Some very interesting news today out of the trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, one-time Barack Obama fundraiser and friend.

On the national level, Patrick Fitzgerald is best known as a scourge of the Bush White House, because of his role investigating the Plame leak. But he’s very much an equal opportunity prosecutor. And back in Illinois he’s been whacking away at the administration of Democratic Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich. So if Fitzgerald was the toast of Dems nationally that was very much not the case in Illinois where he’s actually US Attorney.

So this morning we have this, from the Chicago Tribune …

More bombshells were lobbed in the Antoin “Tony” Rezko trial even before the jury was seated this morning and they involved a purported attempt to pull strings with the White House to fire U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald. In a hearing before court began, prosecutors said they hoped to call Ali Ata, the former Blagojevich administration official who pleaded guilty to corruption yesterday, to the stand.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton said she believed Ata would testify to conversations Ata had with his political patron, Rezko, about working to pull strings to kill the criminal investigation into Rezko and others when it was in its early stages in 2004.

“[Ata] had conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that Mr. Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed,” Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

That sentence is loaded with a who’s who of political heavyweights. Bob Kjellander was the veteran Republican National Committeeman from Illinois who was a sometimes business associate of Stuart Levine, who has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Rezko to rig state boards for contracts.

Remember too, this isn’t the first we’ve heard that Fitzgerald may have been on the chopping block in the US Attorney purge. Rove of course has never had to testify about the purge. But his minion and doppelganger Kyle Sampson did have to testify and was obliged to concede (see video here) that he had recommended Fitzgerald’s ouster.

We’ll have more on this shortly.

(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader GN for the tip.)

Late Update: Paul Kiel has more.

That’s how much the Clinton campaign says it expects to pull in between last night’s win and the end of the day today.

For comparison, Richard Nixon’s entire 1960 campaign cost about $10 million, which was more than JFK spent to win the presidency that year. That’s not adjusted for inflation, and the 1960 election pre-dated Watergate-era reforms, so it’s not a precise comparison.

But still, $10 million in 24 hours?

As you know, on Sunday the Times published a blockbuster article detailing how the Pentagon has used a mix of control of access, defense contracts and more to get network “military analysts” to spout Pentagon talking points in their on-camera analysis. In some cases they even appear to have gotten the analysts to report back to them on what news stories the nets had coming down the pike.

Anybody notice any of the networks — broadcast or cable — picking up the story?

I’ve said this a number of times in conversations with friends and I’m not sure if I’ve written it up on TPM or not. But while there a lot of downsides for the Democrats about the current primary campaign (regrettably, so many self-inflicted), there is one thing that I think bodes well for the Democrats — or at least shows a problem for John McCain.

That is this: right now McCain is enjoying his post-nomination-clinching honeymoon. He’s also got the field completely clear. No one’s out there whacking him everyday, which means the press has no McCain-whacking stories to churn through. On the other hand, the Democrats are beating each other senseless. They daily hit on each others’ weaknesses, which not only airs their dirty laundry, and gets the press to talk about it. It also breeds resentment between the supporters of the Democratic candidates, thus pushing up the number Democrats saying they’re unwilling to vote for the possible nominee. Put that all together and John McCain is enjoying the most favorable environment he’s going to get right now and the Democrat (whoever is the nominee) is probably suffering the worst. And with all that, the race appears to be essentially tied.

I don’t want to be Polyannish. With all the terrible news Republicans are getting these days and with an incumbent Republican president who is now more unpopular than any president in modern history, the fact that the Republicans have a nominee who is very much in the race is little short of astounding and very disheartening for any Democrat. With all that said, though, this simple fact should not be forgotten. I assure you smart Republican strategists are not.

Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe fluffs Fox News so hard they’ve made him into the new network promo …

Elizabeth Warren and Dana Chasin discuss bankruptcy reform in the context of the housing crisis.

Ed Kilgore weighs in on the debate between John Judis and Jon Chait over whether Obama is being McGovernized.

Hillary Clinton achieved a solid victory in the Pennsylvania Primary Tuesday night, but just how much does her 10-point win change the look of the Democratic nomination battle? We break down some numbers in today’s episode of TPMtv …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

I think I’ve said this a hundred times, as have many others. But this article in Thursday’s Times is a good moment to revisit the point. As Patrick Healy explains, it is simply a fallacy to claim that winning a state’s Democratic primary means you’re more likely to win that state in the general election or that your opponent can’t win it.

