Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres, shall explain why.

Earlier today we showed you Barack O'Bollywood and invited you to send in your favorite distracting and discomfiting viral videos about the Democratic candidates. Some of you did! We've embedded some of these videos after the jump. They make for disturbing viewing, you have been warned. There is musical theater and porn and ABBA.

Hillary Clinton strategist Harold Ickes and spokesman Phil Singer had breakfast with the Christian Science Monitor, David Broder, Maureen Dowd, Mark Sheilds, and other "eminences grises of the Washington Press Corps" yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote up a nice little summary of the contentious event. The Clintons are not very happy with how the press has treated them, you see, and Phil Singer is especially angry. Singer is mad that the newsmedia listened to that silly Matt Drudge when he ran that silly photo of Barack Obama in a terrorist apron that (Drudge says) was sent to him by a still unknown Clinton staffer, and then they made a big issue of this photo, except they made, in Singer's mind, the wrong issue out of it, as they all sort of used it as proof that the Clinton campaign is grasping at straws. Singer, quite sincerely, expressed his regret that the newsmedia did not instead take their cue from last weekend's new Saturday Night Live, which was on balance rather nicer to Senator Clinton.

This was in Pennsylvania, but until the convention it could happen anywhere. The moral: Watch out for twitchy Hillary Clinton supporters. The Republicans did something terrible to them a long time ago and now they FIGHT TO WIN: "Shurelds, an Obama supporter, told Ortiz that the Illinois senator was 'trashing' Clinton. Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, replied that 'Obama was not a realist'... Ortiz, pictured in the mug shot below, was charged with a felony aggravated assault count and two misdemeanors and jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. Shurelds was flown to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition." [Smoking Gun]

Hillary Clinton's campaign is so outraged that people keep talking about the picture of Barack Hussein Obama in Somali dress, wearing a turban-ish hat and some kind of terrorist bomb-making apron type thing, that it has issued at least four different statements on the matter over the past 12 hours, mostly about how Obama should be "ashamed." Not about the clothing, of course, but for allowing a Clinton staffer to leak it, or something. Here's a fun clip of the gang in CNN's Situation Room slowly coming to the collective realization that Hillary knows exactly what she is doing with the Obama Turban thing — keeping the story alive: