Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sought common ground Thursday on immigration, health care and tax relief in their first one-on-one debate with just the two of them after John Edwards suspended his candidacy yesterday. But the two left standing in the Democratic Party’s contest for president grew testy at times in trying to distinguish themselves as the candidate best able to handle the responsibilities of the White House.

Just days before the Super Tuesday contests, the two alternated addressing each other cordially with swipes, underscoring the high stakes of the upcoming contests, according to the Associated Press. The debate came on the day when Obama’s campaign reported raising a staggering $32 million in January, cash aplenty to advertise all through the Super Tuesday states, with its nearly two dozen contests from coast to coast.

AP: Obama, Clinton Trade Jabs on Immigration

In your opinion, who won the debate?

Be warned that “severe weather” in Middle Alabamaland, or a little bit of wind and rain, could knock out power and/or Net service today. Makes one wonder what Alabama Power, Charter and AT and T would do in the case of a real disaster, natural or otherwise. They want Congress to grant them immunity for spying on us. I want my money back for all the time they (we) are down…

Major storm for the eastern half of the U.S.

Meanwhile on the techno front, two cables that carry Internet traffic deep under the Mediterranean Sea snapped Thursday, disrupting service across a swath of Asia and the Middle East. India took one of the biggest hits, and the damage from its slowdowns and outages rippled to some U.S. and European companies that rely on its lucrative outsourcing industry to handle customer service calls and other operations, according to the AP and other news organizations and bloggers.

Cable Break Causes Wide Internet Outage

The Senate has been in a logjam on the new surveillance bill since last week, when Republicans prevented the Democrats’ attempts to hold simple majority votes on a number of amendments (the Republicans want a 60-vote threshold), according to the TPMMuckraker.

And ever since both houses finally agreed to a fifteen-day extension to the Protect America Act on Tuesday, the two sides have gone underground for negotiations.

According to a source on the Hill, discussions have been progressing. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made an offer on how to proceed, to which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a counteroffer. Most of the details of those discussions are unknown.

But, as might be expected, the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity for the telecoms that collaborated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, is at the center of the dispute.

According to the source, McConnell’s counteroffer included votes on seven of the proposed amendments (which seven is unknown — there are a number of important amendments offered by a variety of lawmakers), but, crucially, Dodd/Feingold was not one of them.

In a letter to McConnell late yesterday, portions of which the source provided, Reid wrote McConnell, “That amendment – which Sen. Dodd has been talking about for months – goes to the heart of the FISA debate. It is ludicrous to think he should not be allowed to offer that amendment.”

Again, the details of these offers (including the proposed vote thresholds) are unknown. And McConnell is clearly objecting to more than just Dodd’s amendment.

Reid’s letter refers to “several” amendments missing from McConnell’s counteroffer. So the two sides still have a ways to go.

Discussions continue today. Stay tuned … and don’t forget to call your senators.

With permission/David Rae Morris

The New Orleans Radiators celebrated their 30th anniversary at Tipitina’s this past weekend. The five original members are, from the left: Ed Volker, David Malone, Camile Baudoin, Frank Bua, and Reggie Scanlan. The Rads will be playing, as usual, the best party in the world this weekend, the Mom’s Ball. But shhh, don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret!

We have known for some time that the Bush administration and his new Homeland Security Department are filled with loyal Bushies who are for the most part incompetent fools, but check out this story from the Associated Press on the wires this morning.

In “Cyber Storm” war games, bloggers are depicted revealing the locations of railcars with hazardous materials, while Washington’s Metro trains are shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found on London’s subway.

Those incidents were among dozens of mock disasters confronting officials in the U.S. government’s biggest-ever “Cyber Storm” war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by the AP.

The Homeland Security Department ran the exercise to test the nation’s hacker defenses with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA and the National Security Agency.

The laundry list of fictional catastrophes – which include hundreds of people on “No Fly” lists suddenly arriving at airport ticket counters – is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps certain people in the White House awake at night.

Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers and even reporters?

After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified “major news network” airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government.

Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading “believable but misleading” information that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets.

The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers.

The Bush administration is organizing another multimillion-dollar war game, Cyber Storm 2, to take place in early March. Maybe they should get some bloggers involved to clue them in on from who and where the real threats might come from. Maybe they should look in the mirror.

AP: Trains, Bloggers Are Threats in US Drill

Rob Kall of OpEdNews.com Asks John Conyers About Impeachment. Conyers is still reluctant to bring up impeachment because the vote might fail, he says. And then Fox News and the Republicans would call Conyers names, and there’s an election coming up, etc., according to Democrats.com.

But when pressed, as seen in this video, he says it’s “not off the table.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) started his questioning of Attorney General Mukasey by asking about the President’s Article II powers under the Constitution.

“Do you think that the President can break any law he pleases because he’s the President — including, say, statutes banning torture?”

“I can’t contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids,” Mukasey said.

“Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?” Specter responded. “Didn’t he?”

Well, “both of those issues have been brought within statutes,” Mukasey responded, mumbling.

“That’s not the point,” Specter pressed. “The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Mukasey conceded, after a pause.

“There’s no dispute about that, is there? The law says you have to go to court to get a warrant for wiretapping and the administration didn’t do that.”

Mukasey then went into a description of the alleged problems with FISA regarding foreign to domestic communications.

“But I’m talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States,” Specter insisted.

He later asked what’s wrong with the issue of phone companies breaking the law being “front and center” in the debate?

No shit. If the prez is not above the law, he’s impeachment toast, right? Can you say ratings national TV networks?

I’ve now watched this three times today on C-SPAN, little of it has made the TV news or the wires, but it is on a few blogs, where you can also get the historic transcript: TPM-Muckraker

Later, Mukasey said it was because the Bush Justice Department did not want to reveal the “means and methods” of surveillance through the courts in lawsuits against the telecom companies.

But we already know what those means and methods are, do we not?

IMPEACH!

Ad 1: Specter later asked about contempt citations out against senior advisers to the president, such as Karl Rove, and Mukasy danced around the issue of executive privilege and immunity. This is complicated legal stuff, not for everyone, but it strikes me as historic viewing, however difficult. I hope C-SPAN keeps showing it…

John Edwards suspended his run for the White House today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans where he launched his campaign in Dec. 2006. He said it was time to step aside “so that history can blaze its path” in a campaign now left to a woman and an African-American, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Glynn Wilson

John Edwards ends his campaign for president where he started it, in New Orleans

“With our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November,” Edwards said of the Democratic Party.

Clinton and Obama both pledged in phone conversations that “they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency,” Edwards said. “This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause,” he said before a small group of supporters in Musician’s Village, joined by his wife Elizabeth and his three children, Cate, Emma Claire and Jack.

Edwards told a story about his drive over to make his statement, where he stopped and talked to a number of homeless people living under a bridge. One woman asked him never to forget the homeless and the plight of the poor.

“Well I say to her and I say to all those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you. We will fight for you. We will stand up for you,” he said, pledging to continue his campaign-long effort to end what he frequently said was “two Americas,” one for the rich and powerful, the other for the poor and struggling, working middle class.

The former North Carolina senator did not immediately endorse either Obama, the strongest black candidate in history, or Clinton, who is seeking to become the first woman president.

Both of them praised Edwards – and immediately began courting his supporters, according to the Associated Press.

“John Edwards ended his campaign today in the same way he started it – by standing with the people who are too often left behind and nearly always left out of our national debate,” Clinton said.

Obama praised Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth.

At a rally in Denver, Obama said the couple has “always believed deeply that two Americans can become one, and that our country can rally around this common purpose. So while his campaign may have ended, this cause lives on for all of us who still believe that we can achieve that dream of one America.”

The impact of Edwards’ decision will be felt next week, when Democrats hold primaries and caucuses in 22 states, with 1,681 delegates at stake.

Four in 10 Edwards supporters said their second choice in the race is Clinton, while a quarter prefer Obama, according to the latest Associated Press-Yahoo poll.

Edwards amassed 56 national convention delegates, most of whom will be free to support either Obama or Clinton.

As expected, Edwards said he was suspending his campaign rather than ending it, but aides said that was simply legal terminology so that he can continue to receive federal matching funds for his campaign donations.

After the announcement, Edwards planned to work with Habitat for Humanity rebuilding one of the homes in Musicians’ Village.

His recent loss in South Carolina, where he was born and he had won in 2004, may have had a lot to do with his decision, along with his wife’s influence.