The dynamics are simply different between general elections and primaries. You have on the one hand patterns and preferences that Democratic voters show for different candidates in Democratic primaries. Then you have the separate question of whether these same voters will vote for the Democratic or the Republican nominee in the general. One is simply not predictive of the other. It could be — if one candidate’s voters simply refuse to vote for the other candidate. But who wins a primary doesn’t tell you that.

And it’s really not a big mystery that the argument doesn’t hold up because it wasn’t devised or conceived as an electoral argument. It’s a political argument — one that only really came into operation at the point at which the Clinton campaign realized that it was far enough behind that it’s path to the nomination required making the argument to superdelegates that she’s electable and Obama is not.

That’s not to say there isn’t a difference between the two as general election candidates — at least in their current incarnations. There is. It’s just not this big state nonsense. Peter Hart who, for what it’s worth is actually part of the same polling firm as Hillary’s new pollster/strategist Geoff Garin (though himself not working with either candidate), comes much closer to the mark when he says in the Times article, “Hillary goes deeper and stronger in the Democratic base than Obama, but her challenge is that she doesn’t go as wide. Obama goes much further reaching into the independent and Republican vote, and has a greater chance of creating a new electoral map for the Democrats.”

That’s the essence of it. But there’s actually a little more than that too when you combine that partisan analysis with a geographical one.

There’s not a lot of good or consistent polling state by state yet. But we were looking today at what polling data is out there. Clinton is running a bit better against McCain in the rustbelt states that sit just above the Mason-Dixon line. That’s principally Ohio (see Ohio polls) and Pennsylvania (see PA polls). The state where you see this pattern more wildly than anywhere is in Kentucky. (See KY polls). Clinton loses to McCain there but respectably, whereas Obama simply gets slaughtered. SurveyUSA has polled the state three times in the last eight weeks and the last two times McCain beats Obama better than two to one.

Kentucky isn’t really an issue in itself. It’s highly unlikely either Democrat would win it. But it’s the best example I’ve seen where Clinton appears to run dramatically stronger than Obama.

But this isn’t the whole story.

In a whole arc of territory stretching from the Great Lakes through the upper Midwest down into the inter-mountain West Obama consistently runs stronger than Hillary. Some of these states are ones Democrats really must win in order to win a general election — states like Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Others are states red states that have been trending blue but which Obama appears able to put in play while Hillary can’t. Colorado is a good example. The last four polls of the state show Obama tied or ahead of McCain while McCain beats Hillary handily. The most recent poll — April 21st — has Obama beating McCain by 3 points while McCain is beating Hillary by 14 points.

Given the spottiness of state by state polls, for now it’s best to watch the national popular vote polls, which show the two Democrats basically even in how they’d face McCain. But there are differences. They run better in different parts of the country. But the ‘big state’ argument is just malarkey, an artifact of the spin necessities of the post-Super Tuesday campaign.

As you’ve probably read, lawmakers are being briefed today by the Bush Administration on the intelligence gathered in advance of that Israeli strike last year on what the U.S. and Israel claim was a nascent Syrian nuclear weapons facility.

Included in the case against Syria (and North Korea) is a videotape purportedly taken inside the facility that shows North Koreans present.

As you might imagine, that hasn’t sat too well with the Syrians, but come on, this is hitting below the belt:

Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha yesterday angrily denounced the U.S. and Israeli assertions. “If they show a video, remember that the U.S. went to the U.N. Security Council and displayed evidence and images about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I hope the American people will not be as gullible this time around,” he said.

Ouch. Isn’t there some sort of statute of limitations on our goof? I mean it’s been five years since Colin Powell’s UN presentation. And look at all we’ve done since: brought peace and stability to Iraq, made real progress on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, calmed world financial markets.

You’d think they could overlook this one little hiccup in light of all our other good deeds. Not to mention the catharsis we’ve undergone here at home: the extensive congressional hearings on the misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Dick Cheney’s teary apology in the well of the Senate, Bush’s re-election in 2004. Look at the disgrace it has brought to the Republican Party: John McCain is barely running even with the Democrats in national polls.

Can’t the world see? We’ve changed.