With Hillary agreeing not to back out of NBC’s debate later this month, we wondered what that meant for David Shuster.

An MSNBC spokesperson tell us that Shuster remains on indefinite suspension but will not be fired and will return to the network.

With Barack Obama’s big wins last night in Maryland and Virginia (DC too but not many delegates there), it’s looking really hard for Hillary Clinton to take back the lead among pledged (i.e., voted for delegates). We run the numbers and discuss the implications …

Watch this episode on YouTube.

This afternoon, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a criminal contempt resolution against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers and a resolution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) file a civil suit against the White House.

Both resolutions arise from the U.S. Attorneys purge investigation. Paul Kiel explains.

After reading his remarks in their context and watching his appearance this afternoon on MSNBC, I’d have to say that whatever trouble Hillary backer and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell got himself into yesterday–over his reported comments that some whites in his state will not be willing to vote for a black candidate for President–was a result of his bumptious personality, and not a deliberate effort to cast doubt on Obama’s electability or to otherwise inject race into the campaign:

That’s my take at least. Yours?

It appears that waterboarding and Republican presidential ambitions may have collided today in the Senate.

At issue is a Democratic measure that would restrict the CIA to using those interrogation methods listed in the Army Field Manual. In other words, it would bar the CIA from employing so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

Republicans were expected to use a parliamentary procedure today that would have blocked the measure by requiring a 60-vote minimum to proceed. But here’s where it gets interesting.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain opposes waterboarding, which would have put him in the position of voting with the Democrats and against the President on this measure, perhaps giving the Dems the 60 votes necessary to proceed.

So the Republicans scuttled that planned parliamentary maneuver, and the full bill went to a vote a little while ago, barely passing, 51-45. Notably, McCain voted against the bill. One would expect that his publicly stated reason for opposing it will be something other than the anti-waterboarding provision.

The GOP thinking may be that it’s better to have the bill pass and the President veto it, than have the current Republican nominee and the President so publicly at odds.

That sets up an interesting situation when and if a veto override is attempted. But with the two-thirds vote required for an override seemingly out of reach, McCain’s vote may be less crucial.

Several readers have asked about where the total popular vote count between Obama and Hillary stands after last night.

Turns out that even giving Hillary her tallies in Michigan and Florida, Obama comes out ahead — though just barely.

More gamesmanship on telecom immunity. This time in the House. Paul Kiel has the details.

The Senate Ethics Committee issued a public letter of admonishment today to Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) for his conduct in connection with his arrest in the airport bathroom and his subsequent conduct.

We have the letter here and details here.

From a quick read through the letter, the Ethics Committee hits him harder than I might have expected. It’s not just the arrest they tag him for but his efforts to withdraw his guilty plea. Oh, and there was the matter of him slipping the officer his Senate business card. They didn’t like the appearance of that either.

From The Globe …

Hillary Clinton will take the Democratic nomination even if she does not win the popular vote, but persuades enough superdelegates to vote for her at the convention, her campaign advisers say.

The New York senator, who lost three primaries Tuesday night, now lags slightly behind her rival, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, in the delegate count. She is even further behind in “pledged” delegates, those assigned by virtue of primaries and caucuses.

But Clinton will not concede the race to Obama if he wins a greater number of pledged delegates by the end of the primary season, and will count on the 796 elected officials and party bigwigs to put her over the top, if necessary, said Clinton’s communications director, Howard Wolfson.

“I want to be clear about the fact that neither campaign is in a position to win this nomination without the support of the votes of the superdelegates,” Wolfson told reporters in a conference call.

“We don’t make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,” Wolfson said. “And we don’t make distinctions when it comes to elected officials” who vote as superdelegates at the convention.

“We are interested in acquiring delegates, period,” he added.

A quote from Mark Penn that should go over extremely well: “Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”