“A judge in Nevada has just ordered MSNBC to include Rep. Dennis Kucinich in Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas or he will cancel the forum. Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson vowed to issue an injunction halting the nationally televised debate if MSNBC failed to comply. Kucinich had filed a lawsuit seeking to be included just this morning.”

I stand accused — “Yglesias and Marshall are quite busy not readying themselves to own up to the fact that one of their main candidates is using surrogates (in this case, a black surrogate, a fiendishly clever move) to peddle the charge of cocaine use to scare off the white women. Period. That’s what she’s doing.”

Look, I think the idea that I’m turning a blind eye here is dumb. Anyone who reads the blog knows I’d rather see Barack Obama win the nomination than Hillary Clinton. Her campaign’s strategy seems to be to taunt Obama and his supporters into calling her and her campaign a bunch of racists, and then because black people outnumber white people she wins an election that’s all about race. It’s cynical as hell, and I don’t want to be a part of it. Now Bill Clinton’s on the radio whining that Obama called Hillary a racist when Obama never did any such thing.

Nor will I call her one, it’s a red herring that Clinton’s people have injected into the campaign instead of trying to make a stronger affirmative case for their candidate

Let me just fall back to what I’ve said before: I don’t envision core domestic policy issues unfolding incredibly differently in a Clinton or in an Obama administration. I think Barack Obama has given us more indication, both in his record and his proposals, that he’ll pursue the kind of foreign policy we need to get the country on track. I’ll buy that Obama doesn’t have a ton of experience, but the reality is that Clinton doesn’t have a ton either. And while Hillary Clinton can probably win in the general election, I think that the bulk of the evidence supports the idea that Obama would have an easier time — in particular would have an easier time of generating the sort of big win that would be necessary to pass ambitious legislation. Ultimately, that’s what the campaign is about. I won’t even pretend to be appalled by Clinton’s cynicism — the disenfranchisementgambit and all the rest — because, frankly, the idea that Clinton would use dishonest political tactics to beat the GOP is, in my view, probably the most appealing thing about her. At the end of the day, though, while I think she’d be okay it’s always seemed to me that with other viable options in the field it’s made more sense to go with “other options” and now that it’s a clear two-person race, I think Obama is clearly the better option.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeatedly and misleadingly labels any gains in Iraq as breathtaking victories. As early as November, he said that “we’ve succeeded militarily.” Last week, he declared that “the surge worked.”

After the Iraqi government this weekend passed its new de-Baathification law — which “would allow thousands of former Baathists who were not involved in past crimes against Iraqis to fill posts in the Shiite-dominated government” — McCain added “political reconciliation” to his victory list. At a campaign stop today, McCain said that the new law is evidence that “we’re succeeding politically”:

Now, six months ago, the Democrats were saying we’ve lost the war militarily. [...]

My friends, you would have to suspend disbelief to believe that it’s not. So then they said, after we succeeded militarily, Well, you can’t succeed politically. You’re not moving forward politically. Well, now we’re succeeding politically.

The right wing is now echoing McCain’s victory celebration. The National Review writes: “Yesterday we were losing in Iraq, today we are winning.” The law has “shown us what real political reconciliation looks like.”

The law’s language hardly guarantees true political reconciliation. Juan Cole observed that legislation was actually spearheaded by the most anti-Baathist groups, and opposed by former Baathists:

If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.

Instead, parliament’s version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.

Additionally, barely 150 members of the 275-seat parliament attended the session. The New York Times also notes that the law may actually end up undermining the U.S. strategy of incorporating Sunnis into security forces, as it may exclude more former Baathists than it lets back in, particularly in security ministries.

The U.S. embassy in Iraq was “notably cautious,” refusing to comment a full day after the legislation was passed.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman has more.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates today forwarded his recommendation to President Bush that approximately 3,000 additional U.S. Marines be sent to Afghanistan to “augment NATO forces” and “thwart an expected spring offensive by the Taliban.” A Pentagon spokesman said that they are still “waiting” for a response from the White House.

I mentioned Jonathan Chait’s great piece on Robert Johnson, HRC’s new best friend, from back when he was George W. Bush’s new best friend earlier today. In light of Johnson’s renewed salience, the article seems to have been rescued from TNR‘s FUBAR archives and is now available here.