Q&A: David Plouffe  —  Obama's Manager Discusses Clinton's Negatives & The Delegate Race  —  Fri.  —  National Journal's Linda Douglass sat down with David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager, for the April 25 edition of “National Journal On Air.”  This is a transcript of their conversation.

Fair Is Fair  —  What's wrong with this picture?  Our campaign runs a TV ad Monday saying that the presidency is the toughest job in the world and giving examples of challenges presidents have faced and challenges the next president will face — including terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan …

OBAMA'S BAD LUCK WITH ADVISERS CONTINUES  —  Gabriel Schoenfeld reports on the latest Obama foreign policy adviser who turns out not to like Israel very much.  Add Joseph Cirincione to the list that includes Samantha Power, Robert Malley, Merrill McPeak, Zbigniew Brzezinski , and his spiritual adviser Jeremiah Wright.

Obama has a punctuation problem  —  Barack Obama's real opponent now is not Hillary Rodham Clinton.  It is a pair of punctuation marks.  —  The first is a question.  The second is an asterisk.  —  Both threaten to hover over Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination without confronting …

John Edwards's supporters are flocking to Sen. Obama  —  Donors, activists and members of Congress who backed former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) are flocking to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).  —  This and the fact that Obama is likely to win the North Carolina primary could prompt Edwards to endorse Obama …

McCain On The Blogger Conferencee Call: Obama Must Repudiate Ayers And Apologize For Associating With An Unrepentant Terrorist  —  Senator McCain began the conference call with a review of his recent speeches, high praise for Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, and a vigorous defense of tax cuts …

Obama's ‘Distractions’?  —  Real change has never been easy. . . . The status quo in Washington will fight.  They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November.  —  Pennsylvania primary night speech  —  With that, Obama identified …

McCain Offers Tax Policies He Once Opposed  —  Reversal Includes New Support for Bush Cuts  —  On May 26, 2001, after then-Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) cast his vote against President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, he trudged back to his office, convinced, he recalled …

Iraq War Is Everyone Else's Fault, Feith Explains  —  Mistakes were made.  But not by him.  —  Doug Feith, the No. 3 man at the Pentagon before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, has come in for his share of blame for the failures there — in large part because he led the Pentagon policy shop …

Wesley Snipes got off easy  —  Actor Wesley Snipes has not filed a tax return for ten years thereby evading tens of millions of dollars in federal income tax.  Now he has been sentenced to jail for three years, which strikes me as a light sentence under the circumstances.

THE WORST OF TIMES  —  STAFF BRACES FOR LAYOFFS AFTER BUYOUTS FALL SHORT  —  THE New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days.  —  The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board.

Study says near extinction threatened people 70,00 years ago  —  WASHINGTON - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.  The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought …

McCain: “Clear Who Hamas Wants to be the Next President”  —  McCain spoke with bloggers this morning on a number of issues ranging from William Ayers to Rev. Wright to Tony Rezko.  Jennifer Rubin noted that Hamas had endorsed Senator Obama and asked McCain whether Obama might have given “an unhelpful signal” to the terrorist group.

Dancing with News Corp.  —  It's been an interesting week in the relationship between Barack Obama and the country's most political media mogul, Rupert Murdoch.  —  On Monday, Obama, unprompted, took a shot at Murdoch, making his name a synonym for malign media consolidation.