Krissah Williams, Washington Post

Lifelong Democrat Kathleen Cowley watches with disdain as huge crowds hang on Sen. Barack Obama’s every word. She dismisses Obama’s “intolerable logic.” She turns the channel on pundits who chalk up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s primary victories to little more than racism. And she doesn’t much care for the notion that while Obama is fresh and inspiring, Clinton is, by implication, old and mean.

“There’s just been an attitude that if you aren’t voting for Barack Obama, then you’re a racist,” said Cowley, 49, a mother of four from Massachusetts who has vowed to never back the senator from Illinois. “I just find that intolerable. I feel like when the members of the media talk about how [Obama's supporters] would react, they say, ‘Well, we can’t take the vote away from African Americans.’ Well, excuse me, there’s a higher percentage of women.”

A Democratic race that a couple of months ago was celebrated as a march toward history — the chance to nominate the nation’s first woman or African American as a major-party candidate — threatens to leave lingering bitterness, especially among Clinton supporters, whose candidate is running out of ways to win. (more…)

KENNETH LOVETT, New York Daily News

rate Senate Republicans vowed Tuesday to go after filmmakers who deliberately film beatings and then post them on Web sites like YouTube.”They make me sick,” state Sen. John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, said of recent videos with titles like “Dude gets savagely put to sleep” and “Brutal girl fight.”

“We should never, ever, ever glorify this type of behavior,” Flanagan said. (more…)

Democrat and Chronicle Editorial

It may be years before all the sordid details of the Albany scandal known as Troopergate are made public. After all, there’s much more here than a governor — now ex-governor — playing dirty tricks on a political rival.

There’s the involvement of the State Police in the messy business of political spying. There’s the integrity of the initial investigations of the state inspector general, the attorney general and the Albany County district attorney. And there may be a bigger deal still in how former Gov. Spitzer’s ham-handed political attacks led to his own downfall early this year. (more…)

Rich Lowery, New York Post

IF Barack Obama gets his way, the Oxford English Dictionary will update its definition of “distraction” by the end of the campaign: “Diversion of the mind, attention, etc., from any object or course that tends to advance the political interests of Barack Obama.” (more…)

STACY BANDHOLD, Saratogian

In celebration of Mother’s Day, Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, announced the launch of a statewide grassroots petition drive to strengthen support for legislation that would allow motorists a “summertime holiday” from the ever increasing prices.“There is no question about it, record-high gas prices are truly hurting motorists, small businesses and our economy. A summer gas tax holiday, I just can’t think of a better gift on Mother’s Day,” Tedisco said Sunday afternoon while speaking to members of the media outside a local gas station. (more…)

Charles Hurt, New York Post

First it was Bill Clinton dismissing Barack Obama as just another black candidate winning South Carolina. Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, splashing moonshine onto those smoldering embers by telling West Virginia voters that “hardworking Americans, white Americans” support her, not Obama.

This, she argues, is why superdelegates should strip the nomination from Obama and give it to her, even though she trails him by every legitimate measure.

Is this really how Democratic Party bosses talk in smoky back rooms? (more…)

Jay Gallagher, Gannett News Service in the Elmira Star Gazette

The Senate Wednesday voted to suspend the 32-cents-per-gallon state tax on gasoline from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But the plan has almost no chance of becoming law because it is opposed by the Speaker of the Assembly.

“We don’t have the power to control most aspects of the price of gasoline,” said state Sen. George H. Winner Jr., R-Elmira. “But we do control the tax.’”

“Everyone understands the need for a fundamental, long-term, nationally directed effort to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil,” Winner said in a news release. “But we can’t ignore the hardship of today’s gas prices on many families, and we can’t ignore the threat to local summer tourism.” (more…)

Associated Press Article in the New York Times

Republican John McCain on Monday dismissed Democratic rival Barack Obama as having zero national security experience.Arriving in North Carolina on the eve of the presidential primary, McCain said there are stark differences between him and the two Democratic candidates, Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he concentrated on Obama in particular. (more…)

New York Post Editorial

There was a significant political devel opment out of Albany late last month: A county Democratic Committee screening panel declined to endorse District Attorney David Soares for re-election to a second four-year term. For a county committee to reject its own party’s incumbent is quite unusual.

Which means that even if his financial patron, hard-left hedge-fund gazillionaire George Soros, injects his influence into the race as he did in 2004, Soares should have a real fight on his hands. (more…)

New York Sun Editorial

If Senator Obama’s presidential campaign collapses, it will be not only because of his shifting explanations in respect of his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whom he first said he couldn’t disown and then did. It will be not only because of his determination to run to the left of Senator Clinton on the tax issue, promising to raise the payroll tax and at the same time dismissing the idea of a summer suspension of the 18.4 cent a gallon federal gas tax. No, a large part of the explanation will be his decision to run to the left of Senator Clinton on the matter of an American response to Iran. (more…)