MILLERSVILLE, Pennsylvania (CNN) - Hillary Clinton has scheduled a last-minute campaign stop in Detroit for Wednesday morning, a move the campaign says will spotlight Michigan's efforts at a primary re-vote and keep the pressure on Barack Obama to consent to another election in the state.
The Wednesday morning event is billed as a routine "Solutions for America" campaign rally, but Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said the trip is intended to put the focus squarely on Obama, who has resisted agreeing to re-votes in Florida and Michigan.
"The ball is in Obama's court," Elleithee said. "Senator Obama is in the way, so she's going to go to Michigan to press the case personally." In a conference call held earlier in the day, Clinton aide Phil Singer also said the ball was in Obama's court.
"Why doesn't he go ahead and say, 'Let's do this'?" said Singer.
A draft proposal currently under consideration in Michigan calls for a new Democratic primary to be held on June 3, to be paid for with private money. That plan would have to be approved by the state legislature. The state Senate Majority Leader, a Republican, has said he will not give his support to any plan that does not have the consent of all the parties involved, including both presidential campaigns.
The Obama campaign on Tuesday again accused the Clinton campaign of attempting to change the rules late in the electoral game to garner delegates, saying it continued to harbor "valid concerns about the proposal" to hold another primary in June.
"We have raised these concerns, as legislators in Michigan did today, and we're waiting to see if these issues can be resolved by the legislature," Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.
- CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/18/art.murtha.gi.jpg caption=" Murtha endorsed Clinton Tuesday."](CNN) - Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha announced Tuesday he's backing Hillary Clinton's White House bid.
In a statement, Murtha said Clinton is "the candidate that will forge a consensus on health care, education, the economy, and the war in Iraq.
"I've known Senator Clinton for fifteen years," he said. "I know that she continually reaches out for opinions and ideas not just from our nation's leaders, but from all Americans."
Murtha’s announcement comes several weeks before the critical Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary. He is also the latest so-called Democratic “Super Delegate” to choose sides in the contest between Clinton and Barack Obama. According to CNN's latest estimate, Clinton leads Obama among super delegates by 30, though that margin is significantly less than it was before Super Tuesday.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/18/art.archives.gi.jpg caption=" The National Archives will release Hillary Clinton's schedules while first lady."]
WASHINGTON (CNN) - Over 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton's schedule as first lady are set to be released to the public on Wednesday, the National Archives announced.
The documents are among those the Obama campaign has long said need to be made public in order to fully evaluate the New York senator's experience and tenure while First Lady.
In a statement Tuesday, the Archives said the documents are from the files of Patti Solis Doyle, the director of Clinton's scheduling while she was first lady, and later the manager of her presidential campaign. Doyle stepped down from managing the campaign earlier this year after a string of poor showings in primary contests.
“Arranged chronologically, these records document in detail the activities of the First Lady, including meetings, trips, speaking engagements and social activities for the eight years of the Clinton Administration,” the statement said.
The documents are among those that were the center of a legal battle between the Archives and Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group that has long urged a speedier release of files from the Clinton White House years.
In a court motion earlier this month, the Archives promised to release the schedules by the end of the month, but said it will need "one to two years" to process remaining documents, including over 20,000 pages of call logs - an indication those documents won't be released by the November 4 presidential election.
According to the Archives statement, 4,746 of the schedules have redactions, information removed before being released, that largely relate to privacy concerns and include "social security numbers, telephone numbers, and home addresses."
The documents will be available for view on the Clinton Library's Web site.
- CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/03/18/art.pittsburgh.gi.jpg caption=" Sen. Hillary Clinton at the St. Patrick's Day Parade March 15 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."]
Barack Obama's campaign suggests Hillary Clinton will do just about anything to win, and that includes destroying the Democratic Party.
The Politico reports that Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod calls Clinton "the ultimate Washington inside player" who keeps trying to change the rules:
"When they started off, it was all about delegates. Now that we have more delegates, it's all about the popular vote. And if that does not work out, they will probably challenge us to a game of cribbage to choose the nominee."
Another senior aide thinks Clinton is willing to destroy the party as long as she gets the nomination.
Clinton's campaign called these comments "unhelpful." Communications director Harold Wolfson says he doesn't think either side would destroy the party, that the primary process isn't over yet and we should "let democracy run its course."
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(CNN)— Senator John McCain warned Tuesday Iran’s increasing influence in the Middle East is hindering progress in Iraq.
Closing a week-long congressional delegation to the region that included a time in Iraq, McCain expressed concern over a large cache of explosives found in Iraq and alluded that they may have been sent from Iran.
During a press conference in Amman, Jordan, the Arizona senator also said there is a continued concern that Iran may be training Iraqi extremists in Iran and then sending them back into Iraq.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also said he was concerned about Iran developing nuclear weapons and said he planned to work closely with European allies to set in place a strict set of sanctions “that would be harmful and compelling" to Iran's trade, diplomatic, and financial institutions if he was elected president.
"There'd be a broad range of sanctions and punishments to the Iranians to help try to convince them that their activities – particularly development of nuclear weapons – is not a beneficial goal to seek," he said.
McCain said he was encouraged by the progress he saw in Iraq as well as his meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan.
"We realize that there are enormous challenges in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and also continued efforts to win the struggle in Iraq, which we are succeeding but we still have a long way to go," he said.
Despite having a fundraiser planned in London this Thursday, McCain stressed the trip, his eighth to Iraq was not political. McCain is the ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was joined on his trip by two fellow committee members, Sens. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
–CNN's Emily Sherman
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