ABC News is reporting that Hillary will drop out of the race Friday.
The ABC report is thinly sourced. The gist is:
Sen. Hillary Clinton will hold an event with supporters by Friday, likely ending her historic bid for the White House and ceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, ABC News has learned.
Late Update: The New York Times‘ Adam Nagourney is reporting the same thing, citing a senior adviser to Clinton:
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is moving to suspend her campaign and endorse Senator Barack Obama on Friday after Democratic members of Congress urged her Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama, according to a senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton is likely to make the announcement in New York City, an aide said, though no final venue has been chosen.
Her decision came after a day of telephone conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about what she should do now that Mr. Obama had claimed enough delegates to be able to clinch the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had initially said she wanted to wait before making any decision, but her aides said that in conversations, some of her closest supporters said it was urgent that she step aside.
Later Update: CNN, too:
CNN can confirm through multiple sources as well as a top Clinton fundraiser that Sen. Hillary Clinton will drop out of the presidential race on Friday, ending her historic bid for the White House.
A senior Hillaryland source confirms to TPM Election Central that reports Hillary will drop out Friday* and endorse Obama are accurate.
Late Update: A classic line, via the NYT:
“We pledged to support her to the end,” Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said in an interview “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”
*Later Update: Looks like the official event will actually be held Saturday.
If you were awful enough to delight in John McCain’s prebuttal speech trainwreck last night, feast your eyes on the Fox News commentators trying to decide if it was just bad or downright terrible …
(Speaking personally, this episode is one you simply do not want to miss.)
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
From The Hill …
Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are quietly working together on a good-government bill despite their campaign-trail battle over who is tougher against Washington’s special interests.
McCain’s Senate office contacted Obama’s office Monday night asking to sign on to a bill opening federal government contracts to public scrutiny, according to three knowledgeable sources.
Before the call, Obama had been working on the measure primarily with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), an ardent proponent of eliminating wasteful government spending and an early supporter and longtime Senate ally of McCain’s.
After learning that Obama and Coburn were introducing the bill without his backing, McCain’s staffers immediately contacted Coburn to express concern and a desire to be named as an original co-sponsor of the update. They then called Obama’s office.
Obama staffers were happy to comply with McCain’s request to sign on, an Obama adviser said, because they knew support from the two presumptive nominees could propel the legislation to passage in the final months of a packed legislative schedule.
McCain’s Senate office and campaign did not return calls for comment on the matter. Coburn, however, acknowledged that the request had occurred and blamed himself for not being more aggressive in contacting McCain about becoming an original co-sponsor when the bill was introduced.
Read the rest here.
Email out tonight from Sen. Clinton …
Dear XXX,
I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.
On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.
I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.
When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.
I made you — and everyone who supported me — a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.
I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.
I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.
In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.
I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.
Sincerely,
Hillary Rodham Clinton
The Senate intel committee’s Phase II report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq is just out. We’ll be bringing you more through the day, but if you’re eager to take a look, you can find the reports here:
Those are both .pdfs.
Here are the key points from the reports, according to a press release from Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s office:
–Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
–Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
–Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
–Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
–The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
–The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
Late Update: We have a thread set up at TPMmuckraker for readers who are going through the Phase II reports. Let us know in the comments there any interesting tidbits you find.
The chief of staff to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin decided to dabble on the side in the energy business, but all he got was a gusher of trouble.
TPM Election Central confirms that Obama strategist Paul Tewes will be joining the DNC.
Jake Tapper provides some more details of that talking-to Obama gave Joe Lieberman yesterday on the senate floor.
It’s hard when politicians stonewall reporters. So I need to ask for your help.
But first a little background.
Former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) is running for senate in Colorado. Schaffer left the House in 2003 and tried to run for Senate in 2004 but lost in the Republican primary. 
But soon after he left the House he joined the board of directors of an outfit called the National Alternative Fuels Foundation, an outfit run by a guy named Bill Orr and put together with the help of a Colorado political operative named Scott Shires, who’s also been Schaffer’s political handler in Colorado.
Nothing too out of the ordinary there except that it turned out that the NAFF was actually a scam funded with a $3.6 million congressional earmark. Last week, a federal court in Colorado convicted Orr of 22 counts all tied to basically using bogus science to bilk the US government out of $2 million bucks disbursed under that earmark. Shires had already pled guilty to charges tied to his role in the operation — he was treasurer — and is awaiting sentencing next month.
Now, it’s bad enough that Schaffer was serving on the board of the NAFF while it was in the process of scamming the federal government. But the fat earmark that funded the whole scheme suggests another question. Was it Schaffer that got the earmark that funded Orr’s phony-baloney operation?
It’s possible for an earmark like that to get funded without any member of Congress championing them. But it doesn’t happen often. In most cases, someone has to push for it. Given Schaffer’s close connection to Shires and the fact that he joined the board of directors right after leaving Congress, he’s a logical suspect. But there’s no direct proof.
So TPMmuckraker reporter Andrew Tilghman put together the list of every member of the Colorado congressional delegation circa 2000 and just started putting in calls. It took a little work. When Tilghman finally tracked down retired Rep. Joel Hefley at his home in Oklahoma, he had to leave a message for a callback with Hefley’s wife because Hefley was out in the barn. But of the eight members of the delegation, we managed to put the question to seven of them. And while they each phrased it a bit differently, each said they were either sure they had nothing to do with it or had no recollection of having anything to do with it (it was eight years ago). Except one. Bob Schaffer. The guy will not take our calls. He’s not willing to deny a role with the earmark.
So what do we do? The Colorado press won’t touch it. But we really want to know if Schaffer was more deeply involved in this than he’s letting on. We have no proof he was responsible for the earmark, just circumstantial evidence that suggests his involvement. It’s also possible that someone outside of the Colorado delegation made this happen. But I don’t think that’s likely. And I’m pretty sure someone out there knows what happened. So if you do, we want to hear from you. And if you’re not that person, if you can just get Schaffer to answer the question, that would do nice too. We’re just looking for the mystery earmarker